Hey there everyone! Sincerest apologies for my delay on these recaps but I’ve just finished up university (woo-hoo) so I’ve not had much free time. Nevertheless, my recaps are here and I’m back in the game, so let’s dive right in.
Episode 12 of Limitless brings Finch and Morra back into close proximity with one another – you just know this won’t end well…
After many weeks off our screens, Bradley Cooper’s Edward Morra is back – and running for President (of course he is!) As he prepares to make his announcement, thanks to his taking of NZT, Morra spots the glint of a sniper rifle and manages to (almost) dodge the bullet that’s fired at him. He is shot, but it’s only a graze and so Morra suddenly becomes a hero assassination attempt survivor as well as a significantly possible future President…
Finch and his team are set the task of investigating said assassination attempt, not at all helped when Sands shows up at their offices and starts idly chatting away with Naz – to be fair on Finch, I’d probably have a panic attack too – but fortunately the menacing man doesn’t let on about his and Finch’s ‘relationship’. What he does tell the feds though is that he and Morra have a suspect in mind for the shooting – a woman by the name of Piper Baird, who after taking NZT seemingly lost the plot, killed her boyfriend and went on the run (as you do). Sands tells Finch that it’s up to him to keep the FBI away from Baird and subsequently, any suggestion that Morra is involved with NZT.
It doesn’t take long for Finch and Baird to become acquainted (though I’d much rather someone introduce themselves with a simple ‘hello’ rather than a laser point from a sniper rifle) and she tells him via Morse code (what else?) to find Sammy DiPietro. One problem – he disappeared in the 70’s and his body has never been found. Finch however isn’t too worried and works his way through decades worth of FBI files until he finds what he needs – a connection. Said connection leads him to a truck driver who dumped DiPietro’s body. The driver then points Finch to DiPietro’s body, and Finch uncovers Baird’s secret hideaway, rather eerily and creepily covered in pictures of his family.
Panicked and with no Baird in sight, Finch rushes home, only to find her having coffee with his parents, having introduced herself as his new girlfriend. Eventually, she opens up to him about Morra and the whole NZT issue – she warns him that he really doesn’t know how powerful Morra is and, after she stole the enzyme that helps NZT remain stable, together with some pills, he had her boyfriend killed then pinned the murder on her. Not completely convinced, Finch meets with Morra to ask him what happened. Of course, Morra protests he had no involvement in the death of Baird’s boyfriend and as Sands hands Finch a gun, he’s told she’s now his problem and his responsibility to deal with.
Harris meanwhile is looking into the assassination attempt some more on her own and realises that no one, unless they were on NZT, could have made the shot that grazed Morra. An anonymous tip comes through a while later directing her to a former military sniper who easily confesses to the whole thing (it’s not Baird, in case you were wondering). Harris and Boyle aren’t convinced by her story and run a blood test to check for NZT – it turns out there is some in her system, but the results also reveal she’s dying from a disease which impairs coordination. Further digging into her past uncovers that her family’s house was just paid off by a third party. She’s certainly not who they’re looking for.
Finch meets with Baird again but the conversation doesn’t last long after she spots the gun. A chase ensues and as Baird heads down towards the subway, Finch, close behind, pushes her in front of a train. Sands is duly impressed while Morra stops by the FBI later to check on his ‘friend’. It becomes clear that the two are very much different people despite their NZT connection – Morra hates who he used to be before he took it, while Finch is holding on as hard as he can to who he was beforehand. Then comes the twist in the tale – Baird isn’t dead. Instead, Morra stole a cadaver and rigged it under the subway platform. Baird’s in the wind, free to carry on her synthesizing of the NZT enzyme, Morra can continue his bid for President and Finch, well, he’s about to find himself in one hell of a mess while Harris tries to uncover how a once scruffy writer could soon be running the country.
The next episode opens with the most grizzly sight of the series so far – a barbaric murder with a lot of blood. Finch is (as most people would be) disturbed by what he sees and retreats back into his mind so that the killer, nicknamed The Marrying Man, is renamed Mr Pralines and Cream (no, I don’t know why either). The feds get assistance from Quantico profiler David Englander who’s been after Mr P&C for some time, but while Mr Pompous (my new name for him) chats with the rest of the team, Finch is able to remove his original suspect from his list of potentials and instead narrows it down to two. One guy has a secret box filled with finger bones (personally I collect key-chains but each to their own) and boom, the case is closed.
Impressed, Englander invites Finch to Quantico to check out a few other unsolved murders, with Harris tagging along so that Finch can get his daily dose of NZT. The road trip gets off to a good start, however things get tense when Harris brings up Morra and how she can’t understand how he underwent such a lifestyle transformation so fast. She also knows the shooter was on NZT, so Finch is fully aware she’s in way deeper than she should be for her own good.
Having arrived at Quantico, Finch sets to work and quickly solves several cases in an incredibly short space of time and he’s rewarded by Englander handing over a signed copy of his own book (meh). In the book, he recounts the story of Mr. Butter Pecan (seriously?!) AKA Andre Hannan who strangled a bunch of high-schoolers. Now he’s on death row, and Finch can’t quite work out how Hannan, a scrawny dude if Finch ever saw one, could kill those kids in the manner he says he did. Finch heads to Pennsylvania to see him and, despite Hannan’s confession and his passing a polygraph test, Finch isn’t convinced and talks to Naz about the possibility of scientists inserting false memories into people’s brains. Hannan’s former therapist, Dr. Gilroy, it turns out is an expert in such a thing, and after a quick head shave which reveals a scar on Hannan’s head, Finch is sure his new inmate friend has been tricked into confessing to crimes he didn’t commit.
Harris meanwhile is still working on figuring out Morra and Finch calls on Sands for a favour. He’s wanting a Brooks Brothers coat soaked in Morra’s NZT free blood, so if Harris decides to test it the coat the FBI have in evidence following the assassination attempt, it won’t reveal any traces of NZT. Breaking into the evidence locker is easy, but just as he’s about to switch the coats, he notices a problem – the buttons on the old coat are chipped and the new coat looks brand new (chances are it probably is). Finch quickly chips away at the buttons to make them look worn and makes the switch just in time.
Back on the Hannan case, it turns out Gilroy has solid alibis for all the nights of the murders, but Finch won’t rest. He digs deeper into Gilroy’s history and learns that his institute got a hefty donation from a billionaire tech guy whose son Nolan Bale, is one of Gilroy’s patients. A quick DNA test later and Finch and the team have enough evidence to implicate Bale, his father and Dr Gilroy in the murders and the framing of Hannan – job done.
At the start of episode 14, the FBI are looking for another individual to help them out with their ever-growing workloads and after a number of hopeless interviews, take on a guy named Spike. Elsewhere, as she’s been doing for the last two weeks, Harris is still on Morra’s case and it doesn’t take her long to spot that the buttons on the coat are different, something which only makes her more determined than ever to suss him out.
Fortunately for her, and more-so for Finch, the pair have a murder to solve. The name Quentin Walker pops back up – he’s the guy from CRAFT who lent Finch a jetpack, FYI – and it turns out that the woman invented said jetpack, Eloise Carlisle, is now dead. Carlisle has been busy working on mind files and the idea that one day, people could upload a copy of their brain and all its information into a computer system. She placed herself as test subject 1 and so all her knowledge remains accessible, allowing Finch to look into the case using CRAFT’s computer systems. He finds emails that prove she was selling mind files – 6 of them including Quentin’s – to a big buyer, and that she’d used someone by the name ‘Scrub Jay’ to fence them.
Since one of the stolen files belonged to an artist whose key focus was painting naked people, Brian sets about creating a forgery, using Spike (a far too willing Spike if you ask me) as his model. The forgery is so good (of course it is) that it lures Scrub Jay out but before he can reveal anything, he’s poisoned. Fortunately, Finch manages to uncover his real name and that leads him to a few of the many items he’s fenced and the big buyer of the mind files – the Global Enterprise for Research and Development. They admit to purchasing the files, but it turns out they’re pretty useless as the software that allows the heads to use the data isn’t ready yet. Being the NZT-fuelled smart guy he is, Finch quickly makes upgrades to Carlisle’s file and is able to ask her a serious of questions relating to who she believes may have killed her – she responds by making reference to an unstable co-worker she’d been having an awkward relationship with. Said co-worker is named Gerard, and he killed her after she tried to break up with him. He then stole an old copy of her mind file and a few others in order to make it look as if she was the corrupt one *tsk tsk*
Spike’s time with the feds is then cut short after Mike and Ike do some digging of their own and find he’s been informing on Finch to ADIC Johnson, and Harris is desperately trying to get hold of the clerk working the day Finch switched Morra’s coat out. She turns up at his apartment a while later with news that the clerk is dead, supposedly from a peanut allergy – but she’s not convinced. Sands is being REALLY bad at his job and drawing more attention to himself and Morra than ever…surely it’s only a matter of time before he really screws things up?
What did you make of this latest run of episodes? Where do you think this story will go next? Comment below to let me know and I promise I’ll be back on time next week!
