Headscratchers / Forever (2014)

New entries on the bottom. SPOILERS, naturally.

Adam's burner

• Henry started carrying Adam's burner phone around after they found the Jack the Ripper copycat murder, right? Henry also died at the copycat's hands, and ended up in the river buck-naked again, no clothes, no phone. So, how did he get that call from Adam on that phone at the end of the episode? Never mind how he managed to get the phone back, how is it even working?
  • It's never explicitly shown he was carrying the burner at that time. He might have left it at his lab or the store. In fact, since he knew he was going into danger, leaving it behind would make sense.
    • He didn't actually think he was going into danger, he thought he was just disobeying Jo's order to let her handle things. He didn't expect the killer to be there at all because he thought they already had the killer locked up.
    • Perhaps he left the phone at home or work because he knew their GPS location can be traced. Henry might know that much, but not realize Jo would need to be looking for a specific phone to be able to see where he was going from it. Or maybe he didn't want *Adam* tracking him that way.
  • Maybe Adam just gave him a new phone?

Henry's accent

• As delightful as I find Ioan Gruffudd's accent, shouldn't Henry have lost his by now? He's been living in America for at least half a century, give or take.
  • Not necessarily. Some people just don't lose their old accent in a new place. Henry's clearly capable of talking in an American accent, like when he tries to shake off someone who saw him die in a war and recognizes him, but it doesn't come naturally to him.
  • It may also be a way of remaining connected to his past or his identity of self. There are a lot of possible reasons, really. He may just like the accent.
  • It would also be helpful explaining why he doesn't have an American birth certificate and other things the American government would likely have on file. He stays close enough to the truth not to be too suspicious. Allowing himself to identify as a worldly man is incredibly beneficial to his cover.
    • Indeed, Americans would be less familiar with foreign documents, making it easier to pass off fake birth certificate, driving license, etc. Rather like a clerk might spot a small error in a fake driver's license from their own state, but would never have seen a real driver's license from a sparsely populated state across the country, thus wouldn't know what to look for to spot a fake.
  • We know he's gone back and forth to the UK a few times. He was serving with the British military in World War II, when he met Abigail and Abe. It's heavily implied that the family lived in other countries besides the US, we just only saw them in flashbacks that were either specifically New York or didn't specify at all.

Abe's accent

• If Abe was raised in New York by two English parents, why does he have such a strong accent, more than any other New York native seen in the show?
  • Abe's accent is period-appropriate for the time he grew up in. A lot of more contemporary accents are flattened out or muddied by exposure to mass media and migration.
    • This is not unusual for first generation children and the accents they pick up.
  • Also, a lot of fanon has Henry and Abigail making a strong effort to make sure Abraham goes to a synagog and learns Jewish culture. Having a lot of Jewish friends and mentors would explain his using yiddish terms along with the strong accent often associated with New York's Jewish neighborhoods. With Abe growing up just after the Holocaust, everyone would be acutely aware of the risk of Jewish culture losing a good chunk of the younger generation if war orphans were mostly adopted by non-Jewish families.

Old age

• Does Henry get the same results if he dies of old age?
  • It's not that he ages normally and then resurrects at the same age as he was the first time; he just doesn't age. He discusses this with Abraham, mentioning that he wishes he could grow old. If he weren't The Ageless, he would just need to keep from dying for a few decades, which wouldn't be too difficult. Normal people manage to do it all the time, at least.
  • Has Henry ever gone without dying long enough to truly find out whether he ages? Seems like ever since his first one, Henry has a pretty long list of "notable deaths." If no one sees it happen, he can stay in his identity afterwards, so having lived in one place for a decade is not proof he went even that long without dying.

The Stalker

• At the end of the episode we find out the stalker wasn't actually immortal, he just was made to believe Adam was able to share his immortality with him. So, if he wasn't immortal, and thus not reincarnating, why was he found coming naked out of the river four times?
  • Adam either tricked him into mundane indecent exposure to make it look more compelling to Henry, or he just made that part up whole cloth. He didn't actually show them the file, after all.

Abe's age slip-up

• When Henry has his first therapy session with Lewis, Lewis asks him if he has anyone "closer to your own age" than age to confide in than Abe, even though Henry hadn't said anything to indicate how old Abe is. Yet the usually-observant Henry doesn't notice his slip-up.
  • Either he was rattled enough by the whole situation to not notice (he was showing obvious signs of stress), or he did notice and just assumed Dr. Farber had done a little research and was asking easy questions to put Henry at his ease and get the conversation flowing.

Henry's clothes

• What happens to Henry's clothes and personal effects when he dies? Twice we've seen Henry's watch fall out of his pocket just before death and be found later; what would have happened if the watch hadn't fallen out of his pocket? Would it have been gone forever? If so, he's been awfully lucky to never have the watch on him when he's died.
  • There are some hints that the watch may be tied into his immortality somehow, so it's possible he can't lose the watch, even if he wanted to.
  • He lost the watch when he died the first time, and only found it much later when a diver chanced upon it, and a woman who loved him (probably Abigail) bought it at an auction and gave it to him as a gift. As for the rest of the clothes, maybe they get scattered around the bottom of whatever body of water he resurrects in? In which case if he was carrying anything valuable, he just needs to dive down and grab it. If it were that easy, Henry would have figured it out by now, and he wouldn't have a reputation as a skinny dipper.
  • "The Last Death of Henry Morgan" confirms that his watch remains on the site of his death when he vanishes, but only the watch. All his other personal effects vanish. Must be a pretty special watch.
  • Or when he was reaching into his pocket for the syringe, the watch fell out. There's just not enough detail.
    • The watch wound up out of his pocket in the subway crash and the sinking taxicab, too. Thing seems to have a mind of its own and a sense of self-preservation! Possibly a desire to preserve Henry, too, given that it wound up next to his bicycle for Jo to find, instead of clenched in his spasming hand, when he was hit with the cattle prod. Note that the watch does not seem to have been found at the bottom of the stairs in "The Frustrating Thing About Psychopaths," though. No explanation for it not disappearing with his clothes in that one, as he had no reason to expect to die and thus no reason to leave it behind.
    • ...unless Adam picked up the watch and returned it to Henry in some way off-screen!
  • In Matt Miller's script for the pilot, after the subway crash and before he dies, Henry actively tosses the watch away from himself so that it won't disappear. When Abe picks him up the next morning, he asks Henry if the watch was lost, and he replies no, it's in the subway car somewhere, and Abe reassures him they'll get the watch back somehow, eventually.

Caches

• Why doesn't Henry just establish a series of caches of clothing along the shore, where he can retrieve them as needed before exiting the water? Some sort of pants and shirt, preferably of a type that can be put on underwater and isn't too suspicious-looking when wet, maybe a burner cell phone to call Abe? Geocachers find place to hide stuff like that all the time, and you could buy a lot of waterproof containers for the cost of just one of those hand-tailored suits!
  • He doesn't need to. Sure getting arrested isn't exactly convenient, but he's died a few times during the series and, aside from some jokes, has had no lasting repercussions for his skinny-dipping. Plus, with caches, you have to ensure that they're hidden well enough that people won't steal them. Also, you'd have to hide a lot of them around every major body of water (so that you'll always be close to one when you resurrect).
  • Henry has probably never heard of geocaching. The game involves using GPS to locate the caches, with the locations posted online. None of that is within Henry's scope of experience. Lucas, on the other hand, strikes me as the sort who would have done some geocaching, and Matt Miller did say Lucas was supposed to find out about Henry in season 2. I would love to see Lucas helping Henry set up a series of caches. Small ones with just a pair of swim trunks, and a few larger ones with a full set of clothing. There are all sorts of places you could attach a small cache, like the underside of docks and piers, out of sight but accessible to a swimmer willing to dive down a bit. I'm picturing Lucas in a kayak with the caches, Henry in the water placing them. I looked it up, and as long as swimmers stay out of the areas with heavy boat traffic, it's not actually illegal to swim in the East River. If Henry is treading water to talk to a patrol boat, they wouldn't be able to see he's naked, so no reason to stop him other than checking he's okay, it's only when he has to get out of the water that he'd be in trouble, so all he really needs is swim trunks to pop on before emerging.

Henry's name

• Upon re-watching the series for the benefit of a family member who missed the original run, a rather odd thing occurred to me: Why hasn't Henry changed his name? At least Connor MacLeod had the sense to assume a new identity every other decade or so. Why don't Henry and Abraham do something similar?
  • It may be easier to convince someone there's a typo on your birth certificate that's been giving you trouble for years, than to establish a whole new identity every time Henry's age gets out of synch with his official records. As for Abe, why would he need or want to change his identity? (As for Connor Mac Leod, using the name and identity of a baby who died was feasible back before everything was computerized; these days it's not that easy.)
  • Judging by the list of names Abe gave Lucas that Abigail had gone by, they probably did start using other names. Once upon a time, there were only paper documents, and you could just create a birth certificate or baptismal certificate and use that to obtain anything else needed, which wasn't much. They may have used the classic trick of using the birth certificates of babies who died, since birth and death records weren't well-coordinated back then. But as people started needing a social security number, a driver's license or state ID, and then later needed computer records for all of it, their tactics would have needed to change with the times. Henry probably won't be able to set up a new identity again without the sort of help he got filling in the holes in his current identity. But as long as you have to create an identity from scratch, why not use whatever name you prefer? Unless he really does end up with his face splashed across the internet like the hacker was threatening...

Empress of Africa timeline / reports of Henry's death

Henry steals the key. He is called away to check on the sick man, he refuses to stand aside to let him be thrown overboard, and he's shot. The key falls from his hand next to the cells, and his body is thrown overboard. That night, the prisoners use the key to release themselves and take control of the ship, sailing it north to free territory before it sinks.

So who reported that Henry had fallen over the side? When? Did the former prisoners keep some of the crew alive, possibly to sail the ship? Did some of the crew escape in lifeboats? Why wouldn't any survivors blame Henry's death on the slave revolt? And why would Nora (and later Henry) have heard that the ship went down, but not where or the circumstances?

Fingerprints and facial recognition software

"Social Engineering" gave us an example of the capabilities of facial recognition software in this universe. Even in the real world, everything from casinos to Facebook use it all the time. Having been in the army, Henry's fingerprints would have been on file there, albeit probably on a card in an obscure storeroom at this point, but as a NYC employee in a sensitive position, he'd have been printed and his picture and prints stored. Next time he wants a new identity, he'll have to either hack however many redundant servers that info is on, likely including APHIS and thus the FBI, or move somewhere so low-tech prints aren't an issue. But there are too many places using facial recognition these days to avoid them all forever. Henry would have to never visit a casino, never go through an airport, never have his picture posted and tagged by friends on their facebook account...what other places would Henry need to avoid, and how could he deal with them?

• Henry was in the British military, not the US, so he wouldn't have his prints on file with the US military. But, as data gets easier and cheaper to share, our close allies probably would be quite ready to swap military databases.

"I was shot."

In "The Ecstasy of Agony" Jo sees Henry's scar for the first time and asks about it. Later, at the bar, Henry tells her he wants to tell her the story, and casually tells her he was shot. Lucas's arrival interrupts him, and nothing more is said. But what the heck was Henry going to say? He's in a crowded bar, with other cops at the same table who will be able to hear whatever he tells her. It's not like he could have told her the truth just then. So where was this story going? Spinning a complete lie doesn't seem like him, he doesn't like lying and would just not bring it up. Some version of the truth? What?

• Secondary question, has Lucas seen Henry's scar yet? Because he seems like he'd recognize a close-range low-velocity entrance wound directly over the heart, and want to know WTF. No other scars like if they'd gone in to repair damage, no exit wound on his back.