I know I’ve been singing Rubicon‘s praises in recent posts, but Sunday’s effort, “The Truth Will Out” is most certainly the finest episode the ever-improving series has done thus far. We already know that Rubicon can craft an atmosphere of intrigue, suffocation and confusion, but this episode takes all those elements to another level by forcing everyone at API to stay still thanks to a FBI lockdown. But instead of making the lockdown about David’s death or the crossword puzzle mystery, the episode smartly makes the content of it more or less irrelevant and instead forces the characters to squirm, twitch and suffer until they can’t take it anymore. Therefore, the characters find themselves having to deal with personal issues they don’t really want to.

It seems they’ve all been taking the job home, which is exactly what they are not “supposed” to do. Miles is squirming the most because he accidentally left one the files in a cab, a file he should have never taken home. Throughout the lockdown, he slowly becomes unhinged, ranting about possible terrorist attacks and then ultimately breaks down 10 seconds into the lie detector test. He’s clearly been putting up a front about his desire to be single, as the lie detector test also brings out his feelings of loneliness. Grant Test is also having problems at home, most likely because of work and the lie detector test suggest he’s ready to cheat on his wife, or perhaps already has. And Tanya’s so messed up, she can’t even give the detector a baseline.

The use of a lie detector is a great way to learn something about people because even when the machine doesn’t work in the way it always does on television and film (i.e. know the exact truth to what we’re saying), the characters are still people. And people think the lie detector works that way, so they’re as honest as possible or react nervously to the machine because they’re hiding something, even if it’s not related to the line of questioning. It’s an especially smart device in a series like this one and a setting like API where the characters don’t ever have a place to be totally honest.

Meanwhile, Will uses the lockdown as a way to snoop around on Truxton and finds that there’s something definitely going on, as he was following both David and crazy old Ed. Of course, Will is caught by the sneaky Kale. Even when the series is doing some great things like the lie detector scenes, this weird triangle of deceit between Truxton, Kale and Will is still the best thing Rubicon has to offer. I’m not sure what Kale knows or what Truxton knows or even if what we think Will knows is actually true, but I don’t care. I just want them to continue to speak in vague terms and creep in the shadows.