Episode Report Card Pablo G: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Polygraphic Spree
By Pablo G | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.13.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.In Dublin, a former baggage checker at an airport gets his hands on a CIA hard drive with the locations of all the CIA detention facilities on the planet and their respective detainees. We're to believe this happened because the CIA really is stupid enough to run most of its sensitive hardware through the same airport consistently. The guy, by the name of Sean Cullen, gets snagged by the Dublin police and imprisoned. He escapes, of course, and meets up with his partner to get a key for where the device is stashed, and has the guy's own wife kill him. Double betrayal! With the key in his possession, Sean and the partner's wife, whose name is Marie, plan to sell the hard drive together and probably go off to some island with all the money and have monkeys for butlers and live like damn hell-ass kings.
Before the Blooms can put a stop to all of this, they have to establish their quarrel for the episode. Steven asserts that he is a human lie detector because Lizzy's been acting really proactive lately and he senses she's going to ask for money. He's right. Lizzy asks Sam for $700, supposedly to take classes to help with her culinary skills. Right. Sam gives her the money and hides it from Steven. To further drive home this whole lying and lie detection theme, we get a little bit more of Shaw's shady (he wears sunglasses) phone conversations with the mystery man who has an ulterior motive for reactivating the Blooms. Is that intrigue? Is this what passes for intrigue on this show?
Once in Dublin, The Undercovers hook up with Leo and Hoyt, as usual. They check out the prison where Cullen escaped and get a lead to a bar for a gang of former IRA members. Steven speaks to the gang boss after disposing of some goons and gets the name of Cullen's partner. Meanwhile, Leo heads off to sex Cullen's ex-wife. Leo's sexual espionage yields Cullen's alias -- "George Best." This proves useful when the trail goes cold. They're able to find a flight to London under the name of -- you guessed it -- "George Best."
In London, our operatives check in to the hotel where Cullen checked in with Marie. He leaves her alone after going over their plan for the exchange. The Undercovers bust into her room and detain her. Since she was to handle the exchange, Sam goes to make the deal in her stead at the London Symphony while Steven... plays the timpani with the orchestra. Everything goes south from there. The buyer gets impatient with Sam and takes her hostage, Cullen takes Leo hostage, and I get taken hostage by all these hostage situations. Steven intervenes in all cases, tranking the buyer and using a concussive blast device to blow up Cullen's car as he tries to get away with the money.
The hard drive is recovered, and Cullen is heading to prison, as well as the buyer. All of this lying talk prompts Sam to try to confess to Steven the real reason she quit the CIA. Steven says he has no interest in knowing the real reason, as long as part of it was the familiar story that they both quit because they were in love and wanted a normal life together. He does, however, wear a face of guilt as he hugs his wife's worries away. Hmm... could things finally be getting interesting?
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Pablo G. is some guy who lives in San Antonio, Texas. He co-hosts TWoP's original "Trailers Without Pity" with his brother Omar G. Check him out at Space Monkeys!, The Cowboys Blog, and follow him @PendejoJoe on Twitter.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We start out in Dublin. A guy in a hoodie out in the rain calls another guy, and we see that his name on the caller ID is Sean Cullen. Sean tells Other Guy he secured something and will be mailing him a security deposit key for where it's being stashed. Sean won't, however, reveal anything else, because the cops are onto him. They hang up, and a blonde woman asks Other Guy what's wrong. Meanwhile, Sean gets noticed by a cop car and is pursued by multiple cop cars until they finally corner him and make an arrest.
It's very early in the morning at Blooms' Catering. Sam and Steven open up shop and discover Lizzy has been hard at work on new recipes. It's currently only 7am. This raises a red flag for Steven. He suspects Lizzy's started drinking again, and he can make this accusation because he is the self-declared human lie detector. I smell a running theme!
Cut to Carlton Shaw sitting by himself at an outdoor cafe on the phone, wearing sunglasses and talking to the mystery man about the Blooms. It's essentially the same conversation from the pilot episode. The Blooms still have no idea why they were really reactivated by the CIA and Shaw suggests to Mystery Man that they be more straightforward about it. Mystery Man essentially says, "No." Ominous.
Back at Blooms' Catering, Steven thinks he's figured out why Lizzy is acting so strange. Lizzy needs money. Of course! Human lie detector! Again, to undermine Steven's claim to fame, Mr. Carlton "Liar" Shaw shows up behind him. He starts going over information about Sean Cullen. Sean was a bag thrower at Shannon Airport in Ireland. The CIA apparently uses this airport almost exclusively to move sensitive hardware, and Cullen got his hands on a hard drive with the whereabouts of CIA detention facilities and their detainees. With this information, any terrorist organization in the world could track down their incarcerated comrades and try to free them. It'd be chaos! The plan is for the Blooms to go to Dublin and question Cullen without letting Irish authorities know they're operating there.Cullen, meanwhile, is in his jail cell as a guard walks the green quarter-mile to check on all the prisoners. Sean grabs a plush monkey toy and tears off one of its button eyes. Inside the monkey there's a white powder which Cullen promptly starts to eat. He begins convulsing. The guard finds Sean lying unconscious on his bed with a pool of blood coming from his mouth. This is why we can't have nice things.