“I dunno what pink and fluffy place you brough you shit from, but this is Iraq!”
Summary: The team hears the story of how Wiley met Lehm during the Gulf War and eventually started working for Koko. On their mission to build an elementary school in Iraq (for PR purposes), Koko was forced to hire a private military company (PMC) called Excalibur to drive her supply trucks, but when they shoot a car off the road without even checking to see if it was a threat or not, Koko promptly fires their asses. Knowing they’ll be back to take revenge, Koko and the team relie on Wiley’s expertise to help them avoid an attack. In the end everything works out well for HCIL, and with a little help from Excalibur’s translator (who turns on them) Mr. Nazar, they manage to decimate Excalibur.
Impression: You know what? I’m a big fan of a good explosion or two. So this episode was a real treat for me, because sometimes there’s just nothing better than watching shit get blown up. This very Wiley-centric episode starts off in Kuwait in the 90’s during the Gulf War. We see how Lehm recruits him to work on a very top-level mission along with a familiar face. Echo, who we know also eventually comes to work for Koko, is working with Lehm at the time as well. It’s interesting to see him, knowing that he’s going to die. We see a little bit more of the type of person he was; serious when he needed to be, but also the type who makes friends quickly and can put people at ease regardless of the situation. It’s the kind of personality that makes it easy to understand why Koko would be so affected by his death. And I’d wager to guess that it wasn’t just Koko who felt saddened by that lose. Anyway, while Wiley is no slouch at what he does, he’s so impressed by everyone else he worked with that it inspired him to get even better, leading him to leave the military and go work for Koko.
Compared to the episodes that we’ve seen so far this season, this one is quick, dirty, and action-packed. Most of it focuses on stopping Excalibur’s revenge attack, which of course Koko & Co do very easily. Some quality action all around, with snipping action by Lehm and Lutz, and explosions courtesy of our man Whiley. There’s also Mr. Nazar, who everyone is wary of to begin with, but who eventually turns traitor and helps Koko’s team. Of course, he walks off with a man that he will most assuredly ransom for a high price, and as he packs the man and himself away in the convoy of black cars that appear in the middle of the desert, you can’t help but wonder who Nazar really is. Much more than just a simple translator, that’s for sure. They seemed to have been expecting things to turn out as they did, and I’d be willing to bet that Nazar was placed as a mole inside Excalibur for exactly that reason.
In the end, there’s one major thing you can take away from this episode and that is: you do not want to fuck with Wiley. Even Jonah ends up scared of him! Lehm divulges that there are only two people on the team that are on the FBI’s blacklist: Koko and Wiley. Koko you can understand, but how could the language-teaching, seemingly nice guy Wiley be more dangerous than anyone else in a team of people that includes the likes Valmet and Lehm? Because the guy knows how to make things go BOOM! And he’s gotten so good, and has taken out so many targets, that you’d have every right to be afraid of him. When it comes to bombs he’s got a one-track mind, and doesn’t even think twice about picking out some poor, half-dead PMC guy, strapping a bomb to his chest, and then sending him to go blow up his comrades. Think about it. That’s some cold shit right there. It speaks volumes about the quality of a show that can show you that and still make you like the character.
Apart from some really top-notch animation, this episode is also unusually funny. The story of why Whiley shaves his head, the fun group dynamic of Koko’s team, Jonah being scared of Whiley, Whiley being worried that Jonah won’t show up for his language learning sessions, Jonah being convinced that he should never miss Whiley’s class again lest he turn up dead in a ditch somewhere. It’s all rather hilarious, in a kind of twisted way. It certainly helps that they balance all the bloodshed and action with some humor. If they didn’t I think the show would probably sink under the weight of its own seriousness.
Next week: oooOOOOoooo looks like we might be finding out some more about this grand plan that Koko has been working on involving all those satellites she launched into orbit. It looks like Minami will be back, so I’m hoping we get clued in to what exactly those two ladies have been working on that’s got people like George Black at the CIA scared.
Final Thought: I liked the little detail that Wiley’s whole family are architects. Like Echo pointed out, it is very ironic that Wiley ended up in a profession that ends up reducing those self-same buildings to nothing more than dust. I don’t know, it made me laugh.