Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Looking For Mr. Bitcoin
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 13 | Aired on 01.15.2012
In short, Balaban's backup Treasury guys that have been around silently Agent Smithing in the background this whole time show up, and Kalinda leads them a merry chase up to Bao's room, where she's met by Bob Balaban -- wearing a tux -- but when they get inside the hotel room, Bao has cyberghosted himself completely out of the hardware, leaving only a creepy stalker note about how he may or may not have created Bitcoin, but he doesn't really care anymore because now all he cares about is fattening her up in a pit and then using her skin to create clothing that he can wear to make his transformation complete. Or suck on her toes or something, who knows. It's dumb.
SURPRISE WITNESS
What is not dumb, though, is what happens next: Alicia calls Kalinda to the stand, and she relates the whole story above, about how she and Balaban walked into the hotel room and found that letter and Bob Balaban was so sure he had found Mr. Bitcoin but once again, cruelly rebuffed by the fates of 'Skyrim.'
Kalinda: "Balaban stated that he believed I was on the right track to finding Mr. Bitcoin. Bao Shuwei, an econophysicist from Nankai University."
Balaban: "Objection, this is all hearsay..."
Kalinda: "No. No, I recorded it. By accident! I just got a new phone, and I didn't know how to turn it off!"
Which is pretty much a Team Sharma take on "look at all this paper," but the acting is solid and the whole thing is so cute that you don't really have to think about what a simple solution that was, because they tricked you into thinking it mattered who Mr. Bitcoin is by constantly talking for one hundred thousand years about who Mr. Bitcoin is.
AFTERMATH
Alicia: "Better?"
Jason Biggs: " Here's your cashier's check. It only took 20 minutes standing in line at a bank to change dollar bills into another piece of paper! America, I tell ya."
Alicia: "Christ, you're the worst. Listen, I bought a Bitcoin last night. I went online to the internet and I surfed to the Bitcoin home page website and then I bought it and then I surfed back to the internet and then I got offline. It was thrilling."
Jason Biggs: "Really? Cool , it's the future! Although I never actually explained how."
Alicia: "I don't know. It didn't feel real. Not like, say, a gold buffalo coin with Ronald Reagan's face on it and an American flag wrapped around Jesus but there's a hologram where Jesus turns back and forth into Tim Tebow."