Another excellent Intelligence tonight - 1.5 - with another completely different kind of story. This diversity of story style, an almost different genre every week, keeps viewers on their toes and is one of Intelligence's most appealing characteristics.Tonight we get Gabriel and Riley out to rescue a Senator's daughter kidnapped by a Mexican drug king, in a story that could have been on NCIS-LA. But Gabriel of course has all the fancy computer connections and graphics in his head, which makes for far faster response time than on NCIS-LA, and a minimum of trivial chit-chat in the control center.
We also get to meet Lillian's father, played by Peter Coyote, always good to see on the screen. Lillian, who's proving to be a more interesting character than first I thought, has a difficult relationship with her father, as she would with any government bigwig who marches to his own "greater good" drums. Lillian's going against her father's orders in the end is one of the best moves she's made in the series to date.
But my favorite part of this episode concerned an old-fashioned analog watch - the kind with second, minute, and hour hands - and the way it helps Gabriel crack the last part of the case. This is good writing and an example of something else that puts Intelligence a cut above the rest. A lesser show about a chip in the brain and cyber-command would wield nothing but digital super tech on behalf of its stories. But Gabriel has an almost MacGyver-like affinity for anything that does the job, anything he can press into service which happens to be at hand, however mundane.
One last thing: it's good to see the stirrings of attraction between Gabriel and Riley. This can be trite if handled clumsily, but I have a feeling Intelligence will roll it out in the unexpected and satisfying way it's shown us everything else so far.
See also Intelligence Debuts ... Intelligence 1.2: Lightning Changes ...Intelligence 1.3: Edward Snowden and 24 ... Intelligence 1.4: Social Media Weaponry
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