Vo learned the hard way how tragic life in the Fly Team can be on a thrilling FBI: International.
A huge attack in Voice of the People sent Vo on a personal quest that threatened to cross some lines. But, it also caused her to reflect on how amazing it is Forrester and Kellett can balance work with their romance.
A great morning turns tragic
The episode opened with Vo in bed alongside her coffee shop beau Lukacs (Jon Tracy), who offered tickets to a music festival. The pair soon arrived there to meet Raines before Vo had to head to work.
Just as the agents walked off, an explosion tore through the crowd behind them with another explosion knocking them back. Amid the chaos, Vo found Lukacs with shrapnel in his leg.
Vo and Raines returned to the HQ, Vo still in shock over this. The rest of the team were at police headquarters to meet Kobey Farkas (Adam Boncz), who trained with Forrester at Quantico.
No one had taken credit for the blast with a dozen fatalities, including five U.S. citizens working for Trumantis Capital, the American company sponsoring the festival. Forrester assured Farkas they were in as “Budapest is our home.”
Vo and Raines insisted they were ready to go as they checked out the company’s owner, Bartalan Agostan, who’d been killed in the blast. Raines ran a check on the bomb materials while Forrester noted even Tank seemed shaken by this.
Only one place in Budapest had the amount of chemicals needed to make the bomb. The branch manager, Bill Davies (Terence Maynard), claimed no knowledge of this and that ammonium nitrate was a dangerous substance but gave up a list of their clients.
One company that stood out was Gazda, run by Victoria Bern (Didi Anderson), which Trumantis had heavily invested in only for them to pull out, kicking off a lawsuit that left her nearly bankrupt. She had bought a ticket for the festival but walked away without a scratch.
Bern claimed she had been there but left long before the bombing. She claimed to be helping her country with her company and that Agostan had been a friend despite the lawsuit.
Bern said they’d already found another investor and all that nitrate was for a new project. She then showed evidence that the factory had been claiming to ship more nitrate than they actually had.
Another bomb on the way?
Davies shared that someone had arranged to skim some nitrate off several shipping orders, more than enough to create at least two more bombs. Delivery man Elek Simko (Jadran Malkovich) seemed the likely suspect.
Forrester, Kellett, and the police raided Simko’s apartment to find it empty but traces of another bomb being made.
Vo visited Lukacs at the hospital, where he was mostly okay with leg wounds but haunted by seeing a friend from his work dying in front of him. Vo vowed she would find whoever was responsible with Lukacs upset she was leaving him alone.
Simko had worked for the chemical company for 20 years only to be given six months before being fired after Trumantis bought his company to automate the workforce. Then, Simko had to train the robot that would replace him for added humiliation. Throw in a divorce and bankruptcy, and the man was out for revenge.
Heading to meet Simko’s ex-wife, Vo confessed to Forrester about Lukacs and that she wouldn’t let personal feelings cloud her judgment. She finally opened up on how she knew all about Forrester and Kellett to ask how they maintained a relationship. Forrester stated it was hard to handle the “distance” of the job and personal life that could be too wide to cross.
Irena Simko (Maja Bloom) was cagey about what happened until confronted with the images from the festival. She shared Elek became angry after losing his job, attending protests for Hungry for Hungarians. Before they could go on, the entire building shook from another bomb across the city.
Stopping the third bomb
The latest site was the factory building the robots that would replace Elek. The team theorized his next target was another company he felt responsible for his woes.
They checked up on Hungary for Hungarians, begun by Octavius Varga, a professor arguing Hungarians needed to fight for themselves. At a rally, Varga (Endre Hules) told a crowd to “draw a line” for order.
He told Forrester and Kellett he was tired of watching foreign companies “trying to buy” his country and claimed to have never met Simko until shown evidence of e-mails and even a photo with him.
Varga still insisted he’d never given Simko any help or openly told him about the bombings, yet it was clear he inflamed an already upset man to go to extremes. When Forrester accused him of using others, Varga brushed off, “every revolution has collateral damage.”
A line from Varga on “the first place,” had Forrester realizing Simko was going to blow up his plant, which, with all the chemicals inside, would be an explosion that could take out an entire district of Budapest.
The police raided the plant to find Elek had beaten Davies to give up the location of a dinner of the company’s higher-ups. The team and the cops raced to the restaurant with Vo spotting Elek at an outdoor cafe. He tried to detonate the bomb, but the cops managed to jam the signal.
Realizing he had to set the bomb off manually, Elek ran toward the restaurant with Vo in pursuit. She managed to bring him down with Elek snapping that he was “sacrificing for the greater good” before Forrester dragged him off to the cops.
While the team was happy about stopping the bomber, Vo complained that they were giving Hungry for Hungarians a platform. Forrester used Oklahoma City as a reminder that “no one remembers the militants or their message,” but people remember the heroes on the day and the victims.
Forrester confronted Varga about radicalizing Elek and he had Elek’s victims’ blood on his hand. Then, Farkas arrested Varga as they’d figured out that the “raffle prizes” he gave out at rallies (including to Elek) counted as funding terrorists.
Vo went to see Lukacs at the hospital only to find him chatting with his brother. She headed out to take in an elderly couple on a bridge before gazing at the Budapest night and mulled over her future.
It was a thrilling hour trying to stop the bombing as Vo also found herself dealing with how her job will shift up her personal life.
FBI: International returns with new episodes Tuesday, January 4, 2022, at 9/8c on CBS.