Notes for season 1 episode 15, “Blue Code“
02:00 The gurning blond is familiar, it’s Robin Lord Taylor who played Penguin on Gotham.
06:16 Flashback Reese casually listens on a Grundig S450DLX to a German Numbers Station broadcasting on 17898kHz, presumably as a meditation.
A few weeks after this episode aired in 2012, you could access the WebSDR at the University of Twente and scan the radio frequencies for numbers stations without having the radio equipment yourself.
12:38 Carter does the “Mission: Impossible” heist exposition. Files are only hard copies, kept in safes that only a specific person has access to. Although presumably they have a backup access method should that person become incapacitated?
14:21 Vargas makes reference to LOS. Which I think I initially misheard as “Elias”. I presume it’s L.O.S. but at no point do you ever find out if that means anything.
15:30 Having a meeting, with armed participants, and opening with “I’m strongly considering screwing you over” is a bold negotiation strategy.
17:03 Again with the tracking UI where the targets preemptively disappear from a map if there’s a signal interruption?
23:59 Fusco is quite deft in managing to clone an RFID card in a pickpocket style move. Proximity RFID cards are a pretty bad choice for high security doors. But plenty of offices can still be accessed by cloning cards with something like a Flipper.
24:12 Fusco sprays some kind of oil on the CCTV camera, and uses a UV wand to identify which numbers on the keypad had fingerprints on them. And the classic “one number is more smudged” means it was used twice.
27:00 The group determines that Reese is “sus”.
34:28 Reese climbs out of a burning car’s trunk, and Carter’s just… standing there? Did she know Reese was in the trunk and did nothing, or does she just like to stand and watch cars burning?
36:38 Another situation in this show where people put themselves in an armed standoff with no chance of success beyond blind luck?