Quantico - S2E10 - JMPALM

Previously on Quantico, “Cleopatra”

JMPALM refers to the political intelligence gathered from a station in Miami, targeting Latin American countries. 

Blind Mice

Now that we know that Miranda and the FBI are the terrorists behind this attack, we’re side-eyeing her just as hard Alex. According to Miranda, this entire terrorist attack was planned to flush out the AIC and get the disks (the same disks Lydia already has) because they have proof about the AIC agents. But like every single FBI mission we’ve seen on this show, it all went wrong. Now Miranda is trying to clean up her mess so she wants Alex to go back into the hot zone and get the disks while Alex wants to get out the last 125 hostages.

Miranda and Alex encounter Nimah who is livid with Miranda due to the failure of the mission. Since Miranda is still fixated on the disks rather than getting out the hostages, Nimah doesn’t trust her at all. Meanwhile back at the FBI building Shelby is dealing with the new president, Caleb’s mom, who wants to call off the air strike but is afraid of looking weak in her first major decision as president. She also approved the formation of the AIC when she was a senator so she wants Shelby to disavow her intelligence on the group. 

Sabotage

In the past, Alex will not let go of her mission to find proof about Owen and the AIC and she’s putting Ryan’s mission in jeopardy. Because they’re at cross purposes, Nimah and Harry try to convince Ryan and Alex to sabotage one another so that one of them gets kicked off The Farm. The show is definitely playing with our emotions because we know that in the present day, Alex and Ryan aren’t together so seeing them try to take each other out is rough. Both of them are competitive, neither likes to back down and they also aren’t above playing dirty.

The recruits mission is to get intelligence on a Venezuelan government official living in the U.S. (played guest star Javier Munoz who is currently playing Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton) and they do so by kidnapping his daughter and convincing his partner to give up information on him. It takes all of them working in tandem; Léon and Dayana kidnapping the daughter, Alex and Harry pretending to be officers, and Ryan and Sebastian pretending to be venture capitalists. When they’re almost at the end of their mission, Alex tricks Ryan and handcuffs him to a body while tripping the alarm so that Ryan will get caught in the act. They manage to fight, talk some sense into each other and make up and get away before they’re caught. But Harry points out that eventually Ryan will betray her to get ahead. Since Alex is the only one not working for the CIA or FBI in the present day, I’m guessing Harry is right.

But let’s be honest, Alex isn’t the best agent anyway because when she’s confronted by Owen, she spills all the beans about wanting to be a part of his secret group, which is news to Owen because it’s actually Lydia who’s running the AIC under her father’s nose. 

Central (lack of) Intelligence Agency

• Miranda seems to think that bringing Alex with her when she confronts Lydia will throw her off. I highly doubt that play. Lydia doesn’t even like Alex.

Who’s Sexin’ Whom?

Sebastian and Harry continue their game of in and out of the closet. Sebastian is “dating” the woman he slept with last week, either out of guilt or because she works in the government, we don’t know yet. Léon is still sleeping with “Jane” but now that he knows Shelby’s secret and he’s agreed to be a double agent for the FBI, I doubt the romantic part of their relationship will continue.

Answers and More Questions

• If Lydia is running the AIC instead of Owen, how did he end up in prison and why does Lydia blame Alex for it?
• Nimah turns on Miranda because of everything that happened during the fake attack. Everybody seems to be a double agent on this show but who turned murderous and why?
• Léon turns on the AIC partly because he sees how Dayana is falling apart because of what she’s being forced to do, but in the present day, Dayana seems pretty strong-willed. What’s changed?

Best Line of the Night: Newly minted President Haas letting it be known that her successor was half as qualified but won the votes that should have gone to her. Timely and correct.

Now that we know the full extent of the FBI mission, all the speculation turns to how it went so horribly wrong. Clearly all the killing was supposed to be staged or faked to get the hacker released, get the disks and maybe push the AIC to reveal itself. It now makes sense why Dayana was taken and tortured since she was an AIC recruit but Lydia’s endgame is still unknown and now there’s the unknown factor of who on the FBI might have defected or tipped off the AIC. Miranda and Nimah insist that Ryan wasn’t part of all of this but one thing Owen made sure to point out is that Ryan is a masterful liar and he loves to follow a strong leader. Lydia would definitely want him on her team and he would follow her if he believed in her cause. This entire season has been about betraying the people you love, so I won’t be surprised if everyone has turned on each other at some point.