Episode Report Card Sara Brady: C- | 5 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT That Worthless Fellow Lauren
By Sara Brady | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 06.20.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Last week's cliffhanger -- in which it looked like Briggs had figured out that Mike was investigating him -- turns out to be a ruse to fool Bello, the heroin-loving drug lord Briggs has been working. Mike manages not to wet his fatigues and soldiers on through keeping his cover intact, which delights Briggs to no end.
So this week's real problem is that DEA agent/roommate Lauren has lost her fool mind because her partner/loverman Donnie got shot and then transferred to the Miami office (once he's no longer ventilated, presumably). She has the order to extricate herself from the Russian mafia cell she's infiltrated, but instead she tells Briggs that she knows Kusmanov -- the bad Russian in charge -- is installing LoJack on a bunch of Lamborghinis, selling them, and then stealing them back. So they set up a sting for the cars, which fails, and then Lauren lies to Briggs that Kusmanov roughed her up, so he sends Johnny and a tactical team in to bust up the Lamborghini operation.
The bust succeeds, but Briggs figures out Lauren's story and secretly installs a tracking device on her car. Mike and Paige happily do as Briggs asks them and check out Lauren's car, find the tracking device and tell the DEA that she's an unstable nutbar. When Lauren finds out, she blows up at Briggs, and then cries everywhere and that's the last we'll see of Lauren.
Over in Charlie's world o' drug addicts, a confidential informant named Whistler helps her bust a meth dealer, and scores a sweet hundred grand for his effort. Charlie tries to get Whistler to turn his junkie life around with the money, but he disappoints her.
And over in Mike's Big Exciting Life land, Mike meets a nice girl at a bar. I'm sure that will turn out happily for all involved after he lies to her about everything.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Graceland: Graceland roommate Donnie got shot and then bounced out of the house, which made his partner Lauren super sad. New roommate Mike is working with Juan on his investigation of Briggs, which it seems Briggs has found out about, since last week's episode ended with him pointing a gun at Mike's head.
And we pick up right there, with Briggs and Mike at a creepy, dark, dock-slash-warehouse place. Briggs cocks his gun, points it at the back of Mike's head, and asks who Mike has been talking to. Mike protests that he's not talking to anyone, and man, does Briggs have some crazy eyes going on. He takes Mike's gun from him. Just then, the lights switch on. A gentleman in a suit, surrounded by armed henchmen, tells Briggs to put the guns down, which he does. Since the guy mentions Eddie, oh, and there's Eddie behind him, it seems that this is Briggs's elusive mark, Bello.
Bello wants to know why Briggs was aiming the gun at Mike, and Briggs covers--or doesn't, maybe he's totally selling Mike out--by reminding us of Bobby Moi stealing the bullets from Eddie and saying that the only new face around here is Mike. Mike gives Bello the cover story they established last week, telling Bello to call his quartermaster and ask where he was. They all laugh at this, the idea of just calling up the U.S. Marine Corps. Briggs suggests that Mike followed Eddie after he bought the bullets and sold him out to Bobby Moi (the Korean gangster Paige was working).
Mike asks how he might possibly follow Eddie, and Bello cuts in to ask if Eddie did the heat run, that is, took evasive measures to lose a tail. Eddie insists that he did, but as we learned last week, Eddie always does the same heat run. Bello has a henchman light a stove with a blowtorch and then puts on a heatproof glove. He apologizes to Mike and Briggs for drawing them into this internal matters, then gives them back their guns, but not before unloading them. Mike and Briggs leave Eddie to his stove-related, most likely unpleasant fate.
In the car driving back to Graceland, Briggs is thrilled with Mike's performance, which included him dropping the name of his high school football coach as the quartermaster. Mike wants to throw up some of his nerves, but Briggs tells him instead to stand up in the moving (topless) car and scream. He does and they keep congratulating each other in a manly fashion. Credits.
Graceland. Charlie brings the whole gang shots. Briggs is off in another part of the house; he greets Lauren when she comes in and they discuss Donnie's transfer to Miami. She's supposed to be extracting herself from the Russian mafia and clearly isn't able to have the emotional distance from her case that would be best for keeping her (and Donnie) alive. She relates to Briggs a poker game she sat in on this evening with Russian bad guy Kusmanov, in which he told a pal that he has a plan to kill Donnie, the agent who burned him. Briggs is all, FINE, let me hear your dumbass plan.