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A Stitch In Time
Season 1, Episode 1
139120 6885r1
Air date June 2, 2015
Written by Jeffrey Alan Schechter
Directed by Todd Holland
U.S. Viewers (millions) 1.28
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A Stitch In Time was the  series premiere (and subsequently the first episode of Season 1) of Stitchers. It aired on June 2nd, 2015.

Synopsis

ABC Family's first procedural drama, "Stitchers," follows Kirsten, a young woman recruited into a covert government agency to be 'stitched' into the minds of the recently deceased, using their memories to investigate murders and decipher mysteries that otherwise would have gone to the grave. Working alongside Kirsten is Cameron, a brilliant neuroscientist whose passion for the program is evident in his work. The secret program is headed by Maggie, a skilled veteran of covert operations, and includes Linus, a socially immature bio-electrical engineer and communications technician. Kirsten's roommate, Camille, a gifted computer science grad student, is also recruited to use her skills to assist Kirsten in her new role as a 'stitcher'.

Summary

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 The episode begins with Kirsten Clark opening a door without touching it. She walks over to a couple in bed, who are oblivious to her presence. Her vision is blurred. She then touches the woman, causing a bright glow to spread up her hand and across her body. Kirsten winces in pain, and when she opens her eyes, she is in the same room, alone at night. 


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She returns to the living room where she sees a figure working at a desk. Tones can be heard in the background.  The ghostly figure of a man gets up and walks over to a chair behind Kirsten, again ignorant of her presence.  As the man begins to cry, Kirsten turns to look at the desk, which has an active bomb with a remaining timer of 3 seconds.  The apartment then explodes, appearing to consume Kirsten in the blaze.


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10 hours earlier, at Cal Tech in Pasadena, CA, Kirsten and Camille Engelson are meeting with Dean Hardwyck because of Kirsten's apparent sabotage of Camille's research project. Camille is Kirsten's roomate, which Camille believes provided Kirsten the opportunity. Kirsten proclaims her innocence, stating Camille's work is shoddy and the damage self-inflicted. It is revealed Kirsten suffers from a curious disorder called temporal dysplasia -- she has no sense of the passage of time. This condition would cause her to fail a polygraph exam, which Camille suggests they take. The Dean has no choice but to place Kirsten on academic suspension. As Kirsten leaves the meeting, she restores Camille's program with the use of her cellphone, demonstrating her superior computer skills.


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Kirsten is approached by Detective Fisher outside. He takes her to see the body of her father, Ed Clark, who has died of an apparent suicidal gunshot wound to the chest. Kirsten shows little reaction at seeing the body, but refutes the stated cause of death. Detective Fisher explains how all the indications of the scene point to suicide as they return to his office. Kirsten demands copies of all the crime scene photos, which Fisher denies. He asks why she is not close with her father; her reactions are not the normal responses upon learning of a family member's death.  She informs Fisher that she didn't murder him; she was in class at the time. Fisher says he had already confirmed that, again declaring that the death was suicide.  When another detective comes into the room to begin a meeting about the recent bombing activity in the city, Kirsten takes a photo of Detective Fisher's computer screen. Before Kirsten can leave, Detective Fisher asks again why she and her father weren't close, to which Kirsten replies, "you're the detective, detect."


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Kirsten returns to her home in Echo Park, where Camille is seen throwing all of Kirsten's belongings into the the living room. She is kicking her out and threatening to sue for academic sabotage. Kirsten is unphased by the news and returns to her room to use her laptop, but finds herself disconnected from the university's network as a result of the academic suspension.  While trading barbs with Camille about her romantic proclivities, she asks to borrow Camille's laptop.  She wants to use an exploit she wrote last semester to hack into the LAPD's data server.  Camille refuses, sarcastically stating that it is illegal and that it would be easier for Kirsten to break into Hardwyck's office and use his computer rather than her own.  Kirsten affirms this idea and leaves, leaving Camille in a state of disbelief.


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Kirsten returns to the university and is able to break into the Dean's office by studying the worn down keys and guessing the correct code.  She then is able to access the police records, using the picture of Fisher's computer ID she took earlier.  Once Kirsten has access to the photos the police took of Ed's home, she sees that one of his books is missing -- the K volume of a dictionary set, a possible message to Kirsten.  Before she can investigate further, several men with guns break into the Dean's office. They throw a black bag over Kirsten's head and take her to a Chinese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.


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It is there that Kirsten meets Maggie Baptiste, a mysterious woman who asks Kirsten why she think her father killed himself.  Kirsten reveals that Ed Clark is not her father, but rather a family friend who raised her after her real father abandoned her at the age of eight.  Kirsten believes this happened as a result of the death of her mother -- her father didn't want the hassle of having a child anymore and pawned her off onto a family friend.  Kirsten reveals that her lack of closeness with Ed and not feeling anything about his death is a result of her condition, temporal dysplasia; she is unable to perceive time. The moment something happens to her, she feels as if it has always been that way -- the knowledge of his death was familiar and it felt like he had been dead forever.


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Maggie tells Kirsten that she represents a federal agency investigating a serious crime and could use someone with's Kirsten's abilities.  She is the woman in charge of a secret government program to "stitch" a living consciousness into the mind of a recently-deceased person in order to use their memories to investigate crimes and solve mysteries. After intially declining, but with nowhere else to go, Kirsten follows Maggie down the elevator into the Stitcher's Lab.


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As Kirsten looks around at the lab, she is introduced to some of the other team members, including Cameron, the head neuroscientist, who is not happy with the idea of rushing Kirsten into the program without a proper psych evaluation.  Kirsten also meets Linus, a bioelectrical engineer who also handles the communications with a stitcher.  Finally, she meets, Ayo, the woman in charge of the medical side of the lab, ensuring Kirsten's saftey while undergoing a stitch.


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Kirsten is outfitted in the jumpsuit used to get a better connection between her skin and the lab's sensors. She steps into the "fish tank" -- the contraption used to enter a stitch.  Kirsten is sent into the mind of Peter Brandt. Brandt was responsible for two bombings over the last two days and had enough materials to make four bombs, so it is Kirsten's job to search Brandt's memories to find out what he did with the other two bombs.


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Kirsten has a very strong reaction to being stitched into Brandt's memories. Cameron tries to talk her through it and get her to calm down, but it isn't until she gets annoyed with Linus that she finally starts to relax. Cameron guides her through navigating Brandt's memories, most of which involve the woman he loved. This woman, Julie, was killed three months ago and Kirsten watches her death through Brandt's memories. But Kirsten does not get much time in Brandt's mind before his memories start to collapse. She "bounces" out of Brandt's mind just in time but has a strange reaction upon waking up in the real world. She kisses Cameron, tells him she's sorry, and calls him Julie. Then she passes out. 


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The next day, Kirsten and the team go over what she learned from Brandt's memories. Eventually, Kirsten decides to investigate a lead on her own, and Maggie asks Cameron to go along to make sure Kirsten does not do anything to jeopardize the program.  Kirsten returns home and again asks for Camille's assistance, revealing the entirety of the stitchers program in the process.  Intrigued, Camille lets Kirsten use her laptop and the trio work together to discover Brandt's motive: revenge for the theft and sale of Julie's work that left her so distracted she got hit by a bus.  They discover that Brandt has planted the next bomb at the home of the woman who sold Julie's technology.


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Kirsten and Cameron are too late to stop the first bomb, but no one is hurt in the explosion thanks to their delaying the intended victim. Upon learning the identity of the next victim, they return to the university and locate the second bomb in the basement of the library.  Kirsten is able to defuse the second bomb by using her dysplasia ability to traverse her memories of the stitch and slow down time.  The tones heard earlier in the stitch become recognizable as phone keypad tones, leading Kirsten to enter the disarm code -- it was Julie's name. 


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Unfortunately, the police arrive as soon as the danger is over and find Cameron and Kirsten with the bomb. Detective Fisher does not buy their explanation -- they just happened upon the bomb and diffused it -- but Maggie steps in when he tries to arrest them. Maggie flashes a badge that makes Fisher think she's NSA.


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Later, Maggie says the agency was not impressed with Kirsten and Cameron's actions, but she managed to convince them to keep the program up and running, as long as they play by the rules. Kirsten still wants to leave the program.  The stitch allowed her to finally experience emotions like grief and anger and love, and she is not a fan. Maggie stops Kirsten before she can leave, saying that they have been asked to look into Ed's death and they only have 48 hours before his memory collapses. The agency shares Kirsten's belief that Ed did not kill himself and they want answers as to what really happened to him.  It is revealed that Ed and his partner are the ones who developed the Stitchers technology. His partner is Kirsten's biological father. Kirsten declares she will be sticking with the program, at least until she figures out what really happened to the man who raised her.

Title and Background

The title could be referring to the idiom "A stitch in time saves nine," which means if you work hard now you won't have much work to do later.

Episode's Cast

Starring:

Guest Starring:

Trivia

The first episode was available for early viewing before the June 2nd premiere date on Abc Family's youtube channel. It was announced via the official Stitchers Facebook Page. Source

Music

Band Song Title
Cheers Elephant “Doin’ It Right”
Vacationer “Paradise Waiting”
Faces on Film “Strange Stars”

Trivia:

  • The music found in today's episode was confirmed by tunefind.Source

Quotes

Kirsten [to Maggie]:' I have this condition, it's called temporal dysplasia. I have no time perception.
Maggie [to Kirsten]: I've read about this condition. I thought it was made up.
Kirsten [to Maggie]: I wish, cause then you could unmake it up; it really sucks. I use memory, logic and math to approximate time difference, but I don't know what time feels like.


Kirsten [to Cameron]: You're getting this guys dead, deteriorating brain to talk to you? How?
Cameron [to Kirsten]: By inserting a living consciousness into those memories. We call it stitching.
Kirsten [to Cameron]: That's impossible.
Cameron [to Kirsten]: Is that so, doctor I've never studied neuroscience unlike Cameron. The brain is a bioelectrical device with emphasis on electrical. Even after death the wiring, the synapses are all still in there, for a while anyway, and that means so are the memories, but it takes a living consciousness to access them and interpret them and that's where you come in.


Kirsten [to Dean Hardwyck]: We also can't rule out that Camille did this to herself to sabotage me.
Camille [to Kirsten]: I'll take a polygraph right now. Right now. How about you?
Kirsten [to Camille]: I'd fail
Camille [to Dean Hardwyck]: That sounds like an admission of guilt to me.
Kirsten [to Dean Hardwyck]: Polygraphs don't work on me, I fail them.
Dean Hardwyck [to Kirsten]: Because of this condition of yours, um, temporal...
Kirsten [to Dean Hardwyck]: dysplasia, yes


Gallery

Promotional & BTS

Screencaps

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