FBI Episode 14
Episode fourteen starts when Agents Bell and Zidan are called in on a possible hate crime in Central Park. A middle-aged black man was shot, and the word “vermin” painted in his blood on a park bench.
OA notices a pin on the man’s shirt. It is a pin given to journalists who worked in Iraq. This leads the duo to a paper where Maggie’s late husband used to write freelance pieces for a guy named Paul. Paul informs them that their victim, Robert McCann, wrote exposes on corruption and pissed off a lot of people and while everyone who writes gets threats these days, Paul believes Rob’s were particularly vile. A man even demanded to see him the other day.
At the JOC, Jubal instructs the team to investigate the intruder at the Ledger’s office. Meanwhile, Kristen tells him that she might’ve found something. “Crusader86” posted over 30 comments on McCann’s articles and said that he should die, even using the world vermin. Kristen traces the account to an Edgar Santos, someone McCann wrote an article about. Edgar allowed building violations to slide by via bribe and now faces major prison time.
“Freedom of speech. Not when you threaten his life.”
For a moment, we see Maggie watching an old video of her husband. The two are happy, laughing in it. Maggie is interrupted by OA; he asks what she is watching just as she turns it off. This case might be harder for her, it would seem. Her husband was a journalist, after all.
Maggie and OA question Santos outside his car. OA spots an address and a ticket, putting him two blocks from Central Park about twenty minutes before the murder. They arrest him. Maggie interrogates him, but he does not confess. In fact, he denies having done it. He says he hated him for what he did, but he didn’t kill him. Oddly, Maggie’s questioning seems to align more with personal matters the further agitated she gets.
Dana notices from outside and asks what Maggie has told OA about her husband, Jason. He says that he was a reporter who died in a car crash but instructs Dana that she will remain objective in the case. Dana wants to be kept in the loop.
Hit (man) with your Best Shot…
Back in the JOC, Dana notices similarities between the Central Park case and the murder of a Senator in Michigan. Through surveillance footage and gait comparison, Kristen confirms our mystery man is the same person. It gets worse: these seem to be professional hits. Maggie and OA go visit McCann’s widow, who gives them several important details. He was working on a new story but was very secretive about it. He also never traveled anywhere without his notebook, but it was not found on his body at the scene.
Kristen’s badass tech skills lead them to a bar, where they believe McCann was meeting a possible source, but the source never showed, apparently. The bartender tells them that a man left immediately after McCann did, though. She tells them that he wasn’t a regular, as he tried to use their jukebox, which has been broken for months. In an amazing attempt, they pull a fingerprint from it.
The print belongs to William Patterson, a math professor. Maggie and OA head to his apartment, to see what he may know. On the way, Maggie talks about the hitman’s lack of emotions and wreckage. Its clear she’s thinking about her husband’s death. She tells OA he and Jason would’ve gotten along; OA agrees. Almost to the residence, they get a phone call; they have found Patterson’s car.
“Not a lot of hit men out there who are math professors. Which makes it a pretty great cover.”
He and the car crashed into a pole after blowing a tire. I doubt that was an accident… and they confirm it as suspicious. There was an IED planted on the tire, making it explode. Furthermore, Patterson could not have been our bad guy; he had a torn Achilles heel only several months back, he wouldn’t be able to jog like our hitman. So, who killed both… and for what? This is getting quite dangerous. Let’s add to the pot: the keys are missing in the ignition. The hitman has access to Patterson’s apartment. Sadly, by the time the team gets there, the hitman is already gone, having destroyed the place. Maggie notices a bill on the table from his ER visit, listing an emergency contact. She thinks it’s a good idea to get a better understanding of the man.
The contact tells them that Patterson thought he was being followed the last few days, but his friend wrote it off as being paranoid. He does know that he was working on at least one research project and that many others were interested in him because of his ability to parse huge sets of data. OA contacts the NYU math department to find out about the project; the project is being funded by the Department of Defense. The reasoning is classified.
Kristen to the rescue!
Our techie goddess Kristen has struck again. She reveals she was able to source the remote control from the IED to a drone piece, bought by a man … in cash. BUT, on the video camera his neck reveals a scar. Kristen then used what little image she had of the mystery man to compare it to those staying in Michigan last year around the time of the Senator’s killing. She works her magic to narrow it down to about 200 men, finally settling on one. How? She saw he booked a flight to NYC this week. We have a name… our baddie is Frank Cutler.
Um… why is Maggie acting like she’s seen a ghost? OA asks if she recognizes him, but she doesn’t listen. She goes back to her desk, watching the same video of Jason she watched earlier in the episode. And shut the front door… Frank Cutler is in the background! We as an audience assumed his death was an accident, but it would seem that is not the case. Wow. Going off that, does this mean it was luck that Maggie was assigned this case, or did our hitman know this would lead back to him? It is too early to make these assumptions, I suppose… so let’s continue.
Battle of the Partners
OA knows something is wrong and confronts Maggie. She explains her hunch to him, but he’s more than hesitant. What are the odds? Realistically, OA is right, but you can really get where she’s coming from. Like McCann, her husband was a reporter. Who is to say that it shouldn’t be investigated? But, Maggie doesn’t appreciate OA’s skepticism and cuts him off. The conversation is insanely awkward.
Just in time as someone tells Maggie and OA that Patterson owned a safety deposit box. One that he only opened last week; the two decide to go see what is inside. Before they can leave the JOC, Dana asks to speak to Maggie. She tells her that she’s a profiler and she can read people, something everyone already knows. She watched the argument between the partners and gives Maggie an opening to explain. Maggie denies not being okay. Dana tells her that Cutler may be linked to half a dozen more killings and that he is very dangerous. Foreshadowing, perhaps? Is Maggie going to do something she might regret?
One pill, two pill, white pill…
At the bank, the safety deposit box reveals something… interesting? Inside are three unmarked, white pills. That is all. They are dumbfounded by this less than dramatic reveal, when the bank teller tells them that Mr. Patterson would like to check out his deposit box. Well, considering he’s dead… she shows them the ID. It’s Cutler. They tell her to stay back and try to go out without looking like they are FBI. (They’re holding hands, that’s kind of cute… I guess? I’m not so sure I get a couple vibe from our duo.)
They tell Cutler to put his hands up and get on the ground as he tries to leave (perhaps sensing something was wrong, or maybe even recognizing Maggie?), but he’s resistant. He finally drops to his knees, but last second pulls a gun out, prepared to shoot them. They both take a shot, not fatal and rush an ambulance. Maggie, outside, says if he dies, everything dies with him. OA says maybe not… he has his car keys. They find Rob’s notebook inside; the only problem is that it is in some sort of code. Kristen informs them that the pills are a new cancer drug and have severe impurities despite being approved for trial use and that the makers, Morrowick Medical were going to make a lot of money from it.
Maggie hypotheses that they were the ones to get McCann and Patterson killed, but the proof is in the coded notebook. She wants to go see if the widow can decipher it. She’s about to get the gist of it. It seems that McCann and Patterson found that the drug was tainted in China and a batch got out and was used in trials despite the company knowing this. They found a 29 percent rise in morality from this impurity. That’s certain a reason to want two people dead.
Some Friend…
So, who was the stakeholder that ordered Patterson to originally investigate the pills? Wow… his emergency contact and friend, Russell Donovan. They catch him trying to flee from the United States to Canada and arrest him.
Later, Maggie is back at her desk when Dana comes up to her. She tells her that running from things will not make things better over time and if she needs to talk to someone, she should. Mosier hands her a card. Then, OA sits down next to her and tells her the hunch was right. Cutler was not only in the city that day, but a wire transfer of 100,000 was put into his account the day of Jason’s death. It would seem he was the hitman and it wasn’t an accident.
Maggie on a Mission…
Maggie goes to the hospital, where she uses her badge to get him alone. He’s barely conscious and she demands he tell her who hired him to kill her husband. Before he can say anything (if he would say anything), he flatlines and is rushed into surgery.
As she waits to hear if he will make it, OA comes up beside her on a seat, watching a toddler play with their mom in the waiting room. Doubts spill out of her mouth, one after another. She has not moved on and she doesn’t know how to deal with any of it. He tells her that no matter what happens, he will be with her. Great teammate scene, after some rocky points in the episode. Its good to see the two of them on the same page, even if it’s not for a great reason.
The episode ends with Maggie finding out that Cutler didn’t make it.
Thoughts:
Wow, this episode went from 0 to 100 fast and I never saw it coming. Maggie’s husband’s death, which was painted as an accident until now, is now a murder. We also see the start of Maggie’s unraveling in the end of the episode. She goes into the hospital with little thought present, angrily and emotionally demanding answers out of a man who kills people for a living. Only minutes later, we see her facture more watching the toddler. She told Jason she wanted to wait to have kids, making her wonder if she hadn’t, would things have been different? There are so many what ifs playing in her head, you really feel for her. She clearly is not done grieving, and even if she were, this opens old wounds.
So… the question moving forward… with Cutler dead, how do Maggie and the others move forward? We know that she won’t give up. That’s just not in her nature. Jason was her entire world; she will avenge his death. The question is how does she do that? This is not how I saw the show going at all, and I’m excited about it. I figured that her husband’s death would come into play, but I figured it would cost her a suspect, or some sort of job error. Instead, we get some gritty storyline. Between her guilt and the suspense of how this will continue, the next few episodes look extremely packed. This is also great considering the last episode was a little boring in comparison.
My biggest question now is: will Maggie remain professional? She’s level headed and clear most of the time, but this is something where no one would blame her for being emotional. OA promised to have her back, but can he stop her from possibly ruining her career if she remains emotionally charged in the pursuit of justice?
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