Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT We Could Be Heroes
By Tippi Blevins | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.02.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Hot Owen is back! He leaks a Chilean assassination plot from the thumb drive Percy had once entrusted to him. His hope was that Percy would call in his mysterious "engineer" in order to fix the obvious design flaw in the whole black box system, who would then lead him to the other black boxes. Everything goes south quickly, so he enlists Nikita's help. Meanwhile, a peppy little CIA drone named Ryan is this close to uncovering Division's dirty secrets, so Percy and the drone's CIA boss decide to frame him for the assassination. Nikita, having received info on the frame job from Alex, warns Ryan, but Chilean rebels abscond with him into the forest. Owen, new to this whole "hero thing," follows Nikita's lead in rescuing Ryan. Michael is there with Division to stop them, but then the US military shows up to stop them. You see what happens when the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing? Division retreats and the military load Ryan and our would-be heroes onto a plane bound for America. Nikita convinces Ryan to help them escape and Owen seals the deal by giving him the thumb drive. They parachute to safety, and Ryan is exonerated. In his place, his CIA boss is framed and the whole machine keeps chugging along.
Back at Division, Alex is keeping tabs on that engineer. She spies on him as he teaches Birkhoff everything he needs to know about the black boxes and fixes the design flaw. Percy "promotes" Birkhoff by snapping the engineer's neck right in front of him. Alex sees the whole thing and realizes just what Percy is capable of. She's not the only one on spy duty: Jaden, suspicious of Alex, has started keeping tabs on her. On the one hand, it's good that someone notices how sneaky Alex is. On the other hand, Jaden continues to be annoying as hell.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Nikita's voice-over catches us up on what's been going on with Division and Owen and the black boxes. I sort of wish they would just do "previouslies" like on other shows, because these VOs are kind of clunky. Nikita has the Newark Community Center all to herself, so she takes a swim to the strains of a creepy choral rendition of Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)." (Fellowshipper on the forum has identified it as the work of Scala.) After her laps, she sits at the edge of the pool, looking pensive. Maybe the music is bumming her out. A man in a dark hoodie watches her from outside, then approaches as she goes to towel off. She immediately springs into action, giving the intruder the towel-snapping of his life. He goes down without much of a fight. Before she can give him another lashing of her Egyptian cotton terry, he pulls back his hood and shouts, "Wait! Waitwaitwait!" It's Hot Owen, who really should have identified himself to start with. But yay! "What do you want?" Nikita asks, none too happy. "I started something," he says. "I need your help to finish it."
Cut to a news broadcast showing anti-American protests in Chile. A reporter says that video footage has been released, showing the assassination of Andres Quintana, a Chilean presidential candidate thought to have died in a car accident. Birkhoff's voice is heard talking to the operative who strangles Quintana in his car.
This has everyone at the CIA headquarters in a tizzy. A guy who looks like Chris Parnell leads a small gaggle of suits into an office, barking orders at them to figure out who was behind the operation. "Maybe it's Fletcher's 'ghost unit,'" one of the suits says mockingly. Fletcher, who's bringing up the rear of the group, seems very wee and delicate, but he earnestly tells the group about the "off book" operations he's been tracking since Mirko Dadich's murder. He asks for permission to return to Chile so he can hunt out this mystery group. "Like the dark matter of the universe, they fill in all the empty spaces." Everyone laughs at him and his crazy ideas. Fletcher looks like a kitten who's been denied a bit of string.
Nikita brings Owen to her loft. He tells her the black box is safe, but she gives him an annoyed look. While he stands there looking kind of dumb, she explains why she hasn't released any Division information to the press: "First there is chaos and then there is a cover-up. Someone will get framed for this!" She accuses him of not thinking, but he tells her he has a plan. The info he released came from a thumb drive, not the black box. There's an engineer who designed the whole system. He released the video hoping that Percy would call in the engineer to fix the flawed system and then they could track down the other boxes, with the help of Nikita's inside person. There was a lot more exposition than that, but that's the meat of it.
Charm School. Percy's in his office when he gets a call from that Chris Parnell guy, whose name turns out to be John. "Oversight is not happy about this," he fumes. He reminds him that Percy and Division are "tools of Oversight." Percy assures him that Division will stay hidden, but John tells him about Fletcher wanting to go to Santiago. Percy says to send him: "He's not your problem, he's your patsy." Division will create an "electronic paper trail" exposing Fletcher as a political zealot. "You're gonna frame him for the assassination?" John asks incredulously. "No, John, you are," Percy says. "Remember, I'm just a tool." He hangs up and gets a black box out of a safe in the wall. He stands there glowering for a while, looking like Emperor Palpatine's understudy. In the computer lab, Birkhoff is already assigning the recruits to create that paper trail.
Back at the Loft of Fabulousness, Nikita is pissed that Owen started this, knowing he would need her help to finish. He says he didn't think she would help if he asked, not after what he did. He says he wouldn't blame her if she wanted to kill him. Nikita turns away and whispers for him to stop, but he goes on. "Division made me what I am and Percy put me in a cage to guard his secrets," he says. "I had no idea what I was helping him do, until you came along." She makes him stop. She agrees to help him, but she'll set the rules. She gets a message from Alex about their "assignment." Owen is stunned. He never considered the consequences. Why is he suddenly kind of dumb? Nikita tells Alex to keep an eye for the engineer, who Owen describes for her as "weird" with glasses. Alex closes the window just as Jaden walks by to give her some shit. Alex reminds Jaden that she has a picture of her trying to escape. That just makes Jaden even pissier than usual. Man, Alex has some crazy drawn-on eyebrows and neon pink lipstick. She manages to see through her pounds of makeup long enough to send Nikita the IP address of their phony paper trail. This leads her and Owen to Ryan and Ryan's obviously phony job listing as an importer/exporter leads them to realize he works for the CIA.
Fletcher arrives at the import/export warehouse in Santiago. The back office is staffed by CIA agents, one of whom is a somewhat grizzled man named Gil who greets Fletcher warmly. As soon as Fletcher arrives at his old desk, there's a phone call for him. It's Nikita; she tells him that he's being framed for Quintana's murder. She tells him to run, but armed men have already broken into the office. They shoot up the desks and force Fletcher out into the open. Nikita, still on the phone, hears one of the men shouting "Navaja." Navaja, their erstwhile leader, walks in and compares a picture of Fletcher to the real thing. The real thing probably smells of urine about now. Navaja whacks him across the face with the butt of his rifle. Back in New York, Owen is helping himself to Nikita's trunk of weapons. "What the hell are you doing?" she asks. "What does it look like? I'm going with you," he says.
Charm School. Percy is pacing the halls with Michael. He blames Nikita, but Michael says he talked to the leak site that posted the video. With a little "persuasion" he gave up Owen. They head to Ops, where Michael goes on to say that Owen uploaded the video from a thumb drive. He grouses about Nikita getting involved. Percy sees an opportunity to drive another wedge between Michael and Nikita: "She's all about herself, Michael. You should know that better than anybody after what happened in Tashkent." Michael looks equal parts sick and sad. It's all very "she'll never love you the way I love you." A nearby TV is playing a report about Fletcher. When Michael realizes that Division has framed a CIA officer, he knows that Nikita will try to save him. Percy tells him to take a team to Chile.
Nikita and Owen drive up to the CIA front in Santiago. Owen's all raring to go, but Nikita stops him. "Wait here," she tells him. She details her plan to go in with fake credentials and find out who took Fletcher. The whole time, Owen stares at her like she's talking Martian. "You lost me at 'wait here,'" he says. Heh. He snarks on her way of working alone. She offers a rebuttal, but then realizes she's just repeating his words without the snark and cuts herself off. "Wait here," she says again. Once inside, she fake-credentials her way into using Fletcher's computer. A suspicious Gil calls into headquarters while Nikita finds where Navaja's rebels are camped out. When Gil starts questioning her, Owen shows up to knock him out with a blow to the plot-convenience center of the brain. "Somebody call for backup?" Comedic music plays.
At the rebel camp, Fletcher is looking a little worse for the wear. He's tied up in a shack, bruised and quaking, while Navaja and his men try to force a confession out of him. He pleads with them, trying to explain he just wants to find out who killed Quintana. He wants to know why he was the only one taken from the office. In answer, Navaja punches his lights out.
Charm School. The weirdo engineer meets Percy in the training room where Alex happens to be working out. When the two leave the floor, Alex starts to follow, but Jaden stops her. "Where you going? We're supposed to be sparring." She signed them up as partners. Alex looks frustrated. Girl just knock her out. No one would blame you. Meanwhile, the Engineer has taken to Birkhoff's tech dungeon. Birkhoff is feeling all antsy and territorial over having to work with someone to fix Percy's data breach. The Engineer won't even tell him his name. Percy joins them and outlines the problem with the black boxes, namely that the data transfer isn't secure. The Engineer is offended and blames the guardians. Percy blames the update drives. Birkhoff's like, "Uh, why do you even need that? This thing's got onboard wireless." He looks over the black box for the first time, realizing he's getting into some seriously secret shit now. Percy's all ominous and creepy, telling Birkhoff not to let him down. Birkhoff, for once, looks genuinely scared and not smarmy.
Owen and Nikita sneak up to the edge of the rebel camp. Owen whips out a gun. "Put that away," she says. "This isn't a cleaner job." She realizes what she's said and apologizes. "It's OK," he says. "I'm new at this hero stuff. You been doing it a lot longer." Sh