The episode starts out with Roman trying to bring Jane back on track with them. He takes her to a lake that was the site of a massive pollution spill that gave all the residents (and generations after) cancer. He tells her how basically, the government and the company responsible knew when it was happening, but did nothing about it. Later in the episode, we learn that this lake was the literal beginning for Sandstorm–it killed her adoptive mother’s family, and took away her ability to have children of her own.
Jane is understandably filled with righteous indignation. It’s a horrible thing. It’s also a bit confusing–yes, the government was grossly in the wrong in this case, but…terrorism? He gives her a line about saving the country, etc etc.
Back at the FBI offices, Patterson figured out another tattoo. We also learn that incidentally, she does a Girls Who Code group. AWWWWWWWW. How cool is that??
But anyway, the tattoo leads them to a hacker within the government selling secrets to criminals. He programs game style scenarios that lead a person through the perfect way to pull off a heist in many, many high security high risk buildings. Stuff like CDC buildings, government buildings….and museums. They figure out he sold one just a few days ago for a museum that’s putting on a gala. It’s a gala to support a clean water initiative. Somehow, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
However, when they go pick up the hacker, we see that Reade is having some serious trouble. It’s starting to really sink in that he was one of the pedo coach’s victims. He’s having some major trouble processing that, and it’s coming out in pretty destructive ways. He punches the hacker and breaks his orbital bone. OW.
Later, the team goes undercover to the gala to stop whatever heist is going on…and they quickly learn it’s not a heist, but a hit. As they chase the suspect–a woman–through the museum while she’s dropping bodies, there’s a big fight between her and Jane. Lots of smashed art (ouch), but a pretty cool sword vs. sword-pike (sorry, I have no idea the name of the weapon) fight. The killer gets away after setting off a flash-bang. OW. Says a lot for Jane, though, that the woman had to cheat to win.
While questioning museum patrons, Reade gets a little rough with one of them. Back at the office, Nas basically tells Weller he needs to get his shit together and bench Reade now. Weller, of course, doesn’t like to be told what to do. He’s protective of his team (that’s one of the reasons we like Weller), so he takes the compromise road–Reade has to stay behind and talk to Borden.
Borden gets him to explain what’s really going on, because of course he didn’t buy the whole ‘Oh I’m asking about repressed memories for a case’ thing from last time. He lets Reade know that it’s a process, but they can figure it out. (This is why we also like Borden.)
Meanwhile, they set up a sting to grab their killer. Turns out they’ve identified her as a Sudanese national who is thought to be a part of a terror cell…except when they nab her, she says she’s actually CIA. Her evil ex was her handler, and he killed her husband and told her her daughter was dead. She was burned and erased from the records, left to twist in the wind with the terror cell she was undercover with. The people running the operation within the CIA had all been profiting off her undercover time in the terror cell. So naturally, when she escaped the terrorists, she wanted revenge.
As it turns out, her daughter was alive, and the evil ex was actually the girl’s father. The team run to stop the evil ex from fleeing the country with the daughter. There’s some tense moments when after shooting the evil ex, it looks like the daughter might try to shoot them, but Jane takes a leap of faith, disarms, and talks the girl out of it. After all, she knows what it’s like being lied to, and knows how that feels.
They reunite mother and daughter for the moment (mom’s obviously headed for jail), and talk about things. Weller gets Reade to admit what’s up with him, and we know our big hearted Weller will make sure Reade has support if he needs it.
They talk with Jane about Sandstorm and what they were telling her in the beginning of the episode, and when Nas calls it visual propaganda, Jane gets pretty pissed, because to her, it was an outrage. She makes it clear she feels like she can’t trust anyone–not the FBI, not Sandstorm…pretty much nobody.
We close with her back with Mom and Roman, who explain the whole lake thing, that it was their beginning. They say that originally, they wanted to keep her completely in the dark, but they realized that even if she’s operationally in the dark, they can’t keep her emotionally in the dark. They need to know who they are again. This is interesting, because it’s bound to complicate things. Even if she doesn’t really trust them, she might become a bit more emotionally invested. She may begin to understand where they’re coming from better. The show is constantly making us wonder who the good guys are here, but I think the overall message has been that it’s not really all that clear cut.
Not quite as much explosive action in this one, but definitely a lot more character development.
Previous Episode: Hero Fears Imminent Rot
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.