Pan Am Episode 1.04 Eastern Exposure

It's time for another flight and, as usual, Laura is running late. Kate is waiting on the curb, again, urging her little sister to hurry up and find her mittens so they can make their flight to Iceland, when Richard, her Handler in New York, shows up. She tries to explain the situation in Berlin, but he tells her she's of no use to U.S. Intelligence if they can't rely on her to follow orders. As he hails her a cab, he reluctantly gives her a new assignment. She's got to meet a contact in Rangoon and carry a package to Jakarta. Kate calls up to Laura and tells her to forget those mittens; she's going to need a swimsuit!

The next day the ladies are lounging pool-side in Burma when some Navy pilots come over to introduce themselves. Ted's there to make sure the two airmen aren't trying to get fresh with his flight crew and we find out that Ted himself used to be a Test Pilot for the Navy. As Ted dives into the pool later, we quickly see a flashback of him in the ocean, surrounded by burning wreckage, a rescue helicopter hovering overhead. We flash forward from there to a Navy tribunal where Ted argues that there was a mechanical problem with his aircraft, but his superiors seem more than ready to blame the crash on his trip to the bar the night before.

Kate is handed a camera from a contact in Rangoon. She sneaks it away, but not before Laura notices it. In Jakarta, Kate goes off on her own to get instructions on where to make her drop. Laura tries to stay behind in their room and relax, but some unexpected encounters with the local wildlife convince her to run off and see the sights with Maggie. While Kate waits anxiously at the cablegram office for a reply from Richard, Laura is learning all about Indonesian food, drinking and gambling from Maggie. The two start to form a real friendship, but we have to wonder if Kate would approve.

Things are starting to get a little heated in the cockpit. Ted, who has more flight experience than Dean, can't help but ask his friend how he managed to "jump the line" and get in that pilot's chair. They don't spend much time together in Jakarta as Ted's busy trying to get what seems to be the only television in the city working again. What's Ted so excited to see? It's the launch of the Mercury 9 rocket and the expression of wonder on his face as he finally sees it is priceless.

We flashback again to Ted in his father's office. His dad, who's the very wealthy, very well-connected owner of an aircraft manufacturer, is talking to his son about how he should accept the Navy's honorable discharge. Ted doesn't want to. He insists that his plane, which it turns out his father's company manufactured, had a mechanical failure, and pleads with his dad to have his engineers look at it. His father admits there was a problem, but he won't tell that to the Navy because it could threaten his contracts with them. Ted begs, telling his dad that this is his last shot at getting into the space program, but his father turns him down.

Kate finally gets her response from Richard. She needs to take the camera to a small shop across the street from the cablegram office. There's only one problem: Kate can't find the camera! When Laura finally comes home after a night of drinking, dancing and gambling with Maggie, Kate's waiting for her and she's not happy. Laura borrowed the camera without asking and it sets Kate off about how it's time for her little sister to finally grow up. Kate rushes out to make her drop and finally does, but things are definitely tense between the two Cameron sisters on the next flight to Hong Kong.

The landing in Hong Kong is anything but smooth. High crosswinds at night in a storm with what's already one of the trickiest approaches in the world has Ted openly questioning whether or not Dean can pull this off. The two of them argue the whole way down, and we're starting to think that Ted may be right when Dean pulls the plane back at the last second and lands safely. The two argue after the passengers have left and when Dean makes a remark about Ted needing to call his daddy for help, his First Officer decks him.

When everyone's safely back in New York, things calm down. Ted apologizes, in his own way, for giving his friend and Captain a pretty good shiner. In return, Dean tells him how he got his pilot's chair. He got stuck in an elevator for eleven minutes with Juan Trippe, the founder of Pan Am, and plead his case. Dean says he got lucky, but Ted tells him he made his own luck.

Kate meets Richard at a bar where he gives her another lecture for being late with her drop in Jakarta. He also slides over the pictures that were on the film in that camera, and she gets a good look at the night of fun Laura had with Maggie. Richard tells Kate he's going to have Laura reassigned so that she's not in her way anymore, but when Kate spots an touching picture of herself waiting anxiously at the Jakarta cablegram office, she turns him down. Kate stops to buy Laura her own camera on the way home, but when she gets back to their apartment, she finds her sister's gone again. Next we see Maggie open up her front door and let Laura in-as her new roommate.