FBI – Season 5 Episode 10 “Second Life” Recap & Review

Second Life

Episode 10 of FBI season 5 starts with a young lady, Chloe getting ready to leave the restaurant and make pizza deliveries. She has plans to return from the deliveries and watch a movie with her boyfriend, Ben who she also works with. Once she gets in her car, she is strangled from behind by a  wearing a hoodie.

The next morning, OA and Maggie are called about a possible abduction of Chloe. Her car was found in the middle of nowhere, an isolated area surrounded by trees, outside the city. She never made it to her deliveries. They get a canine unit to search the surrounding area for a body and Maggie notices a secondary pair of trucks.  OA and Maggie send the team, footage from the nearest gas station where the car was found.

Based on the footage, Chloe was driving the car while a man held a gun to her head. The footage is too dark to run through their facial recognition system. They also can’t trace the car’s whereabouts after it passed the gas station.

They are also having trouble finding information on the victim, she has no social media presence and can’t find her official ID. Schola and Tiffany talk to the boyfriend to learn more about Chloe. Unfortunately, Ben doesn’t know much about her background and can’t help with the investigation.

Schola and Tiffany visit Chloe’s place of residence, she lived at a lodge. The owner tells them that Chloe was an introvert and she didn’t get close to anyone. She mentions an incident during one of the family dinners, a month ago.  A guy started stalking her and she gives them the footage. They ran facial rec and identify the man as Porter. OA and Maggie head over to his residence to speak to him.

Porter tells them that he knew Chloe as Tasha, she used to work for his family. Sadly, she stole from his parents and took off last summer in July. They confirm his alibi and that he is not the culprit. They give Chloe’s toothbrush to the lab to get her real identity and get a hit. It turns out Chloe is Anabelle Collier, a girl who was abducted eighteen years ago at the age of four.

The abduction was one of  Isobel’s first cases when she started the Bureau as a rookie. She worked on the case with another officer, Jake Reed. They closed the case after they got the guy, Eddie Lyman who confessed to kidnapping and killing Anabelle. Isobel reaches out to Reed and they learn that Lyman got out of prison four months ago after a successful appeal.

Isobel brings in Reed to work on the case with the team.  They trace Lyman and discover he is living in a motel. Jubal sends a full team to arrest him. They successfully arrest Lyman and interrogate him. He denies abducting Anabelle, 18 years ago or the day before. He points out that the man in the footage is wearing a class ring from 18 years ago. This means that anyone from his old neighbourhood could be the culprit.

They check his alibi and discover he is really not their man. Isobel checks old footage from the first case and worries that she arrested the wrong man.

The team learns that the class ring the abductor was wearing in the footage belonged to Lyman’s former high school. They contact the manufacturers to get the list of buyers who lived near Anabelle’s old town in 2004. They narrow it down to six men who fit the abductor’s physical description.

Isobel and Reed decide to talk to Anabelle’s mom. The mom is upset that she has been mourning her daughter for the past 18 years when she was alive with no one looking for her. Isobel tries to calm her down and get her to help with the case. She shows her the photos of the six suspects and asks if she recognizes any of them. She points out a man named Jeff Whalen, who used to work for her husband. He stopped coming to work when Anabelle went missing.

Isobel confronts Reed about his antagonistic approach when talking to Anabelle’s mom. He tells her to let it go and Isobel tells him that they owe that woman an apology. She tells him that they owe it to her to get Anabelle/ Chloe back.

They investigate Jeff but he fell off the grid in the early 2004s. They decide to run his photo through the DMV database and get a hit.  Jeff has been living under a fake identity as Jim. They get his last known address and Schola and Tiffany pay him a visit. Unfortunately, Jeff is not living in the house, he rented it to a man named Paul.

Paul tells them that Jeff left town along with his quiet daughter, Tasha.  Paul tells them that Jeff had a strange relationship with her “dad” Jeff.  Paul also tells them that he pays his rent through a P.0 Box. OA and Maggie visit the postal office and get footage of Jeff driving a green pick-up truck.  They ran the plates but the truck is old they can’t track it, the least they can do is put out a BOLO.

OA and Maggie spot Jeff and secretly follow him. Unfortunately, Jeff sees them and makes a run for it in his truck. OA and Maggie chase him in their SUV but they lose him.  They check houses bought near the postal office in the past five months and get a hit.

Reed and Isobel, go out in the field to supervise. Jeff already knows they are on his property even before they contain the area. Isobel opts to go ahead with the operation even without enough manpower.  Jeff tries to flee the house and take cover in the woods but OA manages to arrest him.

They search the house for Anabelle but Jeff had set a gas bomb and they can’t find Anabelle. The gas explosion forces them to clear out of the house before they find Anabelle. Isobel refuses to abandon Anabelle again and goes back to the burning house. She finds a secret compartment in the house and saves Anabelle. She reunites Anabelle with her mom.

The Episode Review

It was good to see Isobel in the field even under these circumstances. It was heartbreaking to think of all the years, Anabelle and her parents lost. It was a bittersweet ending but we can only hope they heal from the years of trauma.