These are all the original airdates.
1/21/07
"Primed"
5.14:
1/14/07
"Eating Away"
5.13: Well. There was absolutely zero meaningful
Martin/Sam interaction this ep, I can say that right now. It was a
good one for anyone who is a fan of Danny/Elena, though. I'm pretty
indifferent on those two. It's kinda cute, but I can definitely live
without it. This episode was all about the search for Barry Rosen,
a young competitive eater. Barry collapses after narrowly winning an
eating contest. At the hospital after having his stomach pumped, the
doctor tells him that his health is in serious jeopardy, and he could die
if he doesn't stop eating like that. Barry is unhappy to hear that
(obviously), and he disappears from the hospital. The doctor tells
the FBI that they found household bleach mixed in with the contents of his
stomach, so if he hadn't been treated, he would have died. Hmm. Someone
tried to kill him. Stu, Barry's brother, says that Barry had been acting
very paranoid lately.
At the office, Viv, Danny, and Sam have a discussion about
competitive eating and what makes people do it. Danny thinks it's kind
of funny, and Viv doesn't seem to get it at all. They question a reporter
named Val who wrote a profile on Barry. She said he was accused to
cheating. Barry denied it. They then question Gus, the fellow
competitive eater who accused Barry of cheating. He reveals that the
sponsor of the competition, Monty, fixed up a deal with Barry to throw the
competition so they could all get rich off all the people betting on Barry
to win. Barry backed out at the last minute and won the competition,
so they talk to Monty, who admits to putting the bleach in Barry's chili
because he was mad that Barry backed out. Monty says Barry was desperate
for money, and that's why he agreed to cheat in the first place.
Carlos, Elena's ex, asks Danny to sign a letter of recommendation
for his custody review or something. Danny did it for him years before,
but now he is reluctant. Elena confronts him about it later at the
office, and she's freaking out. Turns out Carlos lied to Danny; he's
actually suing for full custody of their daughter Sofia. Elena is mad
at Danny because she thinks Carlos will use him to portray her badly, and
she's really worried she'll lose her daughter. Danny had no idea, and
now he's worried too. Danny later confronts Carlos for lying to him,
and Carlos says he's just trying to do what's best for Sofia. Whatever,
jerk.
They find out that Barry was met a prostitute named Ivy
online and was spending a lot of time with her. However, he was just
friends with her (really!). Her pimp Derek threatened Barry's life.
Martin and Sam go to Ivy's place (the only time they spent together
in the whole episode, and it was all business with those two) and find Derek
dead there. The landlord tells them that Barry wanted Ivy to quit hooking,
and she needed $10,000 to pay off Derek before he would let her go. That's
why Barry was desperate for money, and that's why he agreed to cheat. They
find Ivy, beat up, with Barry's winnings from the eating contest. She
tells them Barry gave her the money, then she dropped him off to see Val,
the reporter who was profiling him. Barry is in love with Val and needed
Ivy's help to know how to be more confident with her. Barry
won the contest because he couldn't bear to cheat and disappoint Val.
Ivy also says that Derek beat her up and she killed him to defend herself.
They talk to Val, who confesses that Barry told her the
real reason he competitive eats: his mother was a drunken, neglectful prostitute
who let her sons eat anything they wanted to pacify them. Yikes. After
Val and Barry talked all night, he disappeared. They find out his brother
Stu had been following him, and they get Stu to tell them that he was angry
because he thought Barry was dating a prostitute. He misunderstood
Barry's relationship with Ivy and missed completely that Barry was really
interested in Val, so he knocked Barry out and put him in a storage unit
to talk to him later. The FBI finds Barry and arrests Stu. They
tell Val that Barry will be fine, and Val is happy to hear it.
Danny tells Elena that he won't help Carlos, and he wants
to help Elena and Sofia any way he can. She wants to know why he can't
just stay out of it, and he says he doesn't want to. When she asks
why, he kisses her. And she seems pretty cool with that. And
that's where the episode ends. So, eh. It wasn't the best, and
don't think I'm not bitter that they seem to developing every relationship
but Martin and Sam's right now. Sigh.
1/7/07
"Tail Spin"
5.12: An air traffic controller with a difficult teenage
son and whose wife died in a car accident a year earlier goes missing. Sam
mentions Anne to Jack, who gruffly tells her that Anne doesn't work here anymore,
and Sam's confused. I'm sad that Anne is gone. There were problems
in the ATC's family after the mom's death. The Neil guy apparently
reported a pilot for possible terrorist threat, so they think maybe the angry
pilot might have had something to do with it, but he didn't. Neil,
the missing guy, was into something really bad. They discover that
Neil and his sister-in-law were having an affair after his wife (and her
sister) died, but Neil broke it off. In the office, Danny "eyes" Elena
from the back, and Martin notices and says, "careful, brother." As in,
careful about getting involved with a co-worker? Martin would know about
that. :(
Sam and Jack have a tense discussion. Sam is mad
about how Jack spoke to her earlier, and she says, "I don't care what you
do with your personal life anymore. I don't." She just doesn't
like that he tells her Anne is pregnant one minute and the next he gets gruff
with her and makes her feel like she's butting in. Jack is down, and
he says that she's the only one he would confide in, but Elena comes in with
news about the case before that can go any further. Seriously, I am
tired of all the Jack and Sam stuff recently. Bo-ring.
Turns out Neil was into drug trafficking: he would guide
drug-smuggling planes to land secretly every so often. Neil wanted
out, so he directed the drug plane to crash on purpose. He reluctantly
took the pilot who was still alive to the hospital, and Martin and Sam question
the injured guy. He isn't forthcoming enough, so Sam cuts off his morphine.
Martin looks at her like he's impressed that she has the balls to do
that. That was pretty much the only thing all ep that even remotely
looked like a Martin/Sam moment. Poo.
Neil's teenage some was in major trouble with gambling
debts, and Neil tried to fix it, but the kid just got himself into more trouble.
Neil was gonna turn himself in, but now he can't because his kid owes
$13,000. So Neil decides to "fix it." Neil and another guy went
back to the crashed plane to get the drugs. Neil was going to sell them
for the money, but the guy turned on him and attacked him. The FBI
finds Neil hurt in the woods, but he's okay. And he's going to jail.
Back at the office, Jack very briefly and bluntly tells Sam that Anne
lost the baby. Then he walks off and leaves her standing there, very
surprised and saddened for him. *eyeroll* I wish they'd leave
off with the Jack/Sam. Ick.
12/10/06
"Fade-Away"
5.11: Yet another episode almost completely devoid
of meaningful Martin/Sam interaction. I'm dying here. They're
looking for this missing high school basketball player named Ted, an emancipated
minor from a violent home. Marina Sirtis plays his mom! And
Connor Trinneer plays his basketball coach! It's a Star Trek Extravaganza
on Without a Trace! Apparently, Anne lost the baby. It made me
so sad for them. Jack was sad, she was sad, and she had to go have
a "procedure" to remove the dead fetus. When it's over, Anne tearfully
says it was awful. And she and Jack both sadly admit that they wanted
this (having the baby together) really bad. At the end, it looks like
Anne is moving out. Forever, I don't know. Not sure what this
means for their relationship. It's currently the only frigging one
on the show right now, so therefore I have to care about it. Sigh.
There was a nice case-related exchange of information
in which Martin and Sam spoke to one another and smiled and stuff. It
lasted about ten seconds, and that was it for Martin and Sam all episode
long. Kill me now. Ted had gotten mixed up in the messy world
of college basketball recruiting and witnessed another high school basketball
friend raping a college girl, but he walked away and didn't help the girl
at all. He felt so terrible about that that he went to apologize to
her and try to make it right. But he couldn't. So he told his
rapist friend that he was going to testify against him if/when the girl pressed
charges. Then an angry friend of the the girl took Ted at gunpoint
and beat him up real bad trying to get him to tell him who raped the girl.
Ted collapses, so the idiot just leaves him there for God knows how
long. They find Ted still alive, and he's going to be okay. It
was a pretty good episode, I think. I really enjoyed seeing Marina
Sirtis and Connor Trinneer on TV again, and the story about Ted was pretty
interesting and less predictable than some of the episodes lately. Now
if only they would let Martin and Sam talk to each other for more than ten
seconds an episode...
12/3/06
"The Thing With Feathers"
5.10: A woman named Audrey has an inoperable brain
tumor and one month to live. She goes missing, and the FBI has to
find her. We learn that something is wrong with Viv's heart, and she
has to have surgery. No one at the FBI seems to know about it though.
The dying woman was desperate for money to pay for an alternative
medicinal cure that might save her (peddled by a fraud, of course), and
she goes to great lengths to try and save her own life. They find
her eventually, and it's sad because she's not ready to die. Viv has
surgery and seems to come out just fine. I'm relieved. The one
funny/cute thing that happened with Martin and Sam this ep was when Sam was
carrying a very heavy box of files over to the table where Martin and Danny
are sitting. She sarcastically tells them not to help her or anything,
she can do it. And they're all, okay, you can do it. She tells
them what she needed to tell them relevant to the files, and then she has
to carry the box somewhere else, and her pride now won't allow her to ask
for their help, so she has to do it herself. It was just really cute
to see her joking around with Martin and smiling at him (he was smiling back).
I miss them together, I really do.
11/19/06
"Watch Over Me"
5.09: Eric Hayes, a Child Protective Services social
worker, goes missing. I felt bad for Danny this ep. The case
brought back a lot of bad childhood memories of the system for him. They
eventually found the guy. He hadn't been kidnapped or killed or anything.
He felt so terrible about a child that died in a foster home that he
placed him in that he crossed state lines with the boy's pregnant mother
so that she could have her baby and the state wouldn't take the baby away.
The evil boyfriend of the girl takes the baby after she's born so he
can sell her, and Eric Hayes tries to stop him. Viv ends up shooting
the boyfriend, and they save the baby, and Eric is safe. But he's very
distraught and burned out on social work. Poor guy. Just trying
to do what he thought was right. Martin got to tackle a guy! Like
full on deck him! I was so proud. He and Sam also got to go to
Connecticut to question a witness there. That was pretty much it for
them. It's really sad when I get excited about them just being in the
same room. :( Anne, in a moment of emotional distress, had intense,
uterus-related pains. I wonder if she's going to lose the baby. She
didn't tell Jack about it though. Jack was weird in this episode. He
calls Sam into his office and has her shut the door. He tells her that
he and Anne are moving in together, and Sam looks at him blankly, puzzled.
She wonders why he's telling her this, and he says that he thought he
owed it to her. "Because we had a fling while you were married?" She
still doesn't get why he should tell her. "Anne is pregnant," he says.
"Oh." And after some more awkwardness, she gets up to leave and
says congratulations before stepping out of the office. It was really
weird. I don't think Sam was at all upset about Jack moving in with
Anne, or even Anne being pregnant. I think she was just confused. Why
does she need to know? She doesn't. I don't think she has those
feelings for Jack anymore. I'm happy about that, but I think that maybe
Jack is under the impression that Sam secretly loves him or something. Grr.
11/12/06
"Win Today"
5.08: Sadly, absolutely no Martin/Sam moments to
follow up from last week's giddy headrush of a Moment. A guy goes
missing, and they find out that the guy and this woman are con artists
and use illegal poker games to scam people out of money. They lose
on purpose and then give phony stock tips as payment so that they make money
when the mark buys bogus stocks. Complicated, but brilliant. Anyway,
the guy goes missing, and they're gonna send someone in undercover to the
poker club, and Martin volunteers to go in, but Jack says that he's bad
at cards, so Jack goes instead. The partner of the missing young man
drugs Jack and kidnaps him because she thinks he works for someone who is
after her and the guy, who is actually her son. She tortures him with
a nail gun. Not pretty. Once the FBI realizes that something
is wrong, they start trying to find Jack. Sam loses it a little bit
trying to get infor out of a guy about Jack's whereabouts. *eyeroll* They
eventually find Jack, and there is a bit of a Jack/Sam moment when she sees
that he's safe. Nothing major, just a somewhat significant look exchanged.
At least there was no touching. Martin and Sam were in the
same room in one scene. Yay! Sigh. This show is killing
me.
11/5/06
"All the Sinners, Saints"
5.07: DUDE. This episode had an actual,
honest to God moment. A moment. A Martin/Sam Moment.
The case was about a missing young woman who has mental disorders
and was last seen at the exorcism performed on her. It turned out
that she simply left by herself to go see her boss, a kind man that she
was in love with. It also turned out that she killed the boss' fiancee
in a jealous, psychotic break thing. She eventually wandered back
home of her own accord, but slit her wrists in the bathtub before knew what
she was doing. It was sad. This was a big Martin episode, too.
Martin used to work with the girl when she interned with his white-collar
FBI unit, but he couldn't remember her. He felt guilty the whole time
they were looking for her because she worked with him for a while, but he
couldn't remember her at all. It was really sad when he looked at her
body in the bathtub full of bloody water. He was almost crying! My
poor baby. :( But the Moment! Martin tells Sam that they found
out the boss was engaged to the woman who was murdered, and Martin remarks
with surprise that the guy didn't volunteer that information sooner. Sam
then says, "Keeping an office romance a secret? Imagine that." Then
she looks Martin right in the eye and gives him a little playful, flirty
smile, and he smiles back with amusement. EEEEEEEEEEE! This is
the first acknowledgement of their past romantic involvement in a very long
time. I am dead of the squee. :D
10/29/06
"The Calm Before"
5.06: So, they're looking for this guy whose
family survived Katrina in New Orleans. He quit his job and went
off looking for the son of a man he pushed out of his boat during the
hurricane, killing him. I can totally understand, though. The
guy was freaking out and violently rocking the boat trying to get in, and
Aaron's two little boys were in it. He was just trying to protect
his children. Anyway, he felt guilty and wanted to find the boy
and talk to him. He ended up almost dying in an abandoned house
in New Orleans, but Jack found him. Martin had lots to do in this
ep, as did Sam. But what annoys me is that so far, no one but Elena
and Danny have had any really meaningful personal interaction. Even
Sam and Jack's arguments (and there was another one this ep) are all business
related (not that I'm complaining about that with respect to Sam and Jack).
I just wonder where their personal lives went. I miss them,
and I miss Sam/Martin.
10/22/06
"The Damage Done"
5.05: The episode was all about a past nemesis
of Jack's whose family disappears. Jack tries to nail the guy (a
mobster) while also trying to locate his missing girlfriend and son. He
eventually gets the guy on an attempted murder, but finds out in the end
that the kid accidentally shot himself and the girlfriend invented the kidnapping
to cover up the kid's death. Sam and Martin had exactly one (1) scene
together: they interrogated a guy. That was it. Martin got
to bust people and do interesting stuff this week, and Sam got to fight
with Jack. Gag. It's kind of hard for me to believe now that
there used to actually be a relationship between those two. Hell,
it's hard for me to believe that Martin and Sam actually used to have anything
to do with each other. I still like this show, but where did the
emotional component for any character besides Jack disappear to?
10/15/06
"All for One"
5.04: In this episode, a girl goes missing from
the juvenile detention facility she's in. It's a very complicated
case, and it turns out that the girl willingly took the fall for something
her older sister actually did. They find her alive but banged up,
and the sister decides to accept the consequences of her actions. The
best thing about this episode was that Martin was one of the main investigators.
It was Jack's turn to barely be in this one. Sadly, though,
Sam and Martin didn't have much to do with each other this week. Even
so, it was nice to see Martin have good stuff to do again.
10/8/06
"911"
5.03: Again, my brain failed me, and I didn't
tape the episode. So here
is a full recap from tv.com.
10/1/06
"Candy"
5.02: Dude, Martin and Sam were barely in
the episode, and when they were, they weren't in the same room. The
only good part with them was when they were searching for a suspect, guns
out, and Martin barges into the wrong apartment and tells a little girl
and her grandma to freeze. It was funny, and Sam thought so too. Other
than that, everyone else spent the episode looking for a missing stripper
mom would turned out to have been murdered. Poor Elena had to get
down and dirty with Danny and also pole dance in front of strange pervy
men. Ick. Jack got in trouble for a lapse in judgment last
season involving the guy who shot up the FBI offices and took Ann hostage.
I'm sad that Jack and Ann's relationship is on the rocks because I
liked it. :(
9/24/06
Without a Trace Season 5 Premiere: "Stolen"
5.01: Well, Martin and Sam had some minor
interaction at the very beginning when they were interviewing a boy
who said another little boy had been abducted. They seemed like
they were getting along fine and working well together, so that's something.
The episode was pretty good, and I enjoyed it, but nothing really
at all 'shippy. Then again, the bright side is that they don't seem
to be swinging back in the opposite direction of Jack/Sam (blech). Ick,
next week: the obligatory exploitation of Roslyn Sanchez's "rockin'" body.
I knew it would be coming eventually, but did they have to involve
Danny? Gag.
