Limitless - 'Brian Finch's Black Op'

I question the wisdom of modelling any part of your life, even a day off, on the
actions of cinema's most notorious sociopathic manipulator (yes, including
Tom Ripley,) but I do appreciate the commitment to the bit.

Now with his own private stash of NZT, Brian decides to take a day off. In a prologue gleefully knocked off from Ferris Bueller (which is actually only a tiny step from the show's usual style of narration,) he calls in sick to the FBI and pockets a pill. A CIA agent comes to the FBI and asks to 'borrow' their asset for a black op, and Brian is promptly tasered and dragged into a van.

'Brian Finch's Black Op' is part homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off (as the CIA-hired mercenary team refuse to give their names, he refers to them as characters from the movie,) and part survival horror. Trapped in the woods with three hardened psychopaths and their equally badass captive, an ex-Spetznas commando who went native in Chechnya after the war. Learning that their plan is to kill the captive rather than bringing him back for trial, Brian first sets out to save the man's life, but is soon left with the realisation that in order to survive he might just have to use his NZT-sharpened wits to make sure that everyone else dies.

Even as a projection of his subconscious, Rebecca has issues with being
dressed as Sloane from Day Off.

While Brian navigates the equally unfamiliar territories of the woods and the simple art of murder, Naz takes Rebecca and her partner with tapping every resource to find out where Brian is and get him back. Although by the end of it Brian is still suspicious that Naz may have authorised the op, she seems genuinely incensed that someone has gone over her head and snatched her drug-enhanced super-analyst.

But the question of Naz's involvement, or even of how Rebecca has managed to never see Ferris Bueller's Day Off pale next to Brian's ultimate reaction to his strange misadventure. When he talks about what he did, he is cool and collected, almost detached as Rebecca puts it, as oblivious to conscience or the value of other human lives as Ferris Bueller himself. This is not happy fun guy; it's not even Pill Brian or Badass Brian, who puts in an appearance in a three way internal dialogue. No, this is a broken Brian, a Brian who has lost something vital, and who is most directly represented in his own subconscious by a coolly practical Rebecca in short-shorts and a fringed white jacket.

Initially appearing as a gag episode, 'Brian Finch's Black Op' is actually a watershed moment, encompassing the irrevocable loss of Brian's innocence. He may not kill anyone with his own hands, but he incites murder and plots a poisoning, spared the ultimate act only by chance. I hope he gets back some of his lightness, but equally that the series doesn't try to sweep this under the rug.