What a mess George has created!

The rookie Lazarus agent plunged along on his rogue mission, which he figures will resurrect his dead lover, Sarah, on The Lazarus Project Season 1 Episode 5.

George's scheme sounds OK (just OK) on paper.

He planned to locate the stolen nuclear device Big Boy and then set it off. To avoid Armageddon, Wes and Lazarus would have to rush in and reset time, bringing back to life Sarah and all those others killed since the last Checkpoint Day.

Based on George's brief experience with Lazarus, this seems workable.

He saw Archie and Dane get gunned down during that disastrous raid against Rebrov on The Lazarus Project Season 1 Episode 1.

Yet they were alive again after Wes reset time following Rebrov's setting off Big Boy. In fact, every time there's a mushroom cloud, Wes seems to use Lazarus's singularity to fix the situation, giving humanity yet another chance to get things right.

But just because Wes has set a pattern doesn't mean things will happen the same way every time.

After all, Wes was willing to sacrifice Archie's partner/lover Ross on The Lazarus Project Season 1 Episode 3 simply because they finally accomplished their mission after multiple failures, so there was no need for a reset.

Lazarus is all about saving humanity as a whole, not rescuing individual humans. So if the planet is better off if Archie's or George's lover or Rebrov's infant son no longer exists, so be it.

Which begs the question: Aren't those in The Lazarus Project playing God? Another question Rebrov has posited is whether humanity deserves or wants to be saved. Look around at people today, and you've got to wonder.

Something else to ponder: What will Wes think when she discovers another of her agents has gone rogue? 

George's idea of stealing the weapon from the anarchist group The Last Glory and shifting the blame onto them when Big Boy went off was sound.

However, he's just been too damn sloppy to pull off his plan. He's that guy who has gone into a new situation thinking he's smarter than everyone around him.

He couldn't even sell Shiv on his need for a few days off amid his grieving for his lost lover. Some of that was Shiv's natural paranoia. But more of it was George's suspicious behavior.

So Shiv spent The Lazarus Project Season 1 Episode 4 chasing George all over Romania. George's recourse was to shoot and kill Shiv, hoping he could bring him back as well as Sarah. That's a well-thought-out strategy.

While searching for the bomb, George shockingly got in trouble for driving a stolen car with Shiv's body in the trunk. He got away thanks to the always well-timed truck fortuitously mowing down a cop who had stopped him.

But by then, he had revealed to Archie that he was in Romania chasing down a lead on Big Boy.

She was perplexed, but with Rebrov causing chaos at Lazarus, she hadn't had time to overthink George's trip as Shiv did.

Seeking to negotiate his escape, Rebrov had told Wes and Archie there was a mole inside Lazarus. George inadvertently piled on by intuiting, from the data on Shiv's phone, that Shiv was working with Rebrov's group.

George was likely just buying time.

Lazarus doesn't seem like the type of organization that lets agents wander off willy-nilly on a hunch. Then again, that's precisely what Shiv did, and see where that got him.

Considering the possibility that Shiv may be the mole sent Archie again into flashback mode, which was enjoyable. That allowed her trademark snark to come through, providing some much-needed humor to the episode.

It was fun to watch Archie age through the years, as she is recruited first by Mi5, then by Lazarus.

While filling out our portrait of Archie, it does the same for Shiv, who has become likable over the past couple of episodes (now that he's dead, at least temporarily).

At first, Shiv appeared to be a one-note, dour character. But that may have just been in his interactions with George, now that he wasn't the only time mutant on staff anymore.

Reflecting on how Shiv had helped her over the past decade, such as when she had to learn to handle a wave of memories, Archie couldn't accept him as the mole. Then the light went on for her.

Maybe she recognized what was evident: her protege George was the mole. He wasn't as far around the bend as Rebrov, but he was still operating from a place of grief.

George somehow managed to limp that beaten-up piece of crap to Big Boy's hiding place and even got the upper hand on Rudy, the device's caretaker. It was a little frightening that Rudy, not the sharpest tool on the farm, was anything's caretaker.

Despite answering about every other question incorrectly, George managed to convince Rudy to take him to Big Boy without even having to flash the other half of Rudy's payment.

Even better, George got him to accompany him to the detonation site for the next phase of George's scheme.

But who's following them? There's no way Archie got from London to Eastern Europe that quickly, is there?

To follow George's journey, watch The Lazarus Project online.

How did you enjoy Archie's back story?

When will George come back from the brink?

What's Rebrov up to?

Comment below.

Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.