In this episode of FBI: International, we not only were able to see the team flex their investigative prowess, but we were also able to see some other sides to the team including blooming romance and also how compassionate the various team members can be for different victims in the crimes they investigate.
To recap this episode, a commercial aircraft going from New York to Athens has a bomb threat when a passenger sees a message on the mirror in the bathroom. The plane was in Moroccan airspace and was directed to an air strip outside of Tangier. One of the passengers was having chest pains and is taken away by ambulance, and the Moroccan authorities allow his son to go with Raines to the hospital. The DOJ wanted the fly team onsite due to the recent death of an al-Qaida leader in a US drone strike.
The man never makes it to the hospital, and the team deduces that the bomb scare was a scam to kidnap Agent Mike Kemp, who is a DEA agent. They discover in the course of the investigation a corrupt Air Marshall, Glenn Shaw, who snuck the drugs on board to sedate Kemp. Shaw asks Vo if she knows the name Hassan Zazaar. She says he is part of the Macro Mafia and has been hiding for years and he tells her that he is blackmailing him. He is on Europol’s most wanted list and in Morocco he is untouchable.
Shaw identifies the man who took the syringe out of the overhead bin, and the team takes him into custody. They question him and he says “He who speaks dies” and they will kill him and his family. He says the next time they see Agent Kemp he will be dead. Smitty tells the team his name is Aziz Harit, and he has 2 young sons and a wife. They take him to the center of a marketplace and they say that Forrester is infront of his home and if he agrees to help them his family will enter the witness protection program or he will let him out of the car right there and word will get around that he is cooperating with authorities. They try to take him out of the car, but he then agrees to help them. He tells them about a building where they take people to torture them and says Kemp is in one across from a pharmacy and observatory and if Kemp is alive still, that is where they will find him.
The team checks out the building and see the abandoned fake ambulance. They go in and take down the mafia members who are there, and save another man who is being held. He says he saw Kemp, and that they left with him a short time ago and that they were transporting him 20 minutes ago to take him to Nomansland . They decide to try to catch them in transit as there is only one road in and out of that area. They stop the vehicles and arrest the men and save Mike Kemp.
Kemp is reunited with his son Tyler at the hospital. The DEA director tells them that he is sending them home in an American military jet as a precaution. He tells his son that the vacation is over and he put in for a transfer to NY which has been granted and they are going home to the USA.
There were a few things that really stood out in this episode and were quite enjoyable.
The first was the budding romance between Kellett and Erdos. At the beginning of the episode they are out on a date, and they are discussing Jamie’s love of donuts, and later in the episode he sends her a picture of him eating a donut and at the end of the episode, when she goes to his home for dinner, he has made her some special donuts trying to get them close to the American ones she loves. It is so wonderful to see Kellett enjoying romance again and Erdos seems genuinely sweet and like he truly wants to do nice things for her to make her feel at home. It will be exciting to see where this storyline goes and if romance will continue to bloom or if the job will yet again interfere with another relationship as we have sadly seen with several of our FBI characters.
Another enjoyable part of the episode was seeing Smitty again demonstrate her knowledge of bombs and explosives. It has been really interesting to learn more about her background through these little bite sized pieces of information, and we can only hope that there will be a “Smitty-centric” episode at some point this season, where perhaps we can see and learn even more about her past with Scott. Regardless, she definitely has a complimentary skill set to this team, and has been a very enjoyable replacement for Katrin, though they have completely different styles.
Another part that was a great addition to this episode was seeing a very compassionate side of Raines with Kemp’s son Tyler. We know that Andre does not have a good relationship if one at all with his own father, and seeing a son who does not have the greatest relationship with his dad but is distraught by his disappearance gave Raines a unique window where we were able to see him help this young man balance the situation, and use rationale facts to help him not assume the worst. One can only imagine that Raines could feel a great deal of empathy for this young man, being that his own paternal relationship is so strained, and his approach and manner with Tyler was endearing and showed a very human side to this very strong character.
It is also wonderful to see Vo show her wealth of skills, whether interrogation, interpretation, investigation, biochemistry and analysis and marksmanship. She is such a well-rounded agent and it will be interesting to see all the places that the Wolf writing team could take her story in this show. Needless to say, we will all be waiting with baited breath.
Overall, the Fly Team successfully completed yet another case, and the FBI writing team smashed another home run with this episode.
Let us know what you thought about this episode in the comments below.
