It may not be a ground-breaking show. It may never win an Emmy. But in the paraphrased words of Al Franken’s SNL character Stuart Smalley, “It’s good enough. It’s smart enough. And gosh darn it, people like it.” Intelligence assumes that its viewers are, well, intelligent, and interested in a smart, fast-moving show. And that’s what they give us.
This week’s episode, Athens, dealt with Gabriel’s vulnerabilities caused by his chip. Remember Jin Cong, the Chinese terrorist who caused problems in early episodes? You didn’t think he’d just head off quietly to prison, did you? Nooooo! He’s back, and still trying to get into CyberCom’s secrets. Lillian and Dr. Cassidy have created a list of people who have the genetic mutation that allows the chip to work when implanted – and everyone on this list are children. This Athens List is what Jin Cong wants – presumably to find these children and take them to use for his own chip experiments.
Jin Cong has developed a multi-pronged attack to get through the many layers of CyberCom’s security. He attacks on a day when the lab is being visited by a congressional delegation, including a know-it-all Congresswoman. When it’s obvious that nothing but drastic measures will keep Jin Cong out – and it turns out not even then – Lillian orders Jameson to use the “Orion Protocol,” which involves manually severing the computer lines to keep Jin Cong from accessing CyberCom’s system. Who knew that a chain saw was standard office equipment?
But in a calculated move by Jin Cong, the methods he uses to break into CyberCom, including an EMP, wipe Gabriel’s memory (but not his use of the chip). He doesn’t remember anyone at CyberCom, and at one point, Jin Cong is able to convince Gabriel that Riley had been involved in an attempt on the president’s life (and has planted faked documents into the CyberCom service that Gabriel accesses – see the end of this article for some of those that were tweeted by producer Michael Seitzman), and that he, Jin Cong, is a friend. Believing that, Gabriel gets him access to this Athens list. Gabriel has to relearn how to use the chip, but he doesn’t understand what it is, why he has it, or what has been done to him.
The night, though, belongs to Nelson Cassidy (P.J. Byrne), the show’s comic relief, from the opening shot, with Cassidy trying to sweet talk – literally – his printer into working; to his thwarted attempt to die bravely. When Jin Cong threatens to shoot him in order to get to the Athens List, Cassidy tries to stand up to him, saying “But know this…. ummmm, I got nothing.” And when he at one point grabs a gun and tries to shoot one of the invaders, he can’t believe what he just did: “I just killed somebody!” Agent Jameson replies, “No, you didn’t, all you did was kill the ceiling.” “I don’t have to pay for that, do I?” Nelson wonders. (And during the live tweet, @IntelligenceHQ, the writers’ account, tells us that yes, Nelson had to pay for that…)
Still without his memory, Gabriel is outraged when he learns that there is a list of children with his same genetic mutation. He accuses Dr. Cassidy (Nelson’s father) and Lillian of being monsters. Dr. Cassidy is outraged that the list had been kept, and not destroyed as he believed it had, but Lillian reminds him that he works for the US government, and had no realistic expectation that anything that potentially important could have been destroyed. Jin Cong and his group, Athens list in hand, attempt to escape CyberCom, but Dr. Cassidy, who was in a different area of the building at the beginning of the invasion, had placed a limited-range EMP bomb of his own near their vehicles, and sets it off when they get to the cars. But they aren’t down for long – I think we can expect this list, and Jin Cong, to resurface in the near future.
Last week, I told you about the live tweeting done by cast members, producer Michael Seitzman, and the writers – they were at it again this week, sending out several new pictures and answering questions from fans during the show. I got some responses from them – at one point I tweeted that “Nelson, we love you!” (and we do, he’s my kind of goofy nerd), which garnered the response, “So wait, you mean we shouldn’t kill off his character?” and a “favorite” from PJ Byrne (who plays Nelson). That kind of quick comment makes watching a show like this more fun, even if it means that you have to skip back on the DVR because you’ve just lost your train of thought!
Here are some of the great pieces that were available if you followed the live tweet session (and knowing that many of you aren’t on Twitter, or don’t follow these live tweets during the episode, I’m happy to reproduce them here!).
Faked documents supposedly detailing Amelia’s role in the Mumbai attacks:
An incident report “showing” that Riley was involved in planning an attack on President Obama, and a picture of her as part of Obama’s security detail:
And Lillian Strand’s CIA dossier (I apologize for the quality of a couple of these items, but thought they were too interesting to leave out):
