Second Look: Limitless Episode 2 – “Badge! Gun!”

Limitless Episode 2 “Badge! Gun!”
Written by Craig Sweeny & Marc Webb
Directed by Marc Webb
Aired September 29, 2015 on CBS

Second episodes of network series are never elegant; tasked with reiterating the major bullet points of the preceding pilot, any creative momentum from the first episode is often stifled as a show tries to both repeat itself, and also step forward and start to realize itself, experimenting with ideas and stories beyond what it shows in its first hour. That tension often defines the second episode of a series – and for a few minutes of its first act, it definitely feels like “Badge! Gun!” is putting Limitless into a similar box. Instead, Limitless smartly uses its second episode to use its few points of familiarity as bridges rather than anchors, guiding the audience through its twist-filled procedural narrative, while it slowly begins to fill in the world around its main characters with a bit more detail.

“Badge! Gun!” centers most of its story on the death of a Pulitzer-nominated journalist from a car bomb, which becomes Brian’s first official NZT-enhanced case on the FBI payroll – except, instead of checking out crime scenes and interrogating witnesses, he finds himself confined to a desk while on NZT. This makes sense, of course – as his new boss points out after he breaks out and escapes from his two handlers (who he’s nicknamed “Mike and Ike”), his immune system is a national security secret – but Brian finds himself drawn to the case, because the deceased journalist, in Brian’s words, “knew who he was – which makes him basically the polar opposite of me”.

From there, “Badge! Gun!” watches Brian push up against the limits imposed on him by the FBI; or, more accurately, him shove his way through them, as he chases the trail from dead journalist to construction company security officer to biolab executive. And for the most part, “Badge! Gun!” does a pretty good job keeping the more incidental, superficial story about corrupt executives and biological warfare light (which is good, because it’s a few shades too ridiculous to be taken seriously), using that as a background to develop the show’s more serialized elements.

If anything, the story allows Limitless to paint Brian Finch as a slightly different type of the light-bearded, failing-upward trope his character is quite an obvious play on. All throughout the episode, Brian is seen taking the time to help other people; talking to a couple in trouble and a father seeking direction, taking time out of his day to fight with his father’s insurance company, giving advice to his family while on an NZT rush – and of course, not giving up on Stephen Fisher’s case after the bombmaker Taurus is found and the FBI is ready to move on to other cases.

It really does a lot to humanize Brian, whose wit that shines through some of the more perfunctory material we see in the investigative scenes. While visiting his father in the hospital, he straight up asks Brian if this is what he wants for himself, which Brian defines as “an opportunity he had no choice but to take”; it’s a strong reminder of the personal and professional desperation we saw from Brian just an episode ago in the pilot – and that while that drug has given him a direction in life, it’s not exactly leading him to the places he expected.

In between that, this second episode actually manages to do a lot, teasing Brian’s interest into his conversation with Eddie Morra in the last episode (we also overhear part of a news report mentioning Morra may be running for another office) as he deals with the post-NZT crash (even with a magic shot, there’s still some aftereffects) and tries to wrap his head around lying to his family about what he’s doing and who he is becoming.

Of course, a large part of “Badge! Gun!” is manipulating events so Brian doesn’t spend 20 episodes sitting in the FBI offices looking at bomb schematics and talking to himself in file storage; and as it did in the first episode, Limitless delivers its bullshit with enough tongue-in-cheek that its ludicrous premise works, quickly building a rapport between Brian and the personalities at the FBI – from Naz, to Mike and Ike, to Spelman and Rebecca, the latter of which is where the series is already finding its comedic voice (alongside some of the visual touches, like Mike and Ike’s reaction to Brian’s pre-emptive text, the goofy visual device tracking Brian’s movements through the episode, or when Brian tells the Eukaryote CEO “remember when you weren’t going to jail five minutes ago? That was dope”).

These moments give Limitless a voice amongst some of its more straightforward procedural elements; and again, grounds Brian at important moments, in quieter scenes with characters like Rebecca – and memorably, his father, who warns him that he’s not going to continue playing along if he’s lying or withholding information from him. That conflict – which grows a bit deeper when his father’s new nurse is clearly on Morra’s payroll, ruining Brian’s plans of using attorney-client privilege to talk about the NZT-centric parts of his quickly-changing life – really makes for a striking way to close the episode.

Moments like those are not only fun ways to serialize Limitless, but also a reassurance that this series wasn’t contend to be a lazy procedural full of cliches about shitty people occasionally doing good things, and was instead aiming for something a little more ambitious, but still grounded in interesting, dynamic characters trying to do the best they can (there’s even a brief mention of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in this episode, a bit of an easter egg towards what this series’ deepest thoughts lies). “Badge! Gun!” does a great job embodying that, with an incredibly encouraging, confident second hour – of a series already playing with the limitations of its genre as it develops its own personality and voice, an exciting sign of things to come for the still-young series.

Grade: B+

Other thoughts/observations:

• “You don’t play baccarat with Uno cards.”
  
• Spelman gives Brian a staple and tape dispenser labeled “gun” and “badge”, respectively. Spelman’s presence is light in this episode, but between this and him yelling “You’re fired” in slow-motion after Brian’s second escape, he’s already got a strong presence.
  
• Brian attends a family dinner while still actively on NZT; he provides parenting advice and sweeps Trivial Pursuit, before crashing on the couch.
  
• While on buses around the city, Brian helps a father trying to get back into his kid’s life (using trigonometry), and helps talk a couple through a breakup. “Guys – we should all get together sometime!” he exclaim as he’s getting off the bus – those kinds of little, genuine moments are what make Brian Finch the most interesting, lived-in version of his archetype he can be.
  
• Brian once handed in a book report that read: “I did not read The Iliad… does that count for points?”
  
• Though many of the claims are dubious, there are theories about genetic markers from Genghis Khan!
  
• Remember how I mentioned this show’s great music? That continues, with this week’s needle drop, courtesy of Fight Like Ape’s 2009 song “I’m Beginning to Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me”.
  
• Brian scores the security footage he puts together for Spelman and Rebecca to review: “It’s way cooler”, he insists.
  
• Brian: “I’ve had a lot of temp jobs, and I took a gym class. I know a petty tyrant.”
  
• Brian’s email address is ninjaversusbear@resorbedtwin.com.
  
• Up next: Brian’s ex-girlfriend fills in some blanks in “The Legend of Marco Ramos”.