'In Plain Sight': A question of loyalty, and a building collapse

Week after week we get to see Mary be either incredibly brave or incredibly crazy -- but her loyalty to her family, to Marshall, to her job, and to the people she's charged with protecting is unquestioned. On tonight's "In Plain Sight," it nearly gets her killed.

No spoilers allowed in the perimeter or on surrounding rooftops...

Five months ago in Mexico City, Lewis (Matthew Davis) is on a job with his partner, who's posing as a cable guy to plant a bomb in the apartment of a terrorist. But the explosion is much bigger than planned, laying waste to four apartments and killing 17 people. Lewis goes into witness protection, and when disaster strikes -- i.e., a building collapse downtown -- does an incredibly brave thing, saving three workers from the wreckage before being trapped himself. Mary's called away from an unusually peaceful morning (with homemade pancakes!) with Raph to the scene.

And before you know it, she's found Lewis, carefully picking her way through the rubble to get to him, and talking and joking with him to keep him hanging on until help arrives. A rescue team shows up with a medic, but they can't get to him, so Mary gets to clear the rubble, see him impaled with a pole, put in an IV, hook him up to a monitor, and try to keep him stable until they can get out of there -- which now looks to be 12 to 24 hours. Great.

Back on the ground, Marshall's main concern is keeping them safe while they're exposed in the open, which means making sure that no snipers end up on the roofs of surrounding buildings. And which means that the aggressive TV reporter who's fallen from grace after airing a story about the vice president taking kickbacks has to be kept at bay as well, lest she blow Mary's cover and ruin her career. I don't know which writer on "In Plain Sight" has been burned by a reporter, but this isn't a great representation of my chosen profession. They aren't all like that, I swear.

Turns out Lewis is pretty worried about snipers too -- he knows it's just a matter of time before the people he's testifying against, mercenary former military men working as a security force for an American company, come after him. Then Mary launches into an unexpected line of conversation with Lewis, who served in Fallujah, about how you cope with the knowledge that you killed someone. You can't do anything about it, he tells her -- it just becomes a part of you.

The surrounding floors are being shored up, which means help is on the way -- until a precision explosive in the stairwell closes off access to the building. And there's Lewis' former partner, Harrison, who served with him in Iraq and in the hired security services. He's not there to kill Lewis -- if he were, Lewis and Mary would both have been dead hours ago, he says. He just wants to convince Lewis not to testify. Lewis thinks Harrison changed the mission by ramping up the bombing, but in fact that was the point, Harrison says -- and it ended up getting eight hostages freed. It's a question of loyalty to both of them -- Harrison believes Lewis should've been loyal to his partner, and Lewis says his loyalty ended when Harrison's bigger bomb killed innocents.

Watching Lewis' failing vital signs on the monitor, Mary goes off on Lewis, calling him a worm and telling him it sickens her to have to protect someone who undermines his partner when things get tough. What Lewis and Harrison don't know is that she's got the radio on, and Stan, Marshall, other law enforcement, and the reporter (who's taken a deal not to ID Mary in her story in exchange for access) hear Harrison admit to killing those 17 people. Best line of the entire exchange, after Mary goes to great lengths to talk about how critical it is to be loyal to your partner: "Marshall, for the record, I'd sell you out for a Twinkie."

In the end, Harrison is arrested, though he tells Mary that her speech convinced Lewis not to testify. But he does, staying in the program and relocating to Seattle.

Also:

Brandi's storyline was small, but at least she got the chance to show a little bit of growth. Her performance as Jinx at the AA meeting is really eating at her, and she calls Peter (Joshua Malina) a stalkerish number of times (19 messages, to be exact) to apologize. But he's having none of it. She ends up going back to the AA meeting and standing up to tell what she did and apologize to everyone in the room. "I think it's a really great thing you guys have going on here," she says. Please let Brandi develop into a somewhat interesting character -- I like her so much better when she's not a Jinxian nightmare.


What did you think? Do you believe in loyalty -- to people, cause or ideology -- over right and wrong? What do you think of the way Mary's handling her trauma?