After the first five minutes, I was expecting yet another disappointing FBI story, but I was wrong.

FBI Season 8 Episode 5 wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was far closer to the show I once loved than the rest of the season has been.

I still hate the cast-rotation policy and missed OA, but at least there was a strong story here worth watching.

The Murder Led To A Sympathetic Killer

I was ready to get annoyed with the seemingly random murder at the beginning of the hour.

It was exciting when a little girl disappeared from the beach — the FBI is supposed to handle kidnappings that go across state lines, but we rarely get a missing persons case on this series.

So it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me when the girl was found… only for her father to be killed while her mother’s back was turned.

It was almost too perfect, as if someone had lured the girl away so they could reach her dad, but that was never explored or even suggested.

Of course, Alvin’s death was mostly a plot point. Sure, he was involved in the trafficking ring, but he was virtually never mentioned again once the Feds found out that Salma was in New York and likely was the killer.

Two gunfights later, Salma was finally arrested… and turned into one of the most sympathetic killers FBI has ever had, which is what made this episode so powerful.

Salma was trying to kill all the traffickers so that she could stop them from hurting other girls.

She’d escaped them and was hoping to free her fellow victims… but at least one of them was killed before she could.

The scene where Maggie and Eva burst in on her and found her over Fatima’s body was heartbreaking, and the more the episode went on, the more obvious it was that Salma was a young girl who was trying to survive after being put through something no girl or woman should have been put through.

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She’d obviously been missing a while, too, since her parents were so relieved and overjoyed to find out she was still alive.

But in the end, she got the harshest sentence — far more than the victim who killed the Crown Prince, and that hit Eva hard.

I’m glad Eva was upset. Someone had to give voice to how unfair that was.

Was This Story Based on Prince Andrew?

I’m not particularly happy that it was an Arab prince who was behind the sex trafficking.

There has been enough ugly Islamophobia rearing its head since Zohran Mandami was elected mayor of New York City in real life, and TV shows depicting Muslims as sex traffickers don’t help anything, especially since OA wasn’t there to provide a counterpoint.

Plus, the story reminded me of Prince Andrew — or former Prince Andrew, now, I guess, except it was an Arab member of their royal family.

Like the Crown Prince, Prince Andrew was an embarrassment to the Royal Family, and it was an open secret that he was engaged in inappropriate behavior with minors, so my mind went there as soon as this aspect of the story was introduced.

I did like the conflict between Isobel and Anna over whether the Crown Prince could be arrested.

I knew Isobel wouldn’t get her way, though — it didn’t matter that the Crown Prince wasn’t here for work-related reasons. Diplomatic immunity is diplomatic immunity.

Still, I wished she could have defied Anna, though it was a surprise that Anna helped orchestrate the Crown Prince’s murder.

That didn’t seem like the kind of thing she’d do, but I guess she wanted to protect the girls in her own way.

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FBI Is Still Missing Something Important

The case was more compelling this time, but FBI is still missing the thing that made me love it in the first place.

It used to be a character-oriented procedural, not just a procedural full of FBI agents chasing people and getting into gunfights.

The gunfights and bomb defusions and so forth were always part of the show, but so were things like Jubal’s attempts to protect his son, OA’s PTSD flashbacks, and Maggie’s decision to let go of her foster daughter.

There’s very little of that now. FBI Season 8 Episode 5 tried to cover up its cast rotation with “it’s just us girls,” but it didn’t quite work.

There wasn’t enough of Maggie and Eva bonding to be interesting, though I did like that Eva played a big role in the investigation and capture of Salma.

It also irks me that now that Isobel is back, there’s no mention of her near-death experience.

She’s just back to being the boss, and that’s it.

I know that FBI is in a rush to get back to its cases, but that is not how trauma works, and some acknowledgment of how nearly dying affects her — even if it’s only when she’s alone — would go a long way toward making FBI feel more realistic and interesting again.

What do you think? More personal stories or is the balance right?

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