Let's just call this one a pause.

There was plenty of intrigue and spy stuff, and John even got a little spotlight (a flashlight?) on Taken Season 1 Episode 6.

What there wasn't was much continuity or much revealed about the development of Bryan Mills.

Let's talk about John first.

John took some of the team members, including Bryan, back to his old neighborhood to play hoops.

At least until all their phones start buzzing when it was "game over."

Except for John who got sidetracked by his older brother who is now Pastor George.

Not surprisingly, there was gang activity in the neighborhood. George was concerned that the new gang leader was drafting young children to do dangerous tasks for the gang. 

Now, for anyone who has watched The Wire, this isn't exactly breaking news. 

George did have a novel if simplistic solution: have his hotshot soldier brother kick the gang's ass to make them behave. It's kind of Biblical, but hardly WJWD (although some would argue that point).

John resisted at first because that's not what a super-secret government agent should be doing, but he couldn't resist the call to service.

So instead, he took out three gang members in about five seconds, all while going through a series of flashback. PTSD much?

That does explain why John is so tightly wrapped. He needs to be.

It didn't do much to explain John's back story. I'm guessing the military took him away from a bad neighborhood and set him up in a steady, if very dangerous, job.

John was right to lecture his brother about hoping to find an outside power to deal with his community's problems, rather than searching for a more realistic way to deal with them himself.

Huh! Maybe more did go on in those five or six scenes than I originally thought. Maybe, like John himself, it was just succinct and to the point.

Especially when compared to the rest of the ODNI team rambling across Russia trying to extract a Russian spy and his pregnant married mistress.

When you start with a messy relationship such as that, no wonder it was such a cluster throughout.

That really wasn't either the team or the defectors' fault. Instead, it was a mole at the CIA that was gumming up the works.

Fortunately, everyone on the team, both home and abroad, was assuming the worst-case scenario because that's what they got. 

I mean, having two CIA officers ambushed and killed was clue enough that something was amiss. Fortunately, there was plenty of guile in the field and Christina's cold-blooded subterfuge at the home office to keep everyone safe and flush out the mole.

I fingered Brant, the cocky young male supervisor, as the mole early on. Isn't it usually the most obnoxious suspect?

I thought Christina and John were serious when they left him alone with a syringe. But it was just a clever way to get a confession out of him. His doing it for greed was such a letdown.

Gretchen came off as incompetent, being unable to see the warning signs. I realize when a division is covering Russian activity, they're going to be stretched thin, but still.

And what did we learn about Bryan?

Well, for the second straight week, he played well with others and sublimated his cowboy tendencies into more of a team concept.

Granted, with John stateside, he tended to volunteer himself as the leader despite being the junior member of the team.

Not that things didn't work out well, especially distracting the spies following them with three people driving away in the panel van, or sending two dupes to the airport in their place to trigger the ambush.

I must have missed they had time to set up a garrote in the woods, but nice effect, anyway. They have such a useful ability to wipe out their opposition in totally foreign territory.

It was amusing to see how Bryan was amazed that Scott actually had kids and seemed to feel that spies couldn't have children. It's ironic because in the films he's constantly rescuing his family members from danger they largely walk into.

Nothing at all about Bryan's obsession with Mejia, his sister's killer. But it looks like they may be making up for that in Taken Season 1 Episode 7. I'd have to assume Asha and the spies next door to her will make an appearance as well.

To catch up on Bryan's evolution, watch Taken online.

How did you like John's visit home? How about the Russian caper? Is Bryan fitting into the team better? Comment below.

Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.