‘Graceland’ Recap — Episode 1.09, “Smoke Alarm.”

Well, this is officially the only episode of Graceland so far that has made me clutch my hair and scream “What?!”

And it just kept happening.

The plot has finally settled and we all know where the episodes are going—Briggs is Odin, Mike is investigating Briggs, and Charlie is also investigating Briggs, though Mike is just doing it under orders at this point and Charlie has an actual suspicion about the Odin thing.

We start out with Bello in his safe house, since the Kaza now knows that he double-crossed them with Odin, and he gets Mike to train his shooters with the new heavy-duty firearms he procured. Meanwhile, Briggs sets up an obvious trap for whoever is on Odin’s tail, using an account that’s known to be connected with Odin to purchase a motel room and setting up a camera in it to see who shows up. Of course, Charlie is hot on his trail, and shows up and finds the camera—but runs into a Mexican officer who’s there investigating Odin as well, and he asks her to work with him. Of course she’s wary, and just says she’ll think about the offer.

Then, Mike discusses the whole Bello thing with Briggs, saying that they should arrest him just then before any more people get killed, and Briggs says that they have to wait so they can get a lead on Odin and the Kaza, and particularly, Jangles, and uses the particular phrasing, the monsters will lead to more monsters. Mike figures that Briggs just wants vengeance on Jangles, and Briggs doesn’t hide this. Looks like Mike’s finally wising up to what’s going on around there.

Wising up a little too much, in fact—because when he goes to see the officer he’s reporting to about Briggs, the officer repeats verbatim Briggs’ quote about the monsters, and Mike finds that extremely suspicious. So he smashes the gift he got from the officer—kind of a waste, like, he couldn’t have just taken the frame off—and finds a bug in it, which he is understandably upset about. So he confronts his officer about it, and gets a whole story about how said officer suspects Briggs not only of skimming drugs of heists for his own purposes, but murdering an entire house of agents years before.

So Mike is kind of like, holy shit, but doesn’t have much time to act on this surprise because he gets sucked back into the Bello thing.

Meanwhile, Johnny is doing what he can to help, and goes to a bar with Briggs to try and get some information about Odin, and what ends up happening is Briggs spots one of Bello’s men selling out to the Kaza, which means Bello’s safehouse is about to get attacked—with Mike in it.

And of course, Briggs is a little too late getting there with the information. The sprinklers go off at the safe house, and Mike goes to turn them off, only to find a bunch of dead guards. And when he finally goes back inside, after calling for backup, he finds Jangles torturing Bello to try and get some information out of him. Mike attempts to kill the guy, but gets stabbed instead, just in time for Briggs to come running in with a bunch of other agents. They arrest Bello, and Mike gets the agents to pretend to arrest him too to keep up the ruse.

So, Mike ends up drugged up in the hospital, and Paige is there when he wakes up, making sure to tell him that the doctors say he’s going to be okay. But then he spills, and says that he was put in the house to investigate Briggs, and Paige freaks out—for little reason, it seems, but these plots usually go deeper than they show us at first.

And if that wasn’t enough, Mike’s supervising officer goes to investigate Briggs’ role in the death of the agents—and decides to use the guise of Jangles, and Briggs is also completely wasted. The officer’s last recorded words were that he was going to investigate Briggs, and during the scuffle that ensues, Briggs accidentally shoots and kills the guy.

I guess we can conclude that the shit has thoroughly hit the fan.

Catch the next episode of Graceland on August the 22nd at 10/9c, only on USA