Saturday, July 20, 2013

Graceland 1.06: "Hair of the Dog"

“I brought you here to save your career. This will be our little secret.”
- Briggs

When last we left Charlie, she was shooting up with the mid-level dealer’s needle (a big no-no if you’re a cop). The aftermath is definitely not pretty. She’s tripping pretty hard and Briggs takes her to one of his CI’s apartments. It makes me wonder a little where the CI is. Charlie breaks down, saying she just wants to go home and be in her own bed. But Briggs puts a stop to that. If Charlie goes back and the FBI finds out, it would be the end of her career. So he leaves her to suffer through the withdrawal in peace.

Meanwhile, Johnny and Paige find a sub (thanks to Mike’s tip that Bello is using them to smuggle drugs). But Johnny goes into the sub and finds no drugs at all. We cut to Bello have an argument with some Hispanic drug dealers (a cartel of some sort). He explains to Mike that there’s a contingency. The drugs are put in a torpedo shell and dropped if the sub is caught. So the drugs are sitting on the bottom of the ocean waiting to be picked up. Mike convinces Bello to use a guy Mike knows to retrieve the drugs before the Feds find it. And yes that guy is totally going to be Johnny.

Mike gets back to Graceland to find Johnny and Briggs at home. Johnny is annoyed that Mike’s westerns (doing homework to keep up with Bello) are taking up precious DVR space. Apparently Briggs heard everything Mike said to Bello and is not happy that Mike is putting a plan in motion without talking to him first. Well obviously since Mike is trying to ensnare Briggs he’s not going to run it by him. And yes, Johnny offers to be the underwater recovery guy (he almost became a Navy Seal…until he got hit by a boat the last day of Hell Week). Mike brings his plan to Juan who is rather impressed. Mike is having second thoughts though about whether Brigg is really dirty. I guess time will tell.

Charlie is still detoxing in the CI apartment. She gets up and starts puking in the toilet. Definitely not pretty. Unfortunately as she’s kind of wandering around the apartment, Johnny calls. She tries to play it off that she’s just working another case to keep busy and distract her from Whistler’s death but it’s not working. And it doesn’t help that Johnny tells her they need to give their side of the story about why the bust went sideways to the Bureau. Briggs shows up in the morning and Charlie is freaking out that she’s going to lose her job. Briggs tells her she’s screwed but gives her an option. She can take more heroin to act a little more normal before totally getting the drugs out of her system. Somehow that’s going to come back and bite her (or both of them) in the ass).

Mike gets a brief reprieve from Graceland world by hanging out with Abby (though she wants to hang at least with Paige). She wonders if Mike is trying to keep her from his roommates or his roommates from her. He can’t just tell her she can’t stay the night because he’s an undercover FBI agent. Even if he wanted to. They sort of do a double date at the bar but Mike is kind of annoyed that Paige is using her current case as her “date”. He was kind of flirting with Abbie and it turns out he’s a dealer (guess everyone kind of is around there). Abbie isn’t as naïve as she looks. She knew he was a dealer.

Elsewhere, things get rolling on the Bello front. Mike brings Johnny to meet Bello and we learn that Johnny immigrated and became a naturalized citizen while serving in the military. Boy’s got layers! In true Johnny fashion, he plays kind of hard to get and starts to walk away from Bello for not giving up details. But the tough guy act works and Bello agrees to pay him a flat fee of $20,000 to recover the sub. They even start working up a plan.

He can’t stick around though because he has the meeting with the FBI with Charlie. Charlie starts off strong explaining what went down. But she starts to come down off the high and her hands start fidgeting under the table. Johnny sees this and jumps in to take the fall for why the operation went south. It looks like Charlie is going to have some explaining to do to Johnny later on. In fact, they grab a bite to eat after and she tells him the truth. He’s hurt that she made him take the fall but he just wants her to go home and get better. He confronts Briggs about why he kept the truth a secret and all Briggs says is it was because he promised he’d protect Charlie. At least she’s got a bunch of people looking out for her. Once that tension is eased off, they start getting their plan together to find the torpedo with the drugs. They do some late night recon and find the torpedo. Not only is it US military but it’s booby trapped. Johnny actually was trained to defuse bombs and IEDs so he’s in his element now.

The next day they head out for the real operation. Bello has a boat and Briggs is standing by ready to intercept once the torpedo is in Bello’s custody. Johnny goes down and has a two way radio connection with Briggs and Mike. Things are starting to get tense on the boat as Johnny works to secure the torpedo. Bello is going to shoot Johnny to tie up loose ends. Mike convinces him to give the job to Mike (so at least he has some control). Johnny relays the fact that the torpedo is explosive to Bello to try and buy a little more time. Just as Johnny reports he’s almost got the bomb defused there is a large explosion above the water. Mike and Bello think Johnny got blown up. I can’t see them killing off one of their better characters, though. But it definitely sends Mike for an emotional loop.

Once the operation is over, Mike can’t get hold of Briggs. He runs the gambit of emotions when he sees Johnny alive and well in the Bureau field office. He’s relieved to know Johnny is okay and pissed that Briggs didn’t tell him about the bomb or that Johnny wasn’t dead. He’s so irate that he punches Briggs in the face. As they check the drugs (which the Bureau seized), Mike learns that Briggs took custody of the torpedo before anyone opened it. So he follows Briggs, thinking he’s going to have a huge revelation that he can take back the Juan. He finds Briggs beginning a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Briggs is an addict. I was a little surprised by the way the episode went but I think it’s finally moving the Mike/Briggs storyline closer to completion so I’m definitely happy about that.

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