Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Smooth Criminal
By Tippi Blevins | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.30.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.One of the missing 63s is a bank thief named Cal Sweeney. He's handsome, conniving and he shows up in modern San Fransisco with a mission he doesn't quite understand. He robs multiple banks, but it's the safe deposit boxes he hits and not the vaults. He does this by romancing a few lady tellers who willingly turn off the security cameras so they can commence nookie undetected. Cal just drugs his unwitting and unfulfilled accomplices, then makes off with the goods.
When Doc and Rebecca go over the details of the case, they realize that Cal is going after female tellers who are "average-looking" and 45-50 years old. They are neither of these things, but we'll have to suspend our disbelief. This leads the A-Team to Cal's next target, but things go south pretty quickly and Cal ends up taking a whole bunch of people hostage. Rebecca then has to sneak into the bank, convince Cal she's there to help him and then sneak him back out. As they're making their escape, Rebecca uncovers one of the items Cal has stolen. It's another one of those big mystery keys. He says he has no idea why he was told to steal it. When he tries to turn the tables on Rebecca, she foils him with his own lack of seatbelt knowledge. (To be explained.)
In the flashbacks, we see Cal running the black market in Alcatraz. He has a young, eager protégé named Harlan who learns from him very quickly. Deputy Tiller wants a cut of the shady dealings; when Cal refuses, Tiller steals a small tin box from Cal's cell. This is a trifling but important memento of Cal's past and he eventually agrees to Tiller's demands in exchange for the box's return. Alas, all his wheeling and dealing lands him in the hole, and it was all for nothing because it turns out Harlan is the one who stole the box. He plans to take over the operation while Cal is in solitary. Harlan so impresses Warden James that he takes the young man to meet someone very important... someone who is hidden behind a heavy door that only unlocks by using both the mysterious keys. Stay tuned for the full weecap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The episode starts in present-day San Francisco. A good-looking guy in his thirties walks into a bank carrying a briefcase. It's Eric Johnson, whom you may recall as Whitney Fordman from Smallville. He walks up to the counter and greets a teller named Amanda as if for the first time. "I'd like to pay a visit to my safety [sic] deposit box, please." He flashes her a charming smile. As soon as they're alone in the safe deposit area, they drop the pretense and start making out like randy teenagers. Amanda assures him she's turned off the security cameras so her boss won't see them. He pushes her up against a wall, seemingly for some fun naughtiness, but then he whips out a syringe and injects her with some kind of sedative. He disables the locks on several boxes, using some kind of gun without a handle that will later be explained as a cattle-killing implement. He steals mostly papers and passports, then comes across a pretty necklace. "Aw, hello, there," he says with a vaguely Southern accent. "What's your story?" Before the thief can make a clean getaway, another bank employee walks in and sees Amanda lying unconscious on the floor. The guy begs for his life. The thief shoots him in the head with the cow gun.
Flashback to the Alcatraz laundry room, 1960. The thief folds clothes along with a younger inmate who looks at him like he hung the moon. "Now, pay attention, kid, I'm only going through this once," the thief says. "Oh, I'm at full attention, Mr. Sweeney," the kid says. He looks like a chipmunk with a Crispin Glover haircut. I don't think anyone says his name in the episode, but a web search says his name is Harlan. Sweeney explains to young Harlan about how to sneak contraband into inmates' laundry pickups. One such inmate shows up for his laundry (and his contraband) but has no money. Sweeney lets him slide, promising to collect three times the money from him next week. Sweeney explains to Harlan that to do otherwise would make the prisoners see him as week. "So you have to be tough," Harlan says. "No emotion, kid," Sweeney says. "You can't care about anyone or anything." He says if the kid wants to be his protégé, he'll have to learn that. A guard comes to let Sweeney know, all hush-hush like, that Tiller is going through his cell. When Sweeney returns to his cell, he frantically searches for something without finding it. "I need to talk to Mr. Tiller," he says to the guard.
Dim Sum restaurant, present day. Rebecca and Doc have breakfast together. While Rebecca enthusiastically chows through her pork buns, Doc eyes his food with wariness. Their morning chat reveals that Doc got his degrees to make his parents happy and then purposely got himself blacklisted from academia by trying to publish a criminology paper based on Gotham City. Rebecca thinks that's pretty adorable. Her phone rings. She answers, listens and then tells Doc they have to go. "Someone hit the safety [sic] deposit boxes at Colonial Liberty." When Rebecca says only the boxes were hit and not the vault, Doc immediately thinks of Cal Sweeney.