"Robin Hood"
This was a pleasant, leisurely episode, a definite shift in pacing as well as tone from the frenetic previous installment. In fact, beyond seeing Navi Rawat's Amita and David Krumholtz's Charlie behave more like an actual couple than we've seen before, and aside from some nice business between Diane Farr's Meghan and Peter MacNicol's Larry as they attempt to grow more intimate again, I have relatively little to note about this episode. Will Patton is quite good at keeping his occasional recurring character, Gary Walker, from slipping into an utter caricature of the tough cop with the heart of gold, and, happily for Dylan Bruno and his stunt doubles or both, Granger was required only to do one shallow dive and some running pursuit of a suspect. (Alimi Ballard's Sinclair even got to do the diving tackle of the fleeing man.)
A synopsis: The episode begins in an ornate bank lobby; only the apparent sophistication of the vault keeps it from being just as likely a chamber in a museum. An overnight bank guard is tricked into assuming the alarm system is malfunctioning, then is put out of commission with a tranquilizing dart. Our FBI unit is called in, along with the LAPD unit under Walker, only to be played by the robbers when only the relatively clueless assistant is caught, leaving the primary culprit at liberty. He seems to have struck only a very few safety deposit boxes in the vault... all of which seem to have housed ill-gotten gains, the specialty of this private, "Grand Caymans-style" bank. In hopes of helping get a handle on the case, Charlie devises a mathematical computer model to determine the order in which the robbed boxes were broken into; however, Amita is not as involved in this as she might have been otherwise, since she's a bit apprehensive about Charlie's stated intention to meet her parents, who are coming to visit. It turns out that Amita's father is against Amita getting involved with any non-Indian man, and Amita is uncomfortable first in admitting that, and even more with the prospect that her not wanting Charlie to meet her father yet will cause friction between them. Larry, meanwhile, wonders what to do with himself, unsure what his goal should be, aside from figuring out how best to reconnect with Meghan. He definitely senses it's time to leave the monastery behind. Meanwhile, the computer model seems to generate more questions than it answers at first, as do the other clues in the case. The thief seems to be putting all his loot, and reward money and blackmail money he also accrues, toward various youth-oriented charities; Sinclair and Granger seem particularly flummoxed in their attempts to control the situations the thief keeps creating. And, as it turns out, the thief was also the first "victim" of the thefts, a South African emigré mercenary going by "J.W. Piennar" (Jason Durr) who is out to avenge the death of his firefighter brother, who was killed responding to an arson fire commissioned by the director of the private bank (a suitably twitchy Tim DeKay). Rob Morrow's Don Eppes uses his discretion as the senior FBI officer to let "Piennar" escape, figuring that at least rough justice has been served. And Amita promises to let Charlie meet her family, even as Charlie promises to let her do so at her own pace.
There were references to Kathy Najimy's absent character Millie, so clearly they're not yet ready to let her disappear altogether. Next week's episode will deal in part with Don and (Aya Sumika's character) Liz Warner's relationship, and Don's troubled romantic past.
