“I made the grievous error of buying Bear a squeaky toy.”
- Finch
This week we dive right in with our POI, investigative journalist Maxine Angelus. There’s a mayoral race going on and she’s blackmailing some guy in a hotel room for some scoop. Reese is photographing her from a distance and we get introduced to the great hilarity of this episode; Bear and his squeak toy. I have to say my dog had a love of squeak toys, too. And man is Bear just the most beautiful and mellow dog, ever! I guess only responding to commands in Dutch will do that. Anyway, Maxine has covered all kinds of big name drama like Elias. Just as Maxine finishes up with her blackmailing, she gets a call from her supervisor that the FBI are bringing in loads of corrupt cops off HR’s payroll. I thought that was all done with that. Apparently not. Carter realizes that the FBI isn’t as happy because they still want the big boss (who may not be a cop). Fusco heads out and gets strong-armed by Simmons to keep an eye on the investigation and make whatever evidence is floating around or else his son may not have a dad.
Maxine runs into the head campaign manager for the mayoral candidate she is looking into and is told that he (the candidate) wants her head on a pike. She’s not really that concerned though Finch notes he’s probably not the last on their list of suspects. Maxine then chats with her boss about the whole head of HR debacle. She wants to write about that but her editor tells her she needs information and a source. Quite miraculously, she gets an anonymous call that points in the direction of Christopher Zambrano, son of one of the late Mafia Dons that was killed when Elias was taken out. Chris seems to be pretty clean which Finch and Reese think is a good way to hide his dirty ties. Plus he owns an import-export company. Maxine calls an old contact at the FBI who tells her that they have been looking into Zambrano in connection with HR. So she’s off to confront Chris and Reese is on her tail.
The meeting doesn’t go well. Zambrano pretty much tells her to get off his property. Just as Reese is about to swoop in but Finch alerts him that Maxine’s other pet project is Reese (aka the Man in the Suit). So now Reese has to find a way of protecting her without getting linked to the whole thing. Maxine is convinced she’s got the whole HR boss story sorted out. She gets permission to put it up on the paper’s website. Meanwhile Reese has enlisted Carter and Fusco for back-up since he can’t get close to Maxine without her asking questions. We got a really amusing scene of Finch being uncomfortable with Reese cleaning his sniper rifle at the library. Of course, Finch then fixes the whole “getting close to Maxine” problem by discovering she’s on a dating website and sets her up on a date with Reese. The look on Michael Emerson’s face after Maxine receives a text from Reese and Reese asks what he just said is priceless.
Reese shows up to the date in a stolen $100,000 sports car. Unfortunately he’s woefully underprepared for his date with Maxine. It seems Finch is rather miffed that Reese keeps getting details wrong. But he has a back-up plan. He had Zoe on stand-by for such an occasion. Maxine is really impressed that Reese dated Zoe Morgan. Their date is short-lived when they both get calls that Zambrano wasn’t who Maxine thought he was. They race off to his docks and find him dead. Not good. They end up at the police station and Reese and Carter have to act like they don’t know each other. Reese is about to get Maxine out of there (more as a protection for himself) when Agent Donnelly swoops in and demands to know where Maxine got the first tip. He produces her phone records and she directs him to the blocked call. Before she can ask any questions, he flits out of the interrogation room, only the reappear moments later. Donnelly gives us an info dump about Zambrano being the key witness against HR. Apparently Don Zambrano kept a written ledger of all the members of HR, including the top boss. Maxine screwed it up royally because they had just pushed through an immunity deal with Zambrano.
Reese has Fusco and Finch working on digging up the HR ledger. Meanwhile, Maxine is really not having a good day. She’s off the story because legal hasn’t okay’d her to do anything and her campaign contact is throwing her under the bus to discredit her on the blackmail scandal in the mayoral race. She calls the burner cell and leaves a threatening message. So Reese decides it’s a good idea to take her out for drinks. She tries to get him to help go through Zambrano’s financials and accounting but Reese tells her to let the authorities handle it. She admits to putting the scoop before the truth and that it cost a man his life. She wants to make up for it. Maxine walks out on the date. Reese connects with her a bit and then saves her from getting shot. He manages to take out some of the guys without giving himself away and then decides to take her somewhere safe, aka his apartment. And more comedy with the dog ensues. Finch realizes he’s still got Bear. And then Finch barely has time to hide in the closet before Reese and Maxine show up. And of course, the closet is full of guns. Lots and lots of guns. Michael Emerson has such amazing facial expressions.
The next morning Finch sends a text to Maxine and then she and Reese head for a meeting with Zoe. It turns out the shooters from the night before are ex-FBI and likely leaked the existence of the ledger to the real RH boss. Together, Reese and Maxine figure out where Zambrano has stashed the ledger (in the children’s carrousel he was importing). Unfortunately the two ex-FBI agents show up and start wailing on Reese. Carter and Fusco show up and manage to take the other guys out. Maxine gets her eyes on the ledger and thinks she’s found the top guy, one of the mayoral candidates. Fusco get his hands on the ledger long enough to rip out the pages with his and Simmons’ names on them. So it seems for now, he and Simmons are safe. I didn’t like that Simmons was working Fusco. I want him to be a true good guy. Reese ends up convincing Maxine that “the Man in the Suit” is just a myth so his cover is safe but there won’t be any more dates for them. I’m not that upset. I prefer him with Zoe anyway. She’s a lot of fun and knows his secret. Plus she sort of owes him for saving her life and all. Back at the library, Bear is happily chomping his toy sans squeaker. I guess Finch had enough. We end with a revelation of who the real HR boss is, the campaign manager that threw Maxine under the bus.
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