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Where There's Smoke
Season 4, Episode 8
Where's-the-smoke
Air date July 29, 2010
Episode Guide
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Past & Future Tense
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Center of the Storm

Where There's Smoke is the eighth episode of the fourth season and the fifty-second episode overall.

Notes[]

  • Clients: Sarah, Christian
  • Bad Guys: Eddy, Jacob

Synopsis[]

Michael, Jesse and Sam have to come up with a plan to save Fiona when a job protecting a businessman at a house party takes a bad turn and puts Fiona's life at risk.

Spy Facts[]

As a spy, you try to work only with an experienced team. Going into the field with someone who doesn't have the proper training is a recipe for disaster. There are times, though, when having a civilian on an operation is unavoidable. In those situations, you just have to make your pitch and hope for the best. 

In banks and other secure facilities, the biggest threats are the ones you invite in. Getting a job dropping off sandwiches requires fewer background checks than getting a job guarding millions of dollars, but it gives you the same access. Plus a tip. 

Most commercial facilities link smoke and security systems. Trigger one alarm and you trigger them all. Smoke alarms work by detecting irregularly dispersed light. Setting one off with a cigarette requires a little time and a lot of lung capacity. 

When you're working a protection detail, it's all about observation. You're looking for broken locks, blocked motion sensors, the subtle signs that someone's trying to breach security. Of course, some security breaches are a lot more subtle than others. 

It's a good sign if kidnappers wear masks and shy away from cameras. By protecting their anonymity, they protect their hostages. If a kidnapper lets you see his face, he's probably not planning on letting you live to testify against him.

Kidnappers see hostages as commodities. Like a good stockbroker, they'll protect their investment until it's time to cash in. If they see a risk, they'll hedge against it. 

Creating an explosive device in the field requires a strong knowledge of chemistry and the ability to improvise with whatever equipment happens to be lying around. An old fire extinguisher makes an ideal compression chamber. Add some metal shavings and the right cleaning supplies, and you can serve up a bomb that will blast right through a cinder block wall. 

A good smoke signal requires dense, visible clouds of smoke or vapor. You can't just light whatever's handy on fire and hope for the best. Rubber burns with a thick, black smoke that's perfect. Put a burning pile of it in an air conditioning duct, and the house's ventilation system will carry it out where it can be seen from a distance. 

Alcohol was used as an energy source and a weapon long before anyone had any idea what gunpowder was. It doesn't contain enough energy to qualify as a top-grade explosive, but in most situations, it's a lot easier to find a bottle of vodka than a brick of C-4.

Handcuffs can be a hostage's best friend. The same steel that locks you up can set you free. Use the cuffs for leverage and apply enough pressure, and you can break the weakest piece of whatever you're chained to. But it might not be the only thing you break. 

Only 10% of a 60-watt bulb's energy is dispersed as light. The rest is heat. Fill one with a flammable liquid, and it only takes a couple minutes for the bulb's warm glow to turn into burning shrapnel. 

Horsepower and torque are the measure of any sports car. But on winding roads, the key to fast driving is fast breaking. Four-piston disc brakes will kill speed quickly and smoothly, allowing you to keep your foot on the gas longer. 

The security of a safety deposit box is less about the box than what's guarding it. Banks spend all their resources keeping thieves out of the vault. Once you get in, every last dime can be had for the price of a roto-tip drill bit. Once you've got what you came for, the trick is just getting out before security shows up. 

The life of a spy demands a kind of cool attachment. When your job requires you to to keep secrets and break trust, you learn to keep people at arm's length. It's one thing to lie to an asset. It's another to lie to a friend. 

Full Recap[]

Michael Westen and Jesse asked Madeline to help them case the Miami Trust bank and use what she did best – smoking. Jesse delivered sandwiches to the security room while Madeline lit up down in the vault to see what the reaction would be. Jesse’s plan nearly got her “burned” – except the security guard felt sorry for her having to put her dead husband’s photo’s in the box. “First thing Frank’s been good for in 30 years,” she told them. Ms plans were to get into the legal office above the vault somehow and then blast their way through the floor – “they’re lawyers, they have it coming!” Sam and Fiona got all dressed up in formal-wear to pretend to be Charles and Charlotte who were going to guard a rich man’s party and prevent anyone from stealing a new battery. Before Fiona left the loft her passive-aggressiveness was blatant enough to have everyone asking M: “what did you do to her?” Christian Aikins' house had "more security than the bat cave”; but, the masked guys with machine guns weren’t there for the battery, rather for Aikins' wife, Sarah. They shot up the place and Fiona had no option except to go with Sarah pretending that her husband was just as rich.

The kidnappers disappeared like ghosts and turned out to be Mexican brothers, Jacob and Eddy, who were expanding their business northward. They called Aikins on his web cam and M began acting as hostage-negotiator. They saw Fiona blink “no” in Morse code, meaning they had seen the kidnapper’s faces so would be killed. Aikins acted like a complete buffoon the whole episode and disobeyed Ms instructions at every turn putting Fiona's life at jeopardy. Fiona even had to argue with little Princess Sarah the whole time she was making a bomb and stealing a phone to call M. While Fiona was on the phone she overheard them taking Sarah out of the building because her husband was the only one who paid! Their 20 hours of lead time had now turned into only one. Jesse had been told to watch Aikins but hadn’t. M told Jesse "You can beat youself up about it later, and I'll help you."  Sam saw Fiona’s smoke signal and said “where’s there’s smoke, there’s Fi.”

Fiona wiled a bottle of Vodka out of Jacob and broke free from the chair she was tied to. She rigged a light bulb full of alcohol to blow up and called M to say that he needed to go find Sarah. Sam waited outside the house. Jesse finally forced Aikins to tell where the payoff would be: his CFO was going to the Lighthouse at Cape Florida. Fiona stalled Jacob with “last requests” until the light bulb blew up and she could take down Jacob.  Sam came in and took out his buddy saying: "Honey I'm home."

M appeared at the drop and showed Eddy a photo of Jacob duct taped to a chair with Fiona’s fire-extinguisher bomb between his legs and a watch taped to the top. Eddy gave Sarah to M who then took their guns and shot their tires. M then convinced Eddy that the only way he could save his brother on the other side of town before the bomb went off was to call the police on himself in order to get them to reach Jacob in time. The police snapped up Jacob and grabbed Eddy at the airport after his 911 call. Back at the loft Fiona said “you should see the other guy” and seemed to have forgiven M, while Jesse acted uncomfortable and left.

Madeline had washed the masks that Fiona took from the kidnappers and told Jesse that "maybe you and M can use them in your  bank heist." She also observed to Jesse that “M and Fiona love each other, and hate each other, but it’s always each other.” When he said that he knew that, she told him "And I believe you, but you might want to work on your poker face." Mike and Jesse were through the ceiling, into the vault and back out in under a minute - and found an old Bible in box 64. It was a book code and belonged to Simon Escher – who M told Jesse that he didn’t know.

Cast[]

Main[]

Recurring[]

  • N/A

Guest[]

  • Laura Regan as Sarah Aikins 
  • Steven Culp as Christian Aikins
  • Yancey Arias as Jacob
  • Paulo César Quevedo as Eddy

Trivia[]

Continuity Errors[]

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