Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby Brother Blues
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 15 | Aired on 12.02.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Michael's little brother Nate is back in town for one of his regular visits, and this time it's to help a couple of brothers who customize cars and got one stolen out from under them -- when it was full of a drug kingpin's heroin. Michael goes back undercover as master car thief Johnny to take on the job of finding the vehicle before the drug lord kills Nate's friends. The culprit proves easy to find: it's the bad guy's own right-hand man, Caleb, who's trying to pin it on their clients. Now all the team has to do is plant the car on Caleb's property so he can take the fall he should be taking. Which he does, with the added bonus that he already stole the smack out of it so our heroes don't have the added karmic burden of putting drugs back on the streets. Like Nate needs that on his conscience now that he's going to be a father (eek!).
While that's going on, Sam and Jesse are down in Santo Domingo trying to figure out how to steal the NOC list before it goes up for auction. Although they successfully crowdsource the intel they need to set up a snatch-and-grab, it takes the whole team to pull it off. Now that they've got it, as much as Michael may gush on about the importance of teamwork, he's going to have to decide what to do with it all by himself.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Michael is pouting even in voice-over about not getting to go to the auction for the NOC list, while Sam packs in front of him at the loft. Apparently Michael's job is zipping up the bag. Jesse shows up with confirmation (in the form of a weeding invitation) that they're in for the auction, three days from now in Santo Domingo. Michael wants to come along, but Sam says he shouldn't attract attention while that list is still out there. Michael insists that Sam take a gun that's modified to fire three-round bursts for some reason that isn't going to be explained now or later. Jesse advises Michael to enjoy hanging out with his brother Nate, who is apparently flying in that day. Which doesn't seem to improve Michael's mood.
With almost no transition, we're in Santo Domingo. Jesse heads to a restaurant to meet "Justin Walsh -- Covert Intelligence Thief/Auctioneer," who is a lot more scroungy-looking than I expected. He writes down the time and place of the auction on a matchbook cover, but Jesse wants to quiz him about security. Walsh isn't sharing, though, other than to say that the list is always moving and whoever tries to steal the list is dead. And if that doesn't satisfy Jesse, there are 20 other potential buyers. Jesse returns to Sam outside to report what little he learned, and Sam figures that means they're relaying the list around using motorcycles. "We can make it work. We just need to make some new buddies. My specialty." Wait, I thought Sam's specialty was having buddies. Oh, well, as long as they're never on screen it doesn't make a difference.
Michael meets Nate at the airport, still whining in VO about how much spies hate days off, "especially when it means playing chaperone to your kid brother." Nate and his obnoxious graphic tee hug Michael, having forgotten about the gunshot wound that's apparently still a little sore, at least in this scene, and after trying to claim this is just a trip to see family, admits that he has a friend whose customized car shop got robbed a few days ago. "Don't they have insurance?" bitches Michael, who was just kvetching about having downtime thirty seconds ago. Nate says, "It's on the way. bro. Don't look at me like that." As if Michael ever looks at him any other way.
Michael and Nate arrive at the car shop just in time to break up a fistfight between the other two brothers in this episode, Billy and Jeff. After things calm down a bit, the younger brother, Billy, explains that a few months ago he started working with a guy named Hector Rivera. "He is not a guy, he is a drug kingpin!" Jeff yells. There's already a lot of yelling in this episode. The worse news is that one of the cars that got stolen was packed with 20 kilos of Rivera's heroin. So Billy's an idiot, and they're screwed, but Nate figures everything will be cool if they find the car in the next day or two. The subtitles introduce us to "Jeff & Billy Taylor -- Nate's Clients." Michael pulls Nate aside and tells him he isn't taking the job -- he needs to tell the brothers to get out of town, and he's pretty unsympathetic about their predicament. "You know what it's like to have a screw-up for a brother," Nate reminds him, and insists he's taking the job with or without Michael's help. So of course Michael agrees to call Fi. You know how the big tough spy is defenseless against emotional blackmail.