First things first: You probably guessed, when his shooting was the previous episode’s cliffhanger, that Arturo would pull through because you’ve seen a TV show before. And you’re right … for now. It starts out looking pretty bad for him: Arturo doesn’t have a pulse, and pretty much everyone except Stockholm is ready to write him off. But then Denver and Tokyo join her in trying to revive him, and after a shot of epinephrine, they are successful. A frustrated Palermo is ready to take the guilt of Arturo’s death off Stockholm by finishing him off, but Lisbon states that they’re going to send Arturo out for medical attention. It’s not entirely clear what her plan is, but (1) the Governor is one of the hostages they send out pushing Arturo’s gurney, (2) the cops cut off the cuffs the heist crew put on the Governor before scanning him for transmitters, and (3) the number of times the camera lingers on the cuffs — which remain in the room as the Governor is getting debriefed — is certainly suggestive that there’s a mic in them. TBD! Not that you probably care much — I sure don’t; neither does Tamayo, who openly says the best thing for the cops would be for him to die right away so they can paint the gang as murderers — but the last we hear of Arturo is that he’s in critical condition.
Stockholm can’t bounce back from the incident — she feels she’s doomed Cincinnati by removing the possibility that he could have been raised by his biological father in the event of heist-tastrophe (although: would she really want Arturo to raise her son? Arturo sucks!) — so it’s fortunate that there’s another lull in the action in which Manila can assure her that Stockholm hasn’t ruined Cincinnati’s life. BenjamÃn thought Manila would never want to see him again after all his mistakes in her youth, but she loves him. She admits that he refused to hear her when she told him, starting when she was very young, that she was a girl, and that he laughed at cross-dressing characters on TV, but says that just as she had no role models, BenjamÃn didn’t either. The natural state for parents is confusion, and love matters most of all.
A flashback reveals how much not only BenjamÃn but also Denver and the late Moscow love Manila. During the Royal Mint job training, Moscow worries that BenjamÃn won’t want Manila involved if he knows the risk, so he and Denver steal a car to drive into the nearest town to phone the incarcerated BenjamÃn to make sure they’re on the same page. BenjamÃn is horrified by the thought that, if caught, Manila would be incarcerated in a men’s prison, but Moscow and Denver pledge to protect her. We know from the previous episode that Manila definitely got bounced from the earlier job since she was still a little salty about it; it remains to be seen whether this was the moment father and son kicked her off it because they weren’t entirely sure about the Professor, or if something else happened to scuttle her involvement.
Speaking of parents: Tamayo calls another press conference to follow through on his plan to tar Sierra for collaborating with the Professor. Remember how Ãngel stated his refusal to participate in police actions if Tamayo did precisely that? Ãngel’s reaction after the fact basically amounts to “Hey, not cool.†Somehow Sierra is surprised that Tamayo would sell her out like this, and as the Professor is hectoring her to give up on her plans for self-redemption, her water breaks because of course it does, she’s pregnant, and you’ve seen a TV show before. The Professor demonstrates his knowledge of midwifery, talking Sierra through it, but she’s not impressed enough to release him to assist with the delivery until … I mean, you’ve seen a TV show before, so you know the baby was never going to just slide out hassle-free; it’s breech. Finally, Sierra relents, releasing all three of her hostages to scrub in.
Back in the bank:The crew all know the army is on its way in, so Palermo rallies his troops for the siege. Since they now know that Sierra isn’t with the cops anymore, he’s confident that the Professor is deploying a new plan against her one-on-one. This means that they will have to lose against the army inside the bank but at the slowest possible pace. They’re going to make so much noise that the soldiers won’t be able to hear the gang’s grenades coming at them, nor will they be able to hear their own radios. Palermo will need three people for the most dangerous job — advancing on the soldiers from the rear — for which Tokyo, Denver, and Manila all volunteer. Palermo warns Denver to say good-bye to Stockholm first, in case this is the last time he sees her; Rio and Tokyo also have a “second first kiss†before parting.
In the tents, Tamayo kicks out the cops and talks strategy with the soldiers. GandÃa — who is apparently completely fine after getting the shrapnel non-surgically tweezed out of his back, on site — has suited up to join the strike team and shares that the bank isn’t entirely blast proof. A spot on the roof is vulnerable to attack and would drop the soldiers in the dining hall. Ãngel is like, “…………… Hey.†The roof they’d be damaging is historically significant, as are the artifacts in the museum; they already have Amnesty International on their asses for this whole op — do they want blowback from UNESCO too? Sagasta’s hand-picked war criminals obviously don’t care about any of that, and Tamayo authorizes them to do whatever they want.
And then it’s go time! Bogotá tells the gold-melting crew in the basement not to stop what they’re doing, no matter what they hear. Palermo realizes that the soldiers’ having moved to a blind spot means they’re going to take out the roof and scrambles his rear team. He also tries to get Helsinki to take cover in the museum, but Helsinki has his own plan to make a trench and continues stacking heavy burlap bags of rice in the dining hall doorway from the inside.
And at the hideout, the Professor successfully turns and delivers Sierra’s baby. No one has much of a chance to celebrate because that’s when they all turn to the TV and see the news report: There’s been a rather large explosion at the bank. WHAT NEXT?!
The Spoils
• Hey, Rafael’s back! We find out that Berlin brought him to Copenhagen to pull off a heist on a not-yet-open Viking gold museum. Berlin, Tatiana, Marseille, and Bogotà have brass replicas of the burial gifts they’re going to steal; the gold originals are currently being stored in a castle where Tatiana will have a recital a few days hence. Rafael pulls an Indiana Jones, snitting that it all belongs in a museum, but Berlin is just as passionate that Viking artifacts don’t merit preservation because they plundered gold from other cultures and melted them down for their own tat. We knew Berlin was a bigot, but his being bigoted against Vikings probably didn’t come up much during his life.
• How about BenjamÃn stating the very, very obvious? Thanks, dude. Got it.
• Speaking of which, I hope we find out why Marseille and BenjamÃn don’t just fuck off while Sierra is, ahem, indisposed? It seems like a good time to make a run for it is when the authority figure who’s been holding you at gunpoint is completely immobilized with your buddy’s arm jammed up her business.