Summary
“Partners in Crime” delivered another perfectly solid (if predictable) episode of FBI, which remains a notably consistent procedural.
This recap of FBI Episode 13, “Partners in Crime”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
If “Partners in Crime” proved anything about Dick Wolf’s FBI, it’s that the show is almost a perfect procedural. The episode plots are virtually infinite. The characters are fixed in clearly-defined roles where they can occasionally reveal nuggets of personal information without ever having to go through any major arcs of change. It might remain a solidly three-star show forever and ever; no better or worse each week, just a finely-oiled, sleekly-efficient hour of television, delivered by experts in exactly that kind of television.
The progression of each episode tends to be the same, too, even if the details differ. The inciting incident in “Partners in Crime” was a bank robbery; unglamorous, but within the purview of the FBI, so what can you do? An interesting wrinkle this week was that it was also in the purview of the NYPD, represented here by a likable local officer who didn’t have much patience for the Fibbie’s rather long-winded investigation into the perpetrators.
It had to be long-winded, though, since as always things weren’t quite as they seemed. Among the robbers was a young girl who had disappeared months prior. Had she been kidnapped and forced into the crimes against her will, or had she run away, lured by the promise of a Bonnie and Clyde-style life of crime?
Blame the blogs. The girl, among other, similar victims, had been preyed upon via her personal blog, meaning that they were indeed victims; told if one attempts to escape or give the game away, the other will be killed. FBI has a well-established fascination with victimised young girls, but then again so does real life. Maggie (Missy Peregrym) and OA (Zeeko Zaki) insisting that the robbers were themselves victims didn’t do much to salve the jurisdictional issues between the FBI and the NYPD, but “Partners in Crime” did an admirable job of not characterising the uniformed officer as hasty or irrational; if anything, it was the FBI who looked like they were putting innocent people at risk.
In the end, of course, the day was saved. Maggie, undercover as an EMT, was able to get close enough to punch up the perpetrator, but it wasn’t Maggie who ended up offing him: The captive girl, in a brief moment of retaliation, filled him full of lead. That’s what happens when you mess with girls who write personal blogs, folks. They’re dangerous.
