As is the case quite often on a procedural drama, a tough day on the job coincides with a problem off it for Jeremy Sisto‘s Jubal Valentine in the latest FBI. The good news? Neither seems to result in long-term problems or concerns.
Just as Jubal gets to work, his ex-wife Sam (Mara Davi) calls to tell him that their son Tyler (Caleb Reese Paul) was suspended after getting caught drinking. Jubal is worried given his own history with alcoholism; he’s talked to his son because he could have the gene. Sam later tells Jubal that Tyler said he was trying to make a friend, but she’s not sure she buys it. She wants him to go back to therapy—Jubal isn’t so sure, since he wants him to own his mistake—and for his father to go with him.
After wrapping up the case, Jubal confides in Maggie (Missy Peregrym) about what’s going on and how he’s angry with himself for what he might have passed along to him, the divorce, and not being there for him. Maggie tells him he’s not responsible for Tyler doing something stupid and mistakes are part of the game. What’s important is what he does next. Outside therapy, Tyler apologizes for drinking and says he knows he should’ve said no but the other kid kept pressuring him. Jubal then uses the same words Maggie did with him about mistakes, and the two head inside. But is Jubal still worried about his son drinking?
“I know playing the scenes, it felt like he was kind of going through it when he heard about it, and throughout the day, going through his own sort of personal coming to terms with what it was. I think by the time he goes to his son, with the help of Maggie and her insight, he is able to do that necessary thing where as a parent, you have to remove yourself from the situation and see it for what it is,” Sisto tells TV Insider.
“I think it’s pretty clear when he sees his son that it wasn’t about the drinking, it was really about his ongoing challenges to feel confident socially and not do things that he doesn’t want to do, that aren’t within his values to make friends,” he continues. “That’s not to say that the drinking thing won’t come up again in his son’s life, but at this point, I think it’s clear that that is not what that was.”
As for the case, Jubal learns that two missing girls he’d thought dead—he’d even been the one to tell their father they were eight years ago—were alive all this time. They’d been kidnapped and held captive, though the team only realizes that after one is found dead. Jubal goes into the field to talk the other down when she turns the tables on her kidnapper after he takes a store full of people hostage. She’s reunited with her father at the end, but she also tells him she “can’t” when he joins her at the ambulance. It’s a tough case all around, so is this one of the ones that will end up staying with Jubal longer than others?
“I don’t think [it will] because of the fact that it wasn’t because of some personal mistake, some mistake that had to do with his love life or his alcoholism or his family,” says Sisto. “It was just a mistake that he made in the job. He thought these girls were dead. I think he’s able to process it in real time.”
He points out, “It doesn’t make it any easier. The reason it’s such a tragic episode to watch and so heart wrenching is because we’ve all seen these stories where someone has been held captive for a long period of time, and when we hear about it, it’s always with a heroic save or escape or something. But we can all see that the beginning of the challenges of what these victims are going to have to face is going to be a long journey. And so it’s really powerful. The actors and actresses that played these roles just really were there and serve the story really well. It’s obviously just an awful, awful situation when something like this happens, when someone is held captive by a person who has lost their mind, and the results of this kind of situation are just very tragic.”
