Limitless - 'This is Your Brian on Drugs'

Oh man, it's Riley!

As we hit what would be the mid-season finale of Limitless if we were doing that in this country, shit once more gets real.

After a brief slice of life insight into the lives of Mike and Ike, Brian's handlers fall foul of a pharmaceutical raid gone bad at the undercover NZT pick up. Ike is shot, and a Canadian gang looking to steal oxycodone for street sale have instead got away with hundreds of doses of NZT, and the Bureau needs to get it back before they realise what they have.

Brian works out where the fleeing Canadian will have to pass, and arranges for Rebecca and Casey to lead the interception, realising too late that there is tension between Rebecca and her boyfriend. The NZT is retrieved, but Rebecca decides that she needs to end it with Casey, by unhappy chance doing so by text just as Casey is read in on the NZT experiment because 80 of the pills have gone missing.

We flash back and discover that Casey's SWAT team took the pills, and that prior to receiving the text, he had been working out how to return them. Stung, however, he pends to peer pressure and the team go on an NZT bender which ends with one of them killing another when his NZT accelerated mind realises that his teammate is sleeping with this wife.

From here, things spiral. Brian realises that Casey is on NZT, but Casey realises that Brian realises and takes him and Rebecca hostage. They try to break out of the building, but Brian is able to alert Boyle, who takes out the SWAT team, ending in a standoff with Casey in which Brian shoots Casey dead, despite Brian's insistance that he can find a better way out.

It's another episode which exposes Brian to death and erodes a little more of his happy fun guy persona. It's interesting to see that Casey's NZT doppelganger dresses the same as him, where as 'pill Brian' is typically distinct.

Also of note, one of Casey's SWAT guys is Marc Blucas, much-reviled as the Yoko of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.