- Title: King & Maxwell – Wild Card
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King (Jon Tenney) and Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn) get a new client when FBI Agent Carter (Chris Butler) is arrested and suspended after getting into an altercation with a pair of patrolmen (Aaron Pearl, Toby Levins) who pulled Carter over for driving while black. As King looks into his client’s past, and how a similar situation left his brother becoming paralyzed from the waist down, Maxwell takes a closer look at the cops involved in the accident who she discovers targeted the agent and broke the tail light they allegedly pulled him over for. The question is, why?
Believing the men were paid off to get Carter suspended for a reason, King sits down with Agent Rigby (Michael O’Keefe) looking for a connection to a case involving a Mexican cartel who Maxwell believes paid off the cops to frame Carter. This leads the pair to a dead CI and his frightened girlfriend (Magda Apanowicz) and eventually back to a Congressman (William R. Moses) and the discovery of the single event seven years ago that set all the events in motion.
In the episode’s B-story Maxwell sicks Edgar (Ryan Hurst) on the firm’s deadbeat clients which lands their new assistant in jail. Edgar turns out to be of better use tracing the money from the murder victim back to the Congressman and helping King discover the reason for the seven years of blackmail and why the small time drug dealer had to die and Carter had to be pushed off the case.
Until the involvement of a member of the House of Representatives I liked how the episode was at least trying a storyline that didn’t include national implications. Thankfully, the twist doesn’t ruin the episode (even if it does feel like overkill). In terms of character the episode brings King closer to both Carter and Rigby as well as force the former Secret Service agent turned lawyer turned private detective to discuss the circumstances that led to him leaving the Secret Service. It also causes Edgar to take a peek into King’s past and make a discovery that we’ll know doubt be hearing about fairly soon.