Quantico E04 review: Finally a good episode that takes us ahead

For all the good press and eyeballs she is getting from ABC’s Quantico, Priyanka Chopra sure needs to learn a trick or two on how to cry better. She looks miserable, not because she’s heartbroken, but because all that she could do in the name of crying is to squint her eyes and shriek loudly. Yes, she looks like 6-year-old beat who’s not allowed his favourite toy. Made me want to shove my face in the pillow out of third party embarrassment.

Still, to be fair to the show, if you thought the fourth episode would be another hour of mediocre television, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The creators of the show seem to be learning from the mistakes they made in the first few episodes and giving us less and less reasons to complain (but hey, our list still isn’t blank). Yes, in this episode of the investigative-drama series, we see better action and a lot more subtlety in execution.

Before we get into the details, here’s what we saw this week:

Last week, we saw Alex, still on the run, taking help from Simon Asher to get to the real terrorist. The FBI got its hands on Alex’s mother and she is more or less convinced that her daughter is a terrorist (definitely not taking home the ‘mom of the year’ award). Back at the academy, Alex found out that her father (whom she killed in self-defence) was actually a hero.

The revelation has left Alex shattered as she now feels guilty of killing a good man. The constant pressure is interfering with her work, which is the perfect opportunity for Liam to get her thrown from Quantico. He assigns Ryan the task to break Alex’s morale and make her quit the academy. Of course, Ryan by now has a soft corner for Alex (could also be a full-fledged, high-schoolish crush but we do not really know) and it is not so inclined towards the job assigned to him.

Nimah (or was it Mina? I don’t think I am going to get their names right by the end of this season at least) is finding it hard to work without her sister. Also, our faux-gay agent Simon also has a thing for Nimah which is super awkward because the blonde creepmaster analyst just won’t leave him alone and is watching everything he does, even the people he stares at.

The trainees are assigned a task on dealing with hostage situations where we get to see some action sequences which are relatively better than the previous episodes. Everything is going well, the action, the suspense and finally even the background soundtrack but of course, something always has to go wrong. PeeCee’s miserable attempts at crying!!

One good find from this episode was Shelby Wyatt. First things first. She looks badass with that bob and pant suit. About nine months later, in present time, Shelby is not longer the same old adorable blondie looking for love acceptance. We get to know that something big has happened with her too since their trainee days, things we do not know about yet. Also, she seems to be a big link now in finding who the real guy behind the blast is.

So far, my money is on Simon but if there is one thing we have learnt from our Doyles and Christies is that the obvious choice is never the murderer. We hope Quantico doesn’t pull a ‘Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ with us where the (SPOILER!) narrator himself was the murderer all along.

Do you think Alex is indeed the one who planted the bomb? Let us know in the comments below.

Watch episode 5 trailer:

Read our first three reviews:

Quantico E01 review: Priyanka Chopra is much more than just a pretty face

Quantico E02 review: A steep fall from the great pilot

Quantico E03 review: Regaining focus but without any subtlety

The author tweets @soumya1405