Complicated relationships make interesting story lines. And Intelligence is creating some great complications, personal and political! Last week’s episode, Delta Force, gave us more insight into Gabriel’s past, and we learned that not even his cyber-abilities can always predict a correct outcome. What is the CIA director up to? Can he be trusted? Is CyberCom being set up? I strongly suggest that you follow the live tweets during the airing of each episode – writers, actors, and producer Michael Seitzman all tweet, and Seitzman has provided some interesting graphics during the sessions that not available on the Intelligence website! I’ve included several of them with this review (most have the #IntelligenceCBS notation in the corner).
Now that we understand and accept the premise of the show – that a human can have a computer chip implanted in their brain and use it to access intelligence sources – the producers are being very smart in moving this a little more into the background and focusing on the characters in the show and how they use the chip. It’s like a magic trick – see it too often and you get bored; talk less about it and it’s still interesting when it pops up. Yes, Gabriel can hack into security systems, pop locks, look at drivers license databases, spy on your Facebook accounts. Sure, he creates cool virtual worlds that only he sees – but what good is it? What can it accomplish? How does it affect the people around it, and the person who controls it? And that’s where the stories are moving.
Michael Rady as Agent Jameson
Last week, CyberCommand learned that someone has been killing off members of the Bolivian government, and the US is determined to keep presidential candidate Javier Leon safe, since he has indicated that he will be cooperative with the United States. And they have the identity of the killer – who turns out to be Gabriel’s former best friend, John Norris, from his Delta Force service. Riley and Gabriel travel to Bolivia to meet with CIA agent Cogan, who is supposed to set up a meeting for them with Leon. Before they can meet up with Cogan, he is killed in his home, and Gabriel believes that Norris is responsible. Agent Jameson (Michael Rady, who until now has been extremely underused and almost invisible) is sent to guard Leon, his wife and his brother-in-law, in a CIA safe house, until Riley and Gabriel can locate and bring down the assassin.
Lance Reddick as the CIA Cheif, Marg Helgenberger as Lillian Strand of CyberCom
Gabriel has a crisis of conscience during this hunt. When Lillian tells him to make sure that Norris is “neutralized,” Gabriel asks, “So what, I’m an assassin now? You push a button and I kill a man?” Lillian answers, “Yes, I push a button, and you kill a man.” But Gabriel can’t just do that -he lives by the Delta Force creed that “everyone goes home,” and determines to learn the truth about his friend and the political assassinations.
Former Delta Force friend John Norris with Gabriel
The cyber chip is used in a cool way between Gabriel and Norris – when Norris arrives at the safe house where Leon and his family are waiting for a meeting with the US Undersecretary of State, Gabriel finds that Norris has unknowingly gone into an area seeded with land mines. He is able to access a diagram of the mines and lead his former friend out safely. The picture below is one tweeted by producer Michael Seitzman during the episode’s airing.
Gabriel leads Norris through the mine field using the chip render
But the danger to Leon is closer than they think – Leon’s wife and brother are planning to attack him and the Undersecretary, because they don’t want Bolivia to be involved with the US. Gabriel learns that Nestor, the brother-in-law, a former football star, is planning the attack, and Jameson, Gabriel and Riley are able to prevent it. This graphic was tweeted by Seitzman – it was created to be shown as part of Gabriel’s intelligence render when he learned more about Nestor.
And they also learn that Norris is not responsible for the attacks on the Bolivian politicians – Cogan, the dead CIA agent, misunderstood his directive and killed the politicians in an effort to guarantee that Leon would be unopposed in his candidacy. Lillian now has more reason to mistrust the CIA director, who she believes set her up have Gabriel kill Norris – was Cogan really ordered to kill the candidates? Is the CIA trying to use Lillian’s CyberCommand group to carry out missions – and take the fall if they’re discovered?
If you’re interested in following the live Twitter feed during each episode, follow these accounts: @RadyMichael, @IntelligenceHQ (official writers account), @IntelligenceCBS, @MichaelSeitzman, and @drlawyercop (writer Aaron Ginsburg). Sorry, Josh Holloway and Meghan Ory don’t have Twitter accounts!
