So what will be the first program I review? A classic I love and adore? A well-respected current show? A twisty episode of competitive reality?
Nah…BORING! Let's start with a show that I wasn't particularly into, and which isn't really good. Or even close to good. Because I'm just wacky that way!
Missing is a show I went into blindly. It came on as a spring replacement, and frankly the premise seems stupid: super-agent/mom Ashley Judd chases all over the world looking for her missing son. But it promised some nice location scenery, and that's good. Even if I don't think that Ashley Judd is much of an actress.
To be quite honest, I've never been a big fan of AJ's. She comes from a background (country music) that doesn't pull any weight with me, there's the whiff of nepotism on her, and she made that horrible Double Jeopardy movie that drives me insane even though I never saw a second of it.
(Remember that? Ashley is convicted of killing her sleazebag husband, only it turns out he faked his own death [like Julia Roberts in Sleeping With the Enemy] and so she breaks out of prison, bent on revenge. Because she can now get away with killing him because she can't be convicted, due to the "double jeopardy" clause, which says you can't be tried two times for the same crime.
Please insert **ENORMOUS EYEROLL** here. Thank you.
(Yeah, small problem. It's not the "same crime" if you were falsely accused of killing a guy in 1997 and then you kill him for real in 2001 [or whenever]. The actual murder [and that's what it would be] has nothing to do with whether or not somebody was falsely tried for a similar crime years ago. The entire hook of their premise and the title of their movie…and anyone who has ever watched a single episode of Law & Order knows it's garbage. That's enough deliberate stupidity and contempt for the audience to prejudice me against everyone involved, however unfair that may be.)
So…we have a wobbly premise, and a lead I'm not fond of. (Although there are a few semi-familiar faces in the supporting cast, if I recall correctly. [It's been a few months since I saw episodes 1-2.]) And our hero is a violent CiA-type, which pushes my "root for authoritarians? I don't know about that" rebellious button. Plus, there really doesn't seem to be a defined antagonist (the head of French Intelligence [the "Deuxieme Bureau"] was a baddie in episode 2, and seemed to have longterm potential, but he was IMO prematurely disposed of)…I'm worried it's less of a "mystery" than a muddle. And we don't seem to have any sympathetic supporting characters to hang our hats on when the lead starts acting grumpy/self-righteous, as leads have a tendency to do. (And if the whole thing is more "the power of a mother's love is the most awesome thing ever", I'm going to vomit. Frankly, I'm hoping the kid is one of the bad guys.)
Still, the fights are cool, the "completely filmed in exotic locations, and for once we don't mean 'Toronto'" angle is cool, and some shows take a few episodes to get going. So let's give it a shot before consigning it to the garbage bin with Touch and Good Christian Bitches and other stuff that I downloaded multiple episodes of, only to refuse to watch the majority of them, so offensive was the initial stench. (I actually gave Touch three episodes. Non-existent god only knows why…)
Also, I have a feeling this thing got canceled. (I'm almost completely disconnected from news such as this, not checking the listings regularly. And I'm hardly going to spend time "finding out the fall schedules" when I'm both far-behind and non-schedule-dependent.) Quixotically enough, I think that might make this a fine first recap for a blog about old shows reviewed by someone who is completely out of date. It's like a perfect storm of uselessness, don't you think? So off we go!
One last note before we begin…Episode 1 was set in Italy. Episode 2 was in France. Will every episode be in a different country? ("If it's the Season Finale, it must be Belgium") Cool. Sort of like the drama version of The Amazing Race. In fact, maybe I'll review it that way. (Nah, probably not. The joke would get stale.)
TEASER…
Recap of the last leg shows us that Becca ended up at a private airport, but couldn't get the Fast-Forward to rescue Michael from the plane. The head of the Deuxieme Bureau was the last to the Pit Stop and was eliminated.
Becca and her new partner, the Paris C.I.A. chief (wasn't this guy portrayed antagonistically in the premiere? A little too soft too soon, methinks. Did some one at ABC get cold feet about criticizing the government and make changes? Between this and Covert Affairs we're having a little too much of "The C.I.A, America's Heroes" for my taste. Remember JFK!) are livestreaming video from the airport in Italy where the plane was grounded. This scene is obviously a waste, because there's no way Michael is still on the plane. We're less than 90 seconds into the episode (and that's counting the "Previously…" segment) when one of the stupidest lines I have ever heard uttered on television assaults my ears:
LOCAL C.I.A. GUY (on monitor, to plane): "This is the C.I.A.! Open the plane door, immediately!"Uh, does the C.I.A. actually have police powers? In Italy? I really don't think so. This should be the Italian authorities, ordering the plane to open up, in Italian. (Or in French, given that the plane took off in France and it might be reasonably assumed that the occupants are French.) Last I heard, the C.I.A. was an intelligence-gathering agency, and not only can't they make people open up their airplanes, but they're not supposed to let their identities be known. (Remember the whole Valerie Plame incident? Or Frank Snepp, if you go back that far?) Incredibly stupid writing.
(Do Europeans even know what the C.I.A. is?)
Fortunately, Michael parachuted out over the Alps (I'm just going to assume that Michael is actually the Head Bad Guy from here on, because it's the twist I'm desperately rooting for, so we can slap this whole "a mother's love" angle silly and throw it in the trash where it belongs), and so there's a hot blonde denying everything in a British accent, instead. No Michael.
Becca's all "that's impossible"…because she's never heard of parachutes, much less the possibility of the plane landing before they picked it up and then taking off again. Idiot.
Fuck, I forgot that we were actually seeing scenes of Michael in captivity (can't pay the actor and just do flashbacks, I guess), so there goes my "he's an evil mastermind, it's kind of exciting" theory, I guess. Poo.
Michael wakes up in a chateau, completely alone, unguarded, unbound, and with the doors unlocked. Hmm, maybe he is the mastermind of the plot and just doesn't know it. When does he start hallucinating Brad Pitt talking to him?
He goes outside and there's a guard with a machine gun sitting in the courtyard below. Rather than, say, try to sneak off into the woods without the guard seeing him, or duck back into the chateau and check for a rear exit, Michael walks down and talks to (well, at) the guard, telling him it must be some kind of a mistake because his family isn't rich. (Oh, I don't know…I doubt that sending your kid to Rome is cheap, exactly…) Yes, your dad got blown up for being a C.I.A. agent (Becca did tell you this, right?) but you can't think of any reason besides money that you might be a target for kidnappers, huh? Way to go, braincase.
Eventually, Michael decides he'll just stroll away, down the (enormous) lawn. The guard with the machine gun does nothing, but a sniper hidden in one of the trees fires a bullet at Michael's feet, stopping that idea. Man, it must suck to work for the bad guys. The guard has to carry this machine gun, even though he doesn't use it, and the sniper has to sit in a fucking tree all day, just in case Michael tries to escape. If I was that sniper, I might be thinking about the roughly 9 million more effective ways to keep Michael a prisoner. You know, the ones that don't involve my having to sit in a tree. Something like this:
"Hey, Horst! Here's an idea. Why don't we just lock the kid in his room and then I can GET OUT OF THIS FUCKING TREE ALREADY!"A seedy blond guy in a car gets a phone call, recapping what we just saw. He replies "If [Michael] tries it again, take out a knee." (Presumably Michael's knee, rather than your own, although that isn't specified.)
"No, they said you have to stay in the tree. Shut up, you don't hear me complaining about having to carry around a machine gun that I don't actually use, do you?"
"Fuck."
Or you could just lock Michael in the room. Or handcuff him to the bed. Or post a guard at the door. This whole "security by sniper" idea really doesn't make much sense. I wonder if the sniper (snipers?) get night-vision goggles for the midnight shift? And can they bring snacks? Wouldn't want them gnawing at the tree bark, I'm just saying.
Credits. (Which really barely exist, just a flash of someone running. Five seconds and we're done. Bring back real credit sequences!)
ACT ONE:
Milan. British Blonde ("Carstairs") is being questioned by C.I.A. Boy. Um, again, shouldn't the Italian authorities be questioning people in Italy? And this guy is the station chief for the C.I.A. in Paris…I take it we have no C.I.A. station in Italy, then? (Must not, since Paris Boy was the one who got the call when Becca killed the Italian agent in the pilot. Guess we don't need spies in Italy, or something.)
Blah, blah, Blondie lies. Later, Becca claims she knows how the whole thing was done (shouldn't have stood around with your jaw flapping during the teaser, then, huh?), C.I.A. Boy ("Miller") doesn't believe her and his sassy female sidekick really doesn't believe her. Miller threatens to send Becca back to America, but Super Mom don't play that. She'll kick everybody's ass!
But she doesn't have to because here comes her intrepid Italian Interpol friend, Giancarlo. He waves the "wanted for murder" warrant at Miller, reminding him that the C.I.A. has no police powers. (Oh, now you play that card, huh, show?) SuperMom, who was just about to fight being sent home to America, goes willingly, quietly (and un-handcuffed) with Giancarlo, without Miller being at all suspicious about her change of demeanor. Some spy you are, Miller. Can this guy even spell "C.I.A."?
On the street, Becca wants to force Blondie to talk, but Giancarlo says he's a part of this now, since he put his career on the line by casually strolling out of custody with a murder suspect and all. Of course, there's no reason he should have to explain this, but…
Man, Ashley Judd really can't act, can she? Here she is going for "resolute" and landing on "bored":
(Maybe she's distracted by the credits lettering floating on Giancarlo's shoulder? Or maybe she's realized that Michael really isn't worth the effort and has decided to bring home an Italian boy, in his place.)
At Chateau de la Captivité, Michael has carved his and Becca's secret code ("2350W"…I forget if that stands for anything) into a priceless antique table (you boorish American!) and is busy making a complex sketch of the grounds. Gee, it's really nice of the "bad" guys to give their prisoner freedom of movement, an unobstructed view, and writing materials, isn't it? Why don't they just give him a fucking iPhone and get the series over with, already?
A random hot chick is outside, and Michael tracks her down while she's injecting herself with something. (Looks like she's diabetic, if I had to guess.) He asks what's going on, just assuming that she speaks English (despite his being captured in Italy and held in France). She tells him to eat and shoves some food at him, but he hesitates.
HOT CHICK: "You think I would drug you?"She takes a spoonful and that convinces him to eat. It would convince me, too…if I hadn't just seen her inject herself with what, for all I know, could be the antidote to this drug I'm so worried about. Are we sure Michael's really been kidnapped? Maybe he just got really lost on the way home from school…with this kid's IQ, it's possible.
MICHAEL: "I don't see why you wouldn't."
ME: "Because if they wanted you unconscious or dead, they've had nine billion chances to do it already! Just eat, you dumbfuck."
Becca has tracked Blondie to her yacht in Ravello, Italy. She makes threatening noises, accomplishes absolutely zip, but for some reason this spooks Blondie, who gets back on the boat and meets with Seedy Blond Bad Guy (from the teaser). (Becca doesn't see this, of course, because, as a highly-trained spy, she disclosed her presence before reconnoitering and seeing this guy who is seated on a deck chair in plain sight. Yay for C.I.A. training!) Blondie asks Seedy Blond Bad Guy (SBBG) to "take [Becca] out". Well, that sounds like a better strategy than keeping Michael penned in by (extremely-bored) snipers, I admit. Maybe Blondie should be in charge?
ACT TWO:
SBBG doesn't want to kill Becca because then the CIA would get involved. Blondie, peeing her pants because Becca is allegedly Just.So.Scary (way to undeservedly fluff your lead, guys), suggests calling it all off, but SBBG says Blondie can take care of SuperMom…"You can handle it. I trust you."
("For God's sake, I'm a one-episode sub-baddie and I don't even get guest-star credit. I'm dead meat, can't you see that?")
[Late note: the character is so prominent in the episode that I'm almost sure she must have gotten guest-start credit. I just didn't see it, I guess.]
Becca brags to Giancarlo that she got really great info out of Blondie, like the fact that there's going to be a charity auction later today. (Pretty sure you could have done that without blowing your cover, but whatever…) Giancarlo tells Becca that her Token Black Friend (who runs the flower shop back home in Wealthy D.C. Suburb with Becca) has been kicking up a fuss (since Becca just disappeared and all…) and so Becca calls TBF and tells her everything's fine. Unfortunately, Token Black Friend has just flown to Rome (on the spur of the moment? Really? What do they sell at that "flower shop", high grade pot?) and is coming to meet Becca. Becca worries after TBF hangs up, and I'd think that we were likely to be out one Token Black Friend…but TBF got guest star credit (hi, Aunjanue Ellis! Loved you as the jury consultant on Justice! What are you doing on this crappy show?), so I guess she'll be around for a bit. And I should probably call her "Mary", then.
Back in Paris, Miller's Sassy Female Sidekick (SFS) has discovered that Becca and Giancarlo know each other. This should be no surprise, but it is to Miller, who slackjawedly says "But she acted like they never met." You get the feeling that Miller is surprised when the sun rises in the East each morning? I do.
Apparently, Becca and Giancarlo used to bone. (And, by the timeline, it was before Becca's hubby got all blowed up. Interesting. [Sort of.]) And, non-shock of the night, Giancarlo never took Becca into custody, but luckily the C.I.A.'s magic computers find Giancarlo in Ravello (you'd think an Interpol agent might know how to drop out of sight, no? Apparently not) and Miller is headed there, in hot pursuit. If he doesn't get stuck in the revolving door at the airport, that is.
Token Mary shows up, and is all "where's Michael? I brought his (conveniently-tiny-sized) teddy bear!" Becca lies, poorly, and Mary decides they should go to Becca's hotel room, claiming she has something to tell Becca. Mary's pouring on the "concerned" bullshit so heavily here, I have hopes that she's going to turn out to be an assassin and try to kill Becca. Of course, if that were the case, she really should have killed Becca back at the flower shop before the whole kidnapping plot started, but as we've seen many times already, Captain Logic is not steering this show's tugboat.
Into the hotel room, but there's no Francinator-esque girl fight, nor even hot lesbian sex (despite Mary and Becca having a seat on the bed). No, Mary just had to tell Becca that her husband dumped her for another girl and that's why she was flying to Rome at random; less help, more running away. Well, that makes emotional sense, but I have to wonder what Mary and her off-screen husband's marital problems have to do with the show, exactly. Aunjanue Ellis is selling it, though:
(I don't know; isn't it kind of disrespectful to be doing actual acting when Ashley Judd is in the scene with you? You're showing up our star, Aunjanue! Watch it.)
Becca gives Mary a hug (and an eye-roll! Bitch) and Mary chatters about how she wants to turn this into a girls' trip across Europe, but then Giancarlo walks in, and we're in the zany world of farce! Which isn't where I thought the show was going, but let's roll with it. After a brief conference on the balcony, Giancarlo agrees to pretend he and Becca are sexing it up, and Super
("A very cold person." Yay! We've explained Ashley Judd's "acting"! Mission accomplished!)
ACT THREE:
Chateau Sans-Securité: Michael consults his little map, and is about to clamber over the balcony when Random Hot Chick (RHC) rushes in and tells him not to do it. Yes, Michael just tried to escape without checking to see if he was being watched. If Michael and Miller could have a child, you could rent the kid's cranium out as a storage locker.
RHC tells Michael he can't sneak away, there are snipers everywhere, and she points them out to him. (So he didn't bother to check the interior or the perimeter, huh? Good planning!) And again, I note that handcuffing Michael to the bed was probably a more cost-effective tactic than surrounding a Chateau the size of Rhode Island with snipers, 24/7. I don't think Seedy Blond Bad Guy has much of a head for budgeting, I'm just sayin'.
Becca and Giancarlo are surveilling the guests arriving at Blondie's boat for the auction. (Some of the guests are bad guys, Interpol knows.) You know, the sort of thing they should have done before Becca blew her cover. Blondie comes over, nervous, and Becca icily tries to intimidate Blondie into letting her see below decks of the yacht. (Because she thinks Michael is being held there, when he's actually in France. Yes, she's only wrong by an entire country . Way to go, SuperMom.) But Blondie is distracted by Token Mary trying to push her way in. (She saw Becca and Giancarlo's invites, earlier.)
But I am distracted by something else:
(Oh my God! Emma Stone is morphing into Joan Cusack before our eyes! Don't do it, Emma! I know The Amazing Spider-Man sucked, but you're still young and sexy! Your career isn't over! Honest!)
Actually, Mary has come to apologize, but Becca bitches her out because she's been talking to Blondie (and, Becca worries, establishing herself as a target). Giancarlo asks Becca to dance, Mary cuts in literally 10 seconds into the song, and Becca blends into the crowd as she heads to the boat. She catches sight of Blondie's security goon, who loses sight of her. Wow, if the snipers at Chateau d'Énormité are as bad at keeping track of targets, Michael could just call a taxi and leave.
ACT FOUR:
The auction starts. The opening bid on the boat is 25 milllion Euros, which is about $37,000,000. Some boat. Wow, that's just stupid, getting the boat price so wrong. (Granted, on this show, that's not saying much…)
The boat goons are worse than the onshore goons. Somehow, one of them misses Becca pulling alongside in a rowboat (despite the fact that, judging from how the boat was headed and the fact that the bay is behind him, she must have rowed right past his post) and clambering onto the deck, in her evening gown, no less. She taps him on the shoulder and he casually turns around (because international criminals are always playing pranks, you know) and gets kayoed.
On shore, the price of the boat is now approaching $90,000,000 (yes, really!) and Giancarlo is trying to make nice with Mary. The bidding soars to (the Euro equivalent of) $110,000,000. Seriously, just buy a soccer team instead. It uses less gas.
The interior boat goon is wearing a cute sailor jacket, and he at least hears Becca coming, but he gets knocked out (killed?) as well. Becca then decides, for some reason, that it's vitally important to pick the lock of a random box on a table. I hope she'll be excited to find Blondie's stash of coke.
The bidding is now at $133,000,000. Why not make it billions, if you're just going for the absurd? "I bid six trillion Quatloos!" Whatever.
Some guy in a candy-cane tie buys the boat for nine figures. ("One hundred million Euros?? I thought we were bidding in Lira! Who's paying that kind of money for a goddamn boat?") On said 1/8th of a BIllion Dollar Boat, Becca opens the box and finds some sapphires. Was she expecting to find Michael in the box? He's grown a bit, SuperMom. I know you still think of him as your little boy, but…
Chateau de la Stupidité: Michael (who is an architecture student, remember) is telling Random Hot Chick that the building is "Baroque, with Gothic influences", which means they're in either Poland or Russia. (Really? Damn, there go all my "Chateau" references. On the plus side, it means that SuperMom is even stupider to think he's on the boat.) She says he's smart, which contradicts everything we've seen so far. He asks Random Hot Czech, er, Chick, to tell him her name. She just looks at him sadly and says they're not in Poland.
Wow, so now Michael knows they're in Russia! Well, Russia's such a small country, that really narrows it down! Also, he still can't even get off the grounds, so this is putting the cart several miles in front of the horse. But isn't it nice of the bad guys to not only allow Michael to roam the
In Becca's hotel room, Mary is sniffing Michael's teddy bear (Jesus, lady! No wonder your husband dumped you…) and going through Becca's bag, looking at old photos of Michael. She's flabbergasted to find that Becca has a gun. And that Becca went to all the trouble to bring a gun, and didn't take it with her.
Blondie goes on the $1/8 Billion Boat, finds the goons unconscious (good job keeping in radio contact with your troops, Blondie!) and finds the box empty of sapphires and a cell-phone in their place. So Becca doesn't carry a gun…but she does carry a spare phone in case she has to leave one to talk to the baddies? Yay, C.I.A. Training!
The phone rings just then, because Becca has psychic powers and can guess when Blondie is in the room, apparently. And more good news for Becca: those were Not-Just-ANY-Sapphires, but the famous "Hoysman Blues", which haven't been seen since they were stolen by the Nazis 70 years ago, but which Becca can, of course, recognize instantly. Because no sapphires have been cut the same way since the 1940s or something?
Becca says that Blondie's employers would be angry if she lost the Not-Just-ANY-Sapphires. Then shouldn't they have been keeping them in a vault or something, rather than a box you can pick with a nail file? (Or easily smash, for that matter.) Don't blame Blondie for your incompetence, Mysterious Russian (I guess) Baddies!
Becca tells Blondie to meet her alone, without weapons, 500 meters offshore. Blondie, shaking in her boots at the force of Becca's SuperMommy Love, quivers agreement. Becca is stoic. Because Ashley Judd can't act.
Becca and Giancarlo go back to the hotel room, where
Oh, and here's Ashley Judd reacting to the news that she's been busted:
(ACTING! Or the effects of too much plastic surgery, your choice.)
ACT FIVE
(because this show NEEDS an extra commercial break, with all the ACTION!):
Becca tells Mary she's still Becca, she just happened to be a former CIAgent. Which she didn't tell anyone "to protect you". Mary doesn't take that well, and loses our sympathy by making it all about her, saying that everyone is lying to her, just like her unseen soon-to-be-ex-husband. What-EVER.
Miller has finally made it to Ravello, three acts after he left Paris. (Maybe he really did get stuck in the revolving door at the airport, after all.) He accosts Giancarlo and says its suspicious that Becca won't use C.I.A. resources to find Michael, given that their spy satellites can tell the size of the boner Giancarlo has from hoping he'll get to nail Becca one more time. He blackmails Giancarlo into letting him into Becca's affairs by promising not to tell Interpol about how Giancarlo used their arrest warrant to get Becca away from the C.I.A. and then didn't actually arrest her, or anything.
SBBG calls Blondie on the phone to nag her. She plays it cool, grateful that he can't smell how she crapped her pants over the phone lines.
Giancarlo's Interpol flunky comes to take Mary to the airport. Unfortunately, we see the real Interpol flunky lying dead in an alley. Ruh-roh! Looks like we may be losing our Token Black Mary, after all. The goon takes an unsuspecting Mary to Blondie's speedboat. Looks like Blondie won't be bringing backup or weapons…but she will bring a hostage.
ACT SIX
([Charles McNair in 1776 voice] "Sweet Jesus!" [/McNair])
Blondie's boat approaches Becca's boat, with Mary not in sight. Giancarlo is watching, which hardly seems fair, given the "come alone" terms Becca was so big on. Blondie stops and she and Becca immediately pull guns on each other. (Looks like the "no weapons" thing is out the window, too.) Blondie has Mary stand up to show Becca that she has a hostage. Luckily for Becca, Blondie is the only hostage-taker in the history of the universe to forget to aim her weapon at the hostage, just letting Mary stand alongside her until Mary gives her a shove and dives overboard:
(Hostage-taking for REAL Dummies.)
Boats circle and shots are fired, but obviously SuperMom is going to win this one. So let's just cut away to SBBG calling some frosted-haired assassin and saying "she" is a liability and needs to be killed. So even if Blondie gets away, she's not making it out of the episode, it seems. Wow, they're just piling on the dramatic tension, huh?
Back to the boats. Blondie is chasing Becca all over the bay, which seems strange since Becca's the badass, and she has a gun, too. Why isn't she firing back? This confuses me so much that eventually I have to go back and look. It seems that when Blondie thought she had Mary as a hostage, she told Becca to throw away her gun and when Mary (immediately) gets the jump on Blondie, we see a reaction shot of Becca, with her hands lowered and no gun. Which means that Becca did throw away her gun…and THE EDITOR FORGOT TO INCLUDE THAT RATHER IMPORTANT SHOT, thus confusing the whole narrative. (No sound of a splash from the gun hitting water, either. Un-fucking-believable.)
So now Blondie is chasing after Becca (to get back the Not-Just-ANY-Sapphires) and Becca is hiding her boat behind other boats (because she's unarmed and never thought to bring a back-up weapon) and Giancarlo is busy fishing Mary out of the drink and can't help Becca…when the Frosted-Haired Assassin (FHA, not related [I don't think] to the Federal Housing Authority) just happens to drive to a nearby bit of the coast road and pull out his sniper rifle.
Eventually Blondie gets the drop on Becca, but Becca whips out the Not-Just-ANY-Sapphires (which are actually blue diamonds, it seems, but hell, you might want to tell me that at some point, show! I see blue stones, I think sapphires. Sheesh) and holds them over the edge of her boat. If Blondie shoots Becca, Becca will drop the diamonds and they'll be lost forever!
(Or until Blondie gets some scuba gear and retrieves them. I mean, we're right by the shore; the water here is what, 10-20 feet deep, at most? Not really a great threat.)
Blondie, of course, trembles, quivers, puts down her gun and, after Becca drops a few of the diamonds in the shallow water, starts singing like a bird. She also spots FHA on the hillside, but isn't concerned, sure that he's going to shoot Becca. There's misdirection to this effect (since SBBG never said a name when giving FHA a target), but come on. Aside from how Becca's the lead, she doesn't work for SBBG, so Becca couldn't have become a "liablity". A "problem", an "inconvenience", an "obstacle", yes…but a "liability" is someone who you thought was on your side. The English language, people…learn it, live it, love it.
So Blondie's playing for time, telling Becca that Michael's kidnapping is actually about Paul, Becca's dead hubby, and that the kidnapper is the same guy who killed Paul, when FHA shuts Blondie up, with a bullet right between the eyes. Well, he's a better shot than Blondie was, that's for sure, so good on SBBG for culling the second-raters, I suppose.
Do Svidaniya Dacha, night. Random Hot Cooch comes into Michael's bedroom, drops her sweat pants and wants to get groiny with him. He sees a scar on her thigh, remembers that she said the guards wounded you if you tried to escape too often (a plot point I didn't bother with before, because that scene was boring me…) and deduces that she's a fellow prisoner (logical) and she's after him because she's trying to get information to please their captors (a bit of a stretch, but possible). She doesn't deny it, and starts to leave, pulling down her top so "they" will believe the two of them had sex. (Well, only if they think Michael lasted about 30 seconds, given how quick this scene is…) Oh, and her name is Oksana.
Outside, Oksana tells a goon that "he's starting to trust me". But is she lying to the goon and claiming she and Michael had (very brief) sex…or is she saying that the "fellow prisoner" angle is working on Michael and she's actually working with the baddies? The ambiguous writing works here in a way that "she is becoming a liability" completely failed earlier.
Oh, and if Oksana is supposed to be seducing information out of Michael, that almost makes the idea of multiple prisoners roaming freely throughout the Dacha semi-plausible. (Not really, but at least it's an attempt.)
Back on the dock in Ravello (where it's nowhere near sundown despite Moscow being only, like, two hours ahead of Italy…maybe the Dacha is in Siberia?), Mary has decided to go home and trust Becca. (Despite how Becca let Mary get kidnapped, lost her gun, and was only saved because the bad guys decided to kill their own operative. Yay, C.I.A. training!) Oh, and Mary says Giancarlo's in love with Becca, which interests me far less than the contrast here:
("Acting", left. Actual acting, right.)
But Giancarlo isn't going to be in every episode (boat chases on the Italian Riviera don't come cheap, you know; gotta cut somewhere), so despite the "love" angle, he turns her over to Miller, who does have access to the information on Paul's death and all, so that works on a story logic level. At least more than the baddies not killing Becca, which was so that the C.I.A. wouldn't get involved. Well, the C.I.A. is involved, so that didn't work out so well for you, did it, baddies?
On the other hand, it is only Miller, after all…
WRAP-UP:
Was this episode so much stupider than the first two, or is it just that recapping it made me less likely to let things go? This was really incredibly stupid, and given that I don't care about any of the characters, there's not much reason to stay with it. Well, except for the snark factor and the fact that "boat chases on the Italian Riviera" isn't really something you see on T.V. that often. Buffy slayed vampires in a "cemetery" that was a re-dressed studio parking lot, by way of contrast.
Did you like the recap? Do you want to see more like this? Should I skip the (probably few) remaining episodes and concentrate on shows that aren't both sucktacular and (most likely) already cancelled? Wanna throw a few bucks my way and keep this site going ? (By helping me avoid homelessness, I mean; Blogger is a free service.) Throw me a comment, send me a line, drop me a dime (more than a dime, please) by posting below, linking to your site, or clicking on the handy little "Donate" button, on the right.
And until next time, remember…always point your weapon at the hostage. Seriously, people. It's just common sense.
Love,
Jess.
