Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Man Troubles
By Tippi Blevins | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.07.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Remember all those "black boxes" of secret info Percy has stashed around the world? He has special guardians assigned to each of them. One guardian, a foxy fellow named Owen, is interrupted by a bank robbery while trying to update one of those boxes. Loyal to the core, he contacts Percy, who promptly hops on a jet in the middle of another op to rendezvous with him and retrieve the box. This makes Michael suspicious. Fed up with Percy's non-answers, he does a little snooping to find out what's going on. Little does he know, Alex is snooping on him at the time and immediately feeds the new info to Nikita. But Alex's actions don't go entirely unnoticed: Thom, having followed Alex after her hasty exit from a training exercise, sees her leaving Percy's office. He's pissed that she'd be so reckless. She lies and says she was just digging for her own files. Thom doesn't turn her in, even when Birkhoff tries to frame Jaden for the security breach. When Alex later goes to patch things up with Thom, he kisses her. Somehow, she resists his ruddy-cheeked sweetness and, embarrassed, he closes himself off at once. Aww.
Meanwhile, Nikita has caught up with Owen. Turns out Owen has fallen in love with a young lady named Emily. Nikita tries to convince them that she's the only one who can protect them, but Owen is still loyal to Percy. Right up until Emily gets a sniper bullet through the chest. Roan and Percy torture Owen in an effort to find where he's hidden the black box, but he doesn't budge. Nikita catches up to them just as Owen has fought his way out of captivity and is about to kill Percy. She wants him dead, too, but they have to destroy all the black boxes first. They escape and Owen apparently spends some time in Nikita's fabulous loft, recuperating whilst wearing little black undies. Yowza. Stay tuned for the full weecap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A bank employee leads a man to the safe deposit vault and gives him some privacy. He opens box 239 and takes out a black hard drive that requires a blood sample from him before he can upload something from a flash drive. The man's a bit scruffy and rugged, in olive drab clothes. (I am later shocked to learn it's Devon Sawa, who did a whole mess of growing up in the last decade or so.) As he waits for the drives to do their thing, a ruckus erupts in the bank proper. He peeks outside the vault, sees a robbery in progress and pockets both drives. He creeps outside, joining the hostages on the floor while French-speaking gunmen shoot up the place. The Montreal police drive up outside. "Damn eet!" curses one of the gunmen. He grabs a little girl and forces her toward the door. Sawa's as-yet-unnamed character silently debates with himself before trying to trade himself for the little girl. He grabs the robber's gun and shoots the other thieves, then takes their extra clips while eying the police through the front door.
Charm School, Ops Room. Michael and the gang are in the middle of overseeing some Pakistani operation when Percy gets a call from our bank hero. He's skulking through an alley somewhere and identifies himself as "Guardian" followed by a code. "The package is out in the open," he tells Percy. Percy looks worried. In a low voice he asks if it's been compromised. Hero says it hasn't, but he's taken a wound from the cops. Percy, flustered, tells him to find cover and call him back at 16:00. He announces to Ops that he needs to be in Montreal in two hours and needs a flight out. Birkhoff checks Orbitz or some damn thing because Division isn't badass enough to have their own jets and/or helicopters. Michael's aghast that Percy would leave in the middle of their operation, chasing after him when Percy leaves the room. "What the hell's in Montreal?" Percy's like, "Use your inside voice, dummy!" Michael keeps pestering him as they stomp through the training floor, but Percy isn't forthcoming. Alex, exercising nearby, overhears their spat.
Alex messages Nikita from the abandoned computer lab about Percy's Montreal trip. Nikita, once more in fabulous lingerie in her fabulous loft, thinks it's unusual for Percy to "go out into the field." Her interest is further piqued when she finds out that Michael and Percy bickered in front of everyone. She searches online for recent Montreal news.
Back in Ops, Michael paces and fumes about Percy leaving. Chill, dude, I'm sure he'll bring you a T-shirt or something. Birkhoff wonders if he left for Nikita, but Michael doesn't think so. Michael asks for the news feeds. "You sure you want to get all up in Percy's bidness?" Birkhoff asks. Michael gives him a look like, "Do cranky baby otters enjoy delicious shellfish?" Duh. Birkhoff understands the look well and gets working. Ugh, his feeds are all white text on black backgrounds. The bank robbery news catches Michael's attention. An article names the hero as one Owen Elliot (guess they knew his name from the safe deposit thing?) but goes on to say the hero then turned on the cops. Yeah, he turned on some viewers, too, but in a different way. At the same time, Nikita is watching a news clip of said robbery. A policeman giving his account says Owen seemed to have military training. The cop goes on to say that they only sustained injuries while the robbers weren't so lucky. Nikita and Michael realize at the same time that Owen must be Division. One of the news clips is of Stan Lee: "That bugger moved so fast it was like he was a superhero or something!" Heh. A reporter goes on to say that the man, a landscaper from a nearby town, had come to check out a safety deposit box. Police are already searching his apartment. In Ops, Birkhoff can't find any Division records for Owen. "That's because he's off-book," Michael says with a snort. "The only reason he surfaced is because something went wrong."
Montreal. Inside an abandoned school building, Owen is removing a bullet from his upper arm using nothing more than a pocketknife and scavenged first-aid supplies. The squelching sounds are quite disgusting through headphones. As he bandages up his wound, he happens to see a crumbling display of butterfly specimens and pauses.
This segues to Nikita showing up outside Owen's apartment building. Stained-glass butterflies decorate a tenant's window. Nikita talks her way past the cops on duty, then knocks on the butterfly tenant's door. A young woman answers and Nikita claims to work for a designer who would love to see some of her work. While Madame Butterfly searches for something she can part with, Nikita makes smalltalk about the "commotion" going on next door and is this where the guy from the news lives? Madame Butterfly claims not to know the man in question and then gives Nikita two glass butterflies, because she's nice like that. Nikita leaves and then, while the cops aren't looking, steals some letters from Owen's mailbox. Back in her car, she uses a freshly-stolen cellphone bill to con customer service into tracking down her cheating "husband"'s phone. Miraculously, this works and Nikita is soon pulling up in front of the old school.
She goes in, gun at the ready. She skulks around the school until she finds Owen in the science lab. "Hands," she barks at his back. "Put 'em up slowly." He does as he's told and turns to face her. She makes a snarky remark about how this "school gone to hell" should remind him of Division. Nikita spies the hard drive on a table. She asks if that's one of Percy's black boxes. "See for yourself," Owen says, tossing it at her. Nikita falls for it. As she reaches out to catch it, Owen does this damned awesome launch off the side of a table, leaps through the air and kicks Nikita in the head. Ouch! But so cool. She fights back. He hurls her to the ground and pockets the black box. A glass butterfly falls conspicuously out of Nikita's pocket. "Where did you get that butterfly?" Owen demands. Nikita tries to explain, but Owen's already in the middle of trying to kick her again. They fight some more in a visually pleasing way and then Owen has her in a stranglehold. He demands to know what she did to Emily. Nikita, choking, gasps, "I'm... not... Division!" This gives Owen a moment of pause. Nikita fights her way out of his grasp and knocks him down. She runs off. Owen flees through a classroom window.
Percy, in a Montreal hotel room, gets a call from Owen. "You're early," he remarks. "What went wrong?" Owen says an "operative made a play for the package." Percy describes Nikita to Owen. "Who is she?" Owen asks, the question a confirmation of her identity. Percy says she's a rogue agent and wants to know what Nikita said. Nothing, really, but she got away because Owen had to choose between going after her and protecting the package. Percy agrees this was the right move. He makes an appointment to meet Owen in an hour. As he hangs up, he turns to Roan, who's been sitting there quietly like some kind of creepy version of a Vulcan, and tells him to secure the rendezvous point. Also, he wants "complete containment," which means killing Owen after the meet.
Nikita messages Alex to dig up info on Owen Elliot. Alex is alone in the computer lab but, shockingly, other recruits start filing in. She gets up and follows them to their next training session, where Birkhoff is teaching them how to rig a Bluetooth headset to listen in on nearby cellphone calls. Jaden tries to flirt with Thom, but Birkhoff cuts them off. Alex feigns ignorance with her Bluetooth in order to get Birkhoff to turn it on for her. She then pockets the device. Alex then just gets up in the middle of their training session and leaves. Somehow, only Thom the remedial spy notices. Back in her quarters, Alex uses a bit of tape, eyeshadow, and an Itty Bitty Booklight to lift Birkhoff's thumb print off the device.
Montreal. Emily returns to her apartment to find Nikita waiting for her. Nikita knows Owen has c