FBI: International - Trust - Review
Mar 28, 2023
FBI: International JM ReviewsIn this episode, the title truly describes what is being seen and challenged in this case. Trust, be it with your relationships, friendships, team members, leaders or people in positions of trust like the police, is something that is critical to all mankind, and essential in order to work and live harmoniously.
To recap this episode, Forrester is sadly absent, but we hear news of him several times being in DC and being able to tout the incredible work the team is doing and how collaboratively they are working with foreign police services. After all he has been through this year with Dandridge, it is wonderful to be able to see that the tide is finally turning in the Fly Team’s favour.
To begin, Jamie is having trouble getting ahold of Ben. She also speaks to his partner David, who says he did not show up for work and he cannot reach him, and that he has been acting strangely recently. The team are then requested to assist the Hungarian National Police (HNP) with an investigation when a couple are shot, and an eye witness says it was a police officer who did it. Juci and Ferenc Olah were shot in their apartment and their neighbor said when she looked out the peephole after hearing the shots, she saw a police officer at the door which she thought strange as that was a very quick response time. She then saw him leave. Juci did a lot of charity work and Ferenc was bidding on a contract for the new stadium development. Vo asks if she can take lead, since she has a past relationship with the Hungarian Police Captain and Kellett agrees.
During the investigation at the crime scene, David notices a camera across the street at a shop and he and the team collect the video. Back at the station, the video reveals Ben entering and leaving the crime scene. Captain Monco advises the Fly Team and HNP that they are now looking for Ben Erdos as a person of interest in the crime. A female officer comes to the team and says that she brought an informant to Erdos some time ago and that he may have a way to contact him, and they use him to message Ben to meet him at their usual meeting place, which is at the baths.
The team goes to try to find him, and Ben finds Jamie. He tells her he is being framed and that he has evidence of a payment from the mafia to someone in HNP and that he has a file on his computer. The team examines his computer but cannot find the file. Vo questions Kellett several times about if she is able to be impartial, and Kellett goes to Raines for help to try to find the file and transaction Ben told her about. They are called to Ben’s apartment, where David is shot in his bulletproof vest and there is a man in the apartment who is dead. His name is Otto Bognar, and he was the other bidder on the stadium contract. Jamie tries to contact Ben again to come in, and Vo tells her she is off the case and to go home.
The team discovers that the only person left alive who was bidding on the contract for the stadium is connected to the Hungarian Mafia. Vo goes to see Kellett and tells her she is not really off the case, but she needed to make a show in front of the HNP officers and captain so they would think she was removed and she could secretly work on the case. Raines recovered the file that Ben had told Jamie about but it had been deleted by someone inside the HNP. Jamie contacts Ben and they come up with a plan and use a text to him to figure out who cloned his phone.
David shows up and he tries to take Jamie hostage and he tells Ben that they had decided to make him the fall guy, when the rest of the Fly team, Captain Monco and several other officers arrive. Jamie takes David down and they arrest him. He reveals that he has been working for the mafia for two years, and started with tip offs and then as the money increased, he had gotten them files and information.
Ben is cleared and at the end of the episode he and Jamie have a heart to heart where she says they need to cool things down because he did not trust her or trust that she would believe him, and that she has a very small circle of people she trusts.
There were several interesting threads throughout this episode. One is the romantic tension between Vo and Raines. In the past, we saw Raines appear a bit jealous last season when Vo dated the barista, and we have also seen pangs of jealousy related to Cameron’s response to Andre’s relationship with Maya. In this episode we see several glances and flirtations, like where she tells him Maya is lucky to have him and better hold on, and when she tells him that she learned to keep your head down and follow your gut not from Forrester, but from him. While it would definitely add an interesting layer of dynamics to the Fly Team, one has to wonder what the writers have in store for this pair, and if it will be a long slow burn like we have seen in many other Wolf Productions, or if there will be some sort of relationship built by the end of the season.
We were also able to see Vo start to strut some leadership. She has always been such an asset to this team, and we have seen the increasing trust Forrester has had in her this season, so it was great to see her jumping in to be willing to lead the investigation. While she seemed to push Kellett a bit, it seemed it was for good reason in trying to balance leadership, politics and her team relationships, but clearly she did have trust in Jamie’s opinions, and demonstrated that through her move to trick the HNP into thinking she had removed Jamie from the case. It has been so wonderful to see her growth and development and she clearly has the knowledge and ability to start to take the lead on some of the cases, in addition to being very compassionate and working well with the victims and witnesses. It will be great to see where they take this character in seasons to come.
The final sad part of this episode was seeing Jamie and her bad luck in love again. She seemed so happy in the last few episodes with Ben and at the beginning of this episode, and it is such a shame that he was so concerned about trusting her in this situation. We can only hope that time will heal this wound, but we will just have to wait and see. Fingers crossed that perhaps they can eventually work through this, as many of us were quite fond of Erdos and thought he was a good match for Kellett.
Hopefully we will be able to see more of Forrester in the remainder of this season, and continue to enjoy watching the team grow on a professional and personal level. One thing is for sure, the Wolf writers are doing an incredible job keeping us glued to our screens and invested in these characters and what is to come for them.
Let us know what you thought about this episode in the comments below.