Summary
“Invisible” tackles post-traumatic stress among veterans as the team hunt down a rogue Army sniper.
This recap of FBI: Most Wanted Season 1, Episode 5, “Invisible”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Continuing a run of tackling complex and sensitive subjects, FBI: Most Wanted Episode 5 opens with U.S. Army sniper Scot Weitzen (Cillian O’Sullivan), a prolific marksman nicknamed “Cyclops”, unravelling at the funeral of a friend and fellow soldier before going on a killing spree at a shooting range after a petty disagreement with an employee. That employee he leaves alive — the shot would have been too easy, according to LaCroix (Julian McMahon) and his team.
Scot, then, has a point to prove in “Invisible”. After being trained to kill and remain unseen by his country, he has returned to a home he doesn’t recognise and can’t assimilate into, as hidden now as he ever was. But his spree has given him visibility; it’s a particularly personal case for Kenny (Kellan Lutz), who understands all-too-well the feeling of abandonment that comes after hard service abroad.
A scene at a veterans meeting helps to articulate how insular this community is; even Kenny, an infantryman, isn’t looked at in the same way as these specialist killers, trained to operate alone. One of them sports the tell-tale bruised knuckles of unchecked aggression, which is the one thing Kenny can relate to, but it’s left alone until later. Before that, Scot’s abandoned car is found, as is the empty pill bottle inside it, and a letter from the VA rescheduling his psych evaluation. Based on the date, he retrieved it after the shooting, and the mailing address is his mother’s home. There, Scot’s mother Corina (Carolyn Baeumler) confesses that she kicked him out of the house. Had he lost his arms or his legs overseas, she would have perhaps been able to deal with it, but he “lost something inside”, and she didn’t know how to care for him as a result. Tracks outside lead to the spot where Scot spent the night — he was testing them again, and proving how capably he can become invisible once more.
The pills in Scot’s car turn out to be addictive antidepressants, and Kenny guesses that Lenn (Ian Michael Stuart), the man with the bruised knuckles he met earlier, is likely on the same drugs and shares a supplier. He’s able to convince Lenn to reveal the name of that supplier, a Corporal Palmer (Slate Holmgren), aka “Gungrave”, who has been profiting from the veterans’ pain. But he blames the government, who train these men to kill, send them to war, and then get them addicted to pills. Kenny struggles to keep his own anger in check, and LaCroix has to chastise him.
The team’s next lead in FBI: Most Wanted Episode 5 takes them to a storage container full of guns, ammo, food, and Christian iconography — Scot is devout. As they leave, he opens fire on them from a distant hillside, popping all the lights in the area. Warning shots. He’s toying with the team again.
Security footage from the storage unit taken an hour after the initial shooting shows Scot contemplating suicide, but he’s saved by something he sees on the TV. It’s easy enough for the team to figure out that he was watching a news report of his crimes; there’s that visibility again, perhaps too tempting to a man who has spent a life and career being invisible. In a standout moment, Kenny describes the pressure of service, of learning to confront and witness death and then returning home to a world that has no use of the skills, no outlet for the pressure. Kellan Lutz, historically an awful actor, makes a case for himself here.
Scot left a trail while looking through the medical files of his friend, Danny Macula, whose funeral he attended at the top of “Invisible”. LaCroix and the team visit his home and speak with his father, Henry (Karl Kenzler), who reveals that Danny committed suicide by hoarding painkillers — an escape from life being bedbound. He also explains that Scot called just before Danny died, asking for the last picture they took together. In that picture are Scot, Danny, and Danny’s visiting nurse Christina — LaCroix deduces that Scot believes Christina can somehow help and heal him, and she’ll be his next port of call.
Christina, as it turns out in FBI: Most Wanted Episode 5, is deeply religious, and clashes slightly with LaCroix. She’s also riddled with guilt over Danny’s death since she failed to notice his hoarding of the painkillers. The team worry that if Scot calls her she’ll be receptive to him, and so put her under surveillance. When she makes an unscheduled stop at the house of Laura (Angel Giuffria) and Josh Miller (Zak Corrigan) to retrieve medication that the former no longer uses, it’s obvious that she has been in contact with Scot. While at the Miller household, LaCroix is reminded of his late wife, since Laura is a veteran who lost her arm in Iraq.
The team hatch a plan to turn Christina against Scot by faking Danny’s autopsy reports to show that he overdosed on antidepressants rather than painkillers; therefore his death cannot have been Christina’s fault, but Scot’s. She buys it and reveals that Scot is in the basement, but she won’t leave or let the team hurt him. When the team storm the basement along with soldiers, Scot isn’t there — as they leave he opens fire, wounding several of the men from a concealed position in the trees.
In a slight change of pace, LaCroix’s attempts to talk Scot down are unsuccessful. Instead, he gives his phone number — retrieved from Christina — to Hana (Keisha Castle-Hughes), who turns on his phone’s microphone remotely, allowing Clinton (Nathaniel Arcand) to track him and counter-snipe just as Kenny rushes into the open to drag a wounded soldier to safety. Scot is killed, and while Christina is distraught, it’s Kenny who’s able to convince her that she was doing what she was trained to do; she has to continue helping people since the world needs more people like her. In much the same way that last week’s episode was about Barnes (Roxy Sternberg), “Invisible” put the focus squarely on Kenny, who admitted after the standoff that he needed to check back in with his support group.
In a touching final scene in FBI: Most Wanted Season 1, Episode 5, LaCroix visits his wife’s grave with his in-laws, Mary Lou (Irene Bedard) and Nelson (Lorne Cardinal), his daughter Tali (YaYa Gosselin), and Clinton, after having been reminded all too vividly of the price she paid for her country.
