S01.E12: The Assassination of Eddie Morra

[thuganomics85]

Senator Edward Morra is targeted by a would-be assassin, and Brian is ordered to sabotage the FBI's investigation into the murder attempt in order to prevent exposing the senator's connection to NZT.

 

 

First episode of the new year, and they sure pulled out the stops.  The return of Morra, Bradley Cooper and is million dollar smirk.  Sands is back lurking around.  Brian's parents make another appearance. And Georgina Haig as a NZT assassin!  Happy 2016, everyone!

 

At this point, it really does look like Morra is a bad guy.  Unless she is just that good of a liar, I think Piper is telling the truth about being framed, and Morra has showed that he would do anything to get what he wants.  The only other option I can think of at the moment is that Sands is going behind Morra's back for some reason, but I'm not sure what he'd gain by that.  I'm kind of hoping that Morra really is the mastermind.  I always found his character to be shady in the film, before the NZT, and I can totally buy it making him become this.  Either way, I continue to like how they implement him.  Not too much that it feels like he is taking over the show, but enough to be a major obstacle that Brian has to overcome.

 

Certainly looks like Rebecca is now getting suspicious of Morra too, so I'm sure that is going to cause problems, if Morra or Sands ever finds out.

 

The opening bits where Brian kept imagining how he might be exposed with Sands and the FBI in the same room was funny, but my favorite was Rebecca and Sands being in his head in his debate over who to trust.  Complete with Rebecca in that silly sweater, and Sands in the "bad boy" get-up.  And then Jason just shows up for no reason.  Heh.

[possibilities]

I love that Rebecca is figuring things out on her own.

[Slade347]

The opening bits where Brian kept imagining how he might be exposed with Sands and the FBI in the same room was funny, but my favorite was Rebecca and Sands being in his head in his debate over who to trust.  Complete with Rebecca in that silly sweater, and Sands in the "bad boy" get-up.  And then Jason just shows up for no reason.  Heh.

 

And his father shows up with the advice that he ends up listening to, which I think makes sense given his relationship with him.

 

I liked that we saw Morra in the beginning using his NZT brain to not only figure out what was going to happen with the attempted assassination, but we also saw him run through the possible headlines from the different outcomes.

 

I'm inclined to believe Piper as well, but that might just be because Morra and Sands always seems so shady. I do like that there's someone else involved with NZT outside of the FBI and the Morra faction.

[Big Mother]

Very dark episode. Too little humor.

Loved Piper. Too bad they can't date or something - they had chemistry, aside from the obvious ties that bound them. Obvious question: Why didn't Piper simply meet up with Brian to bond/discuss taking Morra out BEFORE she put herself in danger by trying to kill Morra?

My heart was pounding the whole time, wondering if Brian could actually bring himself to kill a person. I was really confused at the end when Piper showed up alive, because... well, living in NYC I know it's IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to drag a dead body down a subway without anone noticing. There is always someone in any given train station, no matter the time of day. and I'm not quite getting how they managed to fool the security camera AND the DNA registry. Something went over my head there.

And how the shrewd head of the FBI somehow didn't cotton onto Brian being a double agent here is also a little out of character; Rebecca checks in with Brian a lot more often, and so do Ike and Mike. He spent way too much time off on his own, without anyone from the FBI tracking him. Nu, I'll suspend my disbelief just to enjoy the storyline. (Edited: I missed the fact that at the end of the episode Rebecca started getting suspicious. I'm still puzzled though how they figured out so many different people who were on NZT, except for the biggie, Eddie Morra.)

Morra is the bad guy, for sure. And now Brian is in deep poop; once Sands and co. asked him to kill a person, and to them he apparently did, there is no telling what they'll expect him to do next. And somehow the FBI WILL bust Brian. I envision the Season 1 finale being the one where Brian finally gets busted and loses the trust of Rebecca, Naz, his family and Morra and co., and Season 2 of him being in jail/his trial, etc...

Edited January 6, 2016 by Big Mother

[edhopper]

I don't think Morra is the bad guy. It seems to obvious and I don't know if Cooper, who produces the show, would make himself evil. I think there is more at play. I do expect to see piper again. I am hoping that this show, like Person of Interest, doesn't say a status quo procedural, but goes of in different directions.

[Free]

I don't think Morra is the bad guy. It seems to obvious and I don't know if Cooper, who produces the show, would make himself evil. I think there is more at play. I do expect to see piper again. I am hoping that this show, like Person of Interest, doesn't say a status quo procedural, but goes of in different directions.

 

Same here, but it does seem like it's starting to if this last episode is going by that.

[Netfoot]

Morra seems to be adopting/have adopted the attitude that NZT-people now are the only people of consequence, and normals are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things.  I suppose this is a consequence of essentially being several orders of magnitude ahead in cognitive ability.  It's like people vs. chimps or something. They're cute and we tend to anthropomorphize them, but they aren't us!  So they take second place to our needs.

 

Great episode after the break.  A little less comedic and a touch more serious, but we've had these before.  And the Bradley Cooper involvement probably intended to bring back viewers and maybe win a few more.  Of course, immediately giving us a fortnight's break probably undoes any good, here.

 

Not happy to see the continued proliferation of NZT to every Tom, Dick and Piper.  But I suppose it's inevitable.  If you make NZT-Brian this unstoppable intellectual giant, the only place you will find worthy opponents/villeins is in the same NZT bottle.  Pity though.  I've felt from the beginning that I'd like to see Brian dealing with problems that went beyond the run-of-the-mill crooks, criminals, and bad-guys, even if they are on NZT!

 

Rebecca may not be on NZT, but she is no dummy!  She worked out that the shooter was on NZT simply from the range involved*, and now seems to have her suspicions about Morra.  I must say, I am really liking the character, and glad she is so much more than Dexter's sister Deb.

 

*By the way, that record-setting shot of 2,707 yards Rebecca mentioned, is a real record.  And it wasn't a fluke, because the shooter made two shots at the distance that morning, not one.  And if you want your jaw to drop, get a map (or Google maps) and measure 2,707 yards from your front door to some place you know.  It's a really long way!

[Big Mother]

It really bugs me that Brian wasn't assigned this case, as he normally is. Didnt rebecca wonder why brian was so 'off' and not really doing his normal speedy-gonzalez detective work here?

[ApathyMonger]

The twist with Piper being alive was a bit too predictable, but otherwise I liked it. I prefer the more comedic episodes, but I like how they've made Cooper the antagonist of the series.

[Bort]

I was definitely waiting for the twist that Piper was really alive. It just isn't in Brian's character to put his own needs over someone's life like that. And because the showdown happened to involve the subway, which we've seen from the pilot that Brian has experience with, I knew something was up.

I kind of went awwww at the mini season 5 Fringe reunion with Blair Brown and Georgina Haig being in a scene together.

[MrWhyt]

The opening bits where Brian kept imagining how he might be exposed with Sands and the FBI in the same room was funny, but my favorite was Rebecca and Sands being in his head in his debate over who to trust.  Complete with Rebecca in that silly sweater, and Sands in the "bad boy" get-up.  And then Jason just shows up for no reason.  Heh.

And they made a "Nuke the site from orbit" reference! The writers are really good at throwing in little geek references,

[iMonrey]

I knew he didn't really kill Piper. Maybe I was fooled for a split second when the show went to commercial but the minute it came back and he was drinking with Sands I knew it was a ruse. 

 

You know what I would like to see happen? If the FBI finds out (whether Brian tells them or not) Brian is working with Morra and they let him continue playing double agent so they can get the upper hand on him.

 

What doesn't make much sense to me is that - from what I can recall - the whole reason Brian is working with the FBI is because they wanted to study him and figure out why he's immune to the side effects of NZT. Shouldn't they be putting him through a battery of tests and wouldn't those tests have found something in his system that's blocking the side effects? Wouldn't the NZT itself show up in extensive bloodwork tests? There's apparently some kind of "enzyme" he's getting from Morra, why hasn't the FBI found that in his labwork?

 

I'm glad Rebecca is onto Morra, the story is moving along quite nicely.

[sjohnson]

What doesn't make much sense to me is that - from what I can recall - the whole reason Brian is working with the FBI is because they wanted to study him and figure out why he's immune to the side effects of NZT. Shouldn't they be putting him through a battery of tests and wouldn't those tests have found something in his system that's blocking the side effects? Wouldn't the NZT itself show up in extensive bloodwork tests? There's apparently some kind of "enzyme" he's getting from Morra, why hasn't the FBI found that in his labwork?

 

Tests for substances in blood generally require treating a sample with reagent(s) known to produce a certain effect. For instance, blood glucose would react with Benedict's solution to produce a blue color, which could be measured quantitatively with a colorimeter. (By the way, I don't know if they still use this particular reaction for the home monitors.) The enzyme is manufactured and its properties are unknown. What the government consultants are trying to do would require first separating all the compounds, including all proteins, both structural proteins and enzymes as well as all lipids and nucleic acids, known and unknown, purifying large enough samples to work with, from the blood and every type of cell tissue available for such an analysis. The known compounds could be identified fairly readily of course but any role in toleration of NZT would have to be tested. The unknown compounds would have to be analyzed for their composition and structure (which are not the same thing at all.) It took years to find the structure of hemoglobin and DNA. Much of the lab work has been automated, but this is a brute of a job. Searching a haystack for a pin is easy by comparison. 

 

Another approach would be to use polymerase to duplicate Brian's genome, then resolutely study every unknown gene product, which is the transcripted mRNA. This would involve somehow producing enough of it in pure form to study its effects in a laboratory. The first approach is a monstrous amount of work. I'm not sure that this approach is even technically possible. 

 

The third approach would be to figure out how NZT use cause the damage that finally kills the user, then reverse engineer enough information about the necessary three dimensional structure to make either of the other approaches feasible. It would be like getting a magnet to search the haystack with. 

 

And the thing is, I'm quite sure that an expert in genetics would find even more reasons for the search to fail. 

 

Rebecca, Piper, the pretty women the hero likes are always Good. That said, until we know something about who invented NZT and who unleashes it occasionally, slaughtering any witnesses along the way (which is not Morra according to the movie and Brian's own origin story,) we cannot make a final judgment about Morra. It is hard to say how much of his actions are imposed by them, whoever they are. As long as they withhold that, nothing is final. 

 

As to Piper, I'm not sure that she had a serious problem until she tried to kill Morra...which she did, even if it is suggested she was aiming primarily at flushing out a Morra recruit who might be turned. (Which is why she didn't approach Brian on her own by the way...she didn't know who it was til she saw him pass the NZT test she set up at the crime scene.) She still wanted to kill Morra. I do not understand how that helps her solve her running out of NZT/enzyme problem. I suggest that it doesn't and that she just wants revenge for the death of the boy friend. 

 

The thing with that is it is entirely unclear why Morra would kill the boy friend. The boy friend is a softer target than Piper, after all, but a third party could try to manipulate NZT Piper into attacking NZT Morra. Piper may be Good (hot,) but that doesn't mean she's right. 

 

The thing is, is Sands another user? If so, his comment about the "botched" operation suggests he didn't buy the failure of the alleged shooting attempt. And I'm not sure that he wouldn't wonder if NZT couldn't find a way to fake the rather more elaborate death he got. The thing is, if Morra is just a sharp dealer with plans on re-shaping the world the way he wants, once he gets those pesky other NZT players out of the way, Piper laying low means she's not bothering him any more. Which is, mission accomplished! But if Sands is not another user, then his pep talk was both eerily dispassionate about murder and personally empathetic. If Brian is now an initiate, why is there any need to pretend to be a nice guy? Similarly, Morra's patsy was an eerie mixture of ruthless and kind. A posthumous confession in the suicide note would have been much safer for him. If he's really so ruthless, why not?

 

In some ways, the little discussion about becoming someone else is the heart of this episode I think. For better or for worse, Brian is going to change, just like becoming a rock star would change him. 

 

Maybe it was just luck, but I instantly concluded Brian was going to fake Piper's death, so the finale dragged a little for me, until the discussion with Morra.

Edited January 6, 2016 by sjohnson

[LoneHaranguer]

 

Maybe it was just luck, but I instantly concluded Brian was going to fake Piper's death, so the finale dragged a little for me, until the discussion with Morra.

For me, the diagram that popped up gave it away. No point to calculating anything if he wanted her death to be real.

[Slovenly Muse]

All very good points here. I don't know how I felt about this episode. It was all about delving deeper into this awful relationship Brian has with Morra, so I was all primed to love it from the start, but... something didn't work for me. Mostly, I think it's just completely unbelievable to think of Brian actually murdering a person, so there never seemed to be much tension on that front. Piper's death was obviously faked, so that kind of bugged me. Despite not totally loving the episode as a whole, there were definitely some great things.

 

I love that Brian respects Rebecca's intelligence enough to find it plausible that she might figure out his entire deal with Sands within five seconds of seeing them in a room together.

 

That scene with everyone in Brian's head telling him what to do, and Jason refusing to wear the cardigan, and then his dad dropping some wisdom. That was lovely.

 

I loved Morra noticing that he was about to be shot, and then calculating the best way to play it for political advantage. That guy may not be full-on evil, but he is not a good guy anymore. I don't know that I believe he killed Piper's boyfriend though. Either he lied to Brian in that roundabout "technically I didn't kill him... I had Sands do it!" kind of way, or Sands may be working behind his back. Or there are other players we don't know about yet.

 

On that note, I really am wondering about Sands. I'm with sjohnson in wondering whether or not Sands is a user. Because he seems to be the go-to guy for Morra's sketchiest tasks. We've seen him commit murder before (he planted that bomb), but is he acting on Morra's behalf, or behind his back? If Sands is a user, he could well be acting on his own, and Piper's boyfriend could just be another loose end Sands prefers to tie up rather... definitively. But if Sands isn't on NZT, I find it hard to believe that he could kill people without Morra's knowledge when the victims are people closely tied to Morra, and therefore likely to make Morra himself wonder about it. And if it's not NZT, then what is Sands getting out of being Morra's stooge? Is he a hired hand, or a true believer? In any case, I'll be interested to see how this plays out.

[MisterGlass]

It seems messy for Morra to have had Piper's boyfriend killed instead of Piper.  It leaves an unpredictable entity in play, and that's an unnecessary risk.  I tend to agree some other party is involved, whether that is Sands or an unknown.  Unless Morra truly believes he can anticipate all crises now.

 

I feel like Morra knows that Brian could have faked the death.  But, as sjohnson said, Piper gone is the same as Piper dead for the immediate future from Morra's perspective.  Either way, Morra has an acceptable result.  However, it feels like there is some other layer to this.  Brian is not the right person to pick for an assassination.  Sands is the right person.  Give him the pill and let him watch Brian until Piper shows up.  Asking Brian to kill feels like another test of character, and I suppose the question is whether he passes by not killing, passes by deceiving them, or fails for one of the same reasons.

 

I like Rebecca recognizing the NZT shift in Morra's life.  His speech to Brian about becoming a different person was disconcerting.  He believes that he can accomplish great and good things in his political life, and he believes his political future is worth defending.  It's easy to see him sacrificing a few pawns to achieve those high ends.  He engaged in a fair amount of lying, and even some violence, to survive and get to his current position.

 

 

Of course, immediately giving us a fortnight's break probably undoes any good, here.

 

Aw, really?

[Free]

Maybe it was just luck, but I instantly concluded Brian was going to fake Piper's death, so the finale dragged a little for me, until the discussion with Morra.

 

It was obvious, Brian isn't a killer.

[Clanstarling]

I don't think Morra is the bad guy. It seems to obvious and I don't know if Cooper, who produces the show, would make himself evil. I think there is more at play. I do expect to see piper again. I am hoping that this show, like Person of Interest, doesn't say a status quo procedural, but goes of in different directions.

Since I didn't see the film, for me Morra's been pretty evil from the get-go, what with threatening Brian's family and having a henchman who blackmails Brian all the time. Each interaction with Morra, to me, has seemed fraught with threat. He dodged Brian's questions regarding Piper's fiancé - he made no direct denial. To me, that's shady whether on TV or in real life (where it usually turns out the politician did, in fact, do whatever they were accused of).

Nothing in the TV show has led me to believe any differently. I'll grant that the movie may have layers that the show does not yet have. And as for an actor making himself evil - playing a nuanced evil character is a lot of fun - see Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad, or Kevin Spacey in House of Cards.

[Driad]

How would NZT help a sniper? She had to be fairly smart to get the weapons into the building, choose the right place and time to shoot, etc., but I don't see how becoming a temporary genius would improve her performance. The pill might even make her less calm, which would be bad for her accuracy.

I am always amused when someone looks admiringly at an NZT pill before taking it. Probably considered necessary so viewers get the point, but it looks a bit odd.

[iMonrey]

 

Tests for substances in blood generally require treating a sample with reagent(s) known to produce a certain effect. For instance, blood glucose would react with Benedict's solution to produce a blue color, which could be measured quantitatively with a colorimeter. (By the way, I don't know if they still use this particular reaction for the home monitors.) The enzyme is manufactured and its properties are unknown. What the government consultants are trying to do would require first separating all the compounds, including all proteins, both structural proteins and enzymes as well as all lipids and nucleic acids, known and unknown, purifying large enough samples to work with, from the blood and every type of cell tissue available for such an analysis. The known compounds could be identified fairly readily of course but any role in toleration of NZT would have to be tested. The unknown compounds would have to be analyzed for their composition and structure (which are not the same thing at all.) It took years to find the structure of hemoglobin and DNA. Much of the lab work has been automated, but this is a brute of a job. Searching a haystack for a pin is easy by comparison.

 

Here's the thing - they are able to determine - apparently quite quickly - whether someone has NZT in their system. They did that with the woman who confessed to the assassination attempt on Morra, so they're advanced enough to test for that. Presumably, they've tested Brian too, and would either find a different form of NZT, or the same NZT plus something else unknown. Either way you'd think they'd be focused on determining what that unknown factor is.

 

Instead, they seemed to have completely forgotten about trying to find out why Brian is immune to the side effects, just accept it as a given and let him work as a consultant. It's kind of lazy. 

[sjohnson]

Here's the thing - they are able to determine - apparently quite quickly - whether someone has NZT in their system. They did that with the woman who confessed to the assassination attempt on Morra, so they're advanced enough to test for that. Presumably, they've tested Brian too, and would either find a different form of NZT, or the same NZT plus something else unknown. Either way you'd think they'd be focused on determining what that unknown factor is.

 

Instead, they seemed to have completely forgotten about trying to find out why Brian is immune to the side effects, just accept it as a given and let him work as a consultant. It's kind of lazy. 

They certainly don't say anything about the studies, which I assumed were the endless hours of grunt work on samples I briefly described above. But to be honest there really isn't anything on screen about that, so I guess I've inadvertently fanwanked it (hope I didn't misuse the slang and get unintentionally risque.) 

 

However, a test for NZT wouldn't be too hard, since they would almost certainly have had samples from sick and dying users to work with. No isolating one substance among thousands from the body, just work directly with the pills. The illness and deaths from NZT use are surely why the stuff came to government attention in the first place. Tests for new designer drugs tend to be developed using samples of the product.

 

Since they're giving Brian the NZT themselves, we know there's nothing different about that for them to detect. 

[Big Mother]

I'm confused about one thing - who set up the person to take the fall of Piper? Eddie Morra knows that lady who's dying within the year? Is she also on NZT?

[Clanstarling]

How would NZT help a sniper? She had to be fairly smart to get the weapons into the building, choose the right place and time to shoot, etc., but I don't see how becoming a temporary genius would improve her performance. The pill might even make her less calm, which would be bad for her accuracy.

I am always amused when someone looks admiringly at an NZT pill before taking it. Probably considered necessary so viewers get the point, but it looks a bit odd.

I guess they just want to admire the design of it - it is so pretty, clear and round.

[MissLucas]

 I'm not quite getting how they managed to fool the security camera AND the DNA registry. Something went over my head there.

They replaced Piper's DNA data in the 'system' with the data from the female corpse they used as a decoy.

 

Great episode - it ties in nicely with what was discussed in the thread from the last episode with regards to Brian's morale code being (so far) strong enough to resist giving in to the temptations of NZT. I think Morra is planning to create a society structured on haves and have-nots - i.e. people he deems worthy of getting NZT because they want to 'better themselves' no matter the cost. Those who don't pass that test will probably end up as second-class citizens at best and at worst as some version of Soylent Green. That's his utopia and not 'free NZT for all'. And that's why Piper was so adamant about killing him.

[shapeshifter]

Since I didn't see the film, for me Morra's been pretty evil from the get-go, what with threatening Brian's family and having a henchman who blackmails Brian all the time.

I haven't seen the movie either, but this episode suggests (through the voice of Sands) that something about taking NZT changes a person's moral perspective, so maybe Morra is now corrupted.

[MrWhyt]

How would NZT help a sniper? She had to be fairly smart to get the weapons into the building, choose the right place and time to shoot, etc., but I don't see how becoming a temporary genius would improve her performance. The pill might even make her less calm, which would be bad for her accuracy.

NZT is a brain/nervous system enhancer, not just intelligence. So you get enhanced senses and better control over your body. You'd also have the mental acuity to do the ballistic calculations to make a 6000 yard shot (i believe that was the range) taking into account all the factors that would affect the projectile.

[FurryFury]

Loved the episode. Piper being alive was obvious, but I didn't mind. I really liked Georgina Haig on other shows, so it was great to see her (and it's obvious she'll return down the line). Nice chemistry with Brian, too. Too bad this potential romance seems destined to end tragically (she's either evil or will die or something).

 

Really liked some insides into Morra's character. I still haven't seen the original movie (Bradley Cooper's not a big draw for me), but this episode almost made me want to. The "Blue and orange morality" bit of his character makes a lot of sense, I think. After such a long time on NZT it's hard to see ordinary people as equals. I'll be very impressed if he really turns out to be a bad guy (or close).

[Noirprncess]

I haven't seen the movie either, but this episode suggests (through the voice of Sands) that something about taking NZT changes a person's moral perspective, so maybe Morra is now corrupted.

In the movie, Morra went from a kinda lovable but aimless dolt to being an ambitious schemer. He seemed to decide he needed to be in power to make things happen. I'm not sure I'd attribute it all to NZT. If anything, as we see with Brian and the others, NZT helps them to be smarter by using their brain to full capacity and enhance personality traits that were already there. So, Brian at his core, so far had resisted the pressures to change as much as Morra did.

Personally I think Morra deludes himself into thinking he's a good guy by getting others to do his dirty work. He reasons that it's ok because it's necessary to protect NZT by any means necessary.

[hnygrl]

If I recall correctly (and I haven't seen the episode yet), NZT makes you more of what you already are. If you already are at the core a bad person, then killing would be easy for you. At the core, Brian is a really really good man, so the idea, the suggestion of him kiling someone for any reason on earth would be ridiculous and of COURSE he would fake a death. It's no IN him to kill.

Morra? Sands? Oh yeah. Easy. I agree with the poster who said Morra deceives himself into thinking he's a good person when he's really not.

 

NZT doesn't "change" you at the core, it insteads "magnifies" what's already in you. Makes you the super-duper-best version of yourself.

[riverheightsnancy]

Just jumping into this thread to say, just started watching the show and eye guzzled the entire season. One of my most favorite new shows next to the Grinder. Hilarious. The Ferris Bueller episode had me rolling, as I saw that movie multiple times back in college. I agree with the above that NZT doesn't change the core of the person. Brian is a good person, who has a childlike wonder about life, but still a good person. I love the actor. (he looks like an old boyfriend, so there's that for me). 

[LoneHaranguer]

 

NZT is a brain/nervous system enhancer, not just intelligence. So you get enhanced senses and better control over your body. You'd also have the mental acuity to do the ballistic calculations to make a 6000 yard shot (i believe that was the range) taking into account all the factors that would affect the projectile.

You're not going to know all of the factors since you won't know how all of the intervening air is moving.

[ZoqFotPik]

 

I'm confused about one thing - who set up the person to take the fall of Piper? Eddie Morra knows that lady who's dying within the year? Is she also on NZT?

Morra, but she wasn't so much setup as volunteered to take the fall in exchange for helping her parents. Her parent's house was in foreclosure and she will be dead within a year. Morra may have been aware of her prior to this incident, but I doubt she knew him. She was probably given NZT once so it would be in her system.

 

I hoping that it will be revealed that Naz and the FBI is aware of Morra's connection to NZT, but since he is constantly on it is nearly impossible to get close enough to investigate. 

[Kromm]

Even a "heavy" episode of this show is insanely fun.  I wish I knew how they did it, so I could write better rants about how other shows fail to. At this point I just have to shake my head that none of them get it right, while Limitless does.

What doesn't make much sense to me is that - from what I can recall - the whole reason Brian is working with the FBI is because they wanted to study him and figure out why he's immune to the side effects of NZT. Shouldn't they be putting him through a battery of tests and wouldn't those tests have found something in his system that's blocking the side effects? Wouldn't the NZT itself show up in extensive bloodwork tests? There's apparently some kind of "enzyme" he's getting from Morra, why hasn't the FBI found that in his labwork?

This is the one weakness of the current show setup. I do wish there's some secret reveal eventually where Naz has some secret knowledge that's leading her to actively block better medical studies of Brian (maybe she turns out to be in Morra's pocket--although that will be disappointing from another standpoint).

I love that Rebecca is figuring things out on her own.

This episode really emphasized how smart (off any pill) she is.

[Kromm]

Morra? Sands? Oh yeah. Easy. I agree with the poster who said Morra deceives himself into thinking he's a good person when he's really not.

 

NZT doesn't "change" you at the core, it insteads "magnifies" what's already in you. Makes you the super-duper-best version of yourself.

Morra would have to be deluded to think that. I mean think about what happens in this episode (I'm presuming you've seen it by the time you come back to the thread again).  He makes a nice moralizing speech about how he could never kill anyone and then his heavy (right in front of him) forces Brian to take on killing FOR Morra. But that's not even the capper. The capper is that even having apparently (to Morra and Sands' eyes) having done what they asked, we know that they're just going to use it to ensure Brian's cooperation from now on. I mean the threat of outting him as a murderer. They can use that  as leverage against him (leaking video footage, for example), even though we know that they can't risk him actually telling someone about Morra's connection to it all. 

 

I will say this tied back to the movie finally in a more complete way than we've seen before. You can see how fucked in the head Morra really is here. It's a lot more interesting than the overly simplistic version we thought he was in the first few episodes.

[bethy]

For me, it's not that NZT enhances you, it's almost like it creates a new you. There's original-you or core-you and then there is NZT-you. The question is which will control. We've seen that played out multiple times, including this episode, with Brian's core-self debating his NZT-self. Because of who Brian is, because of his background and the loving family he grew up in, his core-self has maintained control. And seems likely to. But that wasn't always the case. There was an earlier episode, right, where the NZT-self was trying for dominance. Brian chose not to submit to that part of who he is on NZT. It looks like Morra didn't make that same choice.

[sjohnson]

Personally I'm skeptical about the real existence of a core-self. A normal self, maybe. Or maybe not. It may be odd to think that who we are depends so much upon our circumstances, even the company we keep, but it seems to me it shouldn't be. 

 

NZT is brain power. The cliche is that power corrupts. 

 

Perhaps it's just me, but honestly, it really seems to me that when she shot him, she was the one setting the pace. Morra can sincerely say he wouldn't kill anyone, while automatically making an exception (explicit or merely assumed) for someone who tried to kill him. 

[Netfoot]

Perhaps it's just me, but honestly, it really seems to me that when she shot him, she was the one setting the pace. Morra can sincerely say he wouldn't kill anyone, while automatically making an exception (explicit or merely assumed) for someone who tried to kill him. 

 

I can say I wouldn't kill anyone.  But in the defense of myself or a loved-one, exceptions will be made.

[thewhiteowl]

This episode was really good. Morra does make a good foil for Brian. Morra has bought into the Us vs Them. And it's okay to eliminate Them because they are not Us. Nzt'ers know best for All because We are More, Better and Smarter. They are not and never will be, so while acceptable as pawns and doers of dirty work They are not Us and it's fine to use and discard Them.

A dangerous philosophy.

[Kromm]

For me, it's not that NZT enhances you, it's almost like it creates a new you. There's original-you or core-you and then there is NZT-you. The question is which will control. We've seen that played out multiple times, including this episode, with Brian's core-self debating his NZT-self. Because of who Brian is, because of his background and the loving family he grew up in, his core-self has maintained control. And seems likely to. But that wasn't always the case. There was an earlier episode, right, where the NZT-self was trying for dominance. Brian chose not to submit to that part of who he is on NZT. It looks like Morra didn't make that same choice.

It can be argued either way. But I personally don't think it's some other new person created. I think their point with those segments of Brian talking to himself in various forms (some that look like other people) is really the SAME point that cartoons have been making for about 80 years with the Angel on one shoulder and the Devil on the other. I think it's literally that simple and the show just plays with it a lot.

I agree that we have seen Brian himself (not his imaginary dopplegangers) act differently a time or two, but I think the subtext of those has always been (admittedly sometimes subtle, sometimes overt) reminders that Brian is an addict. The show pretties up that aspect with the McGuffin-like nature of the booster shot, Brian actually having a steady reliable supply of NZT, and most importantly that NZT presents a pretty, (super) functional picture to the world. Although the show writing hasn't been 100% consistent with withdrawal symptoms though (remember the episode in the woods where he SHOULD have been really nuts and wasn't?) I do think a good deal of the weirdness of both Brian himself when he acts less normal, and of his imaginary friends, can be attributed to the drug not only being mind expanding, but also logical extensions of classic addict behaviors/tendencies. Addicts tend to be selfish--and that doesn't have to be some new person "carved out" inside of them as much as something that happens to people with that personality tendency in the first place when the threat of losing their fix happens.

It might be interesting to eventually explore that side of NZT a little more directly. Addiction is a funny thing--there are general tendencies that are universal but the specifics vary so much at the same time. There really ARE people in the world who can take the most serious drugs who tend to not get addicted. There are others who have addictive personalities, who never take a single drug and manifest that behavior in other areas of life. It's probably not the best storytelling to act like NZT is just this magic bullet that acts and reacts with all people the same way. I don't even totally buy that the way it degrades people's health/sanity would be all that consistent. In fact, Brian's supposed "immunity" to that (which I bet Rebecca is starting to question if she's twigging to the idea that Morra might be on NZT) would be a more explainable phenomenon to the FBI if the show had written in that NZT could drive people crazy and dead, enough that it was inherently an insane risk, but that the reactions did run a spectrum. Brian literally being alone (to their knowledge) on one end of the spectrum and not being locked in a lab somewhere is the only hard pill to swallow in this setup.

[Netfoot]

Nothing in the series to suggest this, but Movie-Morra stated at the end that he no longer took NZT, that his brain was on maximum efficiency full-time, and that he no longer needed NZT.

I think anything that made you 20 times smarter/better able than normal would be hard to reject. So yes, on the face of it, addictive. But if you discover that the effects of the drug are available naturally, and you can therefore stop taking the drug, is it really addictive?

[MisterGlass]

That's what I took from the movie and assumed for this series - Morra's altered state is now his permanent reality. I speculate he will eventually be tested in this show, especially now that at least one person in the FBI suspects. It seems like the feeling of being on NZT is addictive even if the substance itself does not cause chemical dependence until much later.

Morra said he would not kill someone unless they were threatening to do the same to him. How he proceeds will depend on what he perceives as a threat. Does someone who poses a threat to him, through exposing him, or leaving him open to outside attack, need to die? Depending on how many moves ahead Morra sees the threat, the person who he kills may not even realize they were a danger to him.

[Whimsy]

I don't think Morra is the bad guy. It seems to obvious and I don't know if Cooper, who produces the show, would make himself evil. I think there is more at play. I do expect to see piper again. I am hoping that this show, like Person of Interest, doesn't say a status quo procedural, but goes of in different directions.

 

I wholeheartedly believe Bradley Cooper would make his character evil.  First, actors always say how fun it is to play an evil character.  Second, this is an easy way to take Morra out of the show once the show is established enough that BC doesn't feel he needs to be on it to have people watch it (not saying everyone who watches it is doing so because of BC, but you have to admit he's a "big name" and the network probably loves his involvement).  So, they can either kill Morra off or put him in jail and voila!  no more Morra but the show can still continue.

 

Personally I think Morra deludes himself into thinking he's a good guy by getting others to do his dirty work. He reasons that it's ok because it's necessary to protect NZT by any means necessary.

 

ITA.  I also think he thinks he's protecting society or something.  It's not just about protecting NZT- or at least he has convinced himself of that.

[MzLiz]

I'm seriously bummed Morra is turning out to be a bad guy. I hoped he wasn't. I love Bradley Cooper.

Still love the show.

[Netfoot]

I love Bradley Cooper.

 

And you'd think that as a senator, and now a Presidential candidate, he's have enough clout to prevent this f*ck*ng Musical Chairs with program scheduling, right?

[sjohnson]

There is somebody else who is releasing NZT to the public, then assassinating the users. It seems to me they are covering up how they are killing select persons with NZT for the sake of tapping their temporary abilities. This group/person seems definitely much worse than Morra so far. 

[krimimimi]

There is somebody else who is releasing NZT to the public, then assassinating the users. It seems to me they are covering up how they are killing select persons with NZT for the sake of tapping their temporary abilities. This group/person seems definitely much worse than Morra so far.

Is there? I mean NZT obviously made its way to the "streets," sure, but that needn't have been particularly organized, as we've seen a couple of NZT thefts this season already, in addition to apparent street (the bankers from the pilot) and organized users (I think AgentDeb's dad was one). But even if it were all from an organized source dispensing NZT for whatever reasons, we don't know that that source is behind any of the deaths, do we? Or have I spaced something? Edited January 13, 2016 by krimimimi

[sjohnson]

It's not the getting to the streets that requires organization, it's the killing. In the movie and series pilot, somebody was killing all the users. And it doesn't make any sense that NZT dealers just in it for the money to kill their customers before the drug does. If I could figure out a way for the killers to ID users without having a handle because they were involved in some fashion with the original release? They had a handle on the FBI test subjects because they knew where they were getting their NZT from, a legit factory and pharmacy. 

Edited January 13, 2016 by sjohnson

[krimimimi]

Thanks for the answer, sjohnson. I haven't seen the movie, and didn't think it had been presented that way in the series (there may be an implied "yet" there). As to what they've shown here (and I'm taking the tv series as canon, but not necessarily the movie, particularly as I gather the tone is pretty different), I don't think they've presented NZT supplier = killer (beyond the lethal side effects, natch). Think I'd be a little sorry if they did, because I agree that sounds like it's going places made of all kinds of senseless.

As to generic non-supplier finding the users: how about the cyranose 10000 is able to mechanically smell some chemical present in the body odor of NZT users? More likely, we could explain it with (and again: not sure if this conflicts with what was shown in the movie) the inconspicuous users are ignored and only the conspicuous users are killed, who in turn are found exactly *because* they were conspicuous users to begin with. So basically people who do whacked out stuff that lands them on youtube too often (free climbing skyscrapers downtown), and then someone says "they've got to go," in order to keep NZT under the radar.

[sjohnson]

The side effects will make the users conspicuous to someone, especially when they finally die. But the smellytron sounds like a neat idea!

[Izeinwinter]

If Piper wanted to kill Eddie, Eddie really ought to be dead. All she had to do was stand 2 feet further back so she was in shadow. No lens glint = Bullet out of a clear sky, and it doesn't matter how smart you are, that's not something you can dodge. 

 

So.. I think this entire thing was her trying to find one of Moras recruits and test his character. 

 

Uhm. I think she might be rather a lot smarter than the both of them. Makes sense, really, she started out as an extreme outlier in intelligence before the pills - Both Finch and Eddie were pretty regular people, she was one off the people NTZ Mora went to for help fixing the pill before she even started taking them. 

Edited February 9, 2016 by Izeinwinter