FBI Season 8 Episode 20 Offered a Strange Story That Connected Jubal’s Shady Past To A Terrifying Abduction

That was strange.

The murder of a wealthy woman led to a weird suspect and eventually to a connection to the Russian Mob… and Jubal’s old friend from his shady pre-FBI days.

FBI Season 8 Episode 20 gave us a rare look into Jubal’s past, but there was too much else going on for it to be as effective as it should have been.

FBI Season 8 Episode 20’s Murder Led To The Mob, Then Away, Then Back Again

It seemed weird that FBI had the New York Field Office address what appeared to be a local homicide, although the fact that the woman was a wealthy donor whose loved ones could pressure Jubal’s team to find answers made it make more sense.

That said, the introduction of a case that didn’t appear relevant to the Field Office’s mission was the least bizarre aspect of this entire case.

The non-standard case quickly led to the leader of a strike who was accusing the victim of being horribly greedy and had threatened her on camera, but it was meaningless, as he was secretly engaged to her and the two were deeply in love.

Make that one make sense.

Red herrings are one thing, but having the most likely suspect secretly be the fiancé of the woman whose life he had threatened was so bizarre and unpredictable that it felt as if the writers threw that in randomly just to keep the story moving.

I hope he learned his lesson. Using anger to motivate people to join his cause was dangerous.

While it didn’t turn out that way, any one of the strikers could have killed Susan because they believed his incendiary rhetoric about her, and then he’d be on the hook for the murder of the woman he loved, morally if not legally.

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Of course, his only role on FBI Season 8 Episode 20 seemed to be to tell the agents about the ring he’d given Susan that was worth $800K.

I guess I will never travel in the circles this guy did, because spending that kind of money on a ring seemed extremely extravagant to me. And it should have to this character as well, because his whole thing was getting people to rail against corporate excess.

Anyway, the ring led the team to Lucas so that the real story could begin, so I guess it served its purpose.

I had mixed feelings about the crypto-theft story. I agreed with Jubal when he said that Lucas was too bright a kid to be getting mixed up in stuff like this.

Desperation does lead people to do dangerous and illegal things in an effort to survive, so I guess it was believable, but the whole Russian mob angle seemed far too coincidental to be believable.

And then, on top of that, Jubal happened to have a contact in the Russian mob that he used to do shady things with back in the day. Okay, then…

The Jubal Angle Could Have Been More Interesting Than It Was

On paper, Jubal’s former friendship with a mobster sounds like a great storyline, which is why it was given the green light.

The problem is that there wasn’t enough emotion in this arc. Jubal never really struggled with betraying his old friend, and Andrei took it in stride that Jubal was an FBI agent and wanted information, at least until the case was over.

Andrei’s decision at the end of FBI Season 8 Episode 20 to part ways with the understanding that next time, they wouldn’t meet as friends was supposed to be the gut-punch to end the episode, but it didn’t feel that way, at least not to me.

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It felt inevitable, but not sad, and that was a shame, because this could have been such a strong Jubal-centered storyline.

The Search For Faith Was Muddled, But At Least Ian Had a Big Part For Once

I felt like the search for the missing girl was confusing.

The coincidence of one of the techs knowing about masonry from the 1990s to aid the search didn’t help, nor did the fact that it went from mob-involved to not mob-involved and back again in the space of 20 minutes or so.

However, I was thrilled for Ian’s role in creating the fake cryptocurrency and attempting to trace the kidnapper’s phone once the ransom message was sent.

I love it when FBI uses computers, AI, and other technologically advanced solutions to catch criminals, but often this is a tiny part of the episode — Ian and the other techs might have two lines each.

However, since FBI Season 8 Episode 20 involved a cryptocurrency scheme and a ransom demand that had to be paid in crypto, the team needed Ian’s expertise, so he finally got a bigger role.

I’d love more of that, but for once, I’d also like a kidnapping story that focuses solely on the FBI using all the tools at its disposal to trace calls and find the missing person.

That might just be me. What did you think about the murder and kidnapping arcs on FBI Season 8 Episode 20?

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If you enjoyed this article, check out our coverage of CIA, FBI’s sister show.

FBI airs on CBS on Mondays at 9/8c and streams on Paramount+ on Tuesdays.

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