I've been critical of some episodes so need to give props for this one. The story itself is okay but what makes the episode strong is character development, how they stand by their colleagues in times of crisis, the tough choices some characters have to make, and the potential cost of those choices. Scola is growing into the best characters of the show.
16 Reviews
Wow!
hg989 December 2020
Hands down, this has to be my favourite episode of the whole show! The whole bomb plot has been used by show many TV shows, but I have never seen it like this. Everything about this episode is just perfect.
Not many shows get better as they age, but I have to say: season three has started off with three *very* strong episodes. I'm excited to see what happens next!
Not many shows get better as they age, but I have to say: season three has started off with three *very* strong episodes. I'm excited to see what happens next!
Incredible.
kabxlohlahane3 March 2021
Fine Episode. Nothing Too Exciting
aliyahrocks27 December 2020
This episode was ok. The plot should have been engaging but something about the writing didn't pull me in. The finger was itching to press the fast forward button. I unfortunately think this season will be the last. CBS might renew this show for a fourth season, but I don't think they should. Every episode gets worse.
Insultingly stupid!
caribbeanpiratess-998-9812697 March 2021
Warning: Spoilers
I don't usually take the time to write reviews, but the stupidity of this episode, & my extreme disappointment in what has up to now been a somewhat believable, well-written show compelled me to write this one.
I have watched this show from the beginning, & I like it very much. Until now, the procedural details have been believable for the most part. I have no idea what happened with this episode. It seems that the regular writers took a vacation & they brought in a batch that usually write children's fiction, comedy, etc. Any credibility that the show previously had walked right out the door with the cartel kingpin. They violated the number one rule that anyone who has watched even one episode of a crime drama knows...THERE IS NO NEGOTIATION WITH TERRORISTS!
Two resolutions to the problem mentioned at the beginning of the situation & screaming at us for the rest of the episode:
First, the hollow threat that the ADIC issued to the druglord of placing him right next to the agent wired with the bomb. All that was needed to resolve the issue would have been to do just that. Apparently this option was only obvious to the viewers, & not to even ONE of the supposed "experienced" members of the FBI, all the way up the chain of command.
Second, where was the explosives expert that was supposedly coming down from the third floor? Also mentioned only once, at the beginning of the situation. Apparently he or she left to join the regular writing staff on vacation.
I DIDN'T BUY IT
r-angle2 January 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This episode didn't work for me.
(SPOILER ALERT) I would have handcuffed the big cartel leader to a door near the woman FBI agent with the bomb around her neck, handed him a cellphone, and left him there. He would have saved the FBI agent to save himself.
Utterly Ludicrous!
wwkirk10 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Highly unlikely that a high ranking official would let a kingpin go free, even to save an employee. But on the outside chance that they did do so without authority, they would immediately be suspended, and would ultimately be demoted or fired. They could even conceivably be charged with a crime. That Isobel wasn't punished renders the episode absurd, and weakens the status of the show as a serious drama. The FBI series is being reduced to nonsense.
It's also worth mentioning that the episode literally offered propaganda that drug kingpins are honorable, even noble. Disgusting.
It's also worth mentioning that the episode literally offered propaganda that drug kingpins are honorable, even noble. Disgusting.
Pathetic, just pathetic!
simonhi11 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
4 blocks of C4 with detonators stuck in them and no other source of ignition. Any police officer or agent would be able to pull the dets out and neutralise the bomb, just ridiculous!
The plot too was ridiculous, no senior agent would release such a high profile prisoner. What's the usual line "we don't negotiate with terrorists".
The plot too was ridiculous, no senior agent would release such a high profile prisoner. What's the usual line "we don't negotiate with terrorists".
So the message is ........
LittleStorpingInTheSwuff23 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
We do negotiate, and give in to, criminals demands. Yeah, I know, it's only a TV show, but still..... If the writers are going to be totally ridiculous, one solution was brought up early on. Shackle the drug lord and sit him down next to the bomb. The employee may be blown up, but so will Vargas. Another solution, have a volunteer agent sit down next to Vargas with a gun to his head, with orders to pull the trigger when the bomb goes off. Sure, they are ridiculous solutions and would most likely never happen. But so what? If the writers can portray the FBI as Milquetoasts who will cave under threats, then the writers can also let them have some guts and put the ball in the bad guy's court.
The episode was actually dramatic, but I gave it a 1 for painting the FBI as cowardly and easy to threaten.
Absolutely stupid-deserves a 0
alchemist-8184815 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Depressingly awful, and the writers (if you can call them that!) deserve to be sacked.
In real life, nothing like this would ever happen. Let a murdering drug lord go? Isabel would be suspended for being completely incompetent. And the actress who plays her lacks the talent to carry the part.
Nothing about this episode made any sense at all. It was inconsistent, juvenile, badly written, badly acted, and if real FBI agents were that dimwitted, the country would be in serious trouble. Dick Wolf: do better. You certainly couldn't do much worse.
In real life, nothing like this would ever happen. Let a murdering drug lord go? Isabel would be suspended for being completely incompetent. And the actress who plays her lacks the talent to carry the part.
Nothing about this episode made any sense at all. It was inconsistent, juvenile, badly written, badly acted, and if real FBI agents were that dimwitted, the country would be in serious trouble. Dick Wolf: do better. You certainly couldn't do much worse.
Good until an overly emotional unreal ending
adshiel22 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Loved seeing 'Angel Batista' as a bad guy. But please some overly emotional FBI agent takes a unilateral decision to let an international drug cartels leader walk. No way ever in real life. DoJ, Interpol and every person who outranks her would have stood her down.
Capitulation & Show of Weakness
Johnny_West23 December 2020
I give up on FBI TV series. The FBI is often shown as incompetent and politically compromised. Maybe this is true, but it is not what I want to see in a TV series about the FBI.
In this episode, the FBI captures a major drug trafficker. He warns the SWAT team that there are explosives in the building, and the SWAT soldier that he warns, assumes it is an empty threat and does not warn the rest of his team. Guess what, they blow up.
What a total trainwreck! When he admits that he never warned anyone, his superiors just shrug their shoulders, and let it slide. Wow, how disappointing that incompetence and stupidity of such magnitude is seen as permissible at the FBI TV series.
The downward spiral does not end there. Once they collect the major narco, instead of taking him to a secured prison, the FBI boss, decides she wants him in their office headquarters so she can put him on the TV news and parade him around for good publicity. Needless to say, the plan backfires.
The narco, Antonio Vargas, has a plan to have an FBI agent kidnapped and fitted with a neck-bomb. If he is not released, she blows up in the lobby of the FBI Headquarters. The FBI agents who are not the lead characters are usually portrayed as goofballs. Like the agent that is kidnapped was on the subway, paying no attention to the people around her, when she is suddenly kidnapped off the busy New York City subway platforms. Totally ridiculous, but that is how this show rolls.
Once the FBI agent has been compromised and has a bomb attached to her neck, she walks into the FBI lobby and tells them that she will blow up unless narco Antonio Vargas is released. Really? So of course, Alana De La Garza, who plays Assistant Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille decides to release the major narco who had killed an FBI agent.
During all this, Agent Scola (John Boyd) is sitting next to the bombed-up agent Taylor (played by Vedette Lim) and doing the cliche "I'll stay with you" routine that was first popularized by the Lethal Weapon movie, forty years ago, and has been copied a million times since then.
In between all the boring verbal swaggering between the FBI bosses and narco Vargas, we are told that the FBI agent he murdered was corrupt, and that makes it OK in the eyes of Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille. After all, if the FBI agent was bad, then narco Vargas can be trusted. So she authorizes his release, and Agent Taylor is saved, and the FBI looks like a pathetic bunch of incompetent losers.
If any narco can hash together a plot to blow up the FBI Headquarters in the span of a couple of hours, and the FBI capitulate to blackmail, then we the citizens of the USA are totally screwed. This episode was so totally defeating and disappointing that I do not think I will ever watch this show again.
In this episode, the FBI captures a major drug trafficker. He warns the SWAT team that there are explosives in the building, and the SWAT soldier that he warns, assumes it is an empty threat and does not warn the rest of his team. Guess what, they blow up.
What a total trainwreck! When he admits that he never warned anyone, his superiors just shrug their shoulders, and let it slide. Wow, how disappointing that incompetence and stupidity of such magnitude is seen as permissible at the FBI TV series.
The downward spiral does not end there. Once they collect the major narco, instead of taking him to a secured prison, the FBI boss, decides she wants him in their office headquarters so she can put him on the TV news and parade him around for good publicity. Needless to say, the plan backfires.
The narco, Antonio Vargas, has a plan to have an FBI agent kidnapped and fitted with a neck-bomb. If he is not released, she blows up in the lobby of the FBI Headquarters. The FBI agents who are not the lead characters are usually portrayed as goofballs. Like the agent that is kidnapped was on the subway, paying no attention to the people around her, when she is suddenly kidnapped off the busy New York City subway platforms. Totally ridiculous, but that is how this show rolls.
Once the FBI agent has been compromised and has a bomb attached to her neck, she walks into the FBI lobby and tells them that she will blow up unless narco Antonio Vargas is released. Really? So of course, Alana De La Garza, who plays Assistant Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille decides to release the major narco who had killed an FBI agent.
During all this, Agent Scola (John Boyd) is sitting next to the bombed-up agent Taylor (played by Vedette Lim) and doing the cliche "I'll stay with you" routine that was first popularized by the Lethal Weapon movie, forty years ago, and has been copied a million times since then.
In between all the boring verbal swaggering between the FBI bosses and narco Vargas, we are told that the FBI agent he murdered was corrupt, and that makes it OK in the eyes of Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille. After all, if the FBI agent was bad, then narco Vargas can be trusted. So she authorizes his release, and Agent Taylor is saved, and the FBI looks like a pathetic bunch of incompetent losers.
If any narco can hash together a plot to blow up the FBI Headquarters in the span of a couple of hours, and the FBI capitulate to blackmail, then we the citizens of the USA are totally screwed. This episode was so totally defeating and disappointing that I do not think I will ever watch this show again.
Actions make no sense! -Spoilers-
blake-wolfe9 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
First ever review here.
Spoilers!
So one of the FBI at the HQ is strapped into a bomb necklace, 30 minutes to release the drug cartel leader they had just caught or she goes boom... The bomb can't be removed, or it will explode. But punch in a code and that booby-trap is nullified. So idiot FBI boss makes a deal to let drug cartel leader (who BTW killed her FBI friend a few years ago), walk in exchange for the code. So she breaks the rules and allows this to save the agent from dying.
If you were going to break rules, then the obvious one, would be: 'truss up cartel leader, place him next to the agent in the bomb necklace. Either he gives you the code to disable and remove the bomb, or he goes boom along with the agent.'
Season 3 is a really bad season so far: Ep 1 = Kristen, my favorite character, is gone. Ep 2 = Jubal, my former 2nd favorite, is revealed as a 'gets so drunk he does not recall driving home and killing an animal on the way' adulterer Ep 3 = everyone in the FBI is an idiot! -- If you're going to break a rule, make it the one that both saves your person and keeps the baddie! (The 'baddies' could have had a back-up plan, with a second planted bomb, that they explode and in the aftermath they rescue their boss... at least his getting away then, would not be down to idiots!) If this show does not improve in the next two episodes, I'm out.
So one of the FBI at the HQ is strapped into a bomb necklace, 30 minutes to release the drug cartel leader they had just caught or she goes boom... The bomb can't be removed, or it will explode. But punch in a code and that booby-trap is nullified. So idiot FBI boss makes a deal to let drug cartel leader (who BTW killed her FBI friend a few years ago), walk in exchange for the code. So she breaks the rules and allows this to save the agent from dying.
If you were going to break rules, then the obvious one, would be: 'truss up cartel leader, place him next to the agent in the bomb necklace. Either he gives you the code to disable and remove the bomb, or he goes boom along with the agent.'
Season 3 is a really bad season so far: Ep 1 = Kristen, my favorite character, is gone. Ep 2 = Jubal, my former 2nd favorite, is revealed as a 'gets so drunk he does not recall driving home and killing an animal on the way' adulterer Ep 3 = everyone in the FBI is an idiot! -- If you're going to break a rule, make it the one that both saves your person and keeps the baddie! (The 'baddies' could have had a back-up plan, with a second planted bomb, that they explode and in the aftermath they rescue their boss... at least his getting away then, would not be down to idiots!) If this show does not improve in the next two episodes, I'm out.
Truth in Fiction?
JosephFabeetz10 December 2020
Hard to believe
striveonsolutions29 June 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I understand that a TV show usually asks for some suspension in belief, but outside the fact that the most wanted person in the world uses a hostage to get out, there's something else a miss.
I think the biggest thing that took me out of the show was how much happened in the span of 27min (the time remaining on the bomb when it's first discovered).
It's as if they completely ignored travel time (driving, using stairs and elevators, making phone calls to get intel etc.). By the time they narrowed the search to a 400-yard radius, there was 16min left on the clock, and they had 3 agents scoping that zone. Are you joking??
The dichotomy here is intense. First, you have the FBI looking super efficient by finding two people within a 400 yard radius in under 27min (which ultimately didn't matter). While simultaneously looking completely ridiculous by giving in to the cartel leader's ploy. That would be like letting Osama Bin Laden walk because he has one hostage. That would never happen.
I think the biggest thing that took me out of the show was how much happened in the span of 27min (the time remaining on the bomb when it's first discovered).
It's as if they completely ignored travel time (driving, using stairs and elevators, making phone calls to get intel etc.). By the time they narrowed the search to a 400-yard radius, there was 16min left on the clock, and they had 3 agents scoping that zone. Are you joking??
The dichotomy here is intense. First, you have the FBI looking super efficient by finding two people within a 400 yard radius in under 27min (which ultimately didn't matter). While simultaneously looking completely ridiculous by giving in to the cartel leader's ploy. That would be like letting Osama Bin Laden walk because he has one hostage. That would never happen.
Embarrassing
Robert-M-Woodrruff10 December 2020
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