This week’s episode of Countdown, “Bite ’em Down” picks up in the seconds following Damon Drew’s shooting. Our team’s outspoken number 2 is rushed via ambulance to hospital, with Meachum by his side, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood from his abdominal bullet wound. In the lobby, the team waits for word, but when it arrives, delivered by an uncharacteristically rattled Blythe, we learn that Drew is dead.
With the team reeling from the news, Blythe urges them not to take time to retreat and lick their wounds. With Volchek in the wind, it’s time to turn up the pressure in the search to find him.
Meanwhile Shepherd and Blythe pay their respects to yet another grieving widow, and Meachum and Oliveras bond (just a little) over Meachum’s sense of guilt at a badly executed op that allowed room for a preventable death. Oliveras recounts a memory of the day her training agent was shot and killed during a raid, and how the guilt ate her up afterwards. However Oliveras’ attempts to persuade Meachum to get his head back in the game are not entirely successful. Meachum is having trouble remembering specific details from Volchek’s extensive plans and maps in Mikhail’s restaurant basement. The fact that the entire building went up in smoke, taking all that papery evidence with it doesn’t exactly help.
Meanwhile, in a kick ’em while they’re down dick move, District Attorney Grayson Valwell turns up like a bad penny once again. This time he wants the Police Commissioner to transfer the LAPD officers (read Finau and Meachum) working the case to new assignments.
Blythe pays him a visit and whisper-threatens him to “Back off the transfer or you’ll see a side of me you won’t like.”
Later though, Blythe asks Bell’s opinion of Valwell, and is surprised to learn the DA actually seems like a decent enough guy. Could Blythe actually be thinking of getting Valwell onside?
Meanwhile, the team focuses on finding Mikhail, but when they turn up at his house to arrest him, they find his wife Tatsi instead. Tearful Tatsi claims to know nothing of her husband’s business or his work contacts, but Meachum and Oliveras — superheroes of the interrogation technique — aren’t buying it, with Meachum declaring he hasn’t seen a performance that shitty since Jar-Jar ruined Star Wars.
Eventually Tatsi cracks, and admits she has a way to contact her husband via a chat-board protected by a VPN. Using knowledge only Tatsi could know, the team uses her to set up a meeting with Mikhail, where following a chase through Chinatown, they finally manage to capture their first real cog in Volchek’s great wheel.
Mikhail proves surprisingly slippery though. He brazenly claims he thought Meachum was an escaped convict (which in fairness he did pretend to be), and that his sudden appearance in the restaurant made him fear for his life. When he took Meachum out the back to kill him, he was apparently just pretending, and thinking to use the opportunity to scare him away while he called the police. The story infuriates Meachum who is already feeling emotionally fragile following Drew’s death, and Oliveras is forced to turn off the interview recorder while Meachum physically threatens Mikhail to come clean. However it appears Mikhail is more afraid of Volchek than the task force, and the team are left at a dead end once again.
Eventually Blythe and Shepherd find another cog in the wheel — Mikhail’s cousin, owner of the Prius in which Mikhail made good his escape on the night of the shooting. There follows an unexpected extended gag about Priuses in general, and I have to wonder if its been put there as part of an outtake, or if the show’s writer Derek Haas really have a hatred of hybrids in general? Then just as swiftly as it began, the Prius-bashing ends, and the team go pay the cousin a call at his place of business, where Oliveras plants a couple of grams of heroin in his pocket before “discovering” it in order to get him to talk. He gives up the name of Mikhail’s daughter, the sheltered love child of Mikhail’s mistress. Later Meachum asks Oliveras if she didn’t flush that brick after all. She lies and tells him she did. Mostly.
The gang feels they have what they need to put the pressure back on Mikhail. However before Meachum and Oliveras get the chance to have another crack at him, Shepherd elects to try. She has noticed a similarity in looks between herself and Mikhail’s daughter Anya. In the interrogation room, she tells Mikhail that if he goes to jail, word about his terrorism charge will trickle down to Anya. Shepherd paints a descriptive picture of Anya’s future. People will shun her. No one will date her. No one will marry her. Deportation looms. Pills! Vodka! Needles! The Morgue! it’s all too much for poor Mikhail, and he agrees to set up a meeting with Volchek.
However Volchek, ever one step ahead sends a decoy to the meet, and when the team pounces, they seize the wrong guy instead. Volchek has slipped the net yet again, and when we next see him he’s glowering in a darkened movie theater, no doubt observing all the American consumerism around him (popcorn! comedy! freedom! laughter!) with deep resentment.
However it’s not all doom and gloom. The final minute sees Drew’s widow paying a visit to the team to encourage them to keep trying and not to blame themselves for Damon’s death. Her words seem to be the encouragement the gang needs most, and we get the feeling they’ll be taking the fight to the enemy in next week’s “Blurred Edges” episode.
Just-released photos from tonight’s episode “Bite ’em Down” featured in our review above follow below.
Countdown continues Wednesday, July 9 on Prime Video.
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