"Limitless" Recap: "This Is Your Brian on Drugs"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

It's been a little while since we've seen a brand new episode of Limitless and quite frankly I was starting to miss it. This really is a fun and different show so imagine the joy in my household when I was checking the channels for something to watch last night and found that Brian Finch was back for the Limitless winter finale and what a finale it turned out to be.

Now the show has been dark before, but last night it decided to end the first half of its freshman season with an ugly, ugly bang and it did it in creative fashion, by giving us a grand look at the people around Brian for a change and putting the drug that has caused so much good and so much sorrow on the show, NZT, at the center of this episode's plot line. Now the episode wasn't completely a downer, we did get plenty of hilarious moments with an in depth look at Mike and Ike's life during those handful of moments when they don't deal with Brian, and we even got to see the dispensary that gets the boys Brian's pills.

That's where things got interesting real quick since one day when Mike and Ike go to pick the pill up, they find the place has been broken into and in the process of stopping the robbery, Ike is wounded and 6,000 NZT pills go missing. Naturally Brian is on the case and while he works on that, we got the inside look into Rebecca's life, as she tried to work up the courage to break up with Casey to no avail and to make things tougher on her, she heads off to Michigan with Casey to retrieve the pills based on Brian's intel. The mission goes off without a hitch, minus the 80 NZT pills that go missing from the CJC upon everyone's return. It turns out that one of Casey's men swiped them because why not? And Casey tries to talk them out of taking it...until Rebecca breaks up with him via text. 

Distraught and broken, Casey and the team get the alcohol flowing and pop NZT and pseudo live out their dreams during the night of their lives...until the next morning when it turns out one of Casey's men discovered another coworker had slept with his wife and upon confronting him...choked the life out of him. Casey uses NZT to try and think his way out of it but Brian catches on to the fact he's using the drug, which puts the CJC on lockdown and forces Casey to resort to desperate measures as he takes Rebecca and Brian hostage before trying to escape the building with tear gas and all. But Brian texts Agent Boyle who helps subdue Casey's team...and in the middle of a standoff, where Casey is holding a gun to Brian's head, Boyle makes the decision to put Casey down. 

It was...an incredibly unexpected plot twist to say the least. Casey seemed like a better man than this and quite frankly, his taking of NZT and being so...malicious once again leaves me wondering if the drug brings out the core of who you are regardless of your IQ. But either way, this was quite the intense midseason finale, I didn't see Casey's death or downward spiral coming and despite the dark and dreary ending it gave that character it still continued to surprise by giving us a look at Boyle's tough life outside of the FBI and I'm certain the NZT pill he found beneath his desk will come into play in the spring, I just hope he doesn't take it because he's one of the true good guys out there. Oh, and I also love the fact we finally found out Ike's real name was Jason and that he recovered from his injuries with no problem. But, just like that, Limitless is gone once again and I'll be waiting patiently for the next episode. After all, we still have a lot of unanswered questions, and we still haven't completely dealt with the mystery of Eddie Morra. Until then.

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