‘FBI’: Maggie Clashes With OA in Missy Peregrym’s Return (RECAP)

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for FBI Season 5 Episode 7 “Ready or Not.”]

Is Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) ready to return to work on FBI? She says she is — and even declined to take more time, as offered by the bureau —  but concern from her partner Omar Adom “OA” Zidan (Zeeko Zaki) and a confession on her part leaves the two at odds by the end of the episode.

The team barely has time to greet Maggie with a hug before they get a case; she assures Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille (Alana De La Garza) she’s ready to get to work. However, once alone with OA, she admits, “between you and me, I feel some nerves,” and it was her choice to return when she did.

During the investigation — a double homicide, and one victim ended up in trouble with a gang for selling on its territory — OA spots a bottle of pills in Maggie’s bag. She reminds him she said she was nervous, so she spoke with a psychiatrist outside of work and he prescribed them to take as needed. But there’s a problem: taking meds that the bureau doesn’t know about could get her fired. She knows, but she assures him she hasn’t taken any and just has them “in case.” Still, he wants her to let him know if she even thinks about taking one. Then, while looking for a person of interest, Mateo (Jeff Lima), Maggie has a flashback to what happened in the lab when she was exposed to sarin gas. OA notices, but she says she’s OK.

Maggie is able to get Mateo to help them arrest the killer — the gang’s leader, Jose (Robert Lee Hart) — through a drug bust with one of his men, Frankie (Mathew Montalvo), in exchange for witness protection for him and his boyfriend Sam (Corey Militzok). However, OA’s worried about Maggie going undercover for the bust. Maggie insists she’s good and she wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t — but she goes to leave the office without her gun, which he calls her out on.

Bennett Raglin/CBS

And so it’s no surprise that he’s ready to call the op off at every possible point (when Frankie wants to change locations, when he seems wary of Maggie). And when Frankie insists Maggie try the product and pulls a gun on her when she refuses, OA can’t be stopped from going in and pulling a fire alarm. During the fight for control of the gun that ensues between Mateo and Frankie, the latter is shot.

Before meeting with Isobel, Maggie takes a moment in a stairwell and looks at the bottle of pills from her psychiatrist. She again has a flashback to what happened in the lab, including OA breaking in. Then, while talking with Isobel, OA says that he felt it necessary to end the op before things went south, but their boss can tell Maggie disagrees. All Maggie will say is it was a judgment call.

With Frankie in surgery, it’s a race against the clock for the FBI to control the narrative — and that means having Mateo meet with Jose and get him to incriminate himself. Maggie convinces him to do so, but then Jose texts “and bring that woman to me.” Despite attempts to talk him out of it, Jose insists, so Isobel leaves it up to Maggie. It’s their best shot to get Jose, so she’s in.

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Again, OA doesn’t handle Maggie going in well, even as Tiff (Katherine Renee Turner) reminds him that she’s done this before. But bad things happen every day on the job, he points out, no matter how good they are, and he moves from the mobile command center to his car. After Maggie tells Jose she accidentally shot Frankie, OA wants to go in. Let Maggie control the situation, the others tell him, even after Jose tells Mateo to kill her. But as soon as Jose ‘fesses up to the murders, they move in. Jose tries to flee, Maggie and OA follow, and he ends up surrounded by the FBI and NYPD.

Following his arrest, OA brings up the fact that if Maggie had shot Jose, she’d have to face questions — by people who might be able to see that she’s not completely herself at the moment. Maggie’s offended; she opened up to him, trusting him as her partner, about her first-day jitters, and he’s using it against her? If the bureau found unsanctioned medication in her blood, she’d be benched, he reminds her. She reminds him she said she’d tell him if she thought about taking a pill. He’s just trying to protect her, he insists.

“I don’t need that. I need you to trust me,” she argues. “I do trust you,” he says. But “do you?” she asks, showing him her pills and telling him to count them, that every one is in there. With that, she walks away, and we can’t help but wonder if this is why we’ll see Maggie working with Tiff and Scola (John Boyd) a bit going forward.

FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS