Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Reese By Any Other Name
By DeAnn Welker | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.17.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.This week's Number is a little complicated. It's Alan Dale, a guy named Wallace Negel, whom we quickly learn is actually a former Stasi agent named Ulrich who's been dead for 24 years. Only, really, he's been in a secret prison and he managed to escape. He's being tailed by someone from the prison, all on his own since he can't ask for help tracking down someone who doesn't exist (and who didn't get a trial). He can't catch our man, Ulrich, though, who's hot on the trail of his former teammates who turned on him and got him (but not really) and his wife (supposedly) killed. He tracks down a couple of them -- with JC hot on his trail each time -- but when he reaches the third, he learns his wife's not dead at all. She, too, is in New York and she was one of the people who turned on him. He kills the guy who told him this, then heads out to find "My Anja."
He finds her apartment (although it's not clear how), but JC's already there and Anja's safe with Bench in a car somewhere. Ulrich matches wits and strengths with JC (and, in fact, turns out to have a leg up on JC, who winds up tied up and tortured). They have some male bonding time, and Ulrich learns Anja has a 23-year-old daughter with eyes like his mother. He just needs to kill JC and head off to find his daughter. Thankfully, Fusco busts in and saves JC (maybe JC will cut him a little slack for that... nah, probably not). Ulrich finds the daughter, and gets her to call her mother. They have a big meet in Central Park, in which Ulrich bonds with Anja then pulls a gun to kill her. JC shoots him first, however. An anonymous tip brings Fusco, Carter, and the whole police force in. By the time they get to the scene, though, it's just a dead Ulrich. JC, Bench, and the Ulrich women are long gone. Ulrich ends up buried under his fake name, Wallace Negel, causing Bench and JC to discuss whether anyone will know their names when they're dead. Except, like Ulrich, most people think they already are.
Oh, and about JC's name? We flash back to 2006 when he was very James Bond-esque in a tux working with a woman in the CIA who's bossy and sexy and who named JC "Reese." She didn't like his first name, which she doesn't even let him say out loud so viewers can stop wondering.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!You are being watched, and all that. This time, with Alan Dale. Then a surveillance image of him pops up as surveillance audio gives us a conversation to "Assume he knows everything." Lots of IDs and stories come up that obviously pertain to him. Then he exits the train station at Grand Central, where a young, blond guy is waiting for him with a photo of a much-younger-looking Alan Dale. But Dale's smart enough to hide behind someone and slip by his greeter.
Library. Bench sees JC coming with two cups and tells him its okay -- he doesn't drink coffee. But JC knows that, duh. He brought him sencha green tea. Bench is a little worried that JC's paying so much attention, but JC tells him to relax, it's just tea. He hasn't guessed Bench's favorite color yet. But onto business. The Number of the week is Wallace Negel, who hasn't made a single financial transaction in his own name since 1987. That's a little odd. They wonder where he's been and why he's back. JC doesn't think Negel exists; it's a Spycraft 101 alias, boring life, blah, blah. Bench says Negel purchased a cemetery plot shortly before he disappeared, and it's still there. JC wonders why someone who doesn't exist needs a cemetery plot, and Bench is like, "Right?!" Like a teenager girl. Then he heads out to find someone who can find them pre-digital information.
At a bookstore, he meets up with Austin Pendleton, who gives him some books, but Bench wants more, so he gets threatening about some Russian submarine schematics that the bookstore owner sold back to the Soviets last year. Bench wants to see them. He tells him it would be hard to run this store from prison, wouldn't it? The bookstore owner's definitely listening. In fact, he takes Bench directly to a file on Wallace Negel, and talks about how the Stasi had all sort of information on everyone -- including sweat and body odor samples. The bookstore owner says Negel's team hunted down East German defectors and neutralized them before they could talk. JC, meanwhile, is at the cemetery plot, which has been freshly dug up. He finds a coin in the hole that seems to tell him something.
Bench gets back to the Library and fills JC in via telephone on what they found. Wallace Negel is a guy named Ulrich Kohl, who was married to a lady named Anja, who worked as a Stasi secretary. She was killed in a car accident in 1987. In 1989, the Stasi no longer exists and Kohl was never heard from again. JC tells Bench he's here now, because he dug up the buried stash at Negel's cemetery plot. JC says if it was anything like the stashes he used to bury, it would have contained weapons and definitely money. Bench says it seems Kohl the spy is back.