Human Target – Ilsa Pucci

• Title: Human Target – Ilsa Pucci
• wiki: link

Throwback Tuesday takes us back to Human Target, and the episode that changes everything. After spending an entire season building up to a First Season cliffhanger, Human Target makes a noticeable left-hand turn in the Second Season premiere. The show wraps up the most obvious lingering plot elements in the first six-minutes as Christopher Chance (Mark Valley) and Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley) rescue Winston (Chi McBride) from the intermediary (Timothy Omundson) sent to recover the ledger. Notably absent, and never mentioned again, is Chance’s old boss (Armand Assante) who we last saw heading out with his former pupil to recover the book and Winston. The bank shoot-out ends with Chance’s retirement, leaving Wintson alive but alone when a new client comes calling. After six months of searching, the determined Ilsa Pucci (Indira Varma) finally tracks Chance down to a monastery in Nepal as she will become a new client and the first of two new female characters who will alter the show’s formula throughout it’s sophomore (and final) season.

Believing her husband was murdered, and that she too is a target, Ilsa convinces Chance to come out of retirement to do what he does best. The second new character is the thief Ames (Janet Montgomery), who is hired as the first of two distractions that allow our bad guys to steal Isla away from under Chance’s protection when the heiress violates the only rule Chance asks her to follow. Playing catch-up, with the help of the persuasive Guerrero, the team tracks Ilsa’s lawyer (Rick Hoffman) who has kidnapped their client to Switzerland where the team’s new thief helps set things right. While Isla starts out as nothing more than another client in need of protection (which works fine here), her involvement in the remainder of the series as a not-so-silent partner and potential love interest alters the series formula a bit too much going forward. The office makeover we see in the episode’s final scene foreshadows larger changes to come, many of them unfortunate. Still, the season has its moments, and Isla is rarely better than here (such as jumping out of a bank window into the river during a firefight).