Episode Recap: Man-Flu

There's not exactly a lot of happiness in God-world as both Axl and Michele are suffering from some kind of flu while Anders, recently returned from Norway, is just generally unhappy with the lot of them: Axl for abandoning his Quest in favor of the 'Be a Man' approach, Mike for hooking up with the enemy (i.e. Michele) and everyone for everything that happened with Agnetha. Mike seems to speak for all of them when he delivers a brotherly right hook to Anders' jaw.

Axl's flu worsens but he gets no sympathy from his flatmates as he takes to his bed. Michele, meanwhile, is the world's worst patient as Mike looks after her as best he can whilst also dealing with being the executor of Agnetha's 'will' ... which continues to get interesting as, in a sudden display of entrepreneurship, Stacey wants to buy the cycle courier business she works for. Mike has no problem with this, but suspects Anders might.

Stacey heads off to berate Anders, who is having his own problems. It's revealed that the "top secret mission" he was on for Agnetha was to find and retrieve a branch from Yggdrasil, the World Tree from which all life flows. He duly did this, but now MAF has confiscated The Stick (as it comes to be named) and are going to fumigate it ... and not even Anders' legendary powers of persuasion can get them to release it. Olaf agrees that fumigating the Tree of Life is a bad thing and it must be stopped ... but Olaf is also, strangely, getting older.

Ty, meanwhile, is having a great day: he feels the cold, he can taste food, he can feel the sun on his skin. Eventually it is Mike who puts everything together when he finds out that Axl is really sick -- and the sicker he gets, the more the rest of the Johnsons lose their powers. Axl then proceeds to get sicker and sicker, with whatever virus rampaging through his system sending him into a coma and into the hospital.

Inspired by Olaf, who is now looking all of his 93 years, Anders teams up with Stacey to stage a rescue mission to free The Stick, thinking maybe the Tree of Life can save Axl and, by extension, the rest of them. Unfortunately, without Agnetha there to guide them, they don't know how to harness whatever powers The Stick possesses. When Michele, still sick but called into work and very grumpy, finds them molesting Axl with a tree branch, she takes The Stick and tells them to get it off the premises. When Michele is alone with Axl and touches him with the hands that just held The Stick, she finds that she leaves an imprint on his skin that glows and then fades. How interesting!

Meanwhile, the world is a shiny, happy place for Ty -- who's trying to rekindle his romance with Dawn -- until he realizes this either ends with Axl dying (in which case he dies too) or Axl getting better (in which case he gets his icy powers back). Although Dawn is up for taking things further, Ty can't bear to restart something that he knows will end badly ... so he suggests that they should remain friends.

And so Axl recovers ... and Michele is intrigued to hear him tell of a golden light in his fevered dreams. And the Johnsons get their powers back: Ty is Hod again and Olaf goes back to his usual youthful self (and romances Stacey in the process). However, Mike reveals that while his powers were gone, all of Agnetha's millions also went from his online stock-trading account ... leaving just enough to buy Stacey her business. And so this time it is Anders who delivers a brotherly right hook to Mike.