What is with FBI starting out strong and then taking the story in a far less interesting direction?
FBI Season 8 Episode 14’s Maggie story was easily the strongest of the season, but it went off the rails in the middle.
I’d rather the story stayed about searching for Erin instead of the Criminal Minds-like direction it went instead.
FBI Season 8 Episode 14 Threw In My Least Favorite Trope Halfway Through
There are no strong enough words for how much I hate the “cop gets kidnapped” trope.
Unfortunately, Dick Wolf loves it, judging from how often it’s happened to Maggie, and how it pops up on all of his other cop-oriented shows.
The problem with this trope, besides being unrealistic in most cases, is that it robs the case at hand of its focus.
Instead of being about searching for the villain or original victim, it becomes centered on rescuing the cop who got themselves into trouble, and often includes scenes of the kidnapped cop trying to reason with the kidnapper.
That’s exactly what happened on FBI Season 8 Episode 14.
The first half of the episode was a tense, highly investigative story about finding Maggie’s missing sister.
This was an emotional case for Maggie, although Isobel couldn’t let her participate directly in the search and asked her to work with Peter on profiling.
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All of that was everything I wanted in an FBI episode: a real investigation with personal stakes, real police procedures being followed, and best of all, a substantial part for Ian, who used his computer skills to aid the investigation far more than he had in earlier episodes of FBI Season 8.
Unfortunately, it all fell apart when Maggie and Peter entered that dark house.
Maggie’s Capture Seemed Contrived
A seasoned FBI agent, especially one who has been made vulnerable in the past, should know better than to give in to the idea of going in without backup to save time.
It’s a ridiculous trope that seems pervasive on these cop shows, and it never accomplishes anything other than getting the protagonists into unnecessary trouble.
In this case, it was doubly silly because Maggie and Peter were supposed to be profiling, not going into a dark brownstone by themselves, and the work they were doing should have told them that this was exactly the kind of trap that DiStefano would set.
Besides, Jubal and OA were on the street searching for DeStefano, so this unauthorized investigation meant Maggie risked friendly fire if the actual investigative team ended up in the same place.
To make matters worse, Maggie and Peter split up instead of sticking together, which gave DeStefano the opportunity to kidnap Maggie.
Come on! Everyone involved (except for DeStefano) should have known better.
DeStefano toying with Maggie by placing a recording of Erin begging her to help her was good enough — that was within his character, so it didn’t pull me out of the story the way this unnecessary kidnapping did.
Did you like the twist of Maggie getting kidnapped?
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Afterward, things went from bad to worse in this storyline.
Erin was Practically Forgotten Until Her Tragic Ending
The team focused all its resources on finding Maggie.
It was almost as if they assumed that Erin was simply bait and would be let go, which was silly, considering who DiStefano was.
Or, they forgot about her because they were so worried about Maggie.
Either way, it wasn’t a great look for the NY Field Office.
They should have been devoting resources to finding both women, not treating this change in the case as if Erin were no longer important.
There would have been more room for this investigation if we hadn’t had so many scenes of Maggie struggling with DiStefano.
Most of their scenes were a psychological back-and-forth in which DiStefano asserted his desire to give Maggie a physical scar so that she couldn’t hide her pain, and Maggie tried to figure out what to say in order to survive.
This was better than the usual nonsense involving physically torturing cops who fall into the villain’s clutches, but it still felt more like something that belonged on Criminal Minds than an FBI story.
Plus, once Maggie overpowered him and ran away, it became the standard overly violent hunter-becomes-hunted story that has been on our screens a billion times.
This was all build-up to the final, unnecessarily tragic scene.
It felt more or less inevitable that Erin would be found dead, considering how little attention was paid to her in the middle part of the show and how much more devastating that would be for Maggie.
However, I’m not convinced that that was a necessary beat. Finding Erin in bad shape but alive would still be painful for Maggie to deal with without making the last two minutes of the episode depressing.
What did you think, FBI fanatics?
I want to hear all of your opinions — good, bad, and ugly. Put them in the comments, and don’t forget to share this article with your friends who also love FBI so that they can join in the conversation.
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If you enjoyed this article, check out our coverage of CIA, the latest FBI spinoff.
FBI airs on CBS on Mondays at 9/8c and streams on Paramount+ on Tuesdays.
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