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.

Limitless - 'A Dog's Breakfast'

Brian in a suit is so sad

Brian is back in the US and working for the FBI under new, stricter guidelines, including stone-faced, 24 minders Mr X and Mr Y, no HQ! and a dress code. On the upside, Rebecca is back as his handler, and if Piper comes through with the booster shot, he can come clean and all will be golden. Best yet, with one of his minders on Morra's payroll, Sands promises no more violence.

But then, in the middle of a case involving a missing transplant kidney, Piper contacts Brian to say she's got the antidote, only to miss their meeting. Returning home, he finds his sedated minder gone and Piper's blood-stained bracelet left in his dining room. He tracks down Morra, who realises that Sands has gone rogue, intending to use NZT himself and set up a rival organisation, but declines to act, or even worry, utterly focused on his campaign and what comes after the presidency.

So, what we're seeing is that Morra's brain is now so accelerated that he is
missing obvious threats in his pursuit of the 'big picture'.

Brian cracks the case, but then Rebecca shows up with a gun and a pair of handcuffs and demands to know what is going on between him and Morra.

So we move unironically towards the end of Limitless; the final three episodes ever, and I hope it's not too cliffhangy. I like Brian, and the revelation that basically Sands has been working under Morra's radar because NZT makes the senator too abstracted to focus on details strengthens the idea that Brian's slacker mentality is the ideal starting point for NZT use, and that holding on to who you were before the pill is more than just a choice, but a necessity.

Limitless - 'Bezgranichny'

Borscht.

With everything collapsing around him, Brian sets out to find the one person who might be able to help him escape from Morra's grasp: Fellow NZT user Blair Piper.

Using a pair of pills swiped from Mike and Ike he tracks her to St Petersburg, and springs her from prison with the assistance of George R R Martin. She is in reach of perfecting the enzyme which suppresses NZT side-effects, but needs samples of a rare flower, which she was trying to steal from the private seed vault of a Russian oligarch when she was arrested.

After a week of prep and fun, they make a second attempt on the vault. Piper tells Brian that the past week was not 'real'; real is the people they are on NZT, and he ought to embrace this. It seems that she has embraced it all too much, when the heist goes awry and she rabbits with the prize, leaving him to be bagged by the Russians.

With this look, it is clear that Piper is the Root of this series, but not as cool
as Root.

Meanwhile, Rebecca is trying to track him down, and finding it hard to face the hostility of his family. She likes them, liked Brian, and clearly struggles to cope with being accused of causing his change in personality when she herself has been betrayed because of it.

Fortunately for Brian, Piper has a change of heart and George R R Martin comes through like a boss. He sets out for home with a hope of freedom and reconciliation, even as Sands receives pictures of Brian with the supposedly dead Piper and Brian's sister tells Rebecca about Sands' visit to the safe house.

It's kind of hard to see where Limitless is going at this point. It's all getting rather heavy, and even if Brian 'wins', how will we ever be able to get back to Happy Fun Brian? Because I really hope we do, and since the series has now been cancelled, I hope we end on an up note. It feels as if Limitless might have been better served without the overarching conspiracy from week 1; if Morra had seemed less dodgy for longer, allowing the series to play more to its strengths. As it is, the arc has always seemed at war with the weekly premise, and that has sadly never been completely reconciled.

Limitless - 'Close Encounters'

The Beastie Boys quickly proved to be one of Brian's more relentless
enemies.

Brian's NZT-perfected life is beginning to unravel.

Unable to face the prospect of directly lying to Rebecca about Sands' involvement in her father's death (to whit, that he killed him,) he seeks to avoid her by taking one of his spare pills and wandering the night, guided by a police scanner and offering his insights into whatever crimes he comes across. His hand is forced, however, when an apparent act of cyberterror blacks out the business district.

Brian eventually traces the cause of the blackouts to a mysterious bacteria, initially deemed extraterrestrial in origin, and he and Rebecca are placed in isolation together. He becomes increasingly defensive as she confronts him, only to discover that she has had his safehouse searched, finding two of his four spare NZT pills. The other two are with his sister, who talks to his parents and precipitates a major row over his dishonesty. At around the same time, Rebecca asks Naz to reassign Brian to another handler.

Fortunately, not a bottle episode.

Despondent over having become someone that his friends and family can't trust, Brian decides to set things right. Leaving a message for Rebecca, he sets off into the world, sans NZT, to try to fix his problem: Senator Morra's absolute control over his life.

While the A-plot is as light as ever, 'Close Encounters' features a lot of heavy stuff, as Brian's attempt to combine normal life with his web of deception comes apart. His aggressive behaviour as he is forced more and more onto the back foot is out of his usual character, and hints at the possibility that there is a darker version of Brian that NZT could unlock along with his neurological potential. Morra already mentioned his confusion that Brian would refuse to embrace more substantial change as his cognitive abilities develop, and this is the first sign that some change may be inevitable. Hopefully not too much, as it is happy fun Brian that makes the show so watchable.

Limitless - 'Sands, Agent of Morra'

If the whole episode had been a
motion comic, it might have been
the best thing ever.

Brian's quiet evening of watching and rigorously analysing Game of Thrones ("So, if the cute guy with the beard and the sword beats the ice zombies he still has to beat the other cute guy with the beard and sword?") with his sister Rachel is interrupted by the arrival of Sands, with a bullet in his side.

Thus begins 'Sands, Agent of Morra', a blockbuster romp as Brian is dragged along on a trail of murders with a single commission from Sands: Find his old MI6 handler before he can be blackmailed into murdering all of his old teammates. In the meantime, Rebecca and the team are tracking a kidnapped child; there couldn't possibly be a connection, could there?

Apparently Rebecca is punching a Russian bear. Not sure why.

This episode does a lot to humanise Sands, while still portraying him as a dangerous bastard. As ever, however, the highlight of the episode is its narrative device; in this instance, the comic book covers and pages which illustrate Sands' backstory and incidental aspects of the story. They are a perfect way of framing Sands' larger than life history and cold brutality.

Limitless - 'Undercover!'

And Undercover! means sweet three piece suits.

Someone has hacked a list of undercover operatives, and the FBI needs Brian to help pull out the agents who are so deep that even their handlers can't get in touch with them. The most elusive of these is Lucy Church, closing in on a corrupt hedge fund. Unfortunately, the hedge fund is just the tip of a white slavery iceberg and Church is unwilling to come out until she knows that the 'inconvenient' women caught in their business are safe from disposal.

In an episode bookended by talking head, after action interviews, Church co-opts Brian to help her scope out a party, then infiltrate an office as a temp, in order to steal back the trafficked women's passports. This he does, and for good measure goes on to spend an afternoon at the racetrack, so that he can slip enough money into each passport to ensure none of the women fall back into the poverty trap that led them to where they are. It's a perfect Brian idea, and moves Lucy to become... demonstrative.

So... that happened.

The ensuing Bollywood dance fantasy lasts about thirty seconds, but features a lot of the supporting cast and to judge by my own experience of Indian dance lessons for eight year olds, probably represents a solid day of pure joy for the production.

It's not all fun and games, however, and with Brian running out of NZT and the NOC list in the open, it's up to pilless Brian to talk Church down from eliminating the group's hitman, and persuade her to come out of cover and embrace her own life for the first time in years. Moreover, while Brian is out of the office, Sands - who has already told Brian it is his fault that the evidence clerk had to be killed - approaches Rebecca and offers her a job with Morra. She refuses and pretty much tells him she's coming for the Senator, so that one's going to blow up on someone.

Limitless continues to deftly juggle humour and darker tones, although it's definitely at its best as a caper show, with the serious aspects providing necessary contrast. 'Undercover!' is as caperlicious as they come, as well as introducing Lucy Church as a potentially recurring character; not just an old flame for Brian, but also an old foil from Rebecca's academy days.

Limitless - 'Fundamentals of Naked Portraiture'

Meet Spike.

After many interviews, Mike and Ike recruit a new member of their team, Spike, a seemingly perfect Brian minder who likes the same music he does and is willing to go the extra mile in any circumstances; something which makes Mike and Ike increasingly suspicious.

Meanwhile, a researcher at Brian's favourite think tank is murdered and a set of valuable data tapes carrying replicas of some of the most valuable minds in the country stolen from her research. It's up to Brian to find out who done the deed or deeds, but at the same time Rebecca is getting closer and closer to uncovering his switch with the Morra coats.

Just adorable.

Mike and Ike use a Brianesque presentation to prove that Spike is a pant, working for ADIC Johnson. Brian traces the crimes to the researcher's ex-lover and is saved from discovery when the evidence clerk who could have identified him turns up dead. This of course does not make him feel good.

'Fundamentals of Naked Portraiture' is an odd little episode, which highlights the increasing disconnect between happy fun Brian and the conspiracy he is mired in. On the flip side, watching Mike and Ike adopt some of Brian's approaches gives one hope that Saeson 2 - if it happens - won't be all grimdark.

Limitless - 'Stop Me Before I Hug Again'

The subconscious is a scary place.

Brian is let out into the field this week, as the task force picks up the tail of the notorious serial hugger, Mr Pralines and Cream.

Sound weird? Welcome to 'Stop Me Before I Hug Again', an outwardly lighthearted episode of Limitless which speaks to the depth of distress afflicting Brian's drug-enhanced psyche. Faced with the brutal reality of a murder scene, his subconscious - in the form of a defunct children's TV presenter and a cartoonised rendition of his childhood bedroom, persuades Brian to replace scary words with nice words, and to swap out the BAU's undeservedly cool serial killer nicknames for ice cream flavours. He then proceeds to crack a case which has defied the FBI's rock star profiler, David Englander, in less time than it takes for Englander to ball him out for researching suspects on his phone during the briefing.

Portrait of a Serial Hugger.

Impressed, Englander makes a bid to poach Brian for the BAU, who are basically the opposite of their Criminal Minds incarnation, being a pack of swaggering, shrewdly political self-promoters more interested in book deals than justice; especially Englander. During a visit to their HQ, he cracks a few outstanding cases, but also stumbles on what seems to be an inconsistency in the case that made Englander's career.

Even as he sets out to prove the innocence of a man on death row, however, Brian is distracted by Rebecca's investigation into Morra. He persuades Sands to provide a duplicate coat to swap out for the one in evidence, impregnated with NZT-free Morra blood, but discovers a discrepancy in the buttons that he is unable to fix (an oversight his subconscious suggests was a deliberate attempt to get caught and end the lies.)

'Stop Me Before I Hug Again' is actually a pretty creepy entry into the Limitless canon. Thanks to Brian's NZT super-filtering ability, we run through the entire episode hearing his substituted words (much as in Mr Robot everyone calls E-Corp 'Evil Corp',) and it's... not very comforting, and in fact may cause sensitive viewers to think very differently about ice cream, hugging, tickling and cuddling, let alone 'playing cowboys and Indians.'

Limitless - 'The Assassination of Eddie Morra'

I can't help wondering if this episode would have gone differently if Morra's
renegade helper had been less gosh-darned adorable.

This week, Eddie Morra dodges a bullet, literally, his NZT-accelerated brain allowing him to sidestep a nigh-impossible kill-shot from an NZT-using assassin.

The assassin is Piper Blair, a brilliant biochemist and former member of Team Morra who went off the res with a stash of NZT and the all-important booster enzyme, murdered her boyfriend and then came gunning for her former sponsor. Sands instructs Brian to ensure that the FBI don't catch her, since that would tie Morra to NZT, but Blair leaves a trail of breadcrumbs which lead him right to her secret lair, and from there to a meeting at his parents' house, where she has introduced herself as his new girlfriend.

Blair explains that basically what Morra said is true, but that rather than going crazy and murdering her boyfriend, she tried to expose his operation and he had the boyfriend killed in retaliation. She wants him to help her kill Morra. In return, Morra offers an evasive non-denial of this accusation, claiming that his work requires secrecy and sacrifice. Since Blair has reached out to Brian, Sands tells him to kill her, offering a clean gun and a few extra pills for the job. Brian has a crisis, represented by an ever-increasing number of his NZT doubles, with Rebecca Brian joining Pill Brian on Team Cardigan against Badass Brian and Sands Brian in leather jackets, and Ike Brian baffled by the whole thing.

Eventually, he meets with Blair, fails to shoot her, but after a chase pushes her under a subway train. Once Sands congratulates him on his graduation to the 'real world', he meets the not-dead Blair and flashes back to faking her death with a stolen corpse and altered DNA profile. She invites him to come with her to work on the booster enzyme together, but he insists that he needs to stay with the FBI.

Ah, the conspiracy wall.

Morra asks Brian why he alone seems to be intent on hanging on to the person that he was before NZT. The drug allows one to transcend every limitation, but Brian seems determined to remain Brian.

Meanwhile, Rebecca is on a case of her own, having grown suspicious of Morra during the hunt for his assassin, especially when a perfect scapegoat, suffering from a terminal illness, hands herself in.

'The Assassination of Eddie Morra' delivers another knock to our hero's happy-go-lucky attitude, as his handler asks him not only to conceal crimes or steal from the FBI, but to commit murder by his own hand, and however sure I was that Blair would turn out to be alive, I admit the scene in which Brian seems to push her under a train was chilling. Tough decisions lie ahead, and they may not all be resolved so neatly.

The episode also makes hay with a dramatic benefit of NZT, which is that it does allow a person to become something radically different under its influence. Thus, we see Blair as a cool assassin before we see her as an adorable idealist, making it easier to speculate that she might actually be the femme fatale villain after all.

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.

Limitless - 'Arm-ageddon'

"Could you lend me a hand?"

Boyle comes to Brian for help when an old Army buddy is charged with murdering his wife. His defence: Someone hacked his prototype robot arm.

His story is given credence when the other arms in the study similarly go haywire, and Brian takes a crash course in hacking to prove that the arm could have been controlled remotely. The trail leads from one hacker to another, but to Boyle's distress it turns out that his friend was in on the 'prank' and took advantage of the mass hack to kill his own wife and blame the arm.

Meanwhile, Brian's dad tries to persuade him to sue the FBI for release from the NZT trials, telling him that it isn't NZT that makes him special. When Brian makes it clear that he doesn't want out, his dad meets with Naz and tells her to look after his son or she's going to jail.

'Arm-ageddon' is a fun episode, but does not significantly advance the arc of the series. There is some fun character work, however, especially with Rebecca trying to join in Brian's arm-based punnery.

Limitless - 'Headquarters!'

Huzzah! Clay figures.

Brian wants a Headquarters! With the exclamation point. Since Naz is not keen to pony up a Headquarters!, Brian makes her a deal: In exchange for his own office, with Headquarters! (bargained down to HQ!) on the door, he will deliver a clean sweep of the FBI Most Wanted List.

With his team, the 'Bruntouchables', he sets out to achieve the ultimate crimebusting multipliers. Boyle and Casey go after cop killers, while Mike and Ike are sent on contrasting overseas assignments and one of the tech team is sent to infiltrate a cult. Brian and Rebecca catch one fugitive by making a deal with his partner's wife to arrange for the partner to be upgraded to top ten once he is captured and then confront a wily, wife-killing engineer, whom Brian dubs his nemesis after he eludes them.

When he tracks the man down again, however, he discovers that he is actually the David Jansen of the list, an innocent man on the run to find his wife's real killer. Brian expends his last private NZT pill to help the man unlock the memory of the murder sufficiently to nail the real killer, and trades information on his escape partner (also a lister) for early parole and white collar prison. Alas, with two still to go, Naz closes down the project as too high profile for a covert asset like Brian, but he does get his office, with HQ (no exclamation mark) on the door.

In a personal B-plot, Brian's family visit his new place, but his Dad seems distant. Ultimately he reveals that he knows that Brian is keeping secrets and that he doesn't know how to relate to him anymore, prompting Brian to risk all by telling his Dad the truth.

While this is supposed to be a big moment, so far the Morra conspiracy has not been quite toothy enough for it to feel big. It's more of an emotional payoff, therefore, when in an act of unlikely bonding, Boyle sticks a Post-it note with an exclamation mark on Brian's new door. I do worry that Dad might buy the farm in order to give Morra more threat, but that's for another day. Limitless continues to be a likable, quirky cop show, although I am increasingly concerned that Brian's apparently increasing whimsy is masking a growing disconnection after the incidents of 'Brian Finch's Black Op'.

Limitless - 'When Pirates Pirate Pirates'

"Ten four good buddies."

When SAC Naz goes after whoever in the Bureau set Brian up for the Black Op, she leaves Brian and Rebecca with a contingency plan: Get to her house, a veritable fortress, and stay put, because if things go wrong then Brian will be shipped to DC and locked in a box. Sure enough, things go wrong when Naz is arrested for wiring money to a man on the terrorist watch list.

Brian and Rebecca set out to prove her innocence, but learn from Naz's daughter Ava that she actually did it. The 'terrorist' in question is actually a sort of facilitator - on the watch list because he arranges hostage negotiations with terrorists - who is currently working to get Ava's cousin released after she was captured by pirates in the South China Seas, and then taken from those pirates by a crew of pirate hunters turned pirates.

The meat of the Brian and Rebecca part of the episode involves using Brian's secret NZT stash to learn a whole lot of languages and trawling for information on the pirates via ham radio, then tracking a former pirate in the US and trading him a rare and highly tasteless pinball machine for brokering the release, while Brian and Ava have a little early-stages chemistry going on. We also learn from a game of screw-marry-kill that Rebecca would chose to screw her boyfriend rather than marry him.

There's also a lot going on away from our main characters, as previously just vaguely disapproving Boyles works the interim SAC and his own DC contacts to find out who set Naz up and farmed Brian out to the CIA (surprise, it's Naz's buddy, although we never really met him before, so...)

Finally, Brian gets some additional advantage from his relationship with Morra, persuading him (via Sands; they clearly weren't budgeted for another Bradley Cooper cameo just yet,) to use his influence to get the bad guy kicked out in order to ensure Brian remains where they want him.

'When Pirates Pirate Pirates' suffers a little from its central presence. Brian admits that the hostage issue they're dealing with is a fascinating problem when removed from real life, as it is via his imaginary golden age pirates and treasure map graphics, but without any hint of the reality this trivialises something that is both real and horrible. It's a recurring problem resulting from the filtering of most of the action through the mind of a man who finds it hilarious that the interim boss is called ADIC Johnson. There are hints that the show will get traction through Brian's increasing exposure to actually horrible things, but it's a tough balance and not always successfully negotiated.

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.

Limitless - 'Side Effects May Include...'

SAC Nasreen 'Naz' Pouran aka Boss Naz

Brian and Rebecca start looking into her father's case, with Rebecca providing an alibi for Brian to pursue this on Bureau NZT time while she is tapped to join a Red Team exercise, planning a hypothetical cyber attack on the US economy. Boss Naz (I can't unthink that now, and neither can you; you're welcome) pitches it as a career move, while Brian encourages Rebecca to take out her frustration against the system by lording it over the ruins of the military-industrial complex like a barbarian queen.

While Rebecca kicks arse in the Red Team, their investigation leads to a rehab clinic and then to a pharmaceutical company where a limited NZT trial was being run. Unfortunately, Brian's immunity shot begins to wear off and the side effects of the pill begin to bite. Sands withholds the booster and demands that Brian first frame Rebecca for stealing the NZT file, as her presence in his life is a distraction.

Comedown's a kicker.

As Brian degenerates, Pill Brian and Non-Pill Brian debate strategies, ultimately coming down to two possibilities: Betray Rebecca, or die an unbelievably slow and agonising death. While both are squarely against the latter option, Non-Pill Brian ultimately chooses it as the lesser of two evils. For Brian, this is as defining a moment as taking the NZT in the first place, demonstrating that underneath the happy go lucky slacker exterior and NZT-enhanced smarts is a genuine hero; not just a guy who will help a complete stranger out just because he can, but one who will go to the wire for a friend.

With Brian failing fast, Rebecca blows off a meeting with the Director and goes to see the doctor who administered her father's NZT trial. He admits that he ran the trial, but never knew the source of NZT. He cut her father off when he thought he was spreading his trial dose around the city, but then all of his patients disappeared, except for Harris Snr, who died, and the NZT just dried up.

"Good, bad; I'm the one with the pills."

Brian is saved when Senator Morra himself finds him and administers the injection. He assures Brian that he doesn't need to frame Rebecca: The whole thing was a test of character, to determine if Brian was a mere employee or something more; a potential partner. He explains that he wants to change the world, but that it must be a slow process, and takes leaders like him and partners like Brian. Of course, this would be more sincere and affecting if Sands wasn't blowing up the doctor at about the same time.

Finally, Naz confronts Rebecca over her broken appointment. She realises that Rebecca saw the file, and tells her that she wanted Rebecca's career to move forward so that she could get her the clearance to be allowed to see the NZT file. This puts a bit of a bind on Rebecca's loyalties, although she still insists that Brian did not give her the information.

'Side Effects May Include...' is a big episode, as you might expect given the return of Bradley Cooper as Edward Morra. It's not just Morra, however, nor the five extra pills that he gives Brian; it's the character moments for both Brian and Rebecca, and the escalation of the conspiracy, as either Morra is happy to kill to keep his secrets or Sands is playing his own lethal game.

Limitless - 'Personality Crisis'

Brian explains things to himself in terms he can understand.

Following on from his discoveries last week, Brian wakes to find a video from 'Pill Brian', explaining why he can't tell Rebecca that the FBI has files on her dad's NZT use without his best case scenario bring to be dropped into Supermax and stepped on. He can't be 'happy fun guy' anymore; he has to be badass Brian, which not-Pill Brian interprets as a call for a wardrobe change.

The team go after a meth lab, and after his extensive recall of Enter the Dragon proves little help in a real fight, Brian is assigned to SWAT self-defence training with supercool, superbadass SWAT leader Casey, who also turns out to be Rebecca's secret sweetie, something Brian picks up on without any fuss, which I applaud. I like that Brian and Rebecca can be close colleagues and friends without UST baggage. Of course, there is some baggage, namely that secret Brian is now keeping, which is soon compounded after the investigation takes a swing into counter-terrorism and Brian is pressed to make unkeepable promises in order to coerce a CI, who then ends up dead.

Despondent and off his pills, Brian makes an informed if not hyper-intelligent decision to reach out to his only friend; even if it lands him in supermax and under a boot.

Limitless - 'Page 44'

Some have suggested that Brian does not take his work seriously.

Brian is faced by a dilemma this week: The FBI are showing more trust, reading him into his first classified case (admittedly to sort through trash,) at the same time as Sands delivers Senator Morra's first demand: Steal the FBI's NZT files so that Morra knows what they know. Fortunately, he has a goodwill case to salve his conscience: An internet buddy named Arthur claims to have genetically modified a mouse to live an extra two months and to have been framed for the murder of his former partner, whom he believed to have stolen his mouse. The chance to save his friend is at least morally unambiguous.

Although he tries to pass off fake documents, refusing to betray Rebecca's trust, Sands is unconvinced and arranges a medical crisis for Brian's father. Brian is forced to steal the real files, but sneaks a peek before sending them on, which reveals that the FBI was monitoring Rebecca's father and knew he was using NZT before his death.

The clash of loyalties is what is set to separate this from a routine quirky cop show, more than the neuroaccelerator gimmick. Given that NZT basically puts him at the functional level of Sherlock Holmes, it is Brian's dependence, and not his abilities, that distinguish him. Hopefully then the clash will continue to have areas of grey, such as the FBI's monitoring of Harris snr, and we will see a less than completely amoral agenda for Morra.

Limitless - 'The Legend of Marcos Ramos'

Fun with shredders.

A former FBI agent and Rebecca's mentor is shot dead in broad daylight and suspicion falls on Mexican drug lord Marcos Ramos (whose backstory is revealed in one of Brian's fantasy sequences including cheap eighties film filters and a swimming pool full of piranhas.) As the team works to track down Ramos and his favoured shooter, Brian runs into an old flame and seeks to rekindle the relationship, but wonders whether it is Brian or Brian-on-NZT that she likes.

'The Legend of Marcos Ramos' also reveals the darker side of Brian's deal with Eddie Morra, in the form of Mr Sands (Colin Salmon), a frankly sinister figure who explains that Brian does not work for the FBI; he was placed with the FBI to work for Eddie Morra, and by extension for Mr Sands. Should he refuse, his stabilising treatments will be cut off, and his father or anyone he loves could suffer. Morra might be a slightly shady benefactor, but Sands is clearly very bad people when he needs to be. Ultimately, despite great progress and Rebecca's advice that Brian and Brian-on-NZT are the same guy, and any girl who distinguished isn't worth his time, Brian breaks up with his ex to keep her away from Sands.

Sands and all that he represents bring a little darkness into an otherwise fluffy scenario, and I think that's a good thing. I don't want the show to get all brooding, since its strengths are its lightness, charm and the goofy fantasy sequences that Brian invents for the parts of an investigation he isn't allowed to participate in, but a little shade is important.

Limitless - 'Pilot' and 'Badge! Gun!'

Regular Brian and Smart Brian; Brian Brian and Brain Brian, if you will.

Brian Finch (Jake McDorman) is an amiable slacker; not dim, but unfocused, frittering his youth away on his dream of becoming a musician while the rest of his family grow up around him. Then one day, while working as a temp, he runs into his ex-bassist Eli, a financial analyst who offers him a notropic drug called NZT-48 which allows him to access his brain's full potential - every connection working together, every memory in perfect recall. He completes his two week temp assignment in hours, gives his supervisor advice on dumping her deadbeat boyfriend and diagnoses his father's mystery ailment before the pill wears off and he crashes hard.

Then he tries to get another pill, only to find his friend murdered and the FBI chasing him for the crime. With the help of Eli's emergency stash he escapes and sets out to prove his innocence, with some help from sympathetic FBI agent Rebecca Harris (Jennifer Carpenter). The side-effects of NZT begin to bite, but Senator Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper, reprising his role from the original movie) appears basically from nowhere and offers him the solution - an occasional injection which eliminates the side-effects of NZT - if he never tells anyone that they had contact. It seems like a small price to pay for not having his brain catastrophically, even terminally, rewire itself.

I'm a sucker for a fantasy sequence.

With his innocence proven, the FBI is keen to study Brian's immunity, as the volunteers for their own NZT trials were killed by the drug. Harris insists that, rather than drag him in and make him a lab rat, they should use him as a resource. She explains that her father was a drug addict. He showed up promising to be better with the NZT shine in his eyes, and a few weeks later was dead.

In 'Badge! Gun!' therefore, he kicks off his new job; sadly not by playing Baccarat with master criminals (and Uno cards), but by sitting in a small room learning Farsi. This doesn't really fire his enthusiasm, so he gives his minders - whom he names Mike and Ike, although the NZT means that he must actually remember their names and is just being a bit of a dick - the slip to work on cases, much to the anger of the Chief (played by former Maid Marian, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio,) whom I've just realised is called Nasreen Pouran, so go inclusion even if she is played by an Italian.

Around the procedural elements of the episode - Brian helps to track a bomber by building models, then postulates the existence of a bio-weapon targeting descendants of Genghis Khan and obtains vital evidence against a CEO by appealing to the hatred of a workforce - we continue to build our characters. During his excursion to build model bombs for comparison, Brian takes a bus, gives one man advice on connecting with his son, helps a young couple work out their problems and generally makes friends with everyone, establishing him as a slightly maverick soul, but basically a good man. Harris continues to bat for him, while Pouran and Harris' partner Boyle are grudgingly impressed and Mike and Ike clearly hate his guts.

Most interestingly, when he tries to search for the connection between Morra and NZT, just associating them in a search window crashes his computer. Showing up like a blue eyed Jesus in the Pilot, Morra's influence now adopts a decidedly sinister cast, and his explanation that Brian will soon be in a position where he needs someone rather threatening. Just in case this wasn't enough to question his motives, the nurse who administered Brian's injection suddenly shows up as his Dad's visiting nurse.

Limitless has definite potential. I like the leads, and they're soft-pedaling on the whole '10% of your brain' bullshit, which is good.