- Michael poses as a safe cracker to help out a reformed ex-con who is unwittingly part of a heist, and tries to sneak into the heavily-guarded office of his handler. Meanwhile, Sam gets an unexpected proposition from his girlfriend.
- The team finds the elusive Carla's HQ, but checking it out thoroughly has to wait and her security proves tip-notch. Ex-con Trevor wants to quit crime for his son's sake but dares not refuse to be master jewelry thief Timo's driver at the next heist. Mike poses as safe-cracker to make sure Timo's team gets arrested, except Trevor, but that proves harder then expected.—KGF Vissers
- Michael and Fiona continued to stake out the post-office box that might be used by Carla, Michael's new handler, Fiona annoying Michael by throwing nuts around the car -- she hates stakeouts. But finally, they get something for their trouble: A stout, older woman picked up some mail there and Michael tailed her to what he thought was Carla's building. At first glance to Fi it seemed unguarded, but he urged her to look closer: Carla's security detail was posing as landscapers and maintenance men outside the building. He lured them out of their cover by having a pizza delivery driver make a bit of a scene.
An ex-con, Trevor, approached Michael for help in escaping the criminal life. Trevor specialized in getaways and had been called upon to be the wheel man for a jewelry heist on a big trade show. Apparently this was an offer his old boss wouldn't let him refuse, because the guy only likes to work with a specific team and isn't keen on substitutions. Trevor was afraid of his boss, couldn't leave the country and couldn't go to the cops. Initially our spy was painfully uninterested, but Trevor convinced Michael to help him by saying he made a promise to his son that he'd get out of crime. Michael and Sam staked out the robbery crew's meeting place, a house by the water, which is not conspicuous at all, to let us get to know them. (And hello -- looks like the heavy, a woman named Kandi who has pythons for arms, was played by none other than Robin Givens!)
Michael wanted to get Timo, the heist boss, to call off the whole deal, so the team got Timo's typically drunk safe cracker arrested for violating parole. Fi made the first attempt by posing as a call girl trying to sell her wares, but when he wouldn't drink champagne with her, it was up to Sam to pick a fight with the guy while a couple of cops lurked nearby. Poor Sam took multiple wallops to the jaw, but his plan worked -- one scream from Fi, and the fuzz came running. Good man, that Sam -- and he did it knowing that he had a hot date coming up with Veronica, his rich girlfriend, who went that extra mile and bought him a luxury label watch (er, timepiece) to celebrate their one-month anniversary.
Unfortunately, the potential score was too big for Timo to call off the job, so he put out the call for a new safecracker instead. Enter one former spy and jack-of-all-illegal-trades...working undercover, naturally.
Back at Carla's building late that night, Michael set up a wireless Web cam so he could keep tabs on her. Sam used the camera to find a crack in Carla's security detail -- apparently an old man sitting at a cafe table was the weak link, easily lured away when someone stumbles down an alley. When Sam was out at his anniversary dinner with his girlfriend, Ronnie, he sweet talked her by saying she's a one in a million woman. Ronnie responded by asking him to marry her. His reaction was typical Sam, which is to say he looked like he was choking on razor while maintaining that roguishly charming smile.
Michael met with Timo under the guise of wanting to become his new safe cracker. After practicing all night, Michael was able to pass his audition by cracking a liquor store safe after Timo had the store shut down and put a gun to Trevor's head for extra incentive. He welcomes Michael to the gang by giving him a cell phone and informing him that he is to pick it up by the third ring, and being in the shower is not an acceptable excuse for failing to do so.
Turns out that Timo is a control freak and Michael, operating under the cover name of Joseph, rubbed him the wrong way with his detail-oriented personality. In a meeting to plan the heist, Michael asked more questions of Timo than he was comfortable with, and the boss ended the meeting. But not before sharing the "scatter point" with Trevor, an emergency rendezvous where getaway cars would be waiting if the heist went wrong. The scatter point is always located nearby the as-yet-unknown location of the heist. Thanks to a seemingly innocuous question Michael (a.k.a. Joseph) asked while grilling Timo, he and Sam were able to work off of the address Timo gave Trevor to find the target. But there was a snag in the plan: A member of Timo's team had already secured employment at the location in question. Michael couldn't tip off the cops without Timo's inside man finding out and tracing it back to him and Trevor.
Sam asked Fi for advice about the whole marriage situation, admitting that he's already married. Wait...what?! It happened in the '70s and was a one-time thing he says, and though he and his mystery wife realized it was a mistake, they never bothered to get divorced. Fi advised Sam to come clean with Ronnie, saying that if she loved him she would understand. (Yes, because if there's one person who is absolutely level-headed about romantic entanglements, it's Fi.) Sam pays off a kid to give the guards a show on his skateboard and the kid heads down the alley, luring the old man away from his table. That gave Michael an opening to enter Carla's building, exploiting this little gap in security. But as soon as he made it to the door, Timo called and told him to meet in 30 minutes. Annoyed, he turned on his heels and headed off to the job. When Michael arrived, he was given a uniform. It appeared the mission was taking off sooner than expected. Like, immediately. Saying he needed to take a leak, he scribbled this info onto a piece of paper, balled it up and dropped it on the ground for Sam and Fi, who were following at a safe distance.
Posing as repairmen, Timo's team got the heist underway and Michael began the process of cracking the safe, but Sam clipped a wire in a circuit box that made alarms go off before anyone expected them do. While everyone was getting out of their uniforms and burning them up inside the van, Sam found Timo's flashy getaway car and let the air out of a front tire. Mission of sabotaging the mission: Accomplished. Back at the safe house, when the rest of the crooks and Michael arrived, Timo did not. When Kandi asked where he was, Michael insinuated that he gave Timo the jewels, and he should be along shortly. As if that weren't enough to make Timo's high-strung muscle anxious while waiting for the boss, Fi blew up the lake house remotely, leading everyone to believe that Timo had double crossed them. Kandi tracked him down and insisted on knowing what Timo did with the jewels. Timo said he didn't have any, and Kandi shot him, leaving Taylor free from the life of crime he was hoping to avoid.
The event was not casualty-free, however. Sam showed up at the warehouse, luggage in tow, saying that following Fi's advice got him kicked out of rich girl paradise. Ronnie broke up with him. This time, he says, it's permanent.
Michael finally got into Carla's office building. Inside, he found a desk that was completely empty save for a digital picture frame that showed a photograph of him outside the building. "When you work in intelligence, there's no bigger slap in the face than a picture of yourself in the middle of an operation," Michael's voice-over said. "It sends a clear message: 'We're one step ahead of you, we're in control. We own you."
A bottle and champagne and mylar balloons splashed with the word "Congratulations" were accompanied by a big envelope that contained another crossword puzzle.
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