FBI Review: Pride and Prejudice (Season 4 Episode 13)
OA has his patience and beliefs tested on FBI Season 4 Episode 13, “Pride and Prejudice.”
For an installment focused primarily on OA with Maggie in the peripheral, “Pride and Prejudice” accomplishes something FBI has needed for a while — a good episode.
There are some issues, but overall, this episode is what fans have been waiting for; good characterization, Maggie and OA being the dream team, and guest stars who can hold their own.
Pride
In this episode, we meet Rashid Bashar, another agent OA knows and respects, at least initially.
Bashar is, as OA says, not subtle. He’s a tad aggressive, and he bends the rules to fit what he needs to be done. Typically, this wouldn’t be odd, especially on a show like FBI, but Bashar takes it way too far.
He raises one of the biggest red flags any job will ever tell you — it’s like a family! If you hear that at an interview or a recruitment meeting, run.
As Bashar and OA are leading a recruitment meeting, Bashar says that you will feel right at home with the FBI as long as you honour the badge. Bashar then photoshops a photo of an Imam’s brother to frame him as a terrorist.
What a very nice, casual way to honor the badge, my dude.
And Prejudice
Then, Bashar is a little too confident that Muslims in the community are, in fact, terrorists. OA is shaken up by this thinking, with good reason, and it hurts to see.
OA tends to give suspects the benefit of the doubt, so when he realizes he may have jumped the gun, there’s a silent moment of OA blaming himself.
After the Imam is shown the falsified photos of his brother and is threatened, he tells OA he’ll be filing a complaint, one that he hopes OA will back him on.
When it comes down to it, though, OA lets Bashar get in his head.
There’s no denying that anyone can be a terrorist, and there’s no denying that if the FBI inquires, you should cooperate. But Bashar is still wrong for what he did to the Imam.
Isobel asks the two about it in the final moments of “Pride and Prejudice,” regarding a complaint from the Imam. OA sides with Bashar. He decides that even though Bashar has done this before and will do this again, he’s got to let it go.
Thus begins our biggest flaw of the episode. OA isn’t the type of person to sit back and do nothing. We know that because we’ve seen how he reacts to cases over the last four seasons, in particular, when he’s fighting Isobel on them.
Several times he’s gone head to head with Isobel, either with or against Maggie. So why now, once he’s seen something is done that is truly reprehensible, is he okay stepping back?
It’s odd, and it doesn’t match up with the OA we know and love.
Despite this, “Pride and Prejudice” is a well-put-together, sturdy episode. The best FBI has had in a while; however, it is not the best the show has ever had.
Stray Thoughts:
- The sentence, “the next time they show their faces, our drones will be taking them out,” is a very sick and awful sentence. It is very bold to use that as an upper hand when it shows how disgusting you are.
- How is Maggie’s sister doing? We haven’t heard from her in a while.
- Missy Peregrym and Zeeko Zaki run so much on FBI that sometimes I wonder if it’s their primary form of exercise.
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FBI airs Tuesday at 8/7c on CBS.
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Laura Wanberg
Laura is a homebody who loves everything about TV. Some of her favorite shows include Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Parks and Recreation, and The Morning Show. With her ever-growing list of new shows to watch and books to read, her favorite thing to do is to cuddle up with her cat and get lost in someone else's world.