What I’m Watching: Limitless

Limitless: Season 1, Episode 7 “Brian Finch’s Black Op” (B+)

I was concerned at first that this show was becoming a bit too serious, but then we have an episode that spends a good chunk of time devoted to parodying “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” casting Brian as Ferris and all of the players in his life, both real and hallucinated, as other characters. Rebecca as Sloane complaining about the attire he was imagining her in was one of the best parts, but Brian actually calling the comms guy Cameron to his face ranked pretty high. This was one destitute and ill-fated operation from the start, with a brutal killer as the target and some mercenaries who weren’t much better than him on the other side of things with Brian as their helpful intelligence. On the guest star front, I was happy to see Malik Yoba from “Alphas” as the only non-traitor in the bunch, though I liked it better when he could use part of his brain to amplify his own abilities, albeit in physical rather than mental form on the short-lived Syfy show. I was also amused to see the actor who played Aleksey credited as Andrei “The Pit Bull” Arlovski, and it turns out he’s a Belarusian mixed martial artist who also won the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Who knew? It was good to see that Rebecca, Boyle, and most importantly Naz were firmly on Brian’s side trying to track him down and save him, and that now they owe him one. While Rebecca wanted Brian to take things more seriously, ending the episode with Aleksey getting on a bus like Rooney did at the end of the movie was hardly the way to emphasize that.