overnights

Limitless Recap: The Case of the Missing Kidney

Limitless

A Dog’s Breakfast
Season 1 Episode 19
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
A Dog\'s Breakfast

Limitless

A Dog’s Breakfast
Season 1 Episode 19
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra. Photo: Michael Parmelee/CBS

Right from the very start, I knew “A Dog’s Breakfast” would be a very important episode of Limitless. I could pretend that it’s because I am very good at analyzing and understanding television, but really it’s because I saw Bradley Cooper’s name in the opening credits. “Special Guest Star Bradley Cooper.” Oh, okay, cool, big stuff is happening.

But before we get to that, let’s set the scene. Brian is back from his Russian James Bond mission and the CJC is very mad at him for going AWOL. So, he has to follow a bunch of new rules: He gets a cubicle, a more heavily monitored dosage of NZT, he’s not allowed to smoke weed anymore, he has a curfew, and he’s been assigned a new escort. On top of that, he has to wear a suit to the office. Very lame stuff.

Also: Brian’s new escort, Mr. Y, works for Sands, so he’s being monitored by either the FBI or Eddie Morra’s Secret Pill Gang around the clock.

Onto the better news. Fresh off of being lied to all the time, Rebecca has decided to be Brian’s handler again. Here’s how that happened: It just did. But that doesn’t mean she’s still not suspicious of Brian’s potential connection to Senator Morra.

This week’s case concerns the missing kidney of billionaire Gordon Roper, who was murdered and had his artificial kidney stolen from him. Through some DNA evidence, Brian figures out that the kidney given to Roper was not actually a fake kidney; it was a real one, and it previously belonged to some guy named Rohan Kumar. The whole thing was a scam meant to trick Roper into investing in the biotech firm that gave him the kidney. So, to be clear, the victim received a fake kidney that was actually real, instead of a real fake kidney. Glad we cleared that up.

In the midst of all this, Brian gets texted a weird secret code that he quickly deduces is Piper.

He buys a burner phone and calls her from a port-a-potty. They make plans to meet on the High Line later that night.

Back to the kidney thing: The team is now looking for a shady underground doctor who’s willing to steal organs. Brian — the man who is taking genius pills — decides that the best way to find this guy is to shoot or stab a member of the team and let them seek medical help. And everyone is like, “No, Brian, that’s crazy, and incredibly stupid.” The next thing you know, Stavros the janitor is jamming a box cutter into his thigh.

Nooooppppeeee!

As Stavros goes out for dubious medical treatment, Brian heads home for the night. Unbeknownst to him, Mike and Ike are on his tail. Brian doses Mr. Y with a combination of sleeping pills and Enya, then heads out to meet Piper. The only problem is, she doesn’t show. So he heads back to his apartment, where he finds Piper’s bloody bracelet from the last episode. That’s not good. Morra is sending messages.

The next day at the FBI office, Boyle asks Rebecca, “Hey, I’m like barely in episodes anymore and always on the periphery and have no idea what’s going on?” Which, true. Rebecca lets him know about the Morra theory, which is a correct theory.

Also, Boyle’s like, “I have an NZT pill.” So that’s a big deal! We’ve seen Boyle’s NZT pill twice now, and you know Chekhov’s rule: If you show an NZT pill in the first act, it’s gotta … uh, do something in the third.

Anyway, Stavros finds the underground doctor and the doctor gets arrested. His emails indicate the victim’s wife actually wanted the artificial kidney for herself. When she found out it was just a real kidney, she fed it to her dog. Here’s an infographic!

Photo: CBS

Also, she gets arrested. Case closed.

Anyway, back to the whole Morra thing. Brian goes to see Morra (Special Guest Star Bradley Cooper) and begs him to spare Piper. Morra says, “Oh I didn’t know about the Piper thing. I bet Sands kidnapped her, so she could make NZT and side-effect-mitigating booster shots for him. Sands is rogue now.” I cannot understate how chill Bradley Cooper is when he says all of this.

Here’s Sands, now the villain of this season, meeting with his shadowy pill cabal.

Photo: CBS

Cool meeting! Not weird at all!

Morra also says this ridiculous line: “This fight is not about who’s going to control this world, it’s about who’s going to build the next one.” Oh for sure, my dude.

The next morning, a fed-up Rebecca goes to Brian’s place and demands he spill the beans at gunpoint. It’s a cliffhanger.

So, there is a lot of reshuffling going on here. Most important, now that Sands is out from under Morra’s thumb, this show doesn’t really need Bradley Cooper anymore. I mean, he might still make another cameo, or the show could raise the stakes by killing him off at the end of the season. (That’s my bet.) Additionally, Sands now has a handful of cohorts to play mini-boss to his archvillain, so the show’s now got a lot more ways to build out its mythology.

Anyway, cool! Just another Limitless episode where a dog eats a kidney and a guy stabs himself in the leg.

Limitless Recap: The Case of the Missing Kidney