Episode 302: Question and Answer

Question And Answer
Season 3, Episode 2

Air date	June 11, 2009
Written by	Alfredo Barrios Jr.
Directed by	John T. Kretchmer
Episode Guide
previous Friends and Family	next End Run

Question And Answer is the second episode of the third season and the thirtieth episode overall.

Notes[]

Clients: Howard and Patricia (The Clients)
Bad Guys: Santora (The Kidnapper), Jimmy (Santora's Guy)
Others: Detective Paxson (Michael's Worst Nightmare)

Synopsis[]

Michael has trouble with Detective Paxson who tracks down a storage unit where he has hidden explosives. Meanwhile, Michael, Fiona and Sam help a couple find their kidnapped son.

Spy Facts[]

Whether you're hunting down extremists in the mountains of Kashmir or tracking arms dealers through the streets of Moscow, the life of a spy takes a toll. So during down times, you work out, eat right, and try to recharge your batteries because you never know what's waiting for you around the next corner.
Smart criminals have a variety of ways to find out if a meeting is under police surveillance. Some are more subtle than others. Throw a few punches and any cops in the area have to come running.
Behavior in a combat situation is unpredictable. Sometimes trained soldiers go screaming for the hills. Sometimes guys who've never fired anything bigger than a cap gun, turn out to have ice in their veins.
In the field, it's often your human instincts that jeopardize an operation. Helping people is great, but there are times that impulse can get people killed. Sometimes the right thing to do is let a guy bleed for a while.
When you're concerned you might be walking into a police stakeout, there are a number of things to look out for: Parked cars or vans, workers that seem unusually preoccupied, and curious kids. No matter where you go in the world, little boys like candy, puppies and cops.
When it comes to cover ID's, impersonating a bad cop is much better than impersonating a good one. An honest cop follows policies and procedures; from the way he cuts his hair, to the approach he takes when carrying out a traffic stop. Pose as a good cop, and you have to go by the book. Pose as a bad cop, and you can throw out that book and write your own.
In the criminal world, selling yourself as a colleague often means doing something illegal. So while snorting lactose isn't pleasant- it may put people's minds at ease.
Interrogation professionals don't ask questions directly. They hide what they know and don't know. Amateurs tend to ask for exactly what they want. It's like playing poker with your cards showing.
When people are desperate for information, they start filling in the blanks, often without realizing it. It's something fortune tellers rely on. It works pretty much the same way for spies. Although fortune tellers usually don't get smacked around as much.
Searching for a concealed enemy who could be anywhere is a waste of time. Usually, your best bet is to stay put and give your enemy a reason to come to you.
To tail someone, you need both skill and instinct. You need skill because the driving is tough. You can't get too close, and you can't drift too far away. You can't go too fast or too slow. You need instinct because every turn, every lane change, every bridge, raises the risk of being seen. Anyone can be trained to follow a car but it takes good instincts to know when it's time to stop following.
When you work with someone long enough, you learn to trust them. When things go bad, that trust is the difference between life and death. Of course, knowing that doesn't make it less terrifying; to back a play you know nothing about.
Every profession has occupational hazards. Butchers cut themselves, house painters fall off ladders and operatives get asked to help kill their own people.
People underestimate the tactical importance of TV in urban warfare. Guard duty's boring, and a ball game passes the time better than, say, looking for intruders. More battles have been decided by pennant races than people imagine.
It's always best to have business arguments unarmed. When tempers are high and everyone's got a gun, you never know what's going to set someone off.
When a front door is being watched, your best option often times is just to make a back door. If you don't mind getting damp, a water saw is a great tool for the job. It will cut through the wall much more quietly than a metal saw and won't ignite anything flammable that happens to be lying around.

Full Recap[]

Fiona had “Bud,” a bail-jumper, in Michael Westen’s loft when he returned from a jog, hoping that they could take him in together and entice M into working with her instead of trying to “get back in” to spy-hood. They were met on the stairs by a woman with a badge who introduced herself as Detective Paxson and called Fiona by her full name as she asked if she had a bail-enforcers license. When Fiona didn’t, she said this was a warning for harboring a fugitive and took Bud away. Paxton wanted to talk about an “incident” where three cars were totaled and three more were blown up – saying that there had sure been a lot of explosions since he moved to town. She yanked him in for “questioning” to harass him, which was apparently her style of handling cases, and smirked “welcome to your worst nightmare.” He spent 24 hrs. in the drunk tank. One of Fiona’s old bail-jumpers, Stevie who was doing time on forgery, referred his sister, Patricia, to obtain her son back from his divorced father. She wanted someone to knock some sense into Howard and M said they weren’t the ones to do it but Fiona said: “not a problem.” Sam came to tell M that his new girlfriend, Miss Reynolds, had rebuilt the entire engine and that his new detective lady was a “stalker with a badge” who had checked storage facilities on the entire Florida peninsula and found some video surveillance of him going into a storage unit by Homestead. M said he had some C-4 and detonators which needed to move before she got a warrant.

Fiona drug M along to go harass the father, as Sam wanted to have lunch for giving him the heads up, and his mother called at the last minute expecting him to plan a birthday party for himself. M did catch Howard, the father, who said that Brandon had been kidnapped and he didn’t want to tell his wife because she would call the police and get him killed. An unknown man had called and wanted information about diamond shipments at the place Howard worked. M told Howard to demand a face-to-face as well as proof that Brandon was unhurt. He did, then Santora, the kidnapper, beat him up to see if he was being watched by any cops. Santora told Howard that he wanted his stones within 24 hours and Sam followed him but he didn’t go back anywhere near the boy. M asked Sam to set up some “reverse interrogation,’ where you send in one of your own guys to be interrogated by the bad guys to see what questions they ask and thereby determine what they are worried about. Then when M and Fiona went to empty his storage shed Paxton showed up in a surprise sting but M just told her that he had come to give her receipts which would prove where he had breakfast. Sam stopped Santora in a fake cop car playing Detective Finley and told him that he had an informant, Shep, who had let slip that Santora was doing something related to a kid. For $2k, Sam said, he would let Santora question him first before he took him in to the station. Madeline flew off the handle when Fiona told her that M couldn’t make it to the party and ranted about how HE never made any effort! Santora took the bait and Sam then beat M up while Santora asked questions and they tap danced around answers finding first the name of a café that Santora used. Eventually M made up the fact that the guy he was working with was known at the café and people called him "Flowers." Santora called an accomplice named Jimmy to go check the Seaside Diner looking for a man named “Flowers.”

Sam went outside to call Fiona to go stake out the place and while he was gone Santora began cutting on M. Sam heard the screams and pulled his gun to back Santora down. Meanwhile Patricia and Howard all of a sudden became best buds again. They finally got Santora to reveal that Brandon was in a shed behind the house. Fiona got a photo of Jimmy who went to check the diner and sent it to Sam. Then she tailed the guy back to Hibiscus Island but couldn’t go all the way to the house. As Santora was going to call his guys to have Brandon killed, Sam suggested that it may be one of Santora’s own team. Then he pantomimed a description behind Santora's back for M to "confess" to meeting. Santora told M that the guy he just described was Jimmy and that shep had to die. Sam’s counter-plan was to trade guns with Santora then let him kill M out by the road to make it easier for him to explain down at the station. When Santora walked him out to the road, M flailed at him like a banshee until he was out cold then took his car and Sam’s gun. Going to retrieve his gun, Sam got the address they were heading to from Santora and phoned the island’s “security guard” with it. M called Fiona and together they rescued Brandon before Sam got there. Santora and both of his guys were arguing and pointing guns at each other, so Sam watching from outside merely shot his gun into the ground to set them off firing at each other. M told Howard and Patricia that they should make a fresh start in another town and Fiona couldn’t resist slipping into her manipulation about getting M to make a fresh start. He said he’d settle for staying out of jail and took her to the storage unit. M slipped his truck right past Paxton’s stake out to the back side of the unit where he used a water saw to cut a hole and remove all his contraband. Paxton showed up to taunt M saying it wasn’t over. At Madeline’s party they could barely swallow her “hand-baked” cake. Sam gave M a "5-pack" of imported beer then Madeline stewarded him out so Fiona could get M alone. She gave him a sheathed bayonet which had been used during the first world war for close range fighting. M said: “thanks?” Then Fiona repeated what Madeline had told her – “loving mike is always like trench warfare.” So, whispering in his ear “I thought YOU should arm yourself.”

Cast[]

Main[]

Recurring[]

Moon Bloodgood as Detective Michelle Paxson
Charles De La Rosa as Detective Lopez

Guest[]

Matt Winston as Howard
Rebecca Lowman as Patricia
Holt McCallony as Santora
Stephen Muzzonigro as Jimmy
Mack Preston as Bud
Aaron Berger as Brandon
Claudia Rocafort as Ms. Reynolds

Trivia[]

In the kitchen scene where Madeline is baking a cake for Michael's birthday she tells Fi, "Loving Michael is always trench warfare." Trench warfare was widely used in World War I. Both the Allies and the Germans fought from heavily fortified trenches, sometimes within a few hundred yards of each other. It resulted in some of the heaviest casualties of any war, if one side or the other took the offensive and left the relative safety of the trench.

Continuity Errors[]

When Michael is talking to Madeline about the birthday party, the camera flips back and forth between Michael and Madeline. In one view of Madeline there is about a fourth left of her cigarette. When the camera flips back to Madeline, the cigarette is almost whole.