The first case of season four starts out with a family of four murdered in their hotel room in Georgia. The Fugitive Task Force quickly finds out that the family wasn’t on vacation, but rather on a trip to buy and traffic guns. The murderer, Walker Hawley, and his accomplice, Donte, steal two suitcases full of guns from the hotel room and the team is trying to track them down with help from the ATF before anyone else gets killed.
In the midst of the investigation, Sheryll Barnes returns to the team back from maternity leave and I could immediately sense the tension between her and her new boss, Remy Scott. Remy is also dealing with his mother and her ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s.
On the run, Hawley and his friend argue over what to do with the stolen guns and while at a gas station, he shoots a cop who was on their tail. This kid is just digging himself into more trouble as the murders pile up. Donte comes up with a plan and decides to try and make a run for it when he stops for a bathroom break on the side of the road. Hawley fires a gun at his friend and drives off, probably thinking that Donte is dead and he has nothing to worry about. Fortunately, the friend lives and calls his uncle and the FBI to turn himself in and reveals the rest of Hawley’s plan of who and where the guns are being sold.
On the spot, Remy decides to go undercover to try and catch the gun buyer, Teddy. Sheryll immediately thinks this is a bad idea and a reckless move as there will be no backup or a wire and I agree with her. She’s clearly still hurting from the loss of her former boss, Jess LaCroix, as she mentions that he would have never done something like this. With just a handful of episodes of Remy as the leader, you can sense the difference in his leadership style compared to Jess, but they ultimately have the same end goal – to solve the case. I’m interested to see how the team continues to react to this and how it will play out this season.
Remy ends up being successful in finding Teddy, but he’s led to another location, which ends up being a trailer in the woods in the middle of nowhere. Now, I’ve watched a lot of TV to know that this is never a good idea. Remy puts himself in danger as he finds a gun pointed to his head, but his smooth talking gets him out of the situation. He ends up losing the money to buy the guns, but he spots one of the stolen suitcases and puts a tracker on Teddy’s bike, so his undercover mission is a success.
The tracker leads them to the site of the second deal between Teddy and Hawley and the transaction is stopped by the team’s interference and gunfire. Both men are shot dead, but the ATF reveals that there’s one missing gun from what was originally stolen and what was uncovered in the trailer. Remy recalls the license plate of a minivan he saw at the trailer from another gun buyer and Hana finds that it belongs to a man named Josh Fogelman.
If you were paying close attention, this man was spotted earlier in the episode on television talking about increasing gun control in response to his daughter being killed in a mass shooting in Delaware. This was also mentioned towards the beginning of the episode and I had a feeling it would come back into play somehow. Remy goes to talk with Mrs. Fogelman and finds out that her husband is on a trip to Pittsburgh to attend a gun convention. The Fugitive Task Force hops on their jet and puts a stop to the convention taking place in order to avoid another mass shooting event. Just when they think everything is under control, Fogelman confronts the convention’s leader and locks him in a dressing room behind the stage. Fogelman holds him at gunpoint and asks for the man’s cell phone to be slid under the door by Remy. Remy wasn’t sure at first, but looked around to his team for advice and Kristin gave the go ahead to send the phone in. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea at first because I honestly thought he would make a call to his wife and then kill the convention leader and then himself. But it ended up being a smart move as all Fogelman wanted was for the picture of his dead daughter to be posted on social media for all of the convention’s supporters to see what their guns can do to an innocent child. Fogelman's reaction to the picture of his daughter was so raw and heartbreaking. The team eventually came in and arrested Fogelman.
Now, I wonder if what happened with Remy’s mom earlier was weighing on him during this case and affecting his decision making. But it was nice to see at the end, him and his sister, Claire, watching their mom enjoying herself at the nursing home, playing dominoes with the other residents. It served as a reminder that not everything about this show has to be dark and hopeless.
I was hoping by the end that we would see Sheryll and Remy work things out or at least have a talk, but I guess we’ll see that continue to play out in the upcoming episodes. All in all, I thought it was a good episode to get the season kickstarted with an interesting case, the personal storylines, and the varying team dynamics.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. What did you enjoy most from the season 4 premiere? What are you looking forward to for the rest of the season?
