Limitless - 'My Name is Rebecca Harris', 'Finale: Part 1!' and 'Finale: Part 2!!'

"Stop me if this sounds crazy..."

So, with Limitless cancelled (boo!) I'm just going to wrap up the final three episodes together.

In 'My Name is Rebecca Harris', Rebecca gets her turn in the spotlight, as she finally confronts Brian over his actions and connection to Senator Morra. It's not the ideal time for Brian, who has just realised that Sands has Piper, and thus the ticket to immunity, but there it is. Things being what they are, he comes clean to Rebecca and tells her everything. He asks her to let him work this last case and hits her with the big one: Sands killed her father.

Not knowing who, or how, to trust, Rebecca drops Brian's pill and together they embark on a Rebecca-narrated adventure to decrypt Huston's burn book and thus get the dirt to nail Sands. Rebecca on NZT is ludicrously badass, blocking the pain of a gunshot shoulder and putting a bullet down the scope of a sniper's rifle as she does it,  Not that Brian is completely out of the loop, cobbling together an ECG capable of allowing a comatose man to give some form of testimony. It's a good episode for bringing Rebecca properly back into the mix, although less happily it ends with Brian's immunity fading and thus his removal from the FBI.

The bugger of it is, I know what I was on.

So on to 'Finale: Part 1!', in which Brian is working as a store clerk while Nas and the team try to crack down on a tidal wave of NZT hitting the streets. Brian is working the case in his garage, but his family are more interested in critiquing the grammar of his moniker for Sands' shadow group - 'The Legion of Whom' - than helping him to find Piper.

Sands is in jail, but not talking, and the DEA's point man on 'Apocryphon' - the street name for NZT - is a slimy douchebag. So, Brian buys some street NZT, shoots down the '10% thing' and creates a mobile which explains everything and leads him to Clay Meeks, a chemist who may be the eponymous Apocryphon and who straight up ninja vanishes when cornered. The FBI meanwhile are chasing a different lead and round up a group of suspects, only for DEA douchebag to bomb the prisoner transport - taking out what turns out to be the last of the now-absent Morra's loyal following - and free Sands in the chaos, because evil!

"Good series, but the comedown's a bitch."

'Finale: Part 2!!' ramps up the stakes, as Brian risks his life continuing to take NZT as he tries to fathom the Legion of Whom's objectives. It's actually really simple of course: They need money, and plan to get it by setting up and knocking down a treaty between Greenland and Canada in order to profit in a massive trade short.

By having people shot, in case this all felt too... low key.

With his health collapsing and hallucinations of Piper alternately pleading for rescue or turning into rabid harpies who try to eat his face, Brian finally tracks the NZT production facility and Rebecca gets her moment to confront Sands, shooting him when he tries to do the same to her. Piper is gone, but makes a last minute appearance at Brian's parents' house with a permanent immunity shot to set up new tensions for the Season 2 that wasn't, and that's a huge shame.

I suspect that a couple of things at least were zipped through when the show was cancelled, in order to provide closure, and that quite possibly in the original version Sands got away. It meant that 'Finale: Part 2!!' was a bit of a rush, but still with all the strengths of Limitless - the leads and their chemistry, Brian's mental workings (including a workshop of superhero identities,) and oh yeah, getting through the whole thing without Brian and Rebecca either kissing or getting inappropriately jealous of each other's love interests (even the ones who turned out to be dicks.)

I'm not going to lie. I love shows where men and women work together and share close friendships without having to sleep together. I liked that in Supergirl, Wynn got over his disappointed crush (even if it was by sleeping with a future supervillain.) I was mildly outraged to learn that Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable eventually became a canon couple, because God forbid that we suggest to our children that a boy and a girl could be friends and work together without dating.

So yeah; that was Limitless, and I would be happy to post cat pictures or make clay models as part of a petition to bring it back.