The Big O

In the pilot episode, Roger Smith is introduced as Paradigm City's top negotiator. As the episode begins, he is delivering the ransom for a girl named Dorothy, who had been kidnapped from her father, a rich industrialist named Saldano. After the exchange, Saldano arrives and reveals that the Dorothy Roger they had obtained was actually an android fake. When Roger realizes Beck isn't playing fair, he activates the briefcase carrying the ransom and it flies out of Beck's car.

In the previous episode, Major Dastun and Dorothy looked like they were going to be crushed by Dorothy One as it fell. However, when the dust cleared, Dastun was fine and Dorothy had disappeared. Roger took Big O back into the subway to escape Dastun's rage over the destruction of the fight. Then, he began to search for Dorothy. He received a tip about a nightingale in the city, which led him to a club called Nightingale. There Roger found Dorothy along with a man named Waynewright who said he was her grandfather. Dorothy sang in the club after which Beck arrived, shot Waynewright, knocked out Roger and kidnapped Dorothy.

Recently, there's been a number of power outages in Paradigm. Roger is hired by Paradigm Power Management to go to the Electric City and negotiate with the locals the reactivation of the hydroelectric power plant. They say a god lives in the water.

A woman named Patricia Lovejoy (the same woman called Angel in Electric City) approaches Roger Smith about a job with Paradigm. He is supposed to convince a reporter named Michael Seebach to hand over his manuscript, but as it turns out, Seebach had disappeared months earlier. Using his connections with Major Dastun, Roger tracks down an apartment Seebach is renting. There he discovers a typewriter and a large stack of papers, which he begins to read when gasoline pours in under the door and lights. Roger jumps out the window to escape and is confronted by Seebach, now calling himself Schwartzvald and wrapped in bandages. Seebach tells Roger to report to Paradigm that they will never see him in the city again, then disappears.

A military police vehicle crashes after seeing an apparition while crossing a certain bridge and it is apparently only the latest in a string of such accidents involving high ups in the military police. Roger is retained to work for a billionaire named Melissa Frazier who wants Roger to find her son Bonny. Bonny worked for the military police and was killed during a riot on the haunted bridge a year earlier, after which time the ghost sightings began. His body fell into the water and disappeared. Roger is tipped that Bonny may have been killed because he was going to reveal corruption in the MPs. He goes to track down one of the few remaining conspirators, a Colonel Gaust, but he has been taken to the bridge by Bonny Frazier and pushed into the water. Both Big O and Dastun attempt to attack the apparition, but their attacks appear to go through it, while it's missiles assault Big O from all directions. In a last ditch attempt, Roger tracks the origin of the missiles and shoots

After waking Roger up with her piano playing, Roger decides to take Dorothy to see a friend who can help her learn to add feeling to her playing. His friend is a robot named Instro, who was built by a scientist named Amadeus and thought of Instro as a son. Instro remembers how happy Amadeus was when Instro would play the piano for him. While Instro is giving Dorothy a lesson, a mysterious stranger arrives and reminds Instro that he needs to fulfill his creator's legacy.