By M. Giant
After spending the teaser staking out the airport to track down spy flights, Michael gets accosted by a nerdy -- excuse me, nutty -- mathematician named Spencer who needs his help. His deal is that he sees patterns everywhere, and the patterns both lead him to Michael and a conviction that he's in the middle of an intergalactic battle between aliens. But it turns out that he's actually onto a conspiracy to out spies. Michael takes him on as a client, and they set about trying to prove a corporate executive has an unauthorized code that she's using to sell spies' names. When that doesn't work out, they try to bluff her into giving herself away. But that doesn't work either, because Michael and Fi are busy saving Spencer while they're supposed to be busting her. Fortunately another bluff works, and she hands them the proof they need to take her down. And Spencer gets back on his meds.
Meanwhile, tension between Michael and Fi escalates over his insistence on trying to get his old job back, even as Michael contacts an active spy named Diego Garza. That gets him nowhere -- or does it? In the wake of his recent Job Of The Week, Michael learns that his file is being reviewed, for whatever that's worth. And then he emotionally blackmails Fi into supporting him. Yay?
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vlogger Sean Crespo thinks Michael has a pretty sweet deal in No Prior Knowledge!
"Nobody wants to hear from a burned spy," Michael VOs. "Your old handlers send your calls straight to voice mail, your appeals are filed in the trash, your old contacts are worthless. Your best bet is to find a field operative who can't hang up on you." Which is presumably why Michael and Sam are sitting in the Charger at the airport, watching planes take off and land, consulting a list of tail numbers every time one does, and doing this for what the time-lapse photography would have us believe is days on end. Presumably they're parked out of sight of the big sign that reads "REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY DIAL 911," which is the only reason I can think of that nobody would notice a pair of disreputable-looking dudes in an even more disreputable-looking car hanging out at the airport for so long. "If you're on domestic soil, the airport's not a bad place to look." And the airport doesn't even seem to mind, either. So what about those tail numbers? "Intelligence agencies are like amateur magicians. Watch closely and you can see how they set up their tricks. It doesn't matter how good they are at misdirection and sleight-of-hand; they can't make a covert ops supply plane disappear." With that, Michael awakens Sam from a lovely dream about nachos to say they've got a winner: the plane that's taxiing across the tarmac in front of them had clearance, but doesn't show up on any of their manifests. Therefore: black ops flight. "Bringing toys to all the good little spooks in Latin America," Sam says. QED-o.
Michael's project is to go home and dummy up a fake ID for himself. While he's busy with that, Fi flounces in wearing a diaphanous cover-up over a bikini, expecting to be taken to lunch. Michael blows her off. She gives him a hard time over the ID photo he's using on his license for "Duane Winger," which she thinks looks like a bad prom picture. Michael explains he needs a driver's license to pull some FAA records, and disagrees with her assessment of the photo. "I think it makes me look trustworthy." Michael's hoping that someone behind the plane can help get him "back in," as he keeps saying. I suspect that if this show ever does change its title, it'll be to "Back In." And then the USA Network can sow nationwide confusion by advertising it in parking lots all across the country. Fi starts to leave, weary and defeated and beyond bored with Michael's project, as we well know. Michael stops her on her way to the door: "I know you don't like what I'm doing. But you know, it's not just about the job." Fi makes mocking noises about patriotism and duty "and the sacred call of... whatever." That was a very well-delivered "..." "I was told that hell on Earth would rain down on me without an umbrella," he reminds her. Fi points out, quite correctly, that that doesn't really appear to be the case so far. She tells him to enjoy the metaphorical sunshine, and flounces out. "Prom picture?" Michael mutters to himself. Let's all pause for a moment to imagine Michael Westen at prom, shall we? He'd look good in his rented tux, but in his eyes you would always see that discomfort over the fact that his date showed up in a diaphanous cover-up over a bikini.
Back at the airport, Michael is trying to get an FAA employee to lend him the whole file on the plain by flirting with her using a southern accent. Excuse me, I meant "plane." "Plain" is what the FAA employee is. Which is probably part of the reason Michael's flirting works so well. Before we know it, he's in the copy room, busily photocopying the contents of the folder. Suddenly the PA announces that Duane Winger needs to report to Reception. Which of course translates as "If there is a Michael Westen in the building, your ass is busted." Michael goes to the door, and out in the hallway he hears his flirt-ee talking to a humorless dude in a suit, who tells her the file "Duane Winger" requested was red-flagged. Michael closes the door before they see him, and assesses the only other exit from the room: a closed window, three or four floors up. "When you get cornered," he VOs, quite apropos of the situation, "There's a rush of adrenalin as the fight-or-flight response kicks in. In those moments, you can't listen to your body. There are some circumstances when flight just isn't the right option." But a pair of scissors and whatever he sees behind the copier is. Moments later, as a uniformed guard and that suited dude walk into the now-empty copy room, the VO continues: "Fortunately, with a little training and the right kind of hitch knot, all that adrenalin can make you capable of something pretty close to flight." In this case, hanging out the window by the power cord, dangling right above a barbed-wire-topped fence. Michael awkwardly swings himself sideways to land in the bushes on the outside of the fence. Which is not really all that close to flight at all. "Doesn't help the landing, though," his VO admits, as he coils up the cord to throw it away. Looking sore from his bumpy landing, Michael pulls the file out of the back of his pants and limps away. Good thing he picked the alias "Winger." I hate to think of how hard he would have hit the ground If he'd gone with "Stone."
Michael and Sam are at the gun range, like they don't get enough shooting practice in real life. They're also using what sounds like hollow-point exposition, as we learn that Barry agreed to look into the corporate owner of that plane Michael's so curious about, for a cool thousand dollars. Seems he has to stay with his mom when he goes up to Tallahassee. "The grand is like an annoyance tax," Sam explains. Michael concedes the point, and silently wonders how he can start collecting that when he has to deal with Madeline. Oh, and get this: this episode guest stars an actor named Michael Weston, who I actually recapped before way back when he was playing Jimmy Felon on Six Feet Under. Sam wants Michael to buy him drinks after practice, and is even thirsty enough to have shot up his target in the shape of a martini glass as a little hint. "Subtle, Sam," Michael says. Maybe he should suggest that Sam order his drinks that way at the bar, and then Michael will never have to buy him another one again.
As they're leaving the building, suddenly a bearded little nerd -- played by none other than Michael Weston -- rushes up to Michael Westen, yelling, "You! You in the sunglasses! Can I see the gun?" With one smooth motion, Michael both tosses his bag to Sam and spins the guy to the ground. He's clearly not a threat, especially when he says he didn't mean to scare Michael. His name is Spencer, and he thinks Michael is "some kind of special ops guy." Looking around, Michael VOs, "There are times in any spy's career when someone somehow figures out who you are. Usually the best approach is to just put on a good poker face and deny everything." Which is what Michael does as he lets Spencer up. But Spencer insists that he's been monitoring the paper and the police blotter, and spotted a pattern pointing him to the kind of guy he needs. Or, more specifically, to that kind of guy, who Spencer's number-crunching indicated that he probably lives within five miles of that gun range. He chatters on and on about how he needs Michael's help. "You're the guy!" he keeps saying. "What can I say?" Michael chuckles modestly, and then deadpans, "I'm not the guy," and tries to walk away with Sam. But Spencer's not giving up, so when Michael tries to get in his car, Spencer starts yelling out to some bystanders that Michael's a "famous rogue agent special operatives guy." Michael agrees to talk -- by stuffing him in the Charger. Hey, Michael, what happened to "Characters Welcome?"
Everyone's had a chance to calm down by the time we catch up with them over drinks at Carlito's. Although it's clear that Spencer is rather off, as people will keep calling him. Michael Weston is playing him by speaking all his lines -- and he has a lot of lines -- in this sort of Poor Man's Rain Man cadence, only whinier. Makes it kind of hard to root for him. Anyway, in that annoying voice, Spencer explains that he's a mathematician with a pedigree from MIT and Duke. He's been working for a year at a government defense contractor called Stone Kittredge (not to be confused with Sloan Kettering, which is entirely different), and he's seen some stuff. "One of the vice presidents is a... well, a killer." He says she's already killed three, and he suspects the victim will be in Malaysia. Michael asks for proof, as though he hasn't figured out by now that people who have proof don't come to him in the first place. But Spencer does tell a story about how he used a friend's computer at work to look into it, and shortly thereafter, that friend got blown up in a gas explosion at his house. Michael asks the quite reasonable question of why Spencer didn't use his own computer, and it comes out that Spencer doesn't have one there. Apparently the office plant-waterer isn't issued one, which sounds like discrimination to me. Sam scoffs, and Spencer says he's too busy for a full-time job, what with all the messages he has to decode. "Do you think beings that advanced sleep?" Yes, we've just veered into alien territory. Spencer jabbers about messages coded in beams of light and aliens in disguise. In his worldview, the evil aliens are going after the good ones, which he calls Guardians, three of whom, he reminds us have already been killed. Sam and Michael look at each other, and Spencer, growing impatient with them, stands up and overturns the table. Yes, I think the meeting is over.
Shortly thereafter, Michael is explaining the situation to a uniformed policeman as Spencer is guided into the back of an ambulance by two EMTs. "He started talking about aliens and crazy stuff," Michael says. "He thought I was a spy." The cop says this has happened before with Spencer, who has apparently been in and out of psych wards for years. "Big-time schizo," he says sensitively. He takes off, and Sam remarks to Michael that he's glad they can still call the cops. Which is a weird remark, because they call the cops all the time. Of course, they're not used to hanging around until they actually show up. Michael's worried about how Spencer was able to find him in the first place, like that wasn't a whole thing with his clients throughout Season Two, and Sam assures him, "Most people can't decode the messages hidden in beams of light." True, but I habitually translate my Maglite transmissions into Khmer just in case.
"A money launderer's natural habitat is near rich people," Michael VOs over some Miami pool porn. "What they save by avoiding taxes, they usually spend on overpriced drinks. But meeting with them is never boring." Way to raise expectations for the scene, Michael. Yet even he looks bored as he stands over Barry's deck chair, reading Barry's curt message back to him from his phone display. "This text doesn't even have a smiley face," Michael complains. "What happened to my friend Barry?" Barry apologizes for his steep fee, complains about his mom, and waxes creepy with the bikini-ogling before handing Michael an envelope on the company Michael had him check into. It's a shell company, of course, but it's connected to a business that owns a hangar at the airport. Satisfied, Michael pays the man, but stops short of agreeing to apply sunscreen to his back. Michael doesn't have all day, you know.
When Michael returns to his loft, who should be there but Spencer, chilling at the bottom of the steps flanked by Sam and Fi. Spencer apologizes for before, and talks about how easily he broke out of the locked ward. "There's no hard feelings. I know you were just testing me," he adds. Michael says Spencer can't be there, and Spencer realizes Michael's right; they're looking for him. "The aliens?" Sam asks. "The police," Spencer corrects patiently. "I broke out of a psych ward. Weren't you listening?" Spencer begs Michael to look at what he's learned. "I found you, didn't I?" "He doesn't seem that crazy to me," Fi puts in. Well, that makes it official: he's bonkers.
And then we're at Spencer's house, which is decorated with news clippings threaded through a network of strings on every wall. And the ceiling. The floor is clear, however. We're not completely in A Beautiful Mind territory. "Okay, I was wrong," Fi mutters to Michael. "He's totally nuts." After some flailing around the house aimlessly, wondering where to start, Spencer shows Michael a clipping about a recent bombing in Uzbekistan. Michael says that looks more like American spies than aliens. He breezes past Spencer's explanation that they take "different forms" and asks seriously, "You're saying these men were outed by an executive at Stone Kittredge?" Spencer says yep. Sam has found a clipping about the death of a friend of his, which, given the number of friends Sam has, was pretty much a statistical certainty in this room. Sam is not amused when Spencer calls his late friend a Guardian. "Don't be making up stories about real people!" Sam barks. Spencer reminds them he also lost a friend, and begs them to read all the clippings so they can see the pattern before all the Guardians are hunted down and killed. "And then the darkness will come. It's up to you to stop them," he insists to Michael. Fi starts talking softly about a doctor she'd like Spencer to meet (although if it's whoever shrunk Fi's head, Spencer should run far away), while Michael becomes distracted by the clippings spread out on the wall in front him. He VOs, "Whether you're infiltrating a cartel or spiking a chemical weapons sale, the most dangerous people in any covert op are the ones on your side. If they crack, you end you in a shallow grave. That's usually a good enough reason to avoid working with crazy people." Really? Okay, then -- bye, Fi! No? Why is she not leaving? Michael's in such a reverie that Sam has to actually call him "Michael" to snap him out of it, which is surprisingly jarring after all this time. Sam shows him a clipping from that day's paper: "Diplomat found dead in Malaysia," reads the headline. "But sometimes, you have no choice," Michael's VO concludes. Sam spells it out quietly for Michael: "If 'aliens' equal 'spies'..." Michael turns to Spencer and tells him, "I was really hoping you were just crazy," Michael says. The subtitles take their cue: "Spencer -- The Client," they say. They neglect to mention that he is also crazy.
We're going to be spending a lot of time looking at a particular downtown Miami skyscraper this week, a glass behemoth marked by a giant parabola on the front. Apparently, that's where Spencer works. At a sidewalk café across the street from there, we meet Michael and Sam, who are sitting with Spencer and working on adapting his paranoid fantasies into a real situation they can do something about. The actual backstory, translated into not-crazy: Stone Kittredge, Spencer's employer, provides communications between American embassies. That included developing a code called Zydeco. "You think somebody there is intercepting these encrypted e-mails and selling the names of American spies?" Sam asks. Spencer says that's about it, only his version has more aliens. He also dismisses Sam's theory, that someone outside the company cracked the code, as absurd. "Like 'someone's sending me messages through the Penny Saver' absurd?" Sam wonders. No, like cracking a 4K code absurd. Which I assume is 125 times stronger than the 32-bit encryption I keep hearing about. I won't say where. Just then Spencer kind of freaks, because he recognizes an ice blond in a black suit who just walked out of Parabola Towers across from them. That's Shannon Park, whose team created Zydeco. He thinks she kept a copy for herself, and he also knows she has access to embassy e-mails. "She's a murderer and a traitor," Spencer insists. Good enough for the subtitles, who jump on board and say that she is in fact "Shannon Park -- Murderer, Traitor." "You can see how she takes our form, but I swear, she's an alien," Spencer adds. "Probably Not An Alien," the subtitles add. Nice to know they have some limits. "Let's stick to Earth problems," Michael suggests. Which means looking at Shannon's files. When Spencer says that's impossible, Sam explains they'll do it by entering her office, planting a keystroke-tracking device, and coming back the day for the e-mails and the code. Spencer laughs at Sam and says she's an advanced being, way out of Sam's league. Sam turns the question around on him: "Is she out of your league?" Well, duh, Sam. That's why he came to Michael.
Later, or maybe the day, or who knows when, Michael's back undercover, in a suit with no tie. Nobody notices the fact that when he presents himself at the reception desk, it's at the same time Spencer's arriving for work. Michael introduces himself as Jeremy Dresner from IT and Consulting, and demands a visitor's badge. As he wanders around the office cockily, he VOs, "In medieval Europe, spies used to pose as lepers and plague victims so they could snoop around without being bothered. In today's corporate office, posing as IT works the same way." Whoa, I can't imagine there are a lot of IT people out there who would be flattered by that comparison. "It's the perfect cover if you need to linger without being bothered." Sure, as long as no one on the office has been getting persistent error messages. "And it gives you a pretext for talking to almost everyone." With that, he approaches Shannon Park outside her office, gives a fake introduction, and says he needs to talk to her about an internal audit. While he's got her thus distracted, Spencer sneaks into her office. It doesn't take him long to plug in a thumb drive and do some fast typing, which is good because it doesn't take Park much longer to blow Michael off, pretty rudely. Michael comes right back at her, just as rudely, because it's not like he needs to give a shit. After she reenters her office with a slam of the door, Michael asks her assistant for a bathroom key. "You're my hero," she whispers to him as she hands it over.
She doesn't know the half of it, because now Michael's going to use that bathroom key to forge one for Shannon's office. "All you need to beat a tumbler lock is a little information and some stone-age tools," Michael VOs as he works on making a homemade copy of that key. "If you know the basic kind of key you need to spoof, take out a matching blank, file down the valleys to the central ledge, and you have a bump key. Apply torque, whack it with anything handy, and you're in." I know the show doesn't want to give out information that people could use to actually break the law, but maybe it would be better to not do it at all instead of pretending to with a VO that doesn't actually make any sense. Michael tests his bump key on a little lock he has handy, just like they did in the Stone Age. Fi enters, and Michael invites her along to the airport. He wants to "pay a visit to that front business Barry found." Fi complains, he snaps at her, and he finally leaves, saying he'll go alone. As if he's not better off doing it that way anyhow. They agree they'll have to discuss this out eventually. "Just not right now," Michael says. I agree; that sounds like something that can wait until the end tag.
As we return to the airport, Michael does some more VO-ing: "Drug cartels aren't the only organizations who use import-export businesses as fronts. Intelligence agencies like them because they make it possible for missions to finance themselves." This as Michael is walking right into that hangar with nothing his bluster and sunglasses, looking around at crates of items both dangerous and fragile. "They send out guns and supplies and get back goods to sell. Native antiquities are favorites because their subjective prices make money laundering easy." Michael walks up to a Latino guy in business-casual clothes, asking if he's the manager. "No, Mr. Westen," he says, standing up. "I'm Diego Garza. I'm the spy you're looking for." "Diego Garza -- The Spy Michael's Looking For," the subtitles confirm. Michael likes how Diego isn't trying to mess with him, and he already knows that Michael's approaching him to try to get Back In. But Garza really wants Michael to leave immediately, and he tells him so politely but firmly. "Not everything they told you about me is true," Michael says. He just wants to talk to Garza's bosses. Garza alludes to some of the horrors he's seen and survived in his 20 years, until his transfer here. "You know what the hardest part of this job is? That forklift turns funny." The point is, he's not about to risk this cushy gig by saying he's been in contact with a burned spy. "I'm not rocking this boat." Michael isn't going to let it go that easily. "I'm giving you a chance to be a friend," he threatens. Garza, who speaks spy as well as Michael does, says he doesn't like threats. "But I love your sunglasses. You have a good one, okay?" Michael takes off, defeated. For now.
Back at Parabola Towers, Sam, in slicked-back hair and a dark suit and tie, (but still without a fresh shave, because why go overboard?), strides into he bullpen outside Park's office as Michael VOs, "Doing a job in broad daylight means easier access but more witnesses. You can walk right in with your unwanted audience, but you better have a plan to entertain them." Or, as Sam's about to do, make them a captive audience. Sam jumps up on a desk, jovially introduces himself as a teamwork consultant named (what else?) Charles Finley, and herds everyone into the conference room, promising everyone ice cream cake for his birthday. He has to cut off Park's attempted escape into her office to make sure she comes along, but she doesn't follow him without locking her office first. For all the good that's going to do her.
When Michael and Spencer appear on the scene and see the empty cubicles, Spencer whispers, "Have they all been taken?" "Yeah, to the conference room," Michael says, and leads the way to Park's office. Using Michael's bump key, they break in while Sam is actually going through a whole long boring, content-free (and thus completely convincing) PowerPoint presentation. It's not going all that great -- some of the employees have turned on him for not actually providing that ice cream cake -- and it's not going much better in Park's office. All Spencer has been able to find on her computer is some encrypted e-mails, but as Michael points out, that's not enough to send to the FBI. He wants the code, which is the only thing that will serve as a smoking gun. Unfortunately, Spencer is getting distracted by the latest of those accursed patterns he keeps spotting. In this case, it's Park deleting her bank records at intervals that correspond with deaths of spies/Guardians. Including today, which tells him two more names went out. He commences freaking. Michael tries to keep him on task, but it's no good; as for the code itself, Spencer has just realized that she must keep her copy in the SCIF room. I have to do a little research to learn that SCIF stands for Secure, Compartmented Information Facilities, but Michael knows his stuff better than I do (which is the point of this show, after all): "That's a vault!" he growls. Spencer apologizes for not seeing it before, and Michael kicks him out of the chair so he can take over, sending himself copies of all the encrypted shit on Park's hard drive. In more bad timing news, Park herself has gotten frustrated with Sam's non-presentation, and storms out. Sam follows her, trying to convince her to go back into the meeting. And loudly, so Michael can hear them coming. He tries to drag Spencer out, but Spencer's busy prattling and trying to insist they take her computer to get what they need. "The darkness will come! The darkness will come!" he whines. Michael physically calms him down and drags him out of the office and out of sight, just before Sam and Park come around the corner. "They're all gonna die," Spencer whines as he and Michael wait for the elevator. "We don't have the code. They're all gonna die." I guess one advantage of having a crazy client is that you never have to end a second act without reminding the audience about the stakes in the regularly scheduled second-act screw-up that just occurred.
Spencer's still chattering away when Michael and Fi pull up to his house in the Charger. I guess Michael picked her up so she could translate for him. Spencer is now talking about hacking into Park's computer remotely, which Michael strongly advises against, because she'd be able to trace it back to where he lives. Michael tries to explain what he's planning to do instead, but Spencer won't take a breath from yammering about the impossibility of breaking the code or into the SCIF room, respectively. So Michael and Fi get out of the car, and Michael glares at Fi over the roof to express his frustration. She steps in and calmly explains to Spencer that Michael's plan is to use the encrypted e-mails they did get to fool Park into thinking she's thisclose to being busted, and when she goes to covers her tracks, they'll tip off the FBI. "The alien goes to jail," she sums up. Spencer's on board with that. "Is that what you were going to say?" he asks Michael. Michael glares some more. He's going to melt his sunglasses if he's not careful.
Back to Parabola Towers. Outside, Michael accosts Park and tells her to be cool. She goes him one better, coldly telling him she knows he isn't who he said he was two days ago, and asking who he really is. "The people we both work for don't know my name and neither will you," Michael spits. "I'm the guy cleaning up your mess. That's all you get." He says he was "shaking the tree" before. As though he doesn't realize she knows exactly what's going on, he tells her that he's looking for a leak, Zydeco has been compromised, he says, and three American spies are already dead as a result. Except because he's pretending he doesn't know she's behind it all, all he can threaten her with is a big hit to the value of her stock options if this gets out. When she's unimpressed, he whips out a printout of one of her e-mails. Now he's got her attention, to the point where she clears her calendar for him for the day. You know, Shannon, if you were going make this unbreakable code and then use it to sell secrets, maybe you should have made the code a little less unbreakable so as to allow for the possibility of other suspects when spies started dying.
Michael takes her out to the marina, and leads her to a boat at a slip (we'll later learn [in case we haven't already figured it out (which we have)] that it belongs to Sam's friend Virgil). But Michael tells Park it belongs to Spencer's friend, the guy Park had blown up (again, as though he doesn't know she was behind it), and pulls a stack of more Zydeco printouts from a locker. These even have notes scribbled in the margins, which of course Michael wrote himself, but Park doesn't know that, so she's really more curious than she'd like to let on about what they say. Michael claims all he could tell from the notes is that the dead guy wanted to see the SCIF access logs, so now he does, too. She refuses, but Michael insists: they'll meet there tomorrow at 10:00 and go from there to Parabola Towers, which will be empty on a Saturday. And then he hands her a cell phone. "Cell phones are basically wireless computers," he VOs. "What is this?" Park demands. It's basically a wireless computer, Park. Pay attention. The VO adds, "Upload the right program, and you've got a roving bug you can turn on remotely." Michael tells her to keep it on her and use it if she needs to contact him. "The last person who looked into this leak was killed. You never know who's listening," he warns her darkly, and leaves her standing on the dock, presumably to walk home.
As he walks away from her at the marina, he's already on the phone to Sam, who quotes his last line back to him to demonstrate that the bug is working. Michael wants Sam to be in charge of monitoring the bug so Michael can go to the airport and "See if I can't motivate our pal Diego." Something tells me Diego isn't going to like being motivated.
"Front companies generally make easy targets for burglary," Michael VOs as he B&Es Garza's hangar in the dead of night. "They don't want people wondering what they have to hide, so they tend not to install a lot of lights, alarms, and security cameras." Michael breaks into a crate to steal an old ceramic bowl as he continues, "And, of course, they never invite the police in to investigate, so there's really no need to be shy about leaving clues." Like the note Michael leaves reading "Sorry to Rock Your Boat," signed, "Amigo." Burglary over.
Fi is staked out in her Saab in front of Parabola Towers as Sam tells her the plan: they bust Park wiping the access logs. "I understand the plan, I just don't like it," Fi says, because her job is to complain about the plan so the men can tell her how ideal it is. Sam has to take a break from that, because he's picking up a transmission from the bugged phone that Shannon gave Michael. Which she's using to call a hit man. Yeah, she's a careful one, all right. Sounds like Spencer didn't follow Michael's advice; he hacked into Park's computer remotely, she caught him, and now there's a bomb under his house set to go off at midnight. Sam dispatches Fi to Spencer's house, which she says is 20 minutes away. While she peels out, Michael is elsewhere, stuffing that bowl he stole into a FedEx package and slipping it into a drop-box. "Hey, Sam, do you need some bowls?" he asks when Sam calls. Sam quickly gives Michael the skinny and tells him to get to Spencer's as well. This is a two-person job?
Fi gets there first, and announces her entry by driving her Saab through the chain link fence around Spencer's front yard, shooting the locks off his front door at ten yards, and then kicking it open (although not at ten yards). All Spencer sees is the beams from her Saab's headlights lighting the room up all X-Files, so when she storms in, he gets up and...argues with her. Michael comes in just in time, and smacks him unconscious. "You can't talk to him when he gets like that!" he lectures, throwing Spencer across his shoulder and following Fi into cover behind Michael's car. The house blows. Spencer comes around, looks at them, and says, "If you're here...?" Fi confirms that they missed Park. "She's going to erase everything." So much for attempt number two. Now all that's left for them to do until the commercials are over is sit there watching the fire erase Spencer's house.
Third time's the charm, so here we are. The morning at the loft, the team plays Spencer a recording of a second call between Park and her hitman, discussing the failed hit. Spencer isn't buying it, since the message wasn't transmitted via light-beam. "This must be a special occasion," Sam explains. Spencer realizes they tried to kill him, but Michael has a backup-backup plan, which is after all what fourth acts on this show are made for. "Now that you're the only one she has reason to be afraid of, you're going to have to help." Spencer wants no part of this, especially when he hears he'll need to talk to Park in person. Michael warns him to stick to the script. "You cannot mention aliens, light beams, or any of it." Fi, the designated Spencer-translator, tells him why: "Shannon can't find out we know what she is. She can't find out that her cover's blown. She'll call in for backup. All the other beings." Makes sense to Spencer. See, he's fine as long as there's another crazy person around to interpret things for him.
Michael meets Park at the marina as scheduled. She starts spinning a story about how she checked the access logs and they showed nothing, and starts trying to pin it on Spencer's dead friend. Michael interrupts her to say he got a call from Spencer, who he says is ex-NSA. Park doesn't think a loopy plant waterer is up for that, but Michael sells it pretty well. "Nice cover, don't you think?" He says. He pretends to wonder why Spencer wants Park there with him when they meet. Park is secretly not wondering at all.
In a grassy vacant lot below a bridge, Michael and Park meet up with Spencer and Fi, both in suits. As per the script, Spencer accuses Park of everything we know she's done. Except he does it in his usual whiny-nerd voice, so it doesn't really have the impact it otherwise might. So it falls to Michael to help sell it. "You're the leak?" he incredulously asks Park. Spencer demands five million in cash to keep it quiet, and he does go a little off-script: "I know your whole dark plan, and I know you're one of them." After an awkward moment, Fi saves it: "Ms. Park is one of those people who doesn't cover their tracks as well as they think." Good one. She rattles off Park's password and asks if she's changed it yet today. Spencer hands Michael a stack of encrypted e-mails, as well as some printouts he claims are decrypted. Park, not fooled, starts to walk. As this is falling apart, neither Fi nor Michael know what to do, until Spencer yells, "If I'm bluffing, then how do I know that you're setting up a deal to sell another name to the Venezuelans?" That's got her. She and Michael agree to the five million, and leave together. Fi asks Spencer how he came up with Venezuela. Spencer explains about patterns. "Also, I saw a file labeled Caracas when I tried to hack her." Fi is impressed. I think she's with the wrong Michael West_n.
Back at the car, Michael yells at Park about the attempted hit and demands to know the thug's name and address so he can clean this up. She suggests killing the blackmailers instead of paying them, and Michael acts like he's way ahead of her. He tells her he plans to get a copy of Zydeco to plant on their bodies. He also does that thing he does when he's trying to get a mark to go along with him, talking to her like she's an idiot for not having figured out every step of the plan that materialized fully-formed in his head the minute their meeting with Spencer ended. I'm sure it's an effective technique; in certain circumstances, people are probably more likely to agree to stuff they don't fully get than admit they don't get it. Michael explains, "It has to look like Spencer stole the codes and the e-mails from the embassy. If the problem is on the client's side, then we're protected. Stone Kittredge stock doesn't take a hit." She protests some more, but he scares her into going along.
So it's back to Parabola Towers, where she leads him into the SCIF Room and pulls a CD-ROM out of a locked file cabinet. That would be Zydeco. As for the e-mails, she says they'll have to print them off her computer outside the building. "Yeah, I may skip that part," Michael says, taking the Zydeco CD and handcuffing her to the wall. "This isn't goodbye," he says as he locks her in. "I'll say hi at your trial." He leaves her there screaming in rage. See, this is why you never go into the office on a Saturday.
Inside her office, Spencer is getting the goods off Park's computer while dialing the FBI on her desk phone. "I was just calling because there's a traitor locked in the SCIF room at Stone Kittredge," he says when an agent answers. He goes on to say she's got a bunch of State Department e-mails, and they should bring backup. "That bitch is an alien." Michael quickly hangs up the phone. Their work here is done. Assuming the FBI doesn't decide on the basis of Spencer's last statement that they just got crank-called. By a whiny misogynist.
Some other day, the team is waiting for Spencer at Carlito's. "Maybe he got abducted," Sam cracks, checking his watch. Spencer shows up late, waving a newspaper article about Park plea bargaining by testifying against her hit man. "Something's wrong with the world when we don't hang traitors any more," Sam says, lapsing a bit into his Elvis voice. Fi tells Spencer he looks good, even though he looks exactly the same. Spencer explains that he's on meds now. "Comes with the job, so it's worth it." Especially since they don't seem to have actually affected him in ay way, as far as I can tell. Sam mentions that he got Spencer a job doing cryptography at a buddy's tech firm. Spencer's on his way there now, and Michael offers to walk with him, to make a stop of his own. Spencer thanks them for listening to him (as though they had a choice), and as he and Michael leave, Fi remarks to Sam, "You got him a job." "I actually am kind of a sweetheart," Sam explains. They do not make out.
Walking down the sidewalk, Spencer babbles about the aliens, which he now knows aren't real, and how he should have told someone when he first caught onto what was happening, but he didn't have anyone he could trust. "You're lucky. You're just lucky to have people like that." "Yeah," Michael agrees. "If there's ever anything I can do," Spencer says. "Yeah," Michael agrees again. I assume he's being so reticent because he's afraid Spencer might offer to pay him or something. Instead, Spencer takes off, having become yet another guy who owes Michael a favor, out in the world somewhere. If Michael ever decides to relocate out of that loft, just imagine the size of his moving crew.
Once again, Michael presents himself at Garza's hangar, now carrying that bowl he stole. He claims he beat out some Russians for it in an online auction. "I knew you liked Colombian art, so I thought, what better way to say, 'Still want us to be friends.'" He tosses the bowl to Garza, who makes no move to catch it. It shatters at his feet. Maybe he doesn't like Colombian art that much. Annoyed, he says his bosses spotted Michael's screen name on the auction site: MichaelHeartsDiego. "Nice choice you gave me," Garza says. "Cop to the fact that I made contact with you or admit to skimming and accepting bribes from enemies of the state." "Did you choose A?" Michael asks slowly. Garza did; he's now Michael's point of contact in Miami. "Now you don't have to leave town!" Michael says happily. "Win-win!" Garza adds another win for himself: he gets to tell Michael, "The company is not interested in your services at this time." Michael whips out that newspaper article Spencer had to prove what a good guy he really is, but Garza says they already knew about it. "Did you really think that would get you back in?" Clearly Michael did, and he looks a bit like a hurt little boy as Garza says, "The boys upstairs don't want to pin a medal on anyone for that mess. They want to sweep it under the rug." Michael doesn't have anything left to say but to ask Garza to get to know him. "I'm not one of the bad guys." He turns to leave, but Garza says he was told the higher-ups would review Michael's file. "I wouldn't hold my breath, but who knows?" Uh, I do. At least until I look up this show in the TV listings and find Back In in its time slot.
Michael comes home to the loft at night, where Fi has dinner waiting. Or, more accurately, salads in what look like ancient Colombian bowls. Looks like the prop department picked up a few too many. She asks how it went. Michael is noncommittal. "Whatever happens, one of us will be happy, I guess," he grumbles. And then he asks her, rather pissily, "Why can't you be with me on this?" She compares him to Spencer, with his monomania. Michael doesn't disagree: "We both see the world a certain way and we both have skills that make it a better place. That's not a bad thing." He starts getting heated as he says what they just did is "the type of work I was made for, Fi. It's what my old job gave me a chance to do every single day. So no, getting back in isn't just a way to survive, to protect the people I love. It's what I want. And if you truly care about me, you should damn well want for me what I want for myself." Whoa, that's kind of harsh. She doesn't have a response to that, other than to give in. "I'll be with you," she says. But then she leaves, pausing as she walks past him just long enough for the camera to get a good look at the tears in her eyes. Short dinner for her, but she was probably full anyway.
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M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.