DECEPTION “Forced Perspective” Review

DECEPTION – “Forced Perspective” (ABC/Giovanni Rufino)
JACK CUTMORE, ILFENESH HADERA

DECEPTION “FORCED PERSPECTIVE” REVIEW

BY GEANNIE BASTIAN

Cameron Desperately Tries to Make Himself Useful in “Forced Perspective”

Cameron Black has his hands full this week as he tries to convince his new contacts at the FBI to bring him and his magic team on board as a group of consultants. Of course, the goal isn’t just finding magic tricks – he’s hoping that if he can be helpful to the FBI, that they will in turn be helpful to him, as Cameron is still very much looking for a way to get to get his brother Jonathan out of jail, and track down the mysterious fellow illusionist who set Jonathan up.

Potential partner Kay doesn’t seem to mind, really. The issue is her boss — special Agent Deakins thinks the entire thing is a waste of time. And given that Cameron’s first approach was to pitch her like he was pitching a brand-new magic show, well that didn’t help. What would help? Showing that he can be helpful in solving crimes. And then they rush off to the scene of her murdered Russian mob lawyer who the DOJ had been trying to help get out of the ‘life’.

But how is Cameron supposed to prove that his team can be helpful if he is simply left behind with a quick promise that Kay will call later? Crash the murder scene obviously!

Boys with Deadly Toys

And crash the murder scene Cameron does, only to encounter his first body which turns out to be pretty nasty. The victim has been sprayed in the face with a water gun, containing some form of specialty poison. The catch? It happened right in front of everyone, from a 19-year-old kid with a toy gun.

Cameron’s knowledge of investigations comes mostly from TV crime shows, so he wants to know when the chase starts. Kay snaps that a clue isn’t just going to drop out of the sky for them and there will no doubt be a lot of paperwork. Just then, ‘paperwork’ arrives on cue in the form of a series of paper airplanes thrown from the window of a nearby apartment. It turns out a young local boy flies them out his window in the morning. They go up and question the kid and potential witness, who softens up with a bit of paper airplane magic, only to discover that he has seen a production truck filming the murderer and his squirty gun in action, and gives the description of the logo.

Cameron realizes Noah, the 19-year-old squirt gunmen thought he was on TV. When Noah goes after a second target — a young mother pushing a baby stroller, the FBI team is able to stop him in time, and discover that he thinks he’s in a reality show. As it turns out, the woman with the baby stroller is the girlfriend of the mob lawyer, and it turns out she has been keeping the books. They got together had the little baby in the stroller and so wanted to get out, and the chance at a new life. The reality game show was created as a set up to have an unwitting kid do some Russian mob dirty work.

The trouble is that without evidence that Noah actually was set up the only hard evidence they have points to him as the killer. Cameron can’t deal with that, it’s too close to Jonathan’s case, so they look deeper and learn from a street performer that there was a production crew there that morning and ID the so-called producer as one of the mob lieutenants named Mikail. Unfortunately, just as they figure this out Noah collapses from a small amount of residual poison on his hands. Sensing the urgency to rescue him Cameron goes off on his own, to a club owned by their target. Of course, he gets caught and finds himself in hot water. Meanwhile, Kay gets the evidence she needs and heads his way. A shootout, some fun some sleight-of-hand and a disappearance later, Cameron’s okay, and he has the bad guy’s phone. But they’ve lost Mikail. Deakins wants him gone. Now.

Cameron is pretty despondent, convinced he has lost the best hope to help Jonathan, but Jonathan tells him he sees a lot of people give up in prison, and it isn’t a good look on either of them. Together the two plan an elaborate trick designed to catch Mikail and get the antidote to save Noah. When Deakins sees it’s all in place, even she’s impressed. But then Kay arrests Mikail, and it looks like they didn’t go for it. Until a car slams into the FBI vehicle and it’s on. Both the mobster and Cameron are squirted in the face, seemingly with poison. But of course, it’s the magic team. They have faked Cameron’s attack to spook their mark, and using the team’s usual theatrics, are able to get a confession of the components of the poison along with the antidote that is needed to save Noah.

Unfortunately this is the moment that Mikail catches on and discovers he’s been tricked. He insists their underhanded actions will never hold up in court, and Kate tells him not to worry. She’s not going to arrest him. Instead, she will be happy to let his deeply paranoid boss, Sasha, come for him since he has failed. Or, he could always give Sasha up… Which of course he does.

More in Common Than Meets the Eye

After the case is wrapped up, Kaye informs Cameron that she managed to sell the FBI on Team Deception – letting the magic team work with the FBI. Cameron is excited, but wonders if Jonathan is right and if he is being naïve about the willingness the FBI will have to help him absolve Jonathan. 

Kay tells Cameron about the first body she ever encountered. Before she was an FBI agent, she found her own sister overdosed on drugs. This explains the comments last episode about chasing down drug dealers being her life. She tells Cameron she knows what it’s like to lose the person you are closest to because she lost her sister, and will do all she can to  help ensure he doesn’t lose his brother.

She then shows him the case board she’s constructed, but as she does, we see it dissolve into another similar board with Cameron at the center — another board, another location. This one we find it is much larger and more complex than Kay’s, and festooned with many connecting strings pretty much like something from  a conspiracy film where you start to realize the guy is crazy. We pull back to see that the entire apparatus is mounted on large glass windows of a building in London – and there is our mystery illusionist at the center.

Deception continues Sundays on ABC.