The Fly Team’s newest member got a crash course in how FBI: International operates.
The Season 2 premiere introduced Eva-Jane Willis as Megan “Smitty” Garretson, the Fly Team’s new Europol liaison.
She hit the ground running as the team had to handle a case involving a murdered police officer in Paris that grew into stopping a massive attack.
Meanwhile, Forrester had to handle the ramifications of the Season 1 finale with his mother on the loose and a deadly man with a vendetta out to get him.
Plus, Raines made a surprising choice on his future in the FBI and with the team.
This made Unburdened an exciting start for Season 2.
The City of Lights turns deadly
In Paris, a woman was trying the old “missing ring con” only for a man called Matthew Davis to warn some tourists about it. Before he could do anything, a man came up, stabbed him in the throat, and marched off as tourists reacted.
In Budapest, Forrester was in bed, remembering the events of the Season 1 finale. He headed to work, seemingly unaware that Vladislav (Adam Fidusiewicz), the brother of the man Forrester killed in that finale, was after him.
Before Vladislav could do anything, a car of Russian gangsters pulled up, their leader warning Vladislav he was already in trouble for failing the job. He forced him into a car with Forrester having no idea how close he’d come to being shot.
Forrester met Vo and Raines by the headquarters as they bantered a bit, with Forrester wanting to talk to Raines about something important.
Kellett introduced the group to their new liaison, Megan “Smitty” Garretson, who was an old friend of Forrester from a famous drug bust. With Jaeger having been promoted, Smitty was now taking her place.
She had good timing as they got the call on Davis’ murder to jet to Paris.
In Paris, the team met Commander Beaumont (Jarret J. Merz), who shared how Davis was investigating RedGrave, who they thought was a shell company for brokering illegal arms sales. The company was located in Delaware but had European connections for a joint task force.
Beaumont suggested they look up Corine (Aude Le Pape), a local informant Davis had been using.
Kellett talked about Smitty, with Forrester admitting even he didn’t know where her nickname came from but trusted her. They checked in with Corine, who was shocked to hear Davis was dead.
Corine worked for Chimique, a RedGrave subsidiary as the “eye candy” to put customers at ease. When she heard her bosses talk about using weapons for mass casualties, she spoke to Davis but was scared of wearing a wire.
She mentioned Keith Panzarasa, her boss, who was reluctant to get out of this. Vo and Raines went to Chimique, which appeared empty. They found someone had put a hard drive into a microwave, but Raines found a router he could still use.
Before they could do anything else, Panzarasa himself (Matthew Bellows) charged out of a room to knock Vo down. He and Raines fought with Panzarasa stomping on the memory drive before running to a car that took him off. Vo was struck by how the car had diplomatic plates.
The politics get messier
Raines was still confident he could put together something from the drive and managed to find a photo of Fontainebleau, a small suburb outside of Paris that was home to a museum.
Smitty found some keys that were on Davis’ body, and she and Kellett found a secondary apartment in Paris. They talked about Smitty and Forrester spending over a year traveling across Europe on that Trojan Shield case, and Smitty learned a lot from Forrester. Smitty shared how she grew up with a mystery-loving mother, so got into it.
They found Davis had kept files on Dechets, a waste company, as Smitty made the horrifying realization they handled the spent plutonium fuel rods from nuclear power plants with one truck going through Fontainebleau.
The team arrived on a bridge just in time to find some gunmen hijacking a truck full of the rods. One held the team and the cops off with a machine gun while the other put some fuel rods into a case. They blew up a car to take off with the nuclear material.
The team figured Panzarasa had decided to graduate from just smuggling machine guns and missiles to radioactive materials for a dirty bomb to sell to the highest bidder.
Panzarasa somehow got himself named a diplomat to Dondi, a tiny West African country, giving him carte blanche to travel the world and, more importantly, use diplomatic immunity to get out of his crimes.
They headed to the Dondi embassy to speak to Ambassador Akin Dogo (Robert McKewley). Kellett questioned him about selling passports and titles while Raines checked out the upper floor.
He snuck into an office to plant a device on the computer so Vo could hack it and send an email supposedly from Dogo to Panzarasa claiming to be ready to revoke his status unless he paid them.
Raines snuck out of the office as the team left. The good mood at the job was ruined when they got a call and showed up at a field to find the bodies of the hijackers, who hadn’t secured the radioactive material well and died of radiation poisoning.
Stopping a deadly sale
As the team knew they had to stop a bigger attack, they got a response from Panzarasa on the “deal” Dogo made. The team headed to the public square set up for the meeting to see Panzarasa show up.
Somehow, Panzarasa knew it was a trap and took off running with Forrester giving chase across the town and several rooftops before finally catching him.
Panzarasa refused to talk until he was shown the bodies of the hijackers as Kellett pointed out, he was likely exposed as well and needed medical help.
Panzarasa finally admitted he’d made a deal with some Middle East factions and wanted immunity to say more. Vo was outraged at cutting him a deal as Raines pointed out that stopping the bomb was more important.
Smitty offered a good prison cell in France or a harsher sentence (perhaps the death penalty) in the U.S. for aiding terrorists. Panzarasa decided to give in and supplied the names with the team, impressed by Smitty’s work.
Panzarasa had sold the bomb to Omar Fane (Andre Squire), a Dondi enforcer fighting off coup attempts, and figured a dirty bomb was just the thing to quell insurrection.
The team raided his place to find it empty, but his manifesto had them realizing Omar was going to set off the bomb in Paris as revenge for “stealing” Dondi’s resources and attacks on its citizens.
Thanks to a tip from a neighbor’s kid, the team found Omar in a town square, holding the case with the bomb. Seeing how disoriented Omar was from the plutonium, the group surrounded him, each playing like they were a tourist to subdue him and secure the bomb.
The team thankfully wasn’t exposed to the radiation too long and got a good sendoff from Beaumont.
Back in Budapest, Forrester brought up how Raines was set for “the management route” in the FBI and prepared him for the leadership course in Washington. To his surprise, Raines said he no longer wanted that as he preferred being a field agent over being stuck behind a desk.
Smitty asked, “is it always gonna be like this? Action, action, action?” When Kellett said “yes,” Smitty said she was “good for it.”
She noted how Forrester was “unburdened” since she last saw him, with Forrester saying he was happy about his mother and leading them to talk over a beer.
It was a bold start to Season 2 that showed Smitty’s skills as Raines takes a new course in his life.
FBI: International Season 2 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on CBS.