Take Three: Manhunt: Unabomber

Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 4 “Publish or Perish” (B+)

We didn’t get to see Ted at all in this episode, which took place entirely in the same time period, as things intensified with the search and Fitz suggested a very risky gamble. This episode showed, more than anything, how times and technology have evolved in the past twenty years. The idea that you could print something in a newspaper and know that it was only sold at own newsstand in a given city is so foreign to what happens today, and on top of that, announcing that the manifesto would be posted a few days later on the website is a distant relic of the past, since now it’s impossible to find something that isn’t immediately online somewhere, and then reposted everywhere, within moments of it happening. Unfortunately, the grand plan didn’t work out all that well, with Tabby’s foot chase on the subway turning out to be a false lead. I had seen Jane Lynch’s name in the cast list before, and this was one of the more serious roles I’ve ever seen her in as Janet Reno, who didn’t want to hear too much from Don but was willing to trust him, and then concluded that this was a sad development. Ellie doesn’t seem pleased at all with Fitz’s intense involvement in the case, and getting fired doesn’t seem to have affected his work ethic at all, which is a bit of a concern. The end of the episode presented the first sincere lead we’ve seen, with the introduction of Mark Duplass as someone who appears to be a relative of Ted and whose wife thought she recognized some of the language in the manifesto.