The Working File

Agent Kern

A card game, David Mamet, and Ricky Jay: how could it go wrong?  I didn’t react as unfavorably to this episode as many others did, but it was a disappointment. 

The Basic Summary

The team takes on a mission helping the CIA, and as the episode develops we learn that they accepted the mission only to put the squeeze on Ricky Jay’s character, Agent Kern, to force him to agree to make the prosecution of Red Cap (for authorizing the team’s air rescue in Syria without proper authorization) go away.  That seemed odd by itself, that they would have such discretion over what missions they accept, and it is pretty much glossed over. The mission is to recover a former Russian informant for the CIA, who has started providing his information to the Chinese.  The card game is in a private room in a Chinese casino, and the play is to set up the Russian mark in front of his Chinese hosts, so it looks like he is trying to cheat the Chinese General he works with.

Squeezing Agent Kern

Prepping and Preening

The Mark

Red Cap only takes part in the mission after Kern agrees to make her problems go away. Bob’s role is to get caught, so he can finger the Mark as his accomplice at the appropriate time, after getting beaten up a little.  What the team doesn’t expect, however, is that the General’s men would not beat up Bob, but instead pump him with heroin.  His interrogator gives him multiple hits during the night, each one stronger the the prior injection, and thereby creating both a risk of overdose and an instant addiction. Eventually Red Cap talks her way into the General’s hotel room and rescues him, the informant is recruited back into the fold, and Bob kills his tormentor.  But not all is happy.

Rescuing Cool Breeze

Kim the Interrogator

Meanwhile back at home, Kim, Bob’s wife, is called in to interrogate her former employer (Isaac) by Col. Ryan.  Supposedly Isaac has asserted that he will only confess to Kim.  Since the government has held him as long as they can without raising suspicion among his co-conspirators, they need his information immediately.  When Isaac does not actually confess, Kim is forced to act as an actual interrogator, and she does cajole both the confession and the information about his conspiracy that we needed to get, but at a price.  Isaac and his wife are given full pardons and granted witness protection, which doesn’t sit well with Kim, who still holds an understandable grudge against Isaac for trying to kill her.

Analysis

Where to begin — so many issues:

• how could Bob take multiple hits of heroin, and come down off from each one, in the part of a single night that the card game took place;
• would the army really use Kim as an interrogator?
• why did Max and Grey have to plant the watch when there was no way the game could play out that would require their Mark to see the watch in the safe deposit box, or for the General to return to the card game room before Jonas and the Mark left;
• why did Jonas talk so openly to the Mark in the card game room when there were two guards present and he knew the room was monitored by security cameras?  There was no guarantee the guards didn’t know English and also no guarantee that the local security had lost access to the cameras when the Unit did;
• why did Bridget suddenly lose all of her knowledge and self-confidence, plus her ability to handle a gun?
• did Jonas, the Mark, and the team really just exit through the front door and leave with no one he wiser?
• was Bob really able to hide his addiction from his team members on the long trip back home from China, and is he intending to hide it from them and his wife going forward?

Bob’s addiction seemed to cause the most discomfort among people I read on various discussion boards. They hated the idea of a junkie Unit member.  I was mostly troubled by the logistics of his being able to hide it, and in fact, the first time I viewed the episode I assumed that Bob was telling everyone.  When he told Red Cap that she could do him a favor by pretending she didn’t see anything, I thought he mean his cold-blooded killing of the unarmed interrogator.  Bob was a wreck when he left that hotel room.  He was disoriented, sweating, and weak.  His condition could not be explained just by his having been beaten up.  Then, because it was established in the story that the heroin his interrogator used was a special mix that could create a rush, followed by a come down, in a very short time, Bob would have had to shoot up several times on the trip home, presumably in one of those cargo planes that doesn’t exactly allow for much privacy.  I originally thought that the last shot of the episode, when he is in the bathroom with his kit, signified that he was about to tell Kim of his problem.  All of which makes more sense than what I now think is the actual storyline, that Bob has concealed, and will continue t try to conceal, his addiction from everyone but Bridget.

I did like the last interaction between Col. Ryan and Kim:

• I came this far Col. Ryan, at least you can tell me where he’s going next.
• Why?because I asked.
• [Ryan explains that Isaac agreed to set up a meet with him, his wife, and Leon Drake]
• “Do you know more now than you did before?
• Thank you for answering my question.
• This is chess played in the dark Mrs, Brown.  Chess played in the dark.

I like the fact that Kim stood up for herself, even on an unimportant point, and that she had an answer for Ryan when he pointed out how meaningless her request was.  She needed him to answer a question, and thereby demonstrate respect.  And “chess played in the dark” is such a great description of what the Unit does.

New episode tonight.  Sorry this was so late.