Jess realizes the location to the key to the next step in the treasure hunt.

The episode opens well, swiftly resolving the suspicion on Liam and finally showing our heroes actually looking for surveillance. Alas, it tanks from there. Bad romance? Yes, which makes for a bad episode.

The positive: Tasha uses her tech skills to good effect, albeit with mixed results. Agent Ross. A funny scene involving Oren’s beloved sneakers. The dance scene. Tasha’s speech and the governor’s, and the attendees’, reaction. Jess and Liam making out, er, up.

The negative: Jess spilling the beans to Liam. All the romantic melodrama. Agent Ross. The final shot.

This installment wastes no time in following directly on the last. Tasha investigates Liam and, naturally, finds all kind of suspicious activity. At the bar where they both work, Liam can tell instantly that something is wrong. He presses until Jess tells him everything and accuses him of spying on them for Billie. Presumably intending to show the depth of her growing feelings for him, the actions instead just make her look utterly lacking in intelligence and judgment. I get it. That was probably the point, to show the strength of her emotions. I just didn’t buy it. The execution of the idea fails.

In what initially looks like a good call, the show doesn’t linger on that. Oren shows up at their apartment, and they discover Billie does indeed have them bugged – courtesy of his shoe. Mystery solved, and the scene of Jess and Liam making up is sweet: well written and especially well acted.

For the next clue, they need to infiltrate the governor’s mansion. Before long, the entire sextet (now including Ethan and Meena) has tickets to the conveniently-timed governor’s ball. In and out, easy peasy. Riiight. At Tasha’s urging, Jess and Ethan repeat a dance from their school days. All along, we’ve seen subtle undertones of shared more-than-friends feelings, despite their genuine interest in Liam and Meena. Now Liam and Meena see those feelings as well, no subtlety about it. Here the show reverses its previous good call. This digresses into a whole bunch of melodrama among the four of them, not bad by definition but a hugely un-welcome divergence from the overall tone of the show and the ongoing plot.

Agent Ross continues her investigation and receives confirmation of Sadusky’s murder. She also deepens her investigation into Jess and the others. The scene between Ross and the doctor clearly sets up plot twists to come but would have benefitted from being less clumsily done. Regardless of the doctor’s peripheral connection to the case, it seems unlikely and unwise for Ross to divulge so much information to him.

Billie remains bad-ass as ever, figuring out even earlier this time that she and her crew are going down the wrong path. This puts her on course for the aforementioned ball. Courtesy of Oren’s web page, she also gets a good look at Jess’s necklace (in a cleverly-staged bit that – happily – does not leave one crying out why the heck Jess flaunts it).

Which brings us to the usual cliffhanger at the end. The quest at the ball goes wrong, leaving Liam fleeing with their clue and Jess fleeing from the police. To escape, she leaps into a car driven by… Billie. Whole ‘strange bedfellows’ idea notwithstanding, this needed to be better staged. Jess knows Billie is a ruthless killer. Even with how the show repeatedly brings up DACA, this scene in and of itself doesn’t convince that Jess isn’t still better served by staying on foot instead of getting in the car.

A ton of rare missteps in this one mar an otherwise excellent overall record for the series. Hopefully next week will bring a return to form. 6/10

Rigel Ailur