FBI: International - BHITW – Review

With Dandridge trying to dismantle the Fly Team and send Forrester back to the US, and with the introduction of a new team member, this episode was filled with tension from start to finish. But it is clear that Forrester is not going to be forced out without a fight.

The episode opens with a basketball team having a practice. Following the practice, we see the players on a bus in Belgrade, Serbia. The team is drinking and partying on the bus, but one player, Bryan Moncrief, is sitting quietly and a promoter, Milos Zoran, approaches and says he can get them other “party favors” if they want, and he tells him not to say that. They arrive at a club, and one player, Derrin Vaughn, is approached by a woman, Derrin’s fiancé Cici Pryor. They have a heated conversation and then the players head on to the next club which is a strip club and Derrin goes to a private area with a dancer. Bryan tries to go check on him and is stopped by a bouncer. He punches the bouncer and finds Derrin collapsed and he starts CPR and yells for them to call an ambulance.

It is clear from their past relationship that Jamie knows Scott very well, as she calls him out about something being up with him. Clearly Scott has decided not to tell the team yet about what Dandridge has done, perhaps because he does not want to distract or worry them. Having seen the type of leader Forrester has grown into over the past season, this certainly is no surprise. Forrester, Raines and Kellett all get a surprise though when they go to the office and there is a new agent in the office. Dandridge is there and he introduces Zoey McKenna, and he says she has just finished an undercover assignment with narcotics and will be rotating with them for a bit. She tells them she is there to help with whatever they need.

Forrester speaks to Dandridge privately and tells him he has no authority to bring in a new agent without consulting him but Dandridge brings up that Scott is leaving, to which he bites back that he does not report to him. Clearly it seems like there is some other ulterior motive behind these actions but Dandridge says this is coming from the top and it is best for his career for Forrester to grasp this is happening. He tells him he has a week and if he keeps it collegial he will keep the other members of the Fly Team no matter who they bring in to replace him, but if he digs in his heels he will split them up. He hands Scott paperwork and tells him he needs to sign it and return it asap. This surely must be causing great conflict for Scott. As the leader he is, he would want to maintain the safety of the roles of his team, but he also wants to fight to stay. Keeping the situation under wraps to keep the team from worrying also adds another layer to his stress.

Forrester rejoins the team to go over a new case. Derrin Vaughn, a player for a Lithuanian Euro-league team, was in Belgrade with the team and his agent, Josh Bing, for a game. After Derrin was having his bachelor party and went into cardiac arrest at a strip club. Other members of his crew think he may have been drugged at the club. They also are stating that Bryan Moncrief brandished a knife and threatened the staff at the club and resisted arrest. He is also being held in Belgrade. The team discusses the league they are in, which can have two Americans per team maximum, and they discuss Vaughn and his path to playing in Europe. Kellett mentions that Belgrade is like the Vegas of eastern Europe so it is not surprising Vaughn would want to have his bachelor party there after the game.

Smitty also tells them the local police welcomes their involvement. Scott asks Zoey why she is there, and she says she is there to learn and contribute. Because of their knowledge of some of the other countries where they have worked before, they are concerned about having the technology they need to properly investigate so Vo is asked to stay behind to assist from Budapest.

The team heads to Belgrade, Serbia and meet Lieutenant Mirko Obradovic. He shows them to the area they can work, but is not sure about if the computers even have internet access. Kellett asks about Moncrief and Obradovic says he was moved to the detention cells because he was causing a disturbance with the volume of his voice, but he will have him moved back so they can speak to him. He also tells Forrester and Kellett that just because they score at basketball, they are not getting any special consideration because there are no celebrity discounts in Serbia. Kellett offers to pair up with McKenna to help teach her and they go to investigate at the strip club.

Smitty and Raines go to the hospital to get an update from the Team doctor and Cardiologist. They let them know that Vaughn keeps slipping into a dangerous arrhythmia that they will need to treat surgically with a cardiac ablation because the medications they are giving are not working. Smitty asks if the arrhythmia could be caused by him being slipped a roofie at the club, but the team doctor says Derrin had a pre-existing heart condition called Wolf Parkinson White, which makes him at risk for arrhythmias. The team manager was aware of the condition but he was cleared to play because he has no active symptoms. The team doctor says he cannot say what happened at the club because he was not there and to ask Vaughn’s agent, but a roofie drug would slow his heart rate, not speed it up which is what happened. The cardiologist says they are waiting on the toxicology report and they will let them know the results.

Raines and Smitty meet Josh Bing and his fiancé Cici in the waiting room, and they discuss that Derrin’s heart condition was kept quiet and it was the reason he came to play in Lithuania, because some NBA doctors had found it on a physical. Cici tells them that Derrin’s dream was to work his way to the NBA and there was no way he would have taken drugs to jeopardize that. Kellett asks Cici about their heated conversation and she says they had a conversation, not a confrontation, because he called off the wedding due to a lie someone told him, but still went on to have his bachelor party, so she wanted to make sure he knew he had it all wrong. Josh seems most concerned that word of Derrin’s heart condition not get out to the media, and Raines comments that he is sure PR is not his biggest concern right now. It is clear to the viewer that there is tension between Cici and Josh, but they never fully explore where it comes from.

Kellett takes McKenna with her and asks her about if she requested to be on the Fly Team or did Dandridge assign her, and she says a bit of both. Kellett asks if the team needs to be concerned about Dandridge and she says not that she knows of. Kellett tells McKenna that before the Fly Team she was with the BAU (Behavioural Analysis Unit) and that she knows she is not authentically telling the truth. This was such a great scene as it is only natural to be suspicious of anyone Dandridge brings in, and this only reinforces how astute Jamie is at her job, and that she is a force to be reckoned with.

They go to the club and meet Vlado Popov, and he says Derrin started freaking out because of whatever drugs he took and the Moncrief was trying to act like a thug until he was proven wrong. They ask where the knife is that Moncrief threatened them with and Popov says one of his friends probably grabbed it from the floor. They ask about security footage, but he says there is none, and they ask to speak to the dancer who was with Vaughn, and Popov says the place is protected. This is our first chance to see McKenna in action and she seems to hold her own when it comes to questioning witnesses and suspects, which only bodes well for her and her future with the Fly Team.

Scott goes to speak to Bryan Moncrief, and he asks about Derrin. He asks if there is anything he wants to tell him that is not in his statement to Lt. Obradovic and Bryan says he did not have a knife and he did not make any threats. He says that he thinks the club is trying to frame him, because they fought back when they tried to roll on them, and if the officer puts hands on him again he will fight back, and Scott says that is not a good idea. Scott then gets a call and tells Bryan there were complications and Derrin did not make it. Moncrief breaks down in tears. It was clear from this conversation that Scott believes Bryan, and sets out to prove he did not do what he is being charged for.

At the station, they ask Obradovic if the strip club is protected and he says yes and when they ask by who he says people he will have to deal with long after they leave. Smitty tells him that he can help them or she is calling Europol and he tells her to call whoever she wishes and she goes to make a call. This was such a great scene where we really saw Smitty be willing to ruffle some feathers if it means getting to the truth, and there is no question why she is such a great replacement for Katrin this season. It is wonderful to see them creating strong female characters again in this series like we have seen in many other Wolf productions. Vo calls the team to tell them she found a number of complaints against the promoter who ran the bachelor party, Milos Zoran. He had dropped intoxicated passengers off at the end of a pub crawl and they were all robbed. Kellett and McKenna go to check out the promoter as Obradovic gets a phone call.

Smitty approaches Scott and says she is hearing things about him and the Fly Team from her Europol contacts. She asks if it is true and he says he doesn’t know and he knows that they are all a phone call away from being sent on their next assignment and she says it would be a shame if that were true because she asked for the transfer to work with him again because he is the best agent she has ever encountered. This was a very sincere moment between these two characters but it poses the question about what their past relationship entailed. We still have yet to dig deeply into their previous work together and we can only hope this is foreshadowing for the future. Obradovic comes over and apologizes to Smitty for any miscommunication and says the department will help in any way they need.

Kellet and McKenna go to Milos Zoran’s office and he says everyone had their fun and got their money’s worth, and when it comes to what happened at the strip club that he is a party promoter and not a babysitter. They tell him Derrin Vaughn is dead and if someone was involved, things will get bad for him and he says he was in the parking lot in his party van and saw nothing. They said they know he has had complaints filed against him and when he denies it McKenna says Kellett is trained in lie detection. In this scene it was clear that already Zoey is learning how to play off of her team members, and that perhaps she may have some skills as an agent. Obradovic comes in and Milos tries to tell him that the ladies are harassing him and he tells Zoran to tell them what he knows. Zoran asks Obradovic if he knows what is involved in doing that and he says yes. Zoran tells them that he has a deal in place with some local mobsters in that club to drop off drunk tourists and although he has no direct knowledge of it, he believes they are charged cash or credit card charges or even possibly sometimes drugged.

The team raids the club and make some arrests and while there McKenna gets a phone call Kellett is suspicious of who it was from. Scott and Megan question Vlado and he tells them that certain tourists have been taken advantage of but none of the men from last night. He says he even told the dancers personally because they are celebrities. Scott asks if maybe a bouncer or dancer went ahead without his approval but he says that would not happen. They ask for a list of all the employees and dancers and he agrees to give it to them. Scott asks if Moncrief really had a knife and Vlado says no, and also confirms that he did not threaten to kill anyone. Scott gets Moncrief out of jail and he asks him if he knew Derrin had a heart condition and he said no, and Scott says very few people knew. Bryan says it was hard on Derrin at first because he did not feel he was living up to his potential, and he felt he had a chance at the NBA in the future.

Kellett tells Scott that McKenna is getting a lot of phone calls off to the side and Forrester tells her that he is being transferred out. He tells her to keep it under wraps until they get back to Budapest. This was a great demonstration of the trust Scott has in Jamie, because this something extremely significant, and he tells her before anyone else. Raines comes to tell the team that the toxicology is back and there were no roofies in Derrin’s system but there was 30 gms of Adderall and that was more than enough to trigger his heart condition and whoever did it, it was murder.

They talk about who knew about Vaughn’s heart condition, and it was his fiancé, agent, coach and team doctor. There were also pictures posted on social media. Vaughn’s mom is the beneficiary of his life insurance policy and his fiancé is also named.

Raines and Smitty interview Cici and ask about the trust. They tell her they are trying to eliminate her as a suspect but with him missing out on an NBA contract, he was worth more dead than alive. Smitty brings up that he broke it off with her and she confronted him at the club and could have slipped something into his drink, but she responds by saying she did not put anything in his drink or ask anyone else too.

McKenna said her recent UC assignment involved had to do with synthetic drugs and he did not have Adderall in his system, it was Dextroamphetamine which hit harder and you can only get a prescription for it in Europe in Switzerland. The team trainer Noah Muller is from Switzerland. Forrester takes McKenna with him to speak to the team. She asks him if he knew about Derrin’s heart condition and he said no, only the team doctor knew about it. They then threaten call to get all the records for his phone records and charges on the team card, and he tells them he was asked to get 30 mg of Dextroamphetamine by Bryan Moncrief. It was interesting to watch the dynamics between Forrester and McKenna, as they worked to interview the suspect together. Scott clearly was trying to give her some latitude and see how she would perform and she seems to do a great job with conducting the interview.

They go to practice to speak to Bryan and he does not want to speak to Obradovic so Scott tells Mirko to hang back. They tell Bryan they are going to speak with him privately. He says he would not slip drugs into Derrin’s drink. They ask about a lot of calls between him and Cici. They ask why he got the Dextroamphetamine and he says he did not ask for it and he is being set up. Obradovic brings in a bottle of Dextroamphetamine and says they found it in his gym bag and Moncrief says it is a set up. He says it is not his and he would never do anything to Derrin. Forrester says that Obradovic needs to make sure Bryan is treated fairly while in custody and that they need more evidence and wants the bottle finger printed but Obradovic says that their job is done and he is handing the case over to the prosecutors. Raines says that there is no way the drugs are Moncreif’s because they said they found it in his gym bag but Moncrief is from East St Louis and if he had drugged Vaughn there is no way he would have kept the murder weapon around, and the bottle must have been planted by someone.

Obradovic tells them to wrap it up. Kellett has done some research into the basketball team and suggests they look at Bogdon Vidmar, who played Vaughn’s position before he was on the team and is now on the bench, and he also had access to Derrin’s drink that night. Raines tells them that Bogdon and Muller worked on the same Greek team a few years ago and Bogdon even went to Muller’s wedding.

Kellett and Smitty bring in Muller and ask him for a formal statement, and he is worried about missing the team bus but they tell him it will be 5 mins tops. They then bring in another player and put Bogdon in the waiting area with him. Muller approaches Bogdon but he says for them not to speak in there and as they go outside, the team loses audio.

We are then able to once again see Raines technical prowess when they tap into Mullers phone and are able to hear part of the conversation and listen in. The team comes out and arrests them both.

Scott goes in to speak to Muller and shows him a picture of his family and says to help them because if Vidmar confesses first it is over for him. I think this really shows how effective Scott is when he is conducting interviews, because he seems to have a way of knowing exactly how to get inside the interviewee to be willing to disclose the information they need. Muller tells him that the team has drug tests once a month and the plan was to slip Vaughn something to get him to fail the test so Bogdon would get back on the roster and they did not know about his heart condition.

McKenna tells Forrester she appreciates them including her and she was afraid they would freeze her out, but he says that is not his style.

Smitty gives Derrin’s watch back to Cici and she notices that it says BHITW on the back – Cici says it stands for biggest heart in the world. Smitty holds her as she cries, and this was such a great opportunity to see the softer and caring side of Megan Garretson and what a big heart she has.

Scott goes to see Bryan, and tells him that they found the real person responsible for drugging Derrin. Bryan says he talked to Derrin about people always wanting your spot and that your attitude had to be come and take it. It seems that Scott takes Moncrief’s advise to heart because when they return to Budapest, Scott takes the folder to Dandridge and it is not signed. Scott says he is not leaving and that he is not going without a fight.

Clearly with how he threatened to break apart the team at the beginning of the episode, this was a very risky move, but Scott is not prepared to give up his leadership and friendships on the Fly Team, regardless of the potential cost to him and his career. Now that is a dedicated team leader.

Let us know what you thought about this episode in the comments below.