“Walker’s” Blinded by the Light is a great title, referring literally to what happens to Cordell (Jared Padalecki) and Julia when they confront Tommy, but also to the fact that just about everyone has some kind of blinders on that aren’t letting them see things entirely clearly.
Of Fathers and Sons
The Walker family continues to bicker, Bonham still cranky with Augie, both parents cranky with Liam when he tries to bring work for the horse rescue and therapy center to the table, and Cordell misses breakfast altogether much to their annoyance.
On a Saturday.
Bonham calls a family meeting for both his sons to “sort things out” leaving Liam to tell his brother about it. I love the framing here, Liam and his father are separated, in two different worlds right now.
Bonham also finally tells Abeline about his conversation with Cordell and asking him to move out. Bonham is worried that there’s too much stress around there for Abeline, admitting he’s scared but then projecting it all onto his sons. He says Cordell needs to fix his family.
Abeline: Fix his family? We are his family! I’m curious how you decided that abandoning our son when he needs us the most is best for my health!
Me: You tell him, Abeline!
She says he’s welcome to stay in the farmhouse as long as he wants, and demands that Bonham apologizes (and also finish the dishes alone lol).
Strikingly, when Trey comes over to see Liam to get some legal advice, Bonham is the good dad to Trey with offers of coffee and words of inspiration and consolation. Trey says he feels like he belongs with the Rangers, and Bonham says he was born to do that job, and the Captain and DPS, they see it too. He insists they’re not gonna let a man like him go.
Where is that for your own sons, Bonham??
To make Bonham even more cranky, neither of his sons shows up for the family meeting. Angry, Bonham tells Abeline that their sons didn’t turn out to be the pretty picture he imagined it would be, and what? You have two awesome sons, Bonham, be grateful! (Also, they make quite a pretty picture, just saying…)
Liam has a positive meeting with an accountant (that goes long so he misses the family meeting) and offers Stella a legal partnership in the horse rescue and therapy program since she’s 18.
This show is convinced that 18-year-olds are all grown-up adults, but having worked for a decade as a psychologist in a college counseling center?
I am side-eyeing you, show.
Setting Boundaries
It’s a day of Saturday meetings being called, Captain James calling Trey, Cassie, and Walker in too, and immediately being cranky because they’re a few minutes late. He’s particularly hard on Trey, who was supposed to be on desk duty.
James: Do you have a thing for defying me?
Walker interrupts to defend Trey and James cuts him off.
James: I didn’t ask for your input.
Walker: Yessir.
Trey has to go up before DPS for insubordination, in fact. And while everyone assumes it will turn out fine – it doesn’t.
Trey is dismissed from being a Ranger.
Most of us are convinced that James needed Trey out of the Rangers so he can be recruited by Grey Flag and go undercover, but we’ll see. If not, James is just really cranky.
James also asks if there’s anything else Cassie and Cordell want to tell him about opening that case, which he knows because Cassie said the name ‘Grey Flag’ at Thanksgiving. The whole beeping inside the case thing sounds like quite a logical reason to open it to me, but James thinks it’s weird that they thought a bag of digital watches was a bomb – except they didn’t know what was in there!
He’s really pissed at them for lying to him and tells them to speak up if there’s anything else. It looks like Cordell is going to, but at the last minute, he says no with nothing more to report.
This is a very harsh episode, seriously.
Cassie and Kevin go on a date even though she’s in a bad mood after James chewed them out. Kevin does everything right on the date, including consulting with Ben to pick the perfect restaurant, and insisting he’s “an open book” so she can ask him anything, even though because he’s in politics he’s got a scrubbed social media history.
I don’t know whether to be totally suspicious of Kevin or to find him adorable because after all, he is Jake Abel.
We do learn that he was close to his mother and his father died when he was ten though, which could turn out to be pivotal information if it’s fodder for a revenge plot, just sayin. If that turns out to be the case it’s too bad though, because Kevin and Cassie are cute together. They bond over being workaholics and over why their mom/abuela had to work multiple jobs.
Kevin oversteps the next day though, “fixing” it because he’s worried about the Mayor pinning medals on Rangers under disciplinary review, calling in a favor and putting a favorable spin on it. Cassie is pissed, saying she didn’t ask him to do that and wanted to keep her personal and work life separate. He apologizes but she says this isn’t going to work.
Ouch.
Of New Partners and Old Brothers
Walker teams up with Julia, who is about as no-nonsense as a reporter can get. She’s the antithesis of warm and fuzzy, but I actually like her – or liked her – for most of the first part of the episode. She and Cordell put their heads together to try to figure out who might have sent him that threatening box of drinks, Cordell reiterating that they’re trying to get him to join them which continues to not make sense to me at all. He’s shocked when Julia knows the name of the anarchist organization and just puts it right out there – Grey Flag.
Julia: I’m an investigative reporter, it’s my job to know things people aren’t supposed to know.
She warns him that it’s possible there might be moles at the Rangers and while he doesn’t entirely trust her, it’s enough to stir up some doubt in his mind.
I like their halting sort of friendship and how they push each other; she’s not afraid to tell him exactly what she’s thinking and she’s not lying when she says she has good instincts for figuring out what people are feeling. How she’s gonna use that?
We don’t know yet.
They undertake this informal investigation off the books, which always leaves room for things to go off the rails. Julia says her sources say that they didn’t actually manage to shut down Grey Flag after all, telling Cordell to “calm down” which makes him bristle and that’s kinda adorable. She’s good at pissing him off, pushing him to “open his mind” but comes to a dead end when she admits she doesn’t have the names of the people running Grey Flag.
She’s got her own agenda for sure, and she understands what he may not want to do – he’s their prime target. They’re also competitive, allowing them to eventually figure out that the specific energy drink sent to Cordell was a sort of private joke with his unit. Walker doesn’t want to consider that the person might be a fellow Marine, the five of them in his unit were so close they were like brothers.
Julia: Cain and Abel were brothers too.
He gets so pissed at that; he walks out. She comes over the next day to apologize and he says he’s glad she’s there, though he’s having a lot of trouble wrapping his mind around it being one of his ‘brothers’.
Cordell shows Julia a photo of The Green Raiders, Raider Team 3, and together they brainstorm who it might be. Julia crosses out possibilities, starting with “Coop” who died – I sort of cringed when she markered over the photo though!
Julia surprisingly has access to a Pentagon database – what?? – and figures out that all but one of the five are dead, maybe under suspicious circumstances?
Tommy Adams, however, is still alive. Julia crosses out everyone but Tommy and suggests he may be the one behind Grey Flag, and they set out to find him.
Julia is so eager to confront Tommy that she refuses to wait for backup, pulling out a gun and stalking towards his house out in the middle of nowhere.
Cordell: This is not a good idea!
Julia: Who asked you? Don’t worry, I’m a big girl – with a gun. I’ll be fine.
She refuses to listen to him, and then all the floodlights come on and Tommy confronts them and Julia’s bravado disappears. Cordell orders him to stand down, but he gets jumped instead. We get to see Cordell fighting like a Marine would, ordering Tommy not to fight back and then letting him up.
But it seems like Tommy isn’t the guy, insisting he’s the one who sent the drinks to warn Walker. He assumed that a cryptic message would be responded to in kind, trying to stay out of the light of whoever is picking them off. He says the others were a professional hit – that they’re being hunted.
One by one.
I am not sure where this is going, and I really like that! This was a strong episode and it left me eager to find out what’s going to happen next week, which is exactly what every show wants to do.
I also watched an excellent episode of “Walker Independence” right after, which if you’re not watching, you should be – it managed to check off a whole bunch of fanfic bingo card spaces in one episode!
New episodes of both “Walker” with 3.11 Past Is Prologue and “Walker Independence” this week before a mini hiatus!