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Sad but good. On the season/series finale of one of my many short-lived favorites, FBI negotiators Matt and Emily decide that after breaking up their relationship it would work better for the both of them if they break up their partnership as well.

I was scared there for a while since this wasn’t supposed to be the SERIES finale that they’d leave it with them broken up and we’d never find out what happened, but thankfully it didn’t end that way. After negotiating with a husband and wife who are also in the midst of a sudden breakup, they convince the hostage takers that they are still and love…how convenient!

Great moment at the end when Cheryl decides to let Frank and his team go in just when Matt and Emily have finally managed to get both HTs to back down.
Matt and Emily: “What?” “I was just--“ “I almost had--” “You were--”
Cheryl: *grin*
Wife HT: “You shot me!”, Frank: “Yes I did.”

All in all a bittersweet ending to a show that had a lot of possibility. Thanks to all the cast and crew of Standoff for giving us their best in a great year of tv! I for one was a hooked fan who wishes we could have had more!

*pic from official site

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Posted By: Meggie - Category: Standoff

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Standoff: “Ex-factor”

July 10th 2007 13:35

Matt and Emily’s boss, Cheryl goes to watch a trial where a key witness, a hooded one nonetheless, is testifying in a federal money-laundering case. She’s not there for the witness or the case, but to see her ex-boyfriend Sam, the FBI agent working the case. And “see” him she does. She leaves after only a few words and, of course, he follows her to the hall insisting she owes him a bottle of wine and that he didn’t like the way they left things.

Cut to the key witnesses wife waiting for her husband to get home (*Author’s note—hey, it’s that guy from The Nine!). A pizza guy shows up and, well, he wasn’t exactly the pizza guy. He shoots the FBI agent watching the witness and his wife.

Matt arrives at work and insists he can’t work unless he has his blue chair that Emily is now sitting in because, as he puts it, “Blue is for boys and the red is practically pink.” Emily tells him, “Red is a primary color—an aggressive male color, you should be happy to have red. Besides, my seat is warm so suck it up!” Funny banter=calm before the storm.

Cheryl tells them a federal witness has been kidnapped, and when Sam shows up it’s obvious he and Matt aren’t exactly friends. After Sam and Cheryl argue over who’s in charge and leave, Emily asks, what that was, to which Matt replies, “That is the reason Cheryl doesn’t want us to date.”

Back at the witness’s house the team finds evidence of military involvement and a heart patient. Sam says nobody knew the location of the witness and Matt reminds him that, “You did”. When Sam and Cheryl begin fighting over who’s in charge again, they leave the unsafe secret safehouse where they find out Sam’s car had been bugged. Inside, Matt reveals the reason Sam and Cheryl broke up—she got a promotion, he didn’t.

The kidnapper calls, revealing that he’s ready to torture his hostages, and tells Matt he wants $2 million dollars from the federal government. He tells Matt to ask about the KR-29 fund. Kidnapping and Ransom. They end up tracking down the hostages by a pacemaker in the witness’s heart. They’re being held up in an abandoned mall.

They send in the Frank and the hostage rescue team and manage to get back the wife, but not before the masked Andre takes a station wagon and the husband, Dennis, blasting out onto the street.

When Dennis’s wife reveals that her hostage taker talked to Burke on the phone and had a scar around his wrist, Matt wants to bring in Burke and Emily thinks the HT could be CIA. She reassures Cheryl that what happened wasn’t her fault, that she did the right thing, and Cheryl tells her that as hard as it is to manage a relationship in this job, it’s that much harder to manage a breakup.

Matt and Frank go to meet with Burke without Sam or Cheryl knowing. His lawyer is there of course, and Burke insists that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping, that his clients are very private people who don’t like the spotlight.

Cheryl calls in a favor to the CIA who know the second they hang up it’s one of their men. Andre calls again, now the price is $4 million. He dunks Dennis in ice water while Matt tries to talk him down. He ups the price to $5 million, and when Sam insists he can’t go above two, Matt tells him to leave. Sam yells at Matt to tell him he can only do $2 million. Matt stares at him a second, obvious he hates the man then agrees to five.

Emily asks to talk to Matt in the hall, where he reveals that Cheryl didn’t dump Sam, she proposed to him. Sam and Cheryl fight in her office, where he reveals if things get any worse he’s done. Sam admits he showed up acting like he did to show off for her. There’s still something between them, but before it can go anywhere, Cheryl backs off, saying they should stick to the case. He says he’ll try to talk to DC, see if he can get them closer to $5 mil.

Matt’s had Frank follow Sam who, as Matt suspected, is meeting with Burke in secret. He tells Emily and they tell Cheryl. When Cheryl confronts Sam he insists he was trying to work a deal with Burke, a deal being offered by the government in exchange for the identities of his clients. Sam goes after Matt, Emily defends him, and when Matt tells her she doesn’t need to, she replies, "Why don’t you guys just box and get it over with?" After both Emily and Matt leave and Sam says, "That guy's always had it out for me," Cheryl tells him Matt knows about the proposal. Sam apologizes, not just for that, and manages to get in a kiss before Cheryl leaves.

They get authorized for $3 million dollars and Cheryl goes to talk to her friend Scott at the CIA. He gives her the file on his agent, Jerry Kendall, a government contractor who specializes in kidnappings. He asks for the FBI to keep the CIA out of the official statements, and reveals that Kendall didn’t work alone in Iraq. He shows Cheryl a picture of Sam. Cheryl goes straight to Sam and, great scene, punches him in the face. When he denies working with him, she pulls out her gun.

When being questioned about Kendall’s location, Sam just keeps insisting he wants immunity. Matt realizes that $5 million probably wasn’t even the final price, they were working with Burke, having him bid against them.
Kendall awaits the exchange for the hostage, and Sam calls him while handcuffed in the interrogation room. The FBI goes in, snatches Burke and Cheryl uncuffs Sam in the elevator, asking why he did it. She says in order for things to work the kidnapping ransom thing had to fail and that would have landed on her. Sam says that’s why he was trying to take over.

Everyone waits while Sam takes the money over to Kendall, and when Kendall realizes what’s going on, he pushes his hostage away, shoots Sam, and in turn gets shot himself. Sam dies in Cheryl’s arms.

Later, Matt and Emily go to meet up with Cheryl for a glass of the wine she’d been keeping in her desk ever since Sam had left. She was going to surprise him with it when he won his trial...

All in all a good episode. The first time we got a look into Cheryl’s character, her personal life, and see that Matt is still protective of his old partner. Matt and Emily get a somewhat uncomfortable look at what could happen to them if things ever went wrong, but Cheryl ends things on a somewhat bittersweet moment, reminding them that, "Some people just don’t know a good thing when they got it. You try to remember that."

Watch this episode and previous ones on Fox on demand here.

*pic from fox.com

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Posted By: Meggie - Category: Standoff

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"Standoff": A Summer Show Worth Watching

June 18th 2007 21:31

There's no crisis situation they can't handle... unless it involves each other. MATT FLANNERY (Ron Livingston) and EMILY LEHMAN (Rosemarie DeWitt) are the top-ranked negotiators in the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU). They're trained to talk their way through volatile situations. They're experts at knowing what makes other people tick. They're also sleeping together... a secret that they agreed to keep to themselves, until Matt revealed it to the entire world during a tense hostage standoff. The public revelation causes friction between Matt, who doesn't take much seriously and relies on gut instinct, and Emily, an academic who analyzes every move.

--From Fox's Official Site

Granted I hear “FBI” and I’m more than likely going to tune in to check it out, but it takes great stories and engaging characters to keep me hooked. And believe me, I can be picky about my TV.

Lucky for summer, Fox’s new series Standoff has done exactly that—hooked me. I tuned in from the very first episode introducing FBI Crisis Negotiators Matt Flannery (Ron Livingston, Office Space, The Practice, Sex and the City) and Emily Lehman (Rosemarie DeWitt, Cinderella Man, Rescue Me), and I’ve seen every episode since.

If you enjoy action-packed drama with a little romance thrown in for good measure this is the show for you! Unlike a lot of police dramas where partner UST is always there, hidden beneath the surface, Standofftakes a new approach, giving the characters the added problem of a relationship from the beginning. Each week Matt and Emily are confronted with a new hostage situation that captures your attention and leaves you screaming at the commercials.

After taking a somewhat long hiatus right in the middle of sweeps, I was beginning to get the sinking feeling that yet another show I’d actually become hooked on was going to get axed (a la Invasion or The Nine). However, now that summer is here, Standoff is back with new episodes on FOX every Friday night 9/8c.

As an added bonus, tune in an hour early and catch a rerun of this season’s Bones! That’s one good combination if you ask me!

**Catch up on all of the first season of Standoff so far here!

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Posted By: Meggie - Category: Standoff

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