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This week in paradise, Mike helps Charlie go to a karaoke bar where the roommate we haven't met yet, Paige, is undercover as the girlfriend of a Korean gangster. Mike might have a massive crush on Paige now.
But he has an even more massive crush on Briggs, and even if he wasn't trying to investigate him like he's been assigned he'd want to follow his every move just out of sheer hero worship. Charlie advises Mike that if he wants Briggs to involve him in one of his cases, he needs to make himself useful. So Mike devises a plan: they'll sell the thousand illegal cop-killer bullets that Jakes found in a truck full of smuggled parrots (…yes) to the henchman of a bad guy Briggs wants to get in with, then arrest the henchman and flip him under penalty of federal prison.
Briggs is all, sure, that sounds like a fine plan, but then he puts his own spin on it: rather than arresting the henchman right away, they use the gangster Paige is investigating to hijack the bullets, then they arrange to buy them from the gangster. And everything goes swimmingly…until it appear that Briggs is onto Mike's mission.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Graceland: Blond Marius lives at The Real World: FBI. His roommates include a bunch of hot people and the especially hot Paul Briggs, whom Mike is assigned to investigate by newly minted Tony winner Courtney B. Vance.
Briggs is walking Mike through a market in Santa Monica, imparting the Tao of Undercover. They meet up with Johnny and head over to get tacos, but then Mike sets off running after a petty thief who steals some tacos and escapes on a skateboard. Briggs and Johnny prevent him from arresting the guy because, as they explain to him, they're undercover, dummy, which means they can't arrest every criminal they see for fear of blowing their covers. Mike is unduly committed to the principles of justice, though.
In case you missed how much he likes rules and order, Mike is also one of those weirdos who makes his bed every day with hospital corners. His morning routine also includes practicing his Spanish and jogging on the beach. It's a nice life at Graceland. On the beach he runs into Charlie, on her way home after a night of pretending to be a coked-out party girl, and then she explains while moping, hung over and into her corn flakes, that her confidential informant likes Jäger and dubstep. Ugh. No job is worth that combination.
Johnny comes in with a durian and proceeds to make the whole kitchen reek; it's part of his cover with the Malaysians, he explains. Jakes, after consuming only the items in the fridge labeled with his initials, is off to acquire some contraband birds. An envelope of paperwork that's arrived commands Briggs and Mike to attend their psychological evaluations at the federal building, on account of last week's shooting. This does not make Briggs happy.
He's even less happy to be told to put Mike on one of his active cases. Mike asks to be assigned to the Gutierrez case, but Briggs points out that Mike's Spanish isn't up to snuff yet and he'll get his gringo ass killed. He shoots down all of Mike's other ideas. Credits.
Jakes's bird bust. Amusingly, one of the sources he's investigating has a talking parrot with him. Not so amusingly, the bird smugglers lock Jakes in the truck full of macaws (or something), then they scram. He calls in backup when he finds a huge crate full of armor-piercing bullets behind all the birds.
Lauren's room. She explains to Briggs that the DEA has pulled her from the Russian gang, and they exposition that Donnie won't be returning to Graceland, which is breaking Lauren's heart. Briggs sympathizes, and tells her to get over it and do the job, implying that he once got stupid over a housemate and it didn't end well.