I think that we all know as we walk into any one of the episodes of FBI‘s we are pretty sure that we’re not going to always walk away happy or with everything that we love in place. But we know that when we watch FBI we’re going to be moved by the performances and the team.
OA, Maggie, Scola and Tiff lead this show with such grace and ease that you are invested in these characters. You’re on the edge of your seat, waiting for them to solve the case and to win.
Because they are the people that don’t give up. They are willing to put their lives on the line to protect others, but also to help the people that need it.
One person that has blown us away this season is Katherine Renee Turner. She steals every scene she’s in, but also her character has been written so beautifully and with such strength. Her character arc of growth has been a joy to watch and we can’t wait to see where they take her character.
Tonights episode was no different, Tiffany shining.
This episode is entitled, Fostered, and in it, “the team investigates a string of jewelry store robberies that culminate in a double murder, they uncover a connection to a 16-year-old boy trying to survive the foster care system. Also, Tiffany becomes personally invested after learning about the boy’s ill-fated upbringing.”
Lets break it down.
This case starts off with a man trying to propose, but the moment he’s asking the jewelry store gets robbed and his girlfriend is shot. Heart breaks as he’s kneeling beside her, just hoping that she’s gonna make it. But she’s gone.
She was a DHS employee – a federal employee – so the FBI is called in. Tiff and Maggie are working together as the boys are in Grand Jury. Maggie asks the man if he remembers anything, but he was scared. He doesn’t remember.
Your heart breaks for him.
Tiff is on the inside and finds a watch on the ground. It’s a fake, one she knows is a GPS tracker. But this means there could be another one and she is right. They are able to trace the other one to a corner, where drugs are being sold. The dealer says that it was given to him by a white man for coke. With his information they are able to trace the vehicle to a pawn shop.
The owner, has priors. When OA and Scola arrive, they find the pawn shop owner dead. But they also find a box of the stolen watches, which leads the FBI to scouring the area for any information.
Elise is able to find a video of a kid, two hours prior to the murder, walking and holding the box. Because of a reflection in the window they are able to find the kid. He’s 16, and has had a life of hard knocks. His Mom died when he was young, and seven years prior his Dad was shot by the cops. He’s been in the foster care system, and hasn’t had the best time.
Maggie and Tiff go to talk to his case worker, who says that Jamal is a good kid. She doesn’t believe that he could be involved. Maggie is firm and tells her that he could be involved in murders and Tiff tells her that the sooner that they get in to help him, the better things could be for him.
But you wonder – what if he’s already in too deep. This kid, Jamal, seems like a good kid. He’s at his job, when Tiff and Maggie go to get him. He asks not to be handcuffed in front of the kids. Maggie agrees and they take him to 26 Fed.
His caseworker is with him and Jamal is scared. They ask him where he found the watches and he says in an alley. And then he lets it slip that is what he was told. See his foster brother was the one who asked him to go to the pawn shop and he would get a cut of the sale. Part of me wonders if Jamal actually believes his brothers or if he’s just naive. Tiff and Maggie are all over him, trying to break him, but Jamal is acting as innocent as possible.
I don’t want to think bad of him at all, because this kid has had a million things happen to him. I am also paranoid that he’s going to get hurt and that kid is a good kid. They end up making Jamal wear a wire.
The kid who is playing Jamal makes you wonder if he’s innocent or guilty. Sometimes he is a good liar, sometimes he is a bad one. He heads into the house and Tiff is trying to make him calm, but he’s not. He’s nervous. He’s scared.
But he does what is asked of him. Until his brother catches him in his room and he has to pivot. You can tell that Jamal doesn’t want them to get into trouble. He doesn’t want anything to happen to them. And suddenly the feed goes out as his brother is incriminating himself.
Jamal swears to Tiff and Maggie that he didn’t make it go out (we all know he did). They don’t buy his lies but there is a limit to what they can do. However, for what they have on video, they can get a warrant. So they are going to work the case.
What they find is that everyone is gone. Jamal played them. Maggie is ready to tear him apart and Tiff has a soft spot where she’s trying to reason with him. It’s a little confusing when she asks Maggie to be able to talk to him alone.
Tiff warns him that it’s his last chance when he says that they didn’t leave him behind. That is his giveaway that he knows something. But for him, these people are his family.
Maggie is a little confused by her request so she asks Scola about it. She says that Tiff has been acting weird ever since she heard about Jamal’s circumstances and Scola asks what they are. He then says that he thinks that he knows what is going on.
That sentence alone makes me smile. Because it means that Scola and Tiff are learning more and more about each other. They used to have to many walls between them and this means that they are getting close like partners should be.
When Maggie asks Tiff if she got something she says that she thinks she does. She doesn’t believe that they’ve left, she thinks that they are going to rob a bank.
Part of what I love about Tiff is that she picks up on things that others don’t. Her and Maggie are complete opposites, their approaches being different, and they are both good. But what I love is that you can feel Tiff’s compassion, her heart, and all of the ways that she wants to make a difference.
She’s right about them robbing a bank and by the time that the FBI gets there, they have already shot someone. Tiff and Maggie almost make their way in but they take a hostage, so the team backs off.
The foster kids and their foster father are robbing banks. Percy, the Foster Dad, has them committing felonies to give them a leg up? What sense does that make? The system is broken and it needs to be fixed, I will admit that and I will tell you a million times over we need to do something in this country to fix it. It’s not okay.
Percy believes that he is giving them a chance, but what he is doing is taking their lives from them. He tells Tiff that they don’t care about the kids, but we all know if anyone does, she does.
She tells him that releasing some of the hostages will do them good. And hey, they decide to do that, but run out with the hostages, which results in a chase.
The team is able to catch two of them. OA and Scola can run. Still don’t get how they go so fast in those uncomfortable pants, but what do I know? Maggie and Tiff enter the bank to get the last two and to be honest I thought that Percy was going to make them shoot him. But Tiff knows how to get to him, because she’s been listening. She knows that he wants to be a Dad to these kids, so when she asks him to not to leave these kids without a Dad.
Tiff and her wisdom, the way that she does her job, the way that she makes everything come together and knows how to get the job done. But this case is personal.
See Tiff is the police office that shot and killed Jamal’s Dad. She didn’t have a choice, it was a good shoot. But she feels a bigger responsibility to Jamal, because she feels her choices left him an orphan. That’s not something that she can live with.
It’s something she will forever blame herself for.
When Jamal asks her what happens next, she doesn’t have the answers. She understands that he warned them because he had felt that he had finally found a family. Which in a way, makes it worse, because he’s just lost family again.
The highlight of this season has definitely been Katherine Renee Turner and her performances. She once again shows us how she adds to FBI and makes it a better show. We’re thankful for that.
FBI airs Tuesdays on CBS.
