TV Review: Crisis “Here He Comes”
By: Brandon Wolfe
It’s Day 5 of the kidnapping and Finley and Dunn are hatching a plan to use the materials recovered from Jonas Clarenbach’s house as bait to lure the kidnappers out into the open. Playing on a hunch that the kidnappers have tapped into the cameras present at the regular meetings the FBI is holding with the parents of the taken children, Finley and Dunn play for the cameras and mention the recovered files and where they can be found.
Gibson, of course, sees this and dispatches his senior henchman, Koz, to leave his post guarding the captured soldiers and investigate the files, winning Koz over when he mentions that Finley will be present and that Koz can take his revenge on him for the murder of his brother in the pilot episode. Dunn, meanwhile, receives a text from a blocked number from someone stating that they know she is Amber’s mother and that she will help them out. Dunn, after some initial reluctance, fills Finley in on this and he runs a trace on the number, which turns out to belong to Joel Schearing, Amber’s biological father.
Koz shows up at the location mentioned by Dunn on-camera and sends the files over to Gibson, which are photos linking Gibson to the soldiers as well as a map that is encrypted. Koz leaves and is tailed by the FBI, but stops at a gas station. He seems to walk out of the station and resume his drive back, but while the other forces of the FBI continue to follow the car, Finley and Dunn suspect something is amiss and decide to check out the station. They don’t find anything inside, but the car leads the FBI to what they believe is the compound containing the children, due to the positive identification of one of the hostages, Taylor Bennett, at the scene. But they soon discover that they’ve been led to a decoy mansion by Taylor’s father, who has been coerced by the kidnappers into participating in this ruse. Finley and Dunn, in the meantime, have hung back at the gas station and finally see Koz emerge.
Koz has been given the coordinates from the now-decrypted map that lead him to a storage unit used by Clarenbach. Inside, he finds photos of many deceased people. Finley and Dunn arrive and Finley pursues Koz to the roof, where they engage in a vicious fight. Finley gains the upper hand and Koz tells him that if he lets him go, Koz will text him the location of a hostage that’s currently in the trunk of his car, but will get nothing out of him if he doesn’t. Finley allows Koz to escape, which seems like an appallingly stupid decision until Koz does indeed fulfill his end of the bargain and the promised hostage is recovered. Finley and Dunn then have a look at the storage unit and deduce that the photos are of the civilians killed by the soldiers in the video. Finley comes to the conclusion that CIA Director Widener is continuing to use the program to make soldiers into his own personal hit squad. Believing they’ve discovered the key to what the kidnappers’ goals are, the duo goes back to the tapped cameras to confront the kidnappers with what they’ve learned. Gibson sees this and soon a nearby cell phone rings from an unknown caller.
Meg Fitch has a sit-down with Widener to gain some information about what’s going on. Widener shows her the video and informs her that the soldiers were given a drug to make them better capable of handling traumatic situations, but in effect has just made them repress their emotions, rendering them into mindless killers. The drug, it turns out, was produced by Meg’s pharmaceutical company. Meg wants to know the main kidnapper’s name and offers to deliver Jonas to Widener in exchange for it. Jonas actually tracks down Meg, with whom he was in love with, and Meg has accompanying CIA agents take him in. She in turn is given Gibson’s name by Widener, but is ultimately more broken up about what she has done to Jonas than she had initially led on.
Meanwhile, at the mansion, Kyle comes up with a plan to alert the outside world by setting a fire. He tells Beth Ann, who confides in Gibson about it, still under the impression that he is simply her lame, ineffectual father. Kyle is able to start the fire, but doesn’t get too far due to Gibson being prepared for it. Kyle takes the blame for the fire and is promised punishment for it, but Gibson, still using his unassuming status among the hostages, confronts him about it and says he needs a better plan, offering his services.
The one thing you do have to give ‘Crisis’ is that the show moves. It’s a very busy series and rarely ever slows its pace. It is not an interesting series, but at least it keeps briskly trotting along. But all of its problems are still running strong. Why should we care about this secret program to brainwash soldiers? More to the point, why should we care about any of these people? None of them has any sort of distinct personality. Everyone is defined solely by the archetypal roles they’ve been assigned. Finley and Dunn, in particular, are excruciatingly dull heroes. They’re basically Boy Agent and Girl Agent. ‘24’ fell into many of the same traps as ‘Crisis’, particularly in its later seasons, but the one thing it had that aided it immeasurably was that Jack Bauer was a very distinctive protagonist. Angry, flawed and morally ambiguous, Bauer was a gripping figure that could pull you through all the bad writing and plodding story developments. ‘Crisis’ doesn’t offer anyone with such distinction to latch onto, and the show can twist and turn its narrative in all the directions it wants, but without filling that hole in its center, none of it will make much of a difference.
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