FBI Season 7, Episode 17’s 1 Major Flaw Undermines Isobel’s Big Episode: TV Review

FBI Season 7, Episode 17, “Lineage” does remind viewers how lucky the CBS show is to have Alana de la Garza. The episode is meant to be a spotlight hour for de la Garza’s character Isobel Castille, and in that sense it’s successful. But in a broader sense, the script has more than its fair share of struggles. culminating in a plot twist that every viewer will see coming.

“Lineage” starts with the murder of a high-profile rapper on his tour bus. Yet the episode quickly pivots to being about drugs and those who traffic in them, settling down into something much more predictable. While it’s not close to the most underwhelming episode of the season, it is a collection of missed opportunities.

FBI Season 7, Episode 7 Tells a Prototypical Drug War Story

There’s Nothing Here Viewers Haven’t Seen Before

FBI Season 7, Episode 17 has two different plot fake-outs in relatively quick fashion. First, the murders might be because the rapper has a very public feud with another rap artist, who has accused him of being a pedophile. Secondly, they might be because his tour bus is packed full of pink cocaine. Somehow, this script manages to directly or indirectly reference the Kendrick Lamar feud, the Sean Combs case and the death of One Direction’s Liam Payne in maybe 20 minutes — which isn’t unexpected for Wolf Entertainment’s “ripped from the headlines” approach, but which might give some viewers whiplash. And all of this turns out to be just a bunch of red herrings.

Despite former House star Peter Jacobson chewing every ounce of the scenery as shady manager Jeff Mills, the real plot is that the cocaine belongs to the Solano organization. The folks who opened fire on the tour bus are from a rival group, the Grippo crime family, who are coming back to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs. The identities of the actual shooters are totally irrelevant; they’re hardly acknowledged, quickly shot themselves when the FBI raids the club they’re operating in. From this point on, the beats of this story are incredibly familiar. The head of the family is Jack Grippo, whom Isobel has been chasing for over a decade and a half. Grippo is responsible for the death of someone close to her. And when the episode introduces Grippo’s daughter Billie Abbott, she protests so much that viewers already know she’s the one pulling the strings.

But before FBI gets to that unsurprising reveal, there are several instances of smart characters doing not so smart things in order to keep the suspense going, which make the episode even more underwhelming. Jubal Valentine, an experienced FBI agent, is somehow unaware of the common practice of people leaving messages for one another in draft emails. OA Zidan spooks the suspects by getting into a fight at the airport hangar the team is surveilling. Stuart Scola is the only agent sent in to do reconnaissance in the bad guys’ bar, so he gets almost immediately taken hostage. “Lineage” is full of moments where the audience has to suspend their disbelief.