XIII – Gauntlet

• Title: XIII – Gauntlet
• tv.com: link

Following his only lead to one of the elusive Tesla letters, XIII (Stuart Townsend) heads back to New York to crash a 24-hour birthday party thrown by an insane Russian national Andrej Kalishkanov (Steve Bacic), a private collector who Dr. Westlund (Kenneth Welsh) told XIII was in possession of one of the three letters. Borrowing an invitation from a TV producer XIII makes his way into the party, but he isn’t the only uninvited guest as Mozambique (Wole Daramola) smuggles Betty (Roxane Mesquida) into the party inside a giant Chinese statue.

Things don’t exactly go well for either of the party crashers as Betty gets captured by Kalishkanov’s goons and Kalishkanov catches XIII in a lie thanks to the Russian’s incestuous little sister Sasha (Miriam McDonald). In an unusual escape plan, a very drunk XIII wins a drinking contest with his host and stumbles out of the party with the letter and Betty who manages to fight off Kalishkanov’s head of security (Sten Eirik). After their escape the hungover, and completely pissed off, Russian is surprised when a man identical to the one who stole from him the night before shows up to procure the letter for the Chinese.

“Gauntlet” ends in an old fashioned shoot ’em up between XIII and his double that leaves their host dead, the letter in the hands of the enemy, but XIII and Betty (who now knows there are indeed two of him) alive. Although the logic to get there is questionable, a drunk XIII is a pretty fun thing to watch (and, with less inhibitions, far more deadly). Given the fallout of the latest episode, and both remaining letters in the hands of M. Pong (Ho Chow), it appears the XIII and Betty may be back to working together to recover the letters and get the answers the both need.