Saturday, July 13, 2013

Graceland 1.05: "O-Mouth"

“There are really good reasons why we’re investigating Briggs.”
“Then I think I deserve to know.”
- Juan and Mike

Mike is still reeling from Eddie offing himself in front of him. Johnny busts into his room around 8:30 and insists they go throws a football around with Paige who has a new bikini. It seems to mellow Mike out a little bit and it looks like the actors had a fun time shooting the scene. Mike gets back to the house to find Charlie and Briggs shooting up. At least it looks that way. They’re prepping for a heroin buy with a mid-level guy. And we learn that they used to use different first names for their aliases until they knew better. So for most of the episode they are going to be Eric and Katie.

Mike meets up with Juan and Juan tells him he really should talk to someone. Mike demands to know why specifically he’s supposed to be looking into Briggs. A little while later, they meet up again and we learn that a bunch of busts turned up a lot less heroin than expected. They were all cases Briggs worked. So at least Mike knows what he’s sort of looking for. And lucky for him, Bello has a pretty big distribution side for heroin.

Charlie and Briggs head out for their op with Johnny and Paige watching from the command post. Paige is pretty surprised to hear that back in the day Briggs and Charlie hooked up under these aliases. Things seem to be going well until Whistler shows up. Clearly he’s not out of the game, even if he’s off the FBI payroll. Luckily with some quick thinking from Charlie (which involves jumping Briggs and getting rather personal), they get out without being seen. Well Briggs is pretty sure they weren’t seen. Charlie’s not so sure. Briggs tells her to go pay Whistler a visit. She does and she can see that he’s using again. He obviously lies to her and she lies to him about just checking up on him because she cares. Around the same time, Johnny and Paige make a bet on whether Briggs and Charlie hook up on the op.

Meanwhile, things are getting complicated for Mike. First, at Johnny prompting, he reconnects with Abbie. They sort of bond of Mike’s cover of being a pilot (thanks to Johnny for tossing that one out there) and they also bond over BD (beach dog). Abbie takes him in for shots and to get a bath but he just races off back under the pier. Guess they know where to find him. It is a rather pretty dog. And Mike has some drama with Bello, too. Mike says that the crew needs more time to get properly trained in shooting but Bello wants them trained soon. He makes a reference to an old black and white western film and Mike uses it as an in to try and get Bello to appoint him his bodyguard. This is Mike’s plan to get in on the distribution side to see if Briggs skims some of the bust. Mike’s plan actually works. He tells Bello he’s off active duty and they bond over the sequel to the movie referenced earlier. Mike also shows off his skills by beating up on a TV sales guy at a store (they want to watch the movie on the big TV to test it out). While watching the movie at Bello’s place, Bello gets a call which gives Mike time to check the guys’ calendar and see “big foot” on it. He reports this back to Briggs and we learn that it’s a way of getting drugs over the border by submarine. Seriously, people actually do that?

The more interesting plot of the episode continues to unfold with Charlie and Briggs on their op. Honestly, I think the show may be losing a few viewers because the secondary characters of Charlie, Johnny and Paige are far more interesting than Mike and Briggs. I especially like Charlie. She’s kind of interesting. And Johnny is just a goof which lightens the mood a lot of times. They are setting up a meet with their mid-level guy at a hotel and Johnny is posing as a valet. Things don’t go well because apparently the mid-level guy knows every valet at the hotel so he gets in his car and leaves. This leaves Briggs and Charlie to order room service and have a little heart to heart. Charlie slept with Briggs before because he was kind of a myth back then. And Brigg is impressed with Charlie’s brains and her looks. Johnny is listening in and them Briggs and Charlie are all over each other. They stop short of actually hooking up though. But to give Paige the win on the bet, they order some porn and put the watch with the transmitter next to it to make Johnny think they are hooking up.

Since the plan went sideways, they are almost out of options on how to salvage the meet with the big drug dealer. So Charlie goes back to Whistler and he agrees to help out and talk up Charlie and Briggs’ covers. Interest thing we learned earlier when Mike caught them fake shooting up, you use hemoglobin and it cooks and smells real. So they’ve never had to actually shoot up with real drugs. Charlie gets a call from Whistler and he is clearly out of it. He tells her that the guy they’re trying to meet with be showing up once they do. He collapses in the bathroom and Charlie is starting to get worried about him. They head over to the dealer’s place and it’s clear things are about to go sideways. He makes note of the fact that cops can’t actually shoot up with real drugs. Charlie presses him about Whistler and she finds him dead in the bathroom. Whatever he shot up with was tainted somehow. He seemed to have mentioned his deal with the feds for being a CI. Dude really needed to learn not to talk about things like that. Briggs tries to back them out safely, even if it means losing the opportunity to get in with the big guy but Charlie is severely pissed about Whistler. Before Briggs can stop her, Charlie shoots up with the dealer’s needle (aka actual drugs), saying she really wants to meet the guy that makes the stuff. We have to wait to see what happens next.

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