An excellent episode 1.8 of The Enemy Within tonight, which via flashback provides a big missing piece of what happened three years ago to Shepherd, which resulted in her betraying Laine and three other CIA agents to the notorious Tal.
We already knew it was to protect her daughter. Her blurting out the names of the four-member CIA names to Tal, as he was counting down to when he would kill Shepherd's daughter Hannah, makes perfect sense. What doesn't make as much sense is why she didn't try to warn all four of them a little sooner - or why, after issuing the order for all four to abandon their current positions, she didn't follow through a little sooner with Laine. I know, she had to confirm that her daughter was safe at home, but it isn't quite believable that a leader as effective as Shepherd would be so rattled that she couldn't have multi-tasked a little more.
On the other hand, it does make sense that once she was in the mode of protecting her daughter, Shepherd's other instincts were blocked. Which brings us to the present. We saw her talking to Tal in the present, last week, and again tonight. But I don't think she's working for him. I think she's playing a long game of working for Tal with the goal of his somehow getting her out of prison - as she tells him tonight - with the goal of killing him once she's out.
By the way, it's good to see Lev Gorn from The Americans in action as Tal in The Enemy. Not only is my oldest nickname Lev, but Gorn is a convincing actor. He was a way of conveying a humanistic impulse, which is especially vexing when it's packaging the persona of a character who's a stone cold killer.
At this point, I'd say that The Enemy Within is the best espionage series that's come along on old-fashioned network TV in a while. See you here next week.
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