Stakeout

**Stakeout** is the second episode of the fourth season in the remake version of *S.W.A.T.*, and the sixty-eighth episode overall, which was aired on November 11, 2020.

## Summary

The SWAT team acts as a domestic surveillance unit for the CIA to confirm whether an international crime lord has resurfaced in Los Angeles after being off grid for years. Also, Tan's mother, Chan Fei is a victim of racial discrimination, and Hondo encounters his ex-girlfriend Nichelle for the first time since their breakup.

## Recap

Systemic racism might always be a thing in the US. However, no one counted on the coronavirus or how it would affect LA. The city went into a lockdown. The everyday person was ordered to stay at home, and they could only leave their house or an apartment because of an essential need. They either needed groceries or they required medical care. They couldn’t be going to bars. They couldn’t go on a shopping binge. They instead had to hunt and pray that they managed to find toilet paper at one store. Toilet paper was like gold during the early stages of the coronavirus. Everyone wanted some and none could ever find it.

The police department was also dealing with a lot. The virus seems to have brought out the worst in people and the police were essential workers. They didn’t get to ride out this virus out home. They had to go to work, and they had to respond to crazy people. They were understaffed and their budget was barely covering the people were working. People like Deacon also couldn’t go home. His wife had an immune system that was compromised and so he was accepting LAPD housing. He was put up in a motel. It was a crappy motel, and he missed his family. He wanted home, but he couldn’t risk bringing the disease back to them and so for now he was staying away. And another person staying away is Luca.

Luca went to Germany for training. He was there when the airports were shut down and all flights were canceled. Luca is now stuck in Germany. He couldn’t get home and that left the team down two people. The other person that wasn’t coming in was Tan. Tan had a family emergency with his mom and so Hicks gave him permission to go check on her. Hicks was the one running comms. He and the team had been given a new case. They were brought on after a courier for a notorious war criminal was spotted two days in a row in LA. This courier wouldn’t be in town unless his boss was in town as well and so this gave the team a chance to catch a man wanted for over twenty years.

This man is Salman Radek. He’s stayed free by constantly moving and everyone was hoping he was in LA. They tracked down the person known as the Mailman. They followed him from a newsstand to a house in the hills and they carried out a surveillance of this house. The team soon learned there was a young boy inside. They also saw the moment the Mailman left with another man to go pick up takeout and so they made sure it was one of their own who was making that order. Chris got close enough to take photos. She got the Mailman and her photos identified the second man. His name was Timur Basarov. He was wanted in St. Petersburg and he was another Chechen accused of war crimes.

The team was making progress. They identified a courier and a foot soldier. This made them believe that Radek had to be in town. He was there and they were planning something, but unfortunately, the team showed their hands. They were pretending to work on the phone lines when one of them dropped something and that’s the moment Timur was driving back. Timur spotted the gun. He tried to get out of there and the team was forced to arrest him before he could warn his friends. They later tried to question Timur. He knew better than to fall for their ploys and he was using stalling tactics on them.

Timur knew if he stalled the police long enough that his friends will begin to worry about where he went. The team also knew that and so they came up with a plausible story for why Timur wouldn’t be returning to the house. They staged a car accident. They even had the media report on this accident and so that calm down Timur’s friends. They thought he was either in the hospital or dead. They didn’t flee the house and that meant the team could continue their surveillance. Street and Chris were out there monitoring the house. They got to talking and Chris asked Street what it was about Molly that made him interested in her.

Chris and Street were great friends. They had a moment in which they kissed and they both chose to forget it. Street moved on. He began dating Molly Hicks and the two of them were moving in together so that they can quarantine together. Chris probably thought they were moving pretty fast. She also was curious about why Street pursued Molly and he said he was a risk-taker and that Molly seemed like a risk he was willing to take. Street and Chris soon turn back to surveillance and Street saw something he didn’t like. He noticed that the young boy in the house was being abused by his father. Street wanted to intervene. He was told not because Radek was the priority.

Neither Hondo nor Hicks wanted to move on the house unless they knew Radek was inside. Hondo even pulled Street from surveillance duty when Street tried to push it and so Street was sent back to comms. Tan still wasn’t back. His mother has been racially targeted by someone who thought she was responsible for the coronavirus because she’s Asian and the person threw her down to the ground. Tan’s mom required stitches. Her assailant got away and Tan’s mother doesn’t want to file charges. She wants to just forget about it. It was Tan who couldn’t let it go and he set about tracking down the man who hurt his mom.

Tan was still looking into the man even as he came back to SWAT. The team knocked out the industrial size AC that the house was using to mask their body heat and the young boy inside the house had opened the blinds to see what was going on. With that small window in which they saw inside the house, they were able to identify Radek. The team moved on to the house and they believed they caught everyone. They even thought they caught Radek when it turns out they had a decoy. The decoy wasn’t anyone important and the team knew that the real Radek was still around. They had found out why Timur left the house.

Timur left the house because he was checking on the child bride that Radek had ordered for himself. The team continued to look for Radek and they eventually found him hiding inside of the house. It was Hondo that took him down. Hondo arrested Radek and they handed him over to the proper authorities. After the raid, Tan finished what he set out to do. He found the man who hurt his mom and he gave him a piece of his mind. He also learned that the man was mentally ill. He had been in an accident almost twenty years ago and he has impulse control. He doesn’t understand right from wrong. It was his sister who was saying awful crap around him that helped color his view.

Tan gave her a piece of his mind as well. Tan was leaving when he ran into Hicks and Hicks pretended he wasn’t there to stop him from what he thought Tan was going to do. The two men walked away from the encounter with a better understanding of each other. They were more than the boss and cops. Street and Chris were more than cop and cop. They were friends too and he invited her over to the place he shared with Molly. And she turned him down because she said she had other things planned.

Hondo also had some personal business because Nichelle was back in town and Hondo didn’t like how things ended between them. They weren’t going to get back together because Nichelle was seeing someone else, but Hondo could finally apologize for the way he acted back then, and hopefully, he made things right between them.

## Cast

### Main

* Shemar Moore - Daniel Harrelson
* Alex Russell - Jim Street
* Lina Esco - Christina Alonso
* Kenny Johnson - Dominique Luca
* David Lim - Victor Tan
* Patrick St. Esprit - Robert Hicks
* Amy Farrington - Piper Lynch
* Jay Harrington - David Kay

### Recurring

* Rochelle Aytes - Nichelle Carmichael
* Bre Blair - Annie Kay
* Susan Chuang - Chan Fei
* David Gautreaux - Edward Yannick

### Guest

* Briana Venskus - CIA Agent Tori Prebble
* Alex Feldman - The Mailman
* Michael Klesic - Timur Basarav
* Vladimir Kulich - Salman Radek
* Makai Dudeck - Mischa
* Stacey Hinnen - Oliver
* Jenny Steadman - Linda
* Michelle N. Carter - Officer III Schmidt

## Trivia

* Despite being credited, Kenny Johnson do not appeared in this episode.

### Notes

* Street is chasing the van and going to Six Flags and captured him.
* Schools and Colleges are closing during the pandemic.
* Luca is still in Europe during the lockdown of COVID-19.
* Chris yells at a driver, "I'm walkin' here!"