Quantico Season 2 Episode 19: MHORDER Review

If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.

Synopsis: With all the collaborators unveiled, the team uses Clay and Maxine’s engagement party to entice them into one place. The mission: turn one against the others. But everyone’s lives are put at risk when one member of the team makes a surprising decision. (Quantico Wiki)

Writers: Logan Slakter and Gideon Yago

Director: Jennifer Lynch

Rating: TV-14

Running Time: 42mins

The last episode ended with Sasha being blown up in her which has left Ryan reeling. This episode started with a pair of sequences featuring Alex and Owen bugging someone’s house while Ryan searched through Sasha’s appartment, looking for her evidence. The results of both of these are yet to be determined but more on that later.

The last episode also meant the return of Caleb. This gave the show a boost of energy down the stretch and that was still the case here in an increased role. The reason he was around was that he was worried about Shelby’s ongoing involvement with his family, more specifically his brother Clay. He vowed to stay until she left the team. We all know that wasn’t going to happen but this problem ended up rectifying itself anyway with Caleb going back to school (but that wasn’t the end of him here). Clay and Felix have had a dicey relationship since the task force and that continued here with Felix hacking into Clay’s private emails.

The collaborators now seem to have the task force on the ropes, knowing their involvement and fighting back in the sinister way they can. Their strategy of taking them down one at a time hasn’t worked so they would need a new strategy. They decided to try and get them all at once using Clay and Maxine’s engagement party as a way to get them in one place at the same time and try to convince them to turn on each other. Maxine wasn’t exactly okay the last time she was used for a mission but they eventually convinced her to play along and she ended up having a good time with it too.

In general, the task force wasn’t too successful in turning the collaborators. Felix and Nimah(Raina) had a heated conversation where he revealed that he kind of knew that they had switched places. The only success they seemed to have was that Ryan appeared to turn a woman named Alice Winter (Elisabeth Waterston) and Alex got an offer from a man named Maxwell Fletcher (Fredric Lehne) who was also the man who owned the house Alex and Owen bugged at the beginning of the episode.

Trying to gauge where Roarke was, President Haas offered him the vice-presidency and her resignation but that was too late. He didn’t need her resignation because they were each where he needed them to be. Whatever was happening, it was almost over. The meeting was cut short and revealed to be a distraction when she had caught wind that they were able to turn one of the collaborators against him.

With the news that Winter was seemingly going to turn, she claimed to have convinced two other collaborators to turn as well and had requested a meeting with Ryan. Everyone was okay with this except for Alex and Owen who thought it was a trap and that Winter was playing him. The majority won out but Alex and Owen had a plan of their own. Ryan’s meeting was a trap where there was a reporter waiting for him there and asking about the task force.

When you think it could get worse, it did. At the end of the episode, it was revealed that the task force’s files were all stolen and their existence was outed on the news, prompting calls for President Haas’ impeachment. Hope is not all lost, however, as Alex and Owen’s plan involved Alex stealing the files to prove her allegiance in joining Fletcher and Owen was going to be her handler.

Overall, this was a great episode that established the season’s end game (with 3 episodes left) by seemingly pivoting again with Alex and Owen. Despite the predictable ending, the episode was still exciting now that everything is now in the open and was lightened up by Graham Rogers’ great performance as Caleb.

Score: 8.5/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.