It figures that the episode I miss recapping is excellent, while the following episode is really not. Oh well. Bygones.
I did very much like “Look to the Ant,” last week’s episode that ITunes mislabeled “Look AT the Ant,” which I find funny for some reason. Well, I liked most of it. I’ve come to the conclusion that I like neither the character of Maggie nor the actress who plays her, based not just on her subplot in this episode, but on one line reading — yeah, probably superficial, but still. When Will compliments her at the beginning of this episode, saying she looks nice, not that she doesn’t always look nice, and she responds, “I heard you were good at pattern reading,” the way she delivers the line makes it seem like a total non sequitur. The emphasis is all wrong; it’s on “pattern reading” rather than “heard,” and there’s very little expression on her face when she says it. This is such a minor thing, but it BUGGED me.
(You saw what I did there, right?)
The rest of the episode was great and well plotted. I liked how it took us from Kale breaking into Will’s apartment, Maggie snooping around in Will’s office (because she reports to Kale, remember), Will going over to Kale’s for dinner which conveniently gets him out of the apartment so that bugs could be planted, while at the same time giving him information and claiming to point him in the right direction when he can.
But which is the right direction? What is Kale really up to?
And I liked that this episode brings up another clue that links Will and Katherine’s investigations: Atlas MacDowell owned a subsidiary that employed Edward Roy, the man Kale told Will he should be investigating, and Tom Rhumor served on Atlas MacDowell’s board — as did the professor who killed himself, who also happened to have a four-leaf clover when he died. This is the sort of mystery stuff I love. Especially since the paperweight Katherine finds, that says “Happy Holidays from Atlas MacDowell” or something, is the same paperweight that Will finds in Spangler’s office in the following episode.
Before I get into that episode, though, one other thing I loved about “Look to the Ant”: Will confronting the guy tailing him. I loved that even though he had the gun, it’s not what he used to intimidate the guy. Nope, it was all the information, all the databases, he has access to. And then *click* goes his camera phone. What a great scene.
Sadly, there were hardly any comparable scenes in last night’s episode, “The Truth Will Out.” The whole concept of the FBI lockdown was sort of a joke. Would they really shut down an agency just to find a mole? Wouldn’t they want to find out who the mole was in a more covert way, rather than announcing to everyone YOU HAVE A LEAK? The whole premise was just illogical and flimsy — even if it did lead to some great scenes with Miles.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing was a setup, though, in which case I’m still not sure I like it — because if it is a total coverup for something, you would think all the analysts at API would figure that out — this is NOT proper procedure. But there were a few things that happened during the polygraphs that sent up red flags for me:
1. Kale hesitates before answering the question, “Are any of your analysts capable of running a covert operation.” Now, he’s already said that he always passes these things with flying colors, and he knows the guy asking the questions — something else I find suspect, since I would think that you wouldn’t want to have a pre-existing relationship between polygrapher and polygraphee, but it would seem as though this guy has administered the polygraph to Kale on more than one occasion. So I wonder now whether the polygraph thing was more a way for the FBI to tell API what THEY knew. Or at the very least, Kale’s hesitation would send a message to the FBI, that in fact there IS an analyst capable of running a covert operation (or, at least he thinks he is.)
2. Tanya, after flubbing up on the first question (IS her real name Tanya MacGaffin?) is later asked whether she removed a white paper from the building. And I thought THIS was the reason for the lockdown, because a white paper DID go missing, and we know that Spangler is the one who took and shredded it. And curiously enough, we see nothing of Spangler’s poly.
3. The leak winds up not having anything to do with the missing white paper at all, but with some financial guy using some sort of insider information for personal gain. I don’t know. It felt a little whatever.
And I’m not all that crazy about the subplot with Will’s neighbor, how I think we’re supposed to think that she’s spying on him, and maybe she is, or maybe he thinks she is but she just thinks he’s cute, and this might lead to some sort of awkward situation, but I find the whole thing completely uninteresting.
But what I did like was the way Tanya, Grant and Miles made progress on the George Boeck case, figuring out that the woman from the wedding is the mysterious third person in the photo. And I liked that Will finds a CD recording of David and Ed, in which David tells Ed that Spangler’s running “some kind of unsanctioned op,” and has Ed promise to tell Will to stay out of it. I assume this conversation took place right before David was killed, like right after Will brings the crossword clue to David in the very first episode. But what I don’t understand is why David would set clues around for Will if he didn’t want Will to investigate. Maybe he knew that Will wouldn’t listen, as Ed clearly didn’t. But then David’s “Oh god, there’s someone” at the end of the recording felt false to me.
So I don’t know. It was the weakest episode of the season so far, I thought. What about you?
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