Intelligence 1.12: Cyber Adam and Eve

Intelligence checked in with its best episode of the season last night, with the first a two-part finale, of what I hope will be the season not the series.

The set-up puts everyone on the show in crisis:  Mei Chen has killed three high-level agency people, and made it look like Gabriel did it, under some enemy's nefarious control.  This sets Gabriel and Riley - who of course implicitly believes in Gabriel - on the run, and gets Lillian removed from command, too.   The Cassidys are expected to keep working for Cyber Command, but soon lend their acumen to helping Gabriel and Riley find out what really happened with the murders.  This leaves Lance Reddick's Tetazoo in charge of a mostly ruthless Cyber crew - hey, it was good to see Reddick back on the screen after his character was killed last week on The Blacklist - but in a good final twist, it seems he may not be that bad, or at least not the worst, after all.   If we can believe Mei Chen, she was working for someone else in our government when she did the killings and framed Gabriel.

There's lots of good material here, not just for the finale but a second season.   Gabriel gets the cyber drop on Mei by pretending he's enjoying her overtures and appeals that they both comprise a new kind of humanity who are above the rest of us, whatever the side, U.S., Chinese, or otherwise.   But as the audience at least can see, this perhaps was not a complete pretense on Gabriel's part.   He likely not only finds Mei physically attractive, but agrees to some extent with her view that the two of them share something very special and different.   The question for the future would be, to what extent?

Meanwhile, it was good to see Lillian take her most independent stance in the series so far.  Cyber Command and Gabriel and Mei indeed represent something never seen before in intelligence gathering and espionage, and binding such an operation to old-fashioned government structures and lines of command will never be able to make the best use of it, and indeed may hobble the operation.

Intelligence has rolled out a provocative start to an original and important narrative, and I'm looking forward to more both next week and next season.

See also Intelligence Debuts ... Intelligence 1.2: Lightning Changes ...Intelligence 1.3: Edward Snowden and 24 ... Intelligence 1.4: Social Media Weaponry ... Intelligence 1.5: The Watch ... Intelligence 1.6: Helix meets Rectify and Justified ... Intelligence 1.7: Nanites ...Intelligence 1.8: Heart of Darkness, Cyberstyle ... Intelligence 1.9:  EMP Amnesia and Children ... Intelligence 1.10: Lillian's Daughter ... Intelligence 1.11: American Chernobyl Countermeasures

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