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So the federal government apparently owns an insane Southern California beach house that undercover agents use a crash pad. This is a real thing. And I'd like to go there on vacation, because all the undercovers are stunningly, ridiculously beautiful. The newest roommate is FBI agent Mike Warren, newly graduated from the academy and eager to do some federalin'.
Mike's roommates include FBI agents Johnny and Charlie; DEA agents Lauren, Johnny, and Paige; and ICE agent Jakes. And also legendary badass FBI agent Paul Briggs, who is assigned to be Mike's mentor. And who Mike is secretly assigned to investigate, because Briggs might be crazy or dangerous or corrupt, but he's just so fucking pretty he could basically be running a murderous cartel out of that beach house and I wouldn't care.
Mike's first day includes a cocaine sting that results in the U.S. government taking possession of 12,000 pairs of black-market blue jeans, and then Mike going undercover with the Russian drug cartel, getting held at gunpoint by the recently shot DEA agent whose room at Graceland he's now occupying, and almost accidentally bringing the whole cartel down. Oh, and he also witnesses Briggs murdering someone and covers for him. So his second day ought to be really interesting.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A precredits crawl informs us that the U.S. government owns a SoCal beach house where undercover DEA, FBI and ICE agents live. It's called Graceland because I guess Melrose Fed was a little on the nose.
At Quantico, a bunch of baby FBI agents are graduating. Courtney B. Vance tells all the new grads, including the super adorable Aaron Tveit (or as my friend Cristin was calling him in December, Blond Marius), that he too thought he was hot shit when he graduated from the academy, but then he went out into the world, which is a battlefield. (No promises, no demands.) And he hopes they'll all be smart and lucky enough to survive.
Across the country, intercut with the graduation, a man in an old car is listening to the radio and cracking his knuckles. As another car approaches, the man puts his badge in the glove compartment and greets the newcomers in Spanish. A third car arrives, and the occupants open suitcases full of drugs and cash. The undercover agent cooks himself up a nice spoonful of heroin to check the quality of the merchandise. He makes a big show of finding a vein, but then injects the heroin into a rubber ball held in the bend of his elbow. But when he straightens up, he drops the ball. It bounces horribly slowly over to the big skeptical Russian drug dealer who's watching all this go down. One of the women in the car that brought the drugs also seems to be an undercover, based on the worried eye contact she's making with the ineptly shooting up agent.
The woman screams, "Nyet!" as one of her colleagues pulls out a gun and shoots the undercover. Everyone gets in their cars and splits, leaving the undercover bleeding from a wound to his upper left chest.
Courtney congratulates all the new graduates and they all grin handsomely and smile while the doppelganger of their future bleeds to death on a pier in San Pedro.
Graceland. A shirtless man, Johnny, tries to wake Daniel Sunjata up. Daniel is all bearded and gruff and ridiculously cute and I want to crawl into that bed with him. Johnny teases Briggs, -- which is apparently Daniel's name -- that he told him not to let him sleep in. Briggs is all, I WAS NOT SERIOUS FUCK OFF JOHNNY and flings a shoe at Johnny, who closes the door. The one through the door is Paul's boss -- ack! It's horrible mewling Agent Kohn from Sons of Anarchy! Agent Kohn pulls the curtains open because he is a monster.
Kohn hollers at Lauren -- the undercover female agent from the pier -- and Johnny to clear out Donnie's room so a new guy can move in. Poor Donnie is the one who got shot, and he survived, but I guess he gets turfed out of Graceland while he recovers. Agent Kohn fills them in on their new arrival: Blond Marius, also known as Mike Warren, the top of the latest Quantico class. Briggs points out from a quick perusal of Mike's jacket that Mike doesn't speak Spanish, which would probably helpful in the kind of work they do (and also Aaron Tveit is like the whitest man alive, so he's going to stick out like a great pale thumb). Johnny marvels at Mike's test scores, which he says are almost as high as Briggs's were. Kohn tells Briggs to pick Mike up, which Briggs pawns off on Johnny.
On the plane, Mike is practicing his Spanish. A lady to him overhears and wants to chat. He charms her, and he's just so goddamn cute. He lies that he's a teacher, just as the flight attendant comes over and asks if he's Special Agent Mike Warren from the FBI. He's all... uh, yep. That's me. She hands him a note that Johnny sent through the cockpit to tell Mike where to wait at the airport. Did they not give Johnny Mike's cell phone number? Mike's affable seatmate politely overlooks his pathetic attempt at lying and quickly teaches him how to say "Hands up" in Spanish.
Mike wanders the airport until Johnny shows up, finally, two hours late, and chides Mike for being so by-the-book that he'd wait exactly where he was told to for two hours. He introduces himself and they stroll off into the lovely California sunshine.
Mike fills Johnny in on how he's learning Spanish, and Johnny shows off that he also speaks Korean by flirting with some ladies. As they stroll up the beach, Johnny rattles off the cover stories all the agents at Graceland use: Briggs says he's a Tae Bo instructor (because... people still do Tae Bo?), someone named Charlie passes herself off as a trust fundie, and Johnny tells girls he's a Learjet pilot. And the reason the house is called Graceland is because the drug lord from whom it was seized was an Elvis fan.
So, the roommates: FBI agents Briggs, Johnny, Charlie and Mike; DEA agents Lauren, Donnie and Paige; and ICE agent Jakes. I'm sure Jakes will turn out to be the Puck. The house looks like a Real World pad on steroids, like someone plundered an Anthropologie, with a little Crate & Barrel thrown in (the really pricey furniture collection, not the cheap wineglasses). Guests aren't allowed upstairs, Johnny says, and he shows Mike the chore wheel, which is adorable.
Johnny shows Mike the phone room, which has a zillion different lines, some of them marked with things like "answer only in Russian." Lauren, who rushes in to answer that line, was Donnie's partner, Johnny mutters, and he fills Mike in on the work they were doing with the Gallardo cartel and how he got busted. Mike puts his suitcase down on the bed in Donnie's room, and Lauren comes in to cock her gun and threaten him not to get too comfortable. She seems like a charmer.
A guy in a rasta hat is trying to sell (surely contraband) parrots to another guy with dreads in a rasta hat. Dreads guy closes the deal, takes off his hat, and ties his hair up, and then he's walking into the Graceland kitchen. Dreads guy is Jakes, the customs agent, and he's not pleased to meet Mike, who is drinking his orange juice, as indicated by the initials scrawled on the label. Jakes does not like people consuming his food; over in the breakfast nook, Johnny cracks up. Briggs stumbles into the kitchen grumpily and drinks directly from the milk carton -- also labeled with Jakes's initials -- while Mike sucks up to him. Briggs's idea of Mike getting started is to do all his chores. I do so enjoy handsome men hazing each other.
In a much less attractive and sunny house, a person collects some small vials from a compartment under a floorboard. The woman who did the collecting picks up a crying baby, wakes up the kid's junkie mother, then leaves while the boy screams in his playpen. And then she walks in the front door of Graceland, spooking Mike, who's doing the dishes. She starts rummaging through a bag on the couch, so Mike pulls his gun on her and tells her to put her hands up. She slaps his gun away and draws her own, then asks if he's the new guy. As Johnny comes in, he repeats the "no guns downstairs" rule that she just mentioned to Mike, and then identifies the woman as FBI agent Charlie...
...Who needs a shower and some soft-focus close-ups to wash off her junkie drag. After she gets them, she comes into Mike's room in her bathrobe and finds Donnie's spare key for him, since Mike's welcome packet included dish duty but not a key to the house. She also flirtily says she'll shoot Mike if he tells Lauren about how he thought she was a junkie robbing the place.
Donnie answers Lauren's call at the safe house. From their conversation, it seems safe to say they're not just professional partners. She fills him in on all the people who want him dead: not just the Russians, but also the Mexican cartel. And then they say, "I love you and I miss you," without saying any of those specific words.
The morning, Briggs jogs into the spotless kitchen, then wakes Mike by tossing a wetsuit on top of him. Today the boys will be surfing. Oh man. Blond Marius is going to drown. As the boys sit on their boards, Briggs gives Mike a few instructions while Johnny proclaims catching a wave to be better than sex, and then Mike just gets bashed around the waves and by his board. This would be better if everyone was shirtless, that's all I'm saying. (I will be saying that often. You've been duly warned.)
When Mike hauls himself out of the water and flops down under the pier, his bad luck compounds when a stray dog steals one of his brand-new ridiculous bright-red flip-flops. Charlie sits down to him and Mike tells her Briggs isn't what he was expecting, based on his all-star reputation at the bureau -- multiple awards before age thirty, those off-the-charts test scores. Charlie replies that Briggs used to be more straitlaced, but something happend and now he's the Zen milk stealer. And he's the only one in the house who manages to hold onto his secrets, she exposits. Everyone else just sexily tells everyone their business, is the implication. Mike goes back to try his luck with another wave.
When the boys are back inside, Lauren tells Briggs he got a message from a Felix Arroyo, who wants to buy some drugs. She insists that Felix works for the Russian who shot Donnie and wants to pursue it. Briggs says Felix is just a small-time dealer, but he relents and assigns Mike to help her.
Briggs calls Felix, who is watering some plants very indifferently. In the phone room, Johnny fills Mike in on Felix's connection to the Russians -- his wife is Russian, so he works for them. Felix asks for the cocaine he wants, and in the phone room, Briggs and Lauren make faces at each other until Briggs agrees.
Briggs, Johnny and Mike drive to the meet with Felix, with Mike wanting a cover identity and fretting about how he'll handle the sale. He's taking notes. Briggs flings his pad out of the car, telling Mike he can't have a cheat sheet during a fake drug deal. Johnny tells Briggs to put Mike "in the movie" -- Briggs explains that he got an FBI award while he was undercover with a particularly vicious cartel, and CNN decided to do a story on him and plastered his face all over TV. In a flashback to the deal, the guy Briggs is selling the cocaine recognizes him, so Briggs tells the men he's an actor and he sometimes plays a cop in the movies, and they recognized him from a movie in which he plays a cop who goes undercover as a male hooker named Shasta. I would watch that.
Briggs keeps rambling bullshit, with Johnny agreeing happily to prevent the cartel members, who are pointing large automatic weapons at their throats, from killing them both, and then Briggs pulls out his badge, telling them it's a prop from the movie. And they buy it, everyone laughing about how fake the badge looks. Back in the present, Johnny laughs that one of the guys they busted has an autographed picture of Briggs in his cell. Mike can't believe the cartel members still went through with the buy, and now he wants to be in the male hooker movie too. Briggs tells Mike he can be Shasta's brother-in-law, who's married to a prostitute named Low Rider.
Briggs hands Mike a necklace that will record everything that goes on during the buy. They haven't used wires since The Wire, he snarks. Agent Kohn shows up and asks Briggs what the hell they're doing. Briggs shamelessly spills that this was Lauren's brilliant idea, and then Kohn introduces himself to Mike as Gerry Silvo and reveals that he's humorless and the least interesting person in the room as he flatly says Felix probably won't start shooting, since he has a family and all. Silvo asks Mike if he's nervous, and Mike says he is. Which is good, Silvo replies. I still haven't forgiven him for scaring Tara, all right?
Mike goes to the buy. Felix's son answers the door, and then Felix pops up and hospitably offers Mike lemonade, courtesy of his wife, Irina. It's all very domestic and adorable and you can tell that even with the shine of the academy still on him, Mike doesn't want to fuck up this cute happy family. Felix asks how Mike knows Briggs, and Mike nervously starts talking way too much about how he's Briggs's brother-in-law in the movie. On the other end of the line, this is hugely entertaining to Johnny. But Felix and Irina buy the story and ask if Mike also plays a cop. "Manos arriba," Mike says, just as the lady on the plane taught him. They love it, and Mike and Felix step outside to do their deal.
Felix doesn't have the money to pay for the cocaine Mike's hauling because another guy didn't show up to claim his stuff and pay him, he says. Listening, Briggs is convinced they're wasting their time, but Mike asks what the other guy was buying because he might be interested in the other guy's merchandise in return for the cocaine. Felix sends Mike to check out the stuff in the alley. Silvo asks Briggs if he told Mike not to change locations (never go to a second location with a hippie!), and that's one thing Briggs neglected to mention while spinning the grand story of Shasta and Low Rider. Briggs sends Johnny sprinting off to cover the alley.
Felix shows Mike a truck full of 12,000 pairs of stolen blue jeans. Mike's not impressed, and correctly guesses that Irina is pressuring Felix to unload the truck. And then Johnny comes tearing up the alley, accompanied by cop cars with their blue and reds flashing, screaming, "Federal bureau!" and panting like he's about to drop dead. Felix and Mike put their hands up and Johnny muscles Mike away into a squad car.
But at the police station, the uniforms who arrested Felix bring him through the main corridor, blowing Mike's cover. Silvo yells at them, and I'm sure this will resurface. Briggs gives Mike a grudging "good job, rookie" slap on the shoulder.
Mike's on the beach when the stray dog brings back his flip-flop. They make friends as the sun slips below the Pacific.
At the police station, a fellow named Sergei comes in to bail Felix out. Uh-oh. Felix tells the cop that Sergei isn't his lawyer, and pleads with him not to let Sergei bail him out. The cop ignores him.
At Graceland, Briggs is studying Mike's jacket, specifically the part about how he initially requested to be assigned to DC (and someone graduating at the top of his class would probably get his first choice, so his posting to Graceland is a bit odd). Downstairs, Charlie has decided that Mike's nickname is now Levi. Johnny reveals that Johnny is actually his nickname -- it's the name of his character in the movie. Charlie starts telling a story about when Johnny was undercover with a biker gang and how he got his nickname -- he told the bikers that he killed a man for reading his porno mags on the john.
Back at the police station, Felix nervously tries to make small talk with Sergei, who tells him that Irina and their son will be staying with the Russians until Felix gets out of jail -- and as l'affaire Levi's is his third strike, that could be quite a long time -- to ensure Felix doesn't talk to the feds. Felix pleads that he'll do anything, and Sergei wants to know who Mike is. Felix lies that he's his brother-in-law. It pleases Sergei that he's family.
Jakes comes downstairs and is delighted to learn Mike's new nickname. Apparently he's decided he likes him. And then Silvo breaks up the party, shutting off the music and telling them the truck of jeans was stolen from the port, so it's a customs problem, not the FBI's. This just thrills Jakes all the way to the ends of his dreads.
Silvo fills them in on Felix's situation, and says that luckily Felix has a white brother-in-law, so Mike's going to assume Frankie Bout's identity for a little while. Mike's all, I'ma what now? Turns out Sergei also wants to bail Mike out to make sure Felix won't talk, and they're going to ask him to kill someone so they have leverage over him. Briggs smoothly explains how Mike can accomplish this (he'll just agree to carry out the murder, then have Briggs put together a fake story, leak it to the press, file a fake police report, etc.), then says Mike doesn't have to do all this. But he's met Irina and the kid, so he's in.
Briggs fills Mike in on Frankie's background and then later quizzes him on the details of Frankie's life. Turns out Frankie is also a junkie, so Charlie steps in to give Mike a makeup job -- circles under his eyes, track marks on his wrist, a distinctive scar over his eye. Johnny shows up with shoes and a wallet for Mike, then Briggs hands over his transmitter watch. Mike looks like he's about to hurl in Charlie's lap while she paints on his scar, but she assures him sexily that he can do it. To save Felix's family, of course. And also because Charlie might bang him later, it's implied.
Police station. Sergei gets "Frankie" out and a goon sweeps him for bugs out by the car. In the room where Briggs and the others are monitoring, Lauren tells Silvo she wants in on this. He quite sensibly says she's emotionally compromised and just wants revenge, but since Lauren isn't half Vulcan, this just makes her angry. Silvo tells her to leave, then relents and invites her to listen to the rookie work.
Sergei brings Mike to an auto repair shop. Mike manages to drop a clue to the FBI to let them know where he is, and then is brought to an office full of threatening leather-jacketed Russians. The Russians decide they have no use for Mike, saying they'll just keep Irina and the boy as hostages, but he brags that he can do whatever they want him to do -- do they want him to kill someone, 'cause he can totally do that! He killed someone in Canada once! The Russian tells him he has sources in law enforcement who will know if he's lying, so Mike starts telling the how-Johnny-got-his-nickname story, except with himself in the lead role. This delights Briggs to no end, but makes Silvo tear at his hair in humorless fury.
Briggs sets the tech guys to putting together an unsolved homicide report for the story Mike is telling. The other Russians are tickled pink by Mike's coldblooded bravado, but Sergei coolly calls to check on the story. There's a hiccup when the tech guys encounter the National Crime Information Center server's firewall, but they get the report there just in time. Sergei confirms Mike is telling the truth. (Well, "the truth.") The Russian agrees to let Irina and the kid go if Mike does a job for them, and it looks like they're going to want to go witness it, rather than letting him go alone and let Briggs put together a cover story. Could've called that.
The Russians pull up at a house and hand Mike a key, telling him to kill the man in the back bedroom. They hand him a gun. As he walks toward the house, he tells Briggs and the others the address in a tone of voice that doesn't nearly cover his panic. Briggs hops on his motorcycle and heads out to help, after discussing with Silvo that Felix's family will certainly get killed if they send in lights and sirens.
Mike enters the house and moves quietly through it. Silvo asks his people to tell him who owns the house, and they belatedly discover it's a federal safe house. The man in the back bedroom is Donnie, of course. Mike wakes him up and Lauren immediately recognizes Donnie's voice. Silvo tells his people to wake everyone in LA up and tells Lauren to call Donnie. The phone rings as Donnie tells Mike to put down the gun; Mike grabs for the phone and Donnie shoots the lamp to it.
Mike tells Donnie who he is as they both point their guns at each other. Donnie doesn't really believe him, but Mike figures out who he is after Donnie says the Russians aren't going to finish him off, then shows him the spare key and tells him how Lauren warned him not to unpack. Donnie relents, they put their guns down, and Donnie calls out to the folks listening in. They all think it's adorable and hilarious that Donnie almost shot Mike. Mike empties his gun into the floor, then leaves.
Mike tells the Russians Donnie's dead, and they tell him to get in the car. Mike resists, and just as the Russians are about to shoot him, Briggs takes the driver out. He expositions that he bets the Russians were planning to kill Mike and make it look like a suicide and use the gun Mike used to "kill" Donnie as evidence to hold over Felix's head. When the other Russian, watching from the back seat, won't put his hands up, Briggs shoots him, too. He opens the man's door and a gun falls out. Briggs switches off Mike's transmitter and Mike asks if he knew about the gun. Briggs is all, yep, look at it, a gun right there! Mike switches his transmitter back on and tells the others that Briggs saved his life, so where's that ambulance for the two perforated Russians?
The morning, the Graceland roommates watch a news report about a raid on the Vzakonye Cartel headquarters. Briggs congratulates everyone, and Charlie tells Mike not to get cocky, since most days probably won't be as exciting (or successful) as his first one. At the police station, Felix is reunited with his freed family. Brooke Smith, playing an internal affairs investigator, interviews Briggs and Mike about the shooting, then decides it sounds clean. I do not think it's possible for Daniel Sunjata to look hotter than he does in those aviators.
On the beach, the roommates toast around a fire and drink tequila shots. Johnny and Charlie dance while Briggs tells Mike he did well and fills him in on more about what being undercover means: he has to lie to basically everyone from now on. Mike asks how Briggs keeps from going crazy with all those lies, and Briggs asks, "Who says I haven't?"
Mike's phone rings and he goes off into the dark to talk to Courtney, who's heard about the incident, and to tell Mike that his assignment is actually to investigate Briggs. He asks if Briggs saving Mike's life will prevent him from doing that, and Mike assures him it won't. And then Courtney underlines Mike's defining ambition: to be the deputy director of the FBI. Ah, so that's why he was so suddenly reassigned. Briggs comes over and asks Mike if he knows why he was sent to California, and Mike gets the show's theme of nonstop lies started by telling him that he doesn't.
Coming this season: more of Briggs's extensive collection of sunglasses. Mike gets laid and the roommates drink shots. Plenty of shots. And someone messes up Mike's hair, making him look like a giant Labrador puppy.