Television: Limitless

Still trying to catch up with, well, everything. So let's look at "Undercover!" and "Sands, Agent of Morra."

In "Undercover!" Brian goes, uh, undercover. He's supposed to bring the agent in from the field but instead ends up helping her end a women-trafficking ring. Meanwhile, Sands offers Harris a job with Morra, but she declines.  Overall, Brian's romp is fun, and certainly leaves the door open for the undercover agent (whose name I forget) to return, but . . . Eh. In a show that's consistently good, this solid entry didn't shine brighter than any other episode.

Meanwhile, "Sands, Agent of Morra" did twinkle a bit. This episode explores a bit of Sands' past as part of an elite team, members of which Sands is now being forced to eliminate in order to save his son. During all this we also get a shoehorned birthday story from Harris about how, after attempting reconciliation, her dad missed her birthday, how she'd thought he'd flaked out on her only to discover later he was already dead by the time her birthday rolled around. On the whole, it's a highly entertaining episode (loved that Sands' team members' codenames were taken from famous film directors, and that Sands is Peckinpah), but my chief complaint is how cliché a lot of it was, from Harris' "I hate my birthday" thing to Sands' backstory. I'm hoping against hope it's not his real backstory, just something he fabricated because he knew Brian would eat it up and comply with what Sands needed at the time. In a show like this one, it feels very possible that things can change and nothing is set in stone. And I mean that in a good way, a way that keeps the viewer engaged and guessing. Though taken too far, that kind of vibe is just frustrating because it means there are no stakes. (Looking at you, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. If there's always a chance someone will return from the dead, why do we care whether they die? Answer: we don't.) At least Limitless has not crossed that particular line. It remains one of my favorite shows to unwind with.