Recap: At a local airport, two men who look like they're up to no good are posing as aircraft maintenance technicians as they await the arrival of a plane. When the plane lands a few minutes later, a pretty blonde woman arrives to pick up one of the passengers. He deplanes carrying a briefcase...and when he spots the faux maintenance technicians staring menacingly at him, he clocks one of them in the head with his briefcase and races toward the blonde woman and her car. The two squeal off, and the bad guys jump into their car and race after them while opening fire...but are soon foiled when they get boxed in by large vehicles who pull out in front of them. Aboard the Riptide, Nick is railing about how much he hates Murray's new contraption, Beat the Box, a large white orb encased in a glass box that glows orange and buzzes every time someone tells a lie. Murray tells Nick he's surprised to hear how much he hates his new game and explains that he can't turn it off 'cause he's in the process of testing the orb's circuits. The pretty blonde woman arrives at the Riptide, introduces herself as Jessie Wells, and tells them she's a producer for the Les Carter Show. The Riptide trio make a collective ew face at the mention of Les Carter 'cause of what an abrasive douchebag he's known to be. Nick attempts to fib about being a fan of his TV show - but Beat the Box calls him out by glowing orange and buzzing. Womp womp! Jessie says she would like to hire the agency to look into why a couple of guys pretending to be aircraft maintenance technicians just tried to kill the guest she booked for tonight's show. She has no idea why anyone would want to kill the man, an author named Karl Novack...and Murray recognizes the name and says he recalls that Karl Novack used to work at Cullen-Davis, a weapons manufacturer. Jessie asks them if they could please accompany her to the KCED TV station so they can meet Les Carter and discuss their current conundrum, and they're like 'sure, why the hell not?' At KCED, Jessie introduces Les Carter to Nick, Cody, and Murray...and Les brags about his impressive track record of scoring exclusive interviews, and touts his brash 'love me or hate me' style. As that's happening, one of the bad guys who was at the airport is posing as a water deliveryman and replenishing the water cooler jug while glancing around shiftily. Les pours himself a cup of the water, admonishes Jessie for screwing the pooch on Karl Novack's airport pickup, and snappishly tells her to stay inside while he talks to the Riptide guys outside the building...and Jessie somehow refrains from telling him where he can stick his bitchitude. Nick tells Les that Jessie told them about the two men who tried to kill Karl Novack, but Les just shrugs unconcernedly and says that Novack is probably being hunted by bookies for his gambling debts. He forbids the trio from involving the cops 'cause he doesn't want to be out a guest for tonight's show, then snappishly orders them to drive over to the beach apartment where Novack is stashed and give him an escort to the TV station. He offers to pay them $1,500 for the errand, provides the address, and barks at them to get on it right now.
When the Riptide trio arrives at the beach apartment, they're puzzled by the sound of a man singing Hickory Dickory Dock. They quickly learn that the singing is coming from Karl Novack's apartment, so they let themselves inside and are startled to see him standing in the middle of the living room looking sweaty and demented. When he notices Cody, Nick, and Murray staring at him in bewilderment, he runs across the room, dives off the balcony, and falls to his death fifteen floors below. Lieutenant Quinlan arrives on the scene and grumbles at the Riptide trio about how dead people always seem to pop up around them. When a tearful Jessie bursts into the apartment, Lieutenant Quinlan snaps, "Who's the broad?", so Nick explains that she knew the deceased. Jessie asks what in blazes happened, so Lieutenant Quinlan holds up a hypodermic needle and snarkishly informs her that it looks like Novack shot himself up with dope before taking a swan dive off the balcony. He then orders the trio to start answering questions or he'll throw them in jail, and Cody says they're going to need to check in with their client to get the OK before they can spill the beans on whatever intel they have...and Lieutenant Quinlan's all 'grumble grumble...fuck everyone...fuck everything...I desperately need anger management training'. Jessie is walking to the parking lot with Nick, Cody, and Murray when she suddenly spots one of the bad guys from the airport. She stupidly points at him and yells, "Hey! There's that bad guy from the airport!" - LOL - and the bad guy's all, "Ack!" and jumps into his car and squeals off. Nick somehow manages to leap atop the hood of the moving car and hangs on for dear life as the car weaves through traffic...but eventually he's thrown off of it and lands in the passenger seat of another person's car. Les Carter is guzzling water from the water cooler in his office, and consuming the water appears to make him act extremely weird. His director taps on his window and asks him to please come out so they can discuss tonight's show, but Les tells him to get lost - just as Jessie and the Riptide trio arrive. Les bursts out of his office to rant and rave nonsensically, and a puzzled Jessie is all, "What the hell's wrong with you? You're acting like an idiot" - LOL - to which Les responds by screeching, "No one talks to me like that! You're fired!" He then points at a bespectacled dork who's delivering the mail and appoints him as the show's new producer. After guzzling more water, he asks who the hell Nick, Cody, and Murray are, so Jessie reminds him that they're the detectives he hired to pick up Karl Novack. Cody and Nick are like, "Uh, speaking of Karl Novack.." and inform Les that he died after leaping out of the apartment window, and that one of the guys who had tried to kill him earlier was spotted hanging around the beach apartment parking lot. Nick adds another useful tidbit: while he was hanging onto the roof of the bad guy's car, he noticed a parking tag for Cullen-Davis, the company that Karl Novack used to work for. Les starts laughing manically and screeches, "General Do-Right strikes again!" then bellows, "This is my exclusive! My scoop!" and forbids Nick and Cody from going to the cops. Nick and Cody tell him that, yep, they're definitely reporting all of this to the police, then fire him as their client before stalking out of the office. Les reacts to the firing by grabbing darts and throwing them at a dart board while maniacally singing Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Cody spots Jessie staring despondently into space, and the trio heads over to comfort her. Murray suggests that her firing is actually a blessing, given what a douchetard Les must be to work for - but Jessie says that Les doesn't actually have the authority to fire her, and that she intends to stay on at the station 'cause she really does love her job. She insists that Les isn't normally this weird and is worried that he could be in real danger...then reveals that he and Novack had a secret meeting a few weeks ago, and that ever since that day, he's been on cloud nine about scoring the interview. Nick says that the CEO of Cullen-Davis is a war hero named General Thomas Walker, and wonders aloud why Les called him General Do-Right and implied that he may have had something to do with Novack's bizarre suicide. Jessie says she's aware that Novack was recently fired from Cullen-Davis and thinks this could be an important piece of the puzzle, then urges the trio to dig around a little before reporting any of this to Lieutenant Quinlan. As the trio and Jessie arrive at the Riptide, they hear Beat the Box continually buzzing...and we see that Dooley is trying to impress a young woman named Gia by pathologically lying to her about how rich and awesome he is. When she asks him why the weird box thing keeps buzzing, Nick comes right out and tells her that it makes that noise whenever someone tells a lie. Gia glares at Dooley, declares them through, and huffily storms out, while a miffed Dooley glares at Nick and says, "I will deal with you later" ... but then (mercifully) doesn't make a reappearance during the rest of the episode. Murray heads downstairs to log onto his computer to see if he can dig up any intel on Karl Novack, but doesn't have any luck...then decides to expand the search by looking up Cullen-Davis. When he finds a list of subsidiary companies owned by Cullen-Davis, he notices that the list includes Dyna-Game, a company he once sold a game to and is still haggling with to get his royalty checks. Murray tries to hack into the company's records, but soon realizes he's going to need to use one of Dyna-Game's on-site computers to access any personnel info on Novack. Cody suggests they go over there under the guise of wanting to sell Beat the Box...and Murray doesn't like the idea of even pretending to sell his beloved new prototype to a shitty outfit like Dyna-Game, but then allows himself to be persuaded when Nick and Cody assure him that no actual deal will be signed. The trio heads over to Dyna-Game headquarters to meet with a developer named Mattie to fake negotiate a deal for Beat the Box. Nick and Cody, who are pretending to be Murray's representatives, suggest they go into the hallway to discuss a possible deal [so that Murray can stay behind and use the computer to access the company's internal files], and Mattie detects no red flags with that and is all 'sure, why the hell not?' Murray taps away on Mattie's computer and quickly finds Karl Novack's personnel file. He calls up Roboz, who answers the phone and places the receiver on the desk so that Murray can transmit the document via the phone line and send it as a print job to the dot matrix printer located aboard the Riptide. Fancy! General Thomas Walker, aka the CEO of Cullen-Davis, is promptly informed that someone at Dyna-Game has just accessed Karl Novack's personnel file. Walker's all, "Ack!" and hastily summons a small team of thugs to address the matter. Nick and Cody leave Mattie with the strong impression that they've made a deal to allow Dyna-Game to develop Beat the Box. The trio climbs into their truck and heads off...but a few seconds later, a helicopter hovers over them as the pilot instructs them to pull over. When they comply, two men leap off of the helicopter and, at gunpoint, order the three to get into the helicopter for the short ride over to Cullen-Davis headquarters for an impromptu debriefing. General Thomas Walker explains to Nick, Cody, and Murray the fateful mission he carried out with Karl Novack that resulted in the tragic death of thirty American soldiers. He says he got shot in the leg during the firefight, and that Karl held him in his arms in a mud hole for six hours before finally managing to carry him to safety. Nick asks him why he fired Karl if they're such good friends, so he says that Karl began to unravel and act really strangely, then theorizes that the deaths of the thirty men must have finally made him lose his mind. For the sake of his business, he had no choice but to let Karl go. The Riptide guys thank him for the explanation, and he's like, "No problem" and offers to give them a lift to their truck. When the trio is dropped off at the side of the road where they left the truck, Cody surreptitiously turns on Beat the Box - just as General Walker fibs about having nothing at all to do with Karl Novack's death. When Beat the Box glows orange and buzzes, Cody breezily says it probably has a defective wire inside of it...and an unsuspecting Walker's like, "OK, whatever" and departs with this thugs. Nick gets a faraway look in his eyes and wonders aloud what really happened to those thirty soldiers on that day in Vietnam.
The Riptide trio heads back to KCED, where Jessie is waiting to hear what they uncovered. They run into the show's director, who grimly reports that Les has reached crazy nutty levels and is decked out in a glittery tuxedo for the taping, despite this being a serious interview show and not an Elton John performance. When the show's taping gets underway, a crazed Les starts singing a demented sounding rendition of Three Blind Mice. Jessie urges the director to put the show in standby mode...and an enraged Les flails about while security guards subdue him. Murray notices that the bad guy who had refilled the water cooler jug earlier is now lurking around the studio, so he alerts Nick and Cody, and the three race over to their truck to chase the bad guy and his friend in their fake water delivery truck. After spilling bottled water all over the streets, the truck eventually crashes into another vehicle, and Nick grabs the two men and informs them that he's making a citizen's arrest. They smugly retort that it's irrelevant 'cause they work for the East German consulate and have diplomatic immunity. After being questioned by Lieutenant Quinlan, the two East Germans are promptly released in accordance with international law. Lieutenant Quinlan grumbles says that the two obvious criminals are going to walk, and that it'll take days to figure out what kind of drug they put in Karl Novack's water. Murray says that clearly it's a chemical that attacks the part of the brain where childhood memories of nursery rhymes are stored. Lieutenant Quinlan orders the trio to tell him who his client is, so they reveal it's Les Carter, and that they strongly suspect General Thomas Walker of being directly involved with whatever nefariousness the East German assassins are up to. The trio meets up with Jessie at the Riptide, and she tells them she's very sad about Les being poisoned...and that when she visited him in the hospital, he was still ranting and raving far more than the usual amount he rants and raves. Cody wonders aloud why the East Germans would want to drug Les, then suggests that perhaps they wanted to discredit his interview with Karl Novack. Jessie suddenly perks up and says she now recalls that Les had bragged about having the interview "in the can" and shortly afterwards ordered her to pick up a package at a video place and deliver it to his out-of-town residence, where she witnessed him put the package into his safe. General Thomas Walker calls up the East Germans and orders them to head over to Les Carter's out-of-town residence and bring him the safe that's in the basement. The Riptide trio (plus Jessie) pile aboard Mimi and fly over to Les's place. They quickly locate the safe in the basement, and Nick immediately gets to work blow-torching it open. The East Germans, meanwhile, arrive at the house a few minutes later and enter the basement with their guns drawn. Nick responds by tossing them the white-hot part of the safe opening he just blow-torched and yells, "Catch!" and the East Germans are all, "Owwwww! Heiss!" and flee the house. Nick and Cody chase after them, while Murray finds two videocassettes labelled Interview in the safe and looks solemnly at Jessie.
Nick and Cody climb onto Mimi to pursue the East Germans by air. When they catch up to the vehicle and hover over it, Cody eggs Nick on to slam into the car with the helicopter's wheel...and Nick's like 'sounds like a good idea to me' and wheel-butts it from behind. The action causes the driver to lose control of the vehicle, speed off a cliff, and perish with his comrade in a fiery crash. Yeesh. That evening, the Riptide trio (plus Jessie) are watching the airing of Les's interview with Karl Novack. He confesses that he and General Thomas Walker were on a reconnaissance mission during the Vietnam war when they opened fire on their own men for some bizarre, unexplained reason - other than, "We couldn't turn back unless there were no survivors." A somber Nick wonders how General Thomas Walker is reacting to the devastating interview being aired...and the camera pans over to the general's office at Cullen-Davis, where it looks like he's just blown his brains out. Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying TVofYore's recaps, consider thanking me by buying me a "coffee"!
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