FBI recap: Maggie feels the pressure in an explosive case

Some undercover jobs can be more dangerous when an innocent is caught in the middle.

As the FBI team still reeled from the shocking death of Rina, Maggie undertook a dangerous undercover job putting her on the line of fire in the aptly titled Under Pressure. 

An explosive delivery for the FBI team

At a bar, two men were talking, with one telling the other that “it’ll be all right in the end.” They were served by Maggie, who told owner Colin McConnell (Christopher Redman) she was taking a break after palming one of the men’s phones. She headed to a van where the rest of the team hid to try and get a trace on the phone with Maggie saying Colin didn’t want to get involved after giving up a tip.

Maggie headed back inside just as one of the men realized his phone was missing. She played for time by spilling a drink on him while slipping the phone back, telling Colin it was under control.

Across town, a package was delivered to an office while the team found nothing on the man’s phone, hinting it had been erased. Meanwhile, a councilman opened up that package only for it to explode, blowing apart his office.

Jubal brought the team up to speed on how the bomb was just like the one used to kill a police inspector a few weeks earlier. Colin had overheard Dominic Lawson (Hunter Emery), Eric Park (Rage Lewis), and James Wright (Don DiPetta) toasting that cop’s death and called the tip in to the FBI.

Given Maggie had eyes on all three men at the bar, it was hard to tell how they could have pulled off the bombing. Councilman Archer’s secretary claimed to have no idea who could have done this but remembered a strange man waiting outside the office.

Video caught a guy (Bob Jaffe) dropping off the package, but his age didn’t indicate a connection to the younger anarchists. A man for the delivery company recognized him as Brian Moore, a homeless man he was giving a break to. 

It turned out Moore was Brian Markham, wanted for sexual assault, which seemed an odd background for a bomber. Markham was attempting to escape by bus, the team cutting it off with Markham threatening to set off another bomb. He claimed, “I didn’t know” before being arrested, and the “bomb” was just a bluff.

An unlikely recruit

Markham claimed to have only been hired to drop off a package with no idea it was a bomb and knew he couldn’t turn himself in with his record. He wasn’t much help identifying who hired him and only knew them through their bad attitude.

A video proved Markham’s story with the man looking like Park. That left Maggie to find out more as she saw the trio heading into a back room. Colin was reluctant to let Maggie go deeper as this had already turned into a bigger deal than he anticipated.

Maggie brought the trio some beer but couldn’t get much further. She brought Colin to meet OA to enlist him into wearing a wire around the men. Colin refused, worried about his daughter and how Dominic had given him a break once.  

OA wanted to use more pressure, but Maggie refused; OA figured Maggie was affected by how her last undercover assignment had gone badly. Maggie brushed it off to use a listening device. 

Maggie slipped into the backroom to set it up while Dominic and Wright were suspicious of the “construction van” OA was using. He had his gun up as they rapped on the door before heading off. Colin had to stall Dominic until Maggie was finished, hissing at her never again to put him in that position. 

The bug picked up the trio mentioning someone called “The Duke,” who was Luka Dukowski, a convicted bomber who had spent time in jail with Park. Scola and Wallace led a team to the apartment, killing Dukowski in a gunfight before finding a bomb lab all set up. Worse were plans for a truck bomb that could take down a building.

With the trio in the wind, the team began searching for the kind of truck needed to hold a bomb that big. Colin was horrified at what they were planning while distracted by how there was no one to watch his daughter, Ava. Maggie sent him to be with her while she watched over the bar. 

The bug caught the men talking about the raid and Dukowski’s death and wondering if Colin or Maggie had dropped a dime on them. OA headed into the bar to provide some backup.

Taking a wild ride

Posing as a customer, OA was trying to warn Maggie just as Dominic began questioning her background and where Colin was. They were interrupted by Park while Jubal warned the agents the men had found the wire. 

The agents saw the trio split with Maggie figuring Park and Wright were going for the bomb while Dominic was going after Colin and insisted on helping him. She and OA showed up to arrest Dominic, who snarled he was just coming to warn Colin, but “I should have just let them kill you.”

Surveillance found Park and Wright inside the truck and realized they were pulling off the attack. Maggie and OA pressured Dom to give up where the truck was going, but he insisted they were changing things. When Colin talked about killing innocent people, Dominic snarled, “innocent? They’re the reason my sister is dead!”

Put on the spot, Colin related how Dominic’s sister had been killed by a crazed homeless man a few weeks earlier. The councilman had overseen a homeless shelter nearby with the murdered police inspector making it a “safe space.” Dom wanted revenge for his sister while Wright and Park just wanted to cause some chaos. 

The agents pulled up to the shelter, with Park and Wright running only to be swiftly caught. With three minutes to go and the bomb impossible to stop, Maggie jumped into the truck over OA’s objections and drove it toward a nearly empty naval yard. She managed to get clear before it exploded. 

Asked by OA what she was thinking, Maggie admitted she was still guilty over losing a contact in her last undercover case and “I don’t ever want a good person to get hurt for doing the right thing.”

Maggie dropped by Colin’s home to find him packing up and moving to New Hampshire. He berated her for putting him in harm’s way and not caring, driving off before Maggie could explain she did.

It was a pretty intense case for Maggie, especially with the sad realization not everyone is grateful for being saved.

FBI Season 4 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS.