[Episode 1.06] It’s Bobby’s birthday, but that’s actually the least interesting thing going on because Smith‘s Episode Six belongs to Jeff.

During the best opening segments ever, Jeff returns to the house on the beach he shares with Tom after a morning surf. He grabs a beer to drink while throwing together a nauseating omelet breakfast made of eggs, a cup of butter, two raw hot dogs, and spoiled Chinese lo mein. Yeah — that’s my stomach’s righteous indignation that you hear.

After he finishes eating — how, I don’t know — and takes out the trash, Jeff finds a lovely copy of Surfer Girl, which he takes back inside to enjoy. But just when he’s about to get into the “articles,” Kala Tafattafua (Sidney S. Liufau) smashes threw the wall-length window right beside him.

Hell breaks loose, fierce struggling ensues, gunshots are fired, and Jeff finally manages to get away after Kala nearly drowns him in the bathtub. As he runs for his life down the street, Jeff spots a white Taurus parked outside the house and assumes Kala was driving it. He’s wrong, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from freaking out every time he sees another white Taurus during the episode, which is often.

Jeff goes where he knows he’ll be safe, which happens to be his doctor father’s gated estate. It turns out Assassin Surfer Boy comes from an extremely wealthy family whose members have given up on him after a life filled with psychiatrists, special schools, and arrests.

It’s clear, too, that Jeff understands what a disappointment he’s been to his parents from the painfully guilty look on his face as he avoids eye contact with them. He comes to get his father’s gun collection, but his frustrated mother asked the doctor to sell the weapons. Yet later, Jeff’s father pulls Tom aside and gives him one of the few guns he held onto while asking Tom to keep his son safe.

Before that request, Jeff tells Tom how he shot the two dudes in Honolulu because they kicked him off the beach. Really. That’s it. Jeff had no other motive than that Kala’s brother and cousin ruined his fun surfing time. As lovable as the character is, you have to admit Jeff is well on his way to becoming a card-carrying sociopath.

But Tom already knows that, and he surfs the ‘net to learn that the huge attacker from that morning is Kala, a Hawaiian methamphetamine kingpin who’s so connected, he’s gotten off the hook for four murders, including a decapitation. Oh, sh*t!

Jeff and Tom are really terrified now, and they spend most of the rest of the episode paranoid, jumping sky high at every sound, and trying to avoid booby traps and surprise attacks inside the darkened beach house. Just when the tension becomes unbearable, however, following a night of hyper vigilance, Tom discovers Kala’s body in the bedroom, where it’s been dead since that morning.

Yes — the buddies have wasted an entire day running scared from a dead man. Now all they have to do is get rid of Kala’s huge corpse, which they take care of by leaving it on the beach for little children to find. Really.

As for birthday boy Bobby, after he meets with his accountant to have him wash his recent million-dollar payoff “squeaky clean,” his wife Hope surprises him with a special visit to an old favorite bar, where his former band mates call him on stage for a little impromptu piano playing. Afterwards, Hope finally reveals that she misses the crime life, too, and knows he’s up to something fishy.

Still, Hope wants Bobby to realize that their cozy little suburban life and boring jobs are necessary now that they have two kids and can’t run all the time to stay ahead of the law. Bobby insists he can’t get by with such an existence, but he gives in at the end and goes to a neighborhood barbecue, where he and Hope are shocked to learn the host and half the guests are cops. Ha ha!

There’s no Annie in this episode — she gets center stage in the seventh and final produced installment — which is fine by me. So, the two remaining plot threads involve the Feds, who arrive in Reno to find nothing new, until a report about a stolen gold bar that turns up in Boston, and Joe and Macy.

Joe begins feeling guilty about sleeping with his best friend’s wife after Shawn and Macy’s son Ryan sees him in his underwear one morning. Macy’s response: Get over it, lover, because I feel wonderful sleeping with my husband’s best friend. What a waste — Team Bobby should have found room for her on their jobs to assist equally heartless Annie. Two tough chicks are better than one.

Up Next on the Series Finale Episode Seven: Annie works her charms on several people — or should I say “men”? — and the Feds continue hunting down the team as Smith bows out permanently.

[Episode 1.05] It’s time for the Precious Metals Job in Reno, Nevada, where Joe is the lookout at Reno International Airport, Bobby is on the road posing as a Gunther-Rimes armored-truck driver, and the rest of the team is in the tunnel where Marley knocks out the cellphone, radio, and GPS signals on the real Gunther-Rimes armored truck called Kilo 160. Inside, the driver and two guards are highly annoyed about the traffic jam.

Things never go exactly as planned, however. So, although Bobby successfully fools the dispatch officers into believing he’s driving the real armored truck, he, Tom, and Jeff are held up at the airport when the plane carrying the unrefined gold from the mine is delayed by another plane with mechanical problems, which is given permission to land first.

Their plane arrives just as Team Bobby is about to run out of time, and the three members stationed at the landing site manage to overpower the guards on the plane with gas and then steal the gold. Yet, by then, airport security is on the way because the dispatchers finally realize something’s up when the cops clear the traffic in the tunnel and the real armored truck’s GPS signal goes live again. Bobby, Tom, and Jeff escape with just seconds to spare as four airport security cars arrive with sirens blazing.

The team doesn’t have too long to relish their latest accomplishment, though, because there’s still more trouble ahead. At the meeting with Fred Cole (Ryan Cutrona, 24) the next day to exchange the gold for the $2 million dollar payment, the buyer tries to stiff Bobby out of 1.25 million dollars, insisting he told Charlie he needed more time to get all of the money. Worse, Bobby can’t sell the gold to anyone else anyway because it’s traceable.

Next thing you know, out come the guns because both Jeff and Joe are hiding nearby, as is Cole’s gunman. Bullets fly, Cole is shot, Cole’s gunman is killed, and Cole’s colleague who tested the gold for acidity is wounded but escapes.

With the ambush over, Bobby gets dying Cole to reveal they can refine the gold at the nearby farmhouse his team was going to use since they can’t transport it past the many police roadblocks that have been set up to catch whoever stole it. Unfortunately, the sneaky buyer leaves out the crucial fact that the process requires changing the gold’s metallurgical fingerprint by mixing it with other metals, which just happened to be in the vehicle his colleague used to flee.

After Team Bobby finishes a little improvised metal scrapping and melts all but the last bar of gold — Bobby intends to take it to Boston for some unexplained reason — just before Cole dies, yet more temporary trouble arrives in the form of a Forest Service Ranger. Jeff and Annie get rid of him by pretending to be there alone to have sex while on a road trip, and Bobby calls Charlie, who he understandably suspects may be responsible for the averted rip off, to arrange a meet the next morning in Reno.

Charlie, who denies all involvement with any scam, gets more than she bargains for when she arrives with Team Bobby’s $2 million, however. Bobby not only puts the tools made out of the recast metal in an unmarked van for her, but Cole’s dead corpse, as well. It’s hard to tell if Charlie is shocked or furious when she discovers the body.

The morning after the completed job is mostly lovely for the rest of the team. Happy Annie drives away on the highway, leaving Tom alone in bed with her underwear.

Matthew Marley — who looked mortified the night before when macabre Annie suggested throwing Cole’s body, or at least his head and hands, in the melted gold to get rid of it — returns home late from his “comic convention” and tells his mother he’s not going on that job interview because he’s freelancing now.

And, Cole’s poor colleague Eli Voizard, whom Cole gave up pretty quickly at Bobby’s insistence, gets out of the shower to find cheerful, smiling Jeff sitting on the steps inches away with a cup of coffee, a gun aimed right at him, and a hacksaw on the floor. Ouch! You know whatever comes afterward is gonna hurt.

Up Next on Episode Six, also known as My Favorite Episode: We begin with the best opening scenes ever and then learn all about Jeff, including his surprising background and why he really shot and killed those two dudes on that beach in Hawaii (trust me — you’ll be amazed). Plus, Macy and the Feds are back in action.

[Episode 1.04] This is the first episode that didn’t make it to the tube when Smith premiered on CBS in 2006. It’s time for Team Bobby to get busy on the Precious Metals Job, which entails stealing a half-ton shipment of gold in Reno, Nevada. These guys are nothing if not ambitious, huh?

Although we won’t get to see the final fruits of Tom and Jeff’s efforts until the next episode, “Five,” the fourth episode opens with the close friends casing an armored truck as it travels through a tunnel to arrive at the airport. Trust me, it all makes sense why this surveillance work matters in the next installment.

Meanwhile, gotta throw a wrench in Team Bobby’s plans in order to mix it up and make the quite lengthy theft prep more interesting. I guess that’s why the second incident of the episode has Joe getting stopped by a cop for weaving an Arizona Rescue truck on the road as he struggles to stay awake while driving one night. No worries, however, because Joe gets out of the potential problem by lying that he’s on his way to help put out a nearby forest fire.

The truck he’s driving is actually the armored truck Team Bobby stole during “Three,” painted red and adorned with decals to look like a rescue vehicle. The guys strip it down to the armored truck again when Joe eventually arrives in Reno.

The second kink in the team’s plans comes courtesy of womanizing Jeff, who falls for — or rather lusts after — a chili dog-diner waitress named Verna. She receives a nice colorful shiner from her boyfriend one day after she stands him up to let Jeff drive her home from work on a motorcycle Annie procured for the job.

Predictably, “Surfer Boy” retaliates with a metal napkin holder in boyfriend’s face, which results in a brutal beat-down from the boyfriend’s three goon-ish pals, plus a dislocated shoulder for good measure. The last is a common enough occurrence, judging from Tom’s weary exasperation as he realigns the shoulder.

Back in Cali, Bobby approaches bookie Art at a bar one night with a generous $10,000 good-faith payment on Shawn’s $35,000+ debt. All he wants in exchange is for Art to lay off Macy. But the bookie’s not hearing it and he blows Bobby off.

Next thing you know, Bobby is slamming his car into Art in the parking lot, before retrieving his envelope of money and warning Art that the next time he comes anywhere near Macy, Joe, or any other person Bobby’s ever had coffee with, he’s dead. Shoulda took the dough, dude, and chilled out! Now you done made Bobby mad.

Later at the airport with bossman Jerry (Shaun Toub, Iron Man) and a colleague, Bobby gets out of boarding the plane for the exciting National Paper Products convention in Houston, Texas, by lying that his client Phil in Denver, a half-million dollar national account, received a two million-cup order without logos. He promises disbelieving Jerry he’ll fly to Houston the next day, in time for the second day of the convention.

First, however, Bobby goes to another section of the airport, where he meets Tom’s former fellow inmate, new potential electronics guy Matthew Marley (Elden Henson, Lords of Dogtown), who’s 22 but looks about 15. Marley gets the go-ahead to travel to Reno for the job after he shows Bobby — who’s using the fake name Jack — that he can hack Federal Aviation Administration computers.

Marley really does know his stuff, and he officially joins the team at the end of the episode, when Bobby finally tells him his real name. He then hangs around until the last produced episode of the series, “Seven.”

Hope is around, too, first with her weird boss, Steve (Steven Eckholdt, The L Word), who’s always in her face, asking intrusive questions. Later, she convinces her sympathetic parole officer to grant her a 48-hour leave to “surprise” Bobby at the Houston convention, allegedly for their anniversary, when she reveals Bobby has been traveling a lot lately. What Hope really wants, of course, is to confirm what her husband is actually up to.

When her parents come to watch the kids while she’s gone, we learn Hope gets her intuitive nature from her mother. It’s immediately obvious mom doesn’t care for Bobby at all when one of the first things out of her mouth is a sarcastic “What’s he into now?” Smart woman, just like her daughter.

By the time Hope arrives at the Houston hotel, Bobby still hasn’t checked in, which increases her suspicions to sky-high levels. Good for Bobby, then, that he shows up just as she wanders into the bar and introduces herself to Jerry.

Hope and Bobby then proceed to give every indication they used to be a con team when they lie about their early days as a couple — including their fondness for the Chicago restaurant Mr. Beef — to an A&W executive in order to convince him to switch the company’s cup account to Bobby. The executive does just that before the convention is over, shutting up a stunned Jerry for the rest of the episode and freeing Bobby to leave when he wants.

Before the A&W score, however, Charlie calls with the news that the gold is on its way from the mine to the airport, giving Team Bobby a mere 36 hours to finalize plans. Bobby clearly feels the pressure of getting to Reno in time to complete the heist, and then there’s the new guy. If he can’t hack the GPS signal from the real armory truck and switch it over to their vehicle, they’ll have to abandon the job then, as well.

The test run the next day proves Marley can “hack it” just fine, though. There’s only one problem: a blip on the GPS that could prevent dispatch from reaching the guards in the vehicle. Such a glitch would alert dispatch to a problem, which is why during “Five,” the team stages the transfer in a tunnel, an area that’s more obstructed and less likely to raise suspicions at dispatch.

Back in Houston, Hope finally returns home, allowing Bobby to go to Reno at last, where he meets up with a man to visit the drop site first and then joins the team to confirm they will indeed move forward with the heist.

Up Next on Episode Five: The Precious Metal Job continues, along with the expected complications and setbacks.

[Episode 1.03] What are Tom and Jeff up to, dressed all commando outside of what looks like a military base? Why, they’re setting loose kittens so the animals will wander over the sensor line and trip the base’s alarms.

Once that happens enough times to annoy the frak out of the guards, the duo enters undetected and steals a nice big .50-caliber machine gun, as requested by Bobby for the upcoming precious metals job, complete with 400 rounds of ammunition that look like they weight a ton alone. The guys are nothing if not clever.

While Bobby lies to his wife Hope that he’ll be traveling to Portland, San Francisco, and Houston in the next couple of weeks for business, the Feds identify the former husband of “Dorothy Collins” as hardcore criminal and current inmate Michael Khouri (Sterling K. Brown, Army Wives), who’s serving five years in Michigan on a drug charge. The law has also managed to match fabric found on the burned arm from the river with phone company uniforms, so the next step is to scour missing reports for all white males under 60.

Meanwhile, Agents Dodd and Valez (Lisa Vidal, Third Watch) take a trip to Michigan to chat with Khouri. They try to get him to help locate “Dee” by hinting she’s the one who set him up for his current prison stint — since they were robbery buddies and all — but he’s not buying. In fact, the convict asks them quite nicely, if a tad ominously, to give his ex-wife the message that he’s coming for her soon if they ever find her.

Back in Cali, Kala Tafattafua (Sidney S. Liufau) starts questioning Venice Beach locals about the unidentified guy in his police sketch, and increasingly suspicious Hope continues playing sleuth by following Bobby in her car as he pays a visit to potential new electronics man Mark Langley (Brent Sexton, Life).

Mark claims he’s not drinking again when Bobby asks, but he’s lying, of course, as Tom and Annie verify soon enough when they tail him later. Good thing, then, that Bobby only gives him a preliminary assignment instead of bringing him on full-fledged from the get-go. On to Tom’s suggestion of a young guy he did time with, whom we meet in the next episode.

Somewhere in there, Bobby and Tom make it to Nevada’s Reno International Airport to observe the hangar where the 1,300 pounds of gold they plan to steal will arrive. Given the huge haul and the amount and quality of airport security, it’s immediately clear the thieves need an armored car to complete the job.

Next stop on the itinerary? Meet the rest of the team in Tucson to steal said armored tuck during a complicated operation that involves — take a deep breath — lifting ID from an unsuspecting truck driver to rent another truck and then ambush an armored truck, driven by two guards and carrying used grocery store coupons worth zilch, under an underpass in broad daylight. Got that? Good.

After Joe refuses to tell Macy what’s going on with Shawn when she arrives at his house to complain about the latest mysterious envelope containing $10,000 and no note, shady bookie Art Jackson (William Lucking, Murder, She Wrote) drops by his garage, looking for Shawn and repayment of that formerly $30,000, now $35,000 debt. However, when the encounter doesn’t turn up the gambling addict, Art visits Macy, forcing her to hide in a closet with her son and call Joe after Art and his goons finish trashing her house.

Up Next on Episode Four: Now that Team Bobby has the machine gun and the getaway car, it’s time for yet more heist prep during “Four,” which has never been broadcast on television previously. We also meet the new electronics guy, although Kala and the FBI take a temporary break from the action.

[Episode 1.02] While the first episode of Smith was all about the botched Tanner Museum job in Pittsburgh, the second episode focuses on the inevitable subsequent FBI investigation, as well as the activities of Bobby’s team members.

The FBI, led by Agent Dodd, immediately deduces that six criminals were responsible for the theft of three paintings worth $100 to $200 million: DECOY WOMAN, a blonde, blue-eyed female across the street who functioned as a decoy after renting two of the vehicles involved under a false name; the muscular DRIVER seen only from behind in the alley; the white PHONE MAN with dark hair; the slightly built white guy with an unidentified ACCENT; the white guy with shaggy blond hair and a TATTOO; and SMITH, the 6-foot white guy with black hair, blue eyes, and expensive clothes who was calling the shots.

Dodd’s not kidding when he says the FBI is coming for Team Bobby.

Meanwhile, Annie shows her true greedy colors at the team’s first meeting after the job. The payout split is supposed to be 50 percent to Bobby as leader, and 50 percent divided among the rest of the team. Annie cops an attitude and asks Bobby why she and the guys are receiving only $100,000, or a one-fifth split, when Shawn is now dead and there are four of them left.

Bobby cops a bigger attitude in response and explains Shawn’s share is going to Macy and their son. You can just sense it — one day soon, Annie’s greasy little fingers are going to get her exactly what she deserves. Can’t wait.

Annie figures heavily in this episode for another reason, too. Since Bobby insists on laying low for a while, she comes up with a supplementary identity-theft job to tide herself over, and she lets Tom and Jeff in on it.

But, unbeknownst to her, while she’s busy planning that crime, her old high school buddy Nancy Scialfa (you know — the poor woman Annie zapped with a stun gun in the alley near the museum) is busy informing the FBI about her younger days as dark-haired Dorothy Collins. Dodd and a colleague visit her parents, who both claim ignorance of her whereabouts. Yet, Annie’s father secretly calls and warns her as soon as the Feds leave.

Things aren’t going much better for Bobby, although he remains clueless for now that his wife Hope suspects he’s behind the Tanner theft and is determined to prove it. She’s sneaking peeks at news reports and searching his belongings the second he steps out the door to go to work.

When she comes up with bubkes, however, her sleuthing and suspicions just grow more intense. She branches out to calling every criminal she knows for a lead on what Bobby’s up to, and she finally hits paydirt when she bumps into Macy, who reveals Shawn has been AWOL in Las Vegas since the preceding Thursday.

Out on the Venice Beach boardwalk, Tom and Jeff are doing their yin-yang thing, and they reveal that Tom spent eight months in jail because he was caught during a job while Annie got away because she was already outside the building. Tom doesn’t blame her for not giving herself up, but for some reason, Jeff does.

And, just so we know how impetuous Jeff is, he steals a guy’s “sweet bike” with the owner sitting right on it after the guy makes the huge mistake of winking at Jeff while he’s admiring the vehicle. Bet the dude will never do that again. And, no, Tom, who just wants to complete his parole in peace, is not pleased.

Now is a great time to note the very weird vibe between Annie, an incurable and probably dangerous flirt, and Jeff, who acts like he hates Annie’s guts but actually seems to be struggling mightily to hide his lust for his best friend’s woman. I wonder where all that will lead. No doubt, nowhere good.

However, there’s even more trouble brewing for Jeff because, unknown to him, Kala Tafattafua (Sidney S. Liufau), the brother/cousin of the two men Jeff assassinated on the beach in the first episode, visits the police in Honolulu. A cop played by The Closer‘s Michael Paul Chan gives him a sketch of the murderer who killed his relatives, thanks to a witness.

The lawman also discloses that Jeff’s car was rented with a license stolen during a robbery in Los Angeles. So, Jeff is in big trouble because Tafattafua is huge and he’s coming stateside just to track Jeff down.

But first, Tom and Jeff sign on for Annie’s three-minute Ram Raid — their words, not mine. During the robbery, they literally storm the walls of data company IDA (Information Data Associates) with a SVU outfitted like a battering ram. The target? Not money, but rather over a half million stored accounts that include mothers’ maiden names, birth dates, and social security numbers.

Jeff initially balks at the $50 grand payday, yet agrees after snarkily asking if Annie will be inside with them or outside waiting to run at the sound of the first siren. Ha ha! Funny guy, although Annie clearly doesn’t think so.

Elsewhere, at his financial advisor’s office, Bobby is immensely disappointed to learn he only has $4,262,000 saved up and won’t be able to turn it into $10 million with his current investment strategy. See, that’s the main difference between me and fake people on TV — I’d be perfectly happy, thrilled in fact, with the first amount. But Bobby isn’t, and the $5 million shortage is what motivates him to take the five-week, $500,000 precious metal job from Charlie when he knows it would be better to wait longer following the Tanner disaster.

If only Bobby also knew his wife Hope, terrified his suspected illegal activities are going to ruin their happy suburban life, is investigating him harder than any cop ever will. Yet, first Bobby has to deal with Charlie, who considers Macy a loose end from the Tanner job. Despite the problems Shawn has brought, Bobby is determined to protect Macy, especially from Charlie.

At the garage, Joe is having a hard time keeping Macy in the dark about her husband Shawn’s death. Why, I don’t know, but he’s come up with the brilliant plan (Not!) of sending her $5,000 here and $10,000 there, with fake notes supposedly from Shawn to make her think her husband is in Las Vegas gambling.

Macy has a better idea, though. How about she just do what most wives would and assume he’s stepping out on her. That’s much more likely in her mind, gambling problem or not.

The episode ends with the team congregating once again after a call from Bobby, this time to brainstorm the half-ton precious metals job. As they discuss details like using rumored drunk Mark Langley as their new electronics guy, Hope stares worriedly at her kids playing in the pool and Tafattafua arrives in Venice Beach to take care of business with Jeff. You know a man is as cool as a cucumber when he wears flip-flops to seek fatal revenge.

Up Next on Episode Three: The FBI continues closing in on the team, even as the members prepare for their second heist by stealing an armored truck, and the situation with Macy grows more complex when an unexpected visitor arrives out of the blue.

[Episode 1.01] Smith gets off to a deadly start, literally, with the disastrous museum heist that leaves one of Bobby Stevens’ (Ray Liotta) crew members shot and near death, another the prime suspect in an alley Taser incident, and the rest barely able to escape by boat. The crime actually takes place near the end of the episode, with the opening scenes showing how it fell apart and subsequent scenes depicting how it was planned.

Robert “Bobby” Stevens is a veteran crook living a fake yet quiet suburban life with his ex-con wife Hope (Virginia Madsen) and their young son Jason (K’Sun Ray) and daughter Emily (Tatum McCann). Hope, an administrator in a dental office, attends twice weekly Narcotics Anonymous meetings and has five months left on probation. Bobby has a sham executive-level sales job at a paper cup company, arranged by Charlie (Shohreh Aghdashloo), the woman who provides him with illegal assignments. The cover position allows Bobby to lie to his wife about his true activities as he devotes most of his “work” time to plotting the thefts Charlie commissions him and his team for.

Team Bobby

Bobby’s ace team members include:

JOE (Franky G), the owner of a car shop and close friend of Shawn, whom he brought onto Bobby’s team.

SHAWN (Mike Doyle), a gambling addict married to Macy (Valarie Rae Miller), with whom he has a young son named Ryan. Shawn gets in enormous debt (again), to the tune of $30,000 owed to a thug named Art Jackson. When Charlie hears about it from “the street” and informs Bobby, he’s pissed. If Shawn suddenly pays Jackson in full while reports of their museum job are all over the news, Jackson will put two and two together. So, Bobby angrily tells Shawn he better pay the loan off slowly, stratospheric interest be damned, or else.

JEFF (Simon Baker), whom we meet when he surfs up to a Honolulu beach and assassinates the two men who tell him he’s trespassing with a rifle.

ANNIE (Amy Smart), a Vegas showgirl who takes advantage of a colleague’s drug habit to get access to stolen ids and credit cards, and then stiffs her on the payment when the card limits aren’t as high as reported.

TOM (Jonny Lee Miller), apparently best buddies with Jeff and a newly released ex-convict who just completed eight months of prison time. While Jeff likes to sleep around and steal flashy vehicles to drive, Tom is the responsible one determined to complete his parole without getting into further trouble.

We later learn that Jeff trusts Tom enough to let him hold his cuts from theft jobs, and Tom knows Jeff well enough to stay in touch with Jeff’s father. Tom also has a thing going with Annie, whom Jeff clearly doesn’t like because of her role in Tom’s arrest. Bobby comments at one point that it wasn’t her fault that Tom got caught, and the second episode clarifies exactly what went down then.

The Tanner Heist

At the fist team meeting of the episode, Bobby shares the details of the Tanner Museum job in Pittsburgh. Charlie’s unidentified client is commissioning the theft of three paintings — a Delacroix, a Rembrandt, and a Tintoretto — worth $100 to $200 million and so esteemed they can’t be sold on the market or to a fence. Payment for the job is $2 million total, with 50 percent going to Bobby as the leader.

After Bobby lies to Hope, who’s no dummy and suspects something is going on, that he’s heading to St. Louis for work, he meets up with the Tom and Joe in Pittsburgh to case the museum and determine the best plan of action. Annie will divert the attention of the two cops in a kiosk across the street as the men carry out the theft during rush hour, when the precinct six blocks away is most likely to be too busy for cops to arrive on the scene quickly if something goes wrong. The getaway boat is necessary to allow the team to flee during the congested traffic period.

On the day of the heist, electronics expert Shawn poses as a utility worker, logistics expert Tom parks a delivery truck roadside, weapons expert Jeff drives up in a rented van, transportation expert Joe waits outside on the street in the getaway vehicle, and disguise and deception expert Annie provides diversion on the street by pretending to have been violently attacked in an alley.

Unfortunately, it’s the unpredictable things that can make situations the most messy. A high school acquaintance named Nancy Scialfa (Maria Dizzia) recognizes Annie as she walks up to the museum to get ready for her act. The woman refuses to listen when Annie denies being Dorothy Collins, and Annie ends up shooting Nancy in the chest with a stun gun when she follows Annie into an alley and sees her disguise.

Meanwhile, Jeff and Tom lose track of a security guard’s location when he’s in the bathroom, and the “bogey” manages to sneak up on Bobby and Shawn while they’re removing the paintings in a wing. The floor creaks as Jeff and Tom approach from behind, startling the guard, who shoots Shawn before Jeff shoots and kills him.

Hell breaks loose on the street outside as soon as the kiosk cops hear the gunfire, leaving Annie to rush away after warning Nancy to stay. Yet, the damage is already done — twice — and Shawn dies on the getaway boat, although the team manages to escape the cavalry of cops by blowing up the delivery truck Tom left roadside earlier. The boat, with Shawn’s body still onboard, gets the explosive treatment, as well, and the team heads back home with the paintings for Charlie. Ironically, Shawn was the one who rigged both bombs.

At work at the dentist’s office, Hope learns about the heist when she notices her colleagues standing around a television as the news breaks. And, yep, she immediately suspects Bobby is involved. Up in the sky on the return flight to California, Tom ignores Jeff’s advice to stay away from Annie and hooks up with her in the bathroom anyway.

Worst of all, however, the feds arrives at the Tanner, led by Agent Dodd (Chris Bauer), and they quickly identify the theft and murder as a professional job orchestrated by one unknown Smith, with helpers. So, although Bobby tells Charlie he’s getting out of the crime life after three or four more jobs when she asks him later if he’s ready for another one, his remaining time as a free man is already in major jeopardy.

Up Next on Episode Two: The aftermath of Shawn’s death and its effect on his wife Macy, the aftermath of Jeff’s two murders on the Honolulu beach, the aftermath of Tom and Annie getting together again, and the unrelenting suspicion of Bobby’s wife Hope.

The “Nadia” episode of The Beast is all about Roman Petrescu (nicely played by The Invisible Man‘s Vincent Ventresca), a rich Romanian diplomat’s Harvard-educated son running a thriving prostitution and slavery ring in the United States, courtesy of his home country’s poorest villages. The action gets underway when one of his sex-slave victims hangs herself rather than talk when the police bring her in for questioning.

After the Romanian ambassador agrees to waive immunity, Charles Barker (Patrick Swayze) decides the easiest way to get to Roman is through his ever-present goon Slava Dobre, a fat older man who did time in a Romanian prison and now spends his days being Roman’s shadow and collecting strong-arm money from various businesses.

While Ellis Dove (Travis Fimmel) pretends to be a customer and visits one of Roman’s “massage” parlors to establish his own in with one of the girls, Barker drops by Slava’s favorite bar and pretends to be a fellow former Jilava Prison inmate in order to lure him into backing his fake budding prostitution business. Both Feds fail initially, but Nadia (Angela Gots), the “massage” woman Dove meets, slips him a matchbook begging for help during the police raid he arranges later.

Barker is forced to try again with Slava and does an okay job being the crook’s drinking buddy … until he trips up and confuses his Romanian universities. Given the phony Romanian accent and the actual Romanian he’s speaking, that’s understandable. Unfortunately, poor Slava ends up dead of a broken neck when he pulls a gun on Barker after pointing out the mistake.

This gives Barker the opportunity to take his business proposition — money in exchange for hooker slaves — directly to Roman, who laughs and suggests he go back to his farm in Romania. Next thing you know, Roman is braining one of his own men with a lamp after Barker and Dove ambush him and kidnap two of Roman’s fresh-off-the-plane girls.

No worries, though, because Roman gets his own taste of braining after Barker and Dove take out his two hoodlums when they try to kill the Feds during a meeting to swap the sex-slave girls for money. Barker gleefully busts the slick criminal and then let’s Nadia get a little pistol whipping-to-the-face in when Roman claims he doesn’t know where her son Alin is.

Yep, that’s right — Roman has three rings in one: a prostitution ring (girls taken from poor Romanian villages), a slavery ring (girls forced to work as prostitutes until they pay up ridiculous amounts of money), and a baby-smuggling ring (girls’ kids bought and illegally sold for adoption in the United States).

Barker and Dove eventually track down Alin, but Nadia decides to let him stay with his new parents to keep him safe. The State Department’s immunity waiver for Roman is rescinded, however, so the government can enjoy increased cooperation with Romania. No worries there, either, because Barker just calls somebody, says a few things in Romanian, and voilà, the news is reporting Roman was murdered in his Bucharest hotel.

Despite his earlier claim to Ray Beaumont (Larry Gilliard Jr.) that he has no intention of ever betraying Barker, Roman’s death inspires Dove to load a virtual lockbox program on his computer that contains a photo of a cute little blond girl and a heavily redacted document about Barker being the agent in charge during a 1991 operation in Yugoslavia. The end.

Although the pilot had me convinced The Beast possesses enough potential to make it must-see TV, that opinion is starting to weaken after just three episodes. For starters, the cases we’ve seen up to now are way too cut-and-dried and standard crime-TV stuff to be interesting. They get wrapped up by the end of each episode and in a manner so simplistic you can see the resolution coming a mile away. Silly me, I thought the show was going to be more of a serial antihero drama.

My main peeve, however, is the disappearing subplot about Barker’s potential corruption. Larry Gilliard Jr.’s Internal Affairs Fed Ray is the most intense character on the show — sorry, Patrick — and now he’s barely making an appearance. Really good things start to happen whenever he’s on-screen, so it’s hard to imagine maintaining interest in The Beast if his role is diminished.

Let’s hope there’ll be more Internal Affairs action — and less Travis Fimmel/Ellis Dove smirking, underacting, and reciting lame jokes about snails crossing the street — on future episodes. Otherwise, I’m going to have to demote The Beast from my must-see list.

NEXT UP: On February 5th’s “Infected,” Barker and Dove investigate a boy deliberately infected with a deadly virus in order to blackmail his mother. Nasty stuff.

“Nadia” Original Air Date: January 29, 2009

The “Family Remains” episode of Supernatural is the most boring episode of the series to date. Having admitted that, even a dull-as-a-doorknob installment in the Adventures of the Winchester Brothers is more exciting than 90 percent of the other stuff on TV.

During this outing, Sam and Dean encounter what appears to be a ghost girl at a secluded farmhouse. After she bloodily offs an ancient man who lives there in the opening scene, Sam and Dean arrive to investigate and eventually protect the new family of five moving in: Brian and Susan Carter, their two children Kate and Danny, and Susan’s brother Ted.

The boys don’t manage to accomplish that mission until they realize that not only is the “ghost” actually human — she enters a salt circle like it ain’t no thang — but she’s actually the daughter and granddaughter of the dead old man. Nasty, no? It turns out he molested his daughter, her mother, who committed suicide by hanging in the attic, and then he decided to hide the girl from authorities by holding her hostage in the house.

Dean, still torn up over all of the souls he enjoyed torturing during his 30+-year sojourn in hell (inflicting pain was a release of sorts), vows to save Danny from his new ghost buddy when she abducts him, especially after Uncle Ted gets stabbed to death in the throat while in the walls of the house hunting her down with Dean.

So, just when you think the biggest twist is Ghost Girl actually being Savage Girl, you go and learn she has a Savage Brother, whom Dean quickly dispatches before explaining to Sam — again — why his main focus these days is saving as many people as possible. Meanwhile, out in the shed with the womenfolk, Daddy Brian takes care of Savage Girl with her weapon of choice: a rusty, crusty knife.

A nice casting touch in the episode is 1980s Supergirl Helen Slater as Susan. I barely recognized her, but she looks good, and the rest of the guest cast does a typically fine job acting terrified, terrifying, and/or dead on command.

NEXT UP: January 22nd’s very cleverly titled “Criss Angel Is a Douche Bag,” featuring extra special guest star Barry Bostwick (Spin City). He plays one of three washed-up magicians who could possibly be dabbling in that old black magic.

The Brothers Winchester step in to do their usual thing, which this time around means reversing a spell that could wreak some serious havoc on the old-timers. Here’s hoping “Douche Bag” is more intriguing than the last episode.

“Family Remains” Guest Cast: Helen Slater (Susan Carter), David Newsom (Brian Carter), Bradley Stryker (Uncle Ted), Alexa Nikolas (Kate Carter), Dylan Minnette (Danny Carter), Mandy Playdon (The Girl), Gerry Rousseau (Bill Gibson), Mark Wynn (The Boy), Karin Konoval (Mrs. Curry)

“Family Remains” Original Air Date: January 15, 2009

The latest field of sixteen chefs made their debut on Season Four of Bravo’s Top Chef last night, once again reminding me that I don’t know jack about food. That’s why I love this show — it makes me hungry and eager to learn, all at the same time, a fairly amazing feat.

After the aspiring culinary stars met up and chowed down on pizza at the original Pizzeria Uno in the premiere episode “Anything You Can Cook I Can Cook Better,” they tackled the very first Quickfire Challenge perfectly tailored to the Windy City location, creating their own signature deep dish pizza.

Now, that’s my kind of cooking — something I’ve heard of before and eat on a regular basis. And, what I would give to taste the pie that featured peaches as a main ingredient (and, yes, the judges actually liked it).

The subsequent Elimination Challenge phase of the contest required the ace cooks to go head-to-head before the judges in pairs after reinventing one of eight classic dishes: Chicken Piccata, Crab Cakes, Duck à l’Orange, Eggs Benedict, Lasagna, Shrimp Scampi, Soufflé, or Steak au Poivre.

It was fitting that the new season’s first winner was 31-year-old Chicago resident Stephanie, whose duck dish looked good enough to eat off the TV screen (if only!). Her win must have given her a huge boost after host Padma Lakshmi and guest judge Rocco DiSpirito banished her to the losing group of eight chefs following the pizza cook-off.

On the opposite end of the results, the seemingly most unsocial competitor in the current crop, Georgia’s 26-year-old Nimma, got the boot for oversalting the shrimp in her Scampi to the extent that the judges — Lakshmi, head judge Tom Colicchio, DiSpirito, and second guest judge Anthony Bourdain — thought it was inedible.

If the decision had been left up to me, however, I would have chosen to send home 28-year-old Californian Ryan. He not only made a dish that clearly wasn’t Chicken Piccata — it has no breading, unlike Ryan’s interpretation — but, as Colicchio pointed out, he almost certainly still didn’t know why his version fell way short, even after Colicchio told him.

The premiere was also notable for introducing the show’s first competing couple, San Francisco’s 35-year-old Jennifer and 30-year-old Zoi. Thankfully, their personal relationship was pretty much ignored after the first mention, although Richard probably won’t be forgetting about it anytime soon.

When everyone arrived at Pizzeria Uno early in the episode, the 35-year-old Georgia resident seemed pretty psyched that he and Jennifer have a hairdo in common. Maybe they can still hook up in the kitchen if there are any group challenges down the road.

On the October 1, 2007, episode…

WE MEET:

Dr. Jonas Zarnow (John Fleck), a top NSA scientist.

WE LEARN:

The Intersect computer that undercover CIA agent Bryce Larkin destroyed in the first episode will be back up and running in six months.

A closeup shot of a Buy More banner shows the Web address www.nerdherdhelp.com, an authentic Web site containing more information regarding the series.

We also find out that Captain Awesome’s actual first name is not Awesome but Devon when Ellie calls him that at her and Chuck’s house.