The episode opens with Michael traveling along the shoreline at a dead run, which raises the question: who is he chasing/fleeing? Nobody, actually; he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt instead of his regular clothes, which indicates he's just taking some exercise. His voice-over doesn't even seem out of breath as it explains, "Whether you're hunting down extremists in the mountains of Kashmir or tracking arms dealers through the streets of Moscow, the life of a spy takes a toll." Good thing he isn't one of those any more, then, right? As he returns to his loft, he continues, "So during down times you work out, eat right, and try to recharge your batteries. Because you never know what's waiting for you around the next corner." Makes sense, except that if he's going to practice his running, he should probably do it in his suit and dress shoes, like he's used to doing anyway. He lets himself in the front door just as a knife thwacks into a wall a couple of feet from his head and vibrates there. Michael looks surprised at this, like he just recently met Fi or something. Fi -- for naturally it is she who's been flinging deadly blades around his home -- introduces Michael to "Bud," a bald, tattooed, leather-vested character who is Fi's latest bail jumper. "You got a real chair in this dump?" Bud grumps at Michael from where he's handcuffed to a support pillar. Sore spot. Fi breezes that Bud's in a bad mood. "He didn't like the music in my trunk." And the reason he's there is so that Fi can try to convince Michael to help her out with some of the extra bounty-hunting work her bail bondsman has been sending her lately. Fi tries to make a flirty case for partnering up, but all Michael wants is for Bud to leave. And also Fi, of course, but I think that's just a bonus.

But as the three of them start down the steps from the loft entrance, they hit a hitch already. Down in the courtyard is a woman in a pants suit who introduces herself as Detective Paxson, and her nondescript male partner in the open gate as Detective Lopez. Paxson is played by Moon Bloodgood, whom you may know from Journeyman and Terminator: Salvation but whom I know primarily as a person whose name is a highly efficient demonstration of all the different vowel sounds a double-O can make. She says wants to ask Michael some questions, and when he says he's "in the middle of something," she turns her attention to Fi and busts her for not having a bail enforcer's license, taking Bud into custody. Bye, Fi's bounty. Michael says he's already been to the station, just in the last episode, but she's looking into a specific "traffic incident." You know the one. She says someone matching Michael's description was seen driving away, and although Michael points out that he's pretty generic-looking Paxson won't be put off. "Are you going to answer my questions, or am I going to pick my way through everything you own?" Are those the only two options? Michael rattles off a list of his possessions: "That would be a workbench, six power tools, four yogurts -- three yogurts, I actually had one." She says he can tell her about it at the station, and tells him to get in the car. "I'm going to enjoy this," she says. Which I'm not really buying, because so far she just looks bored rather than even remotely into it. I assume that's a by-product of having had to step in for Jennifer Esposito at the last minute. Michael gets in the back of the detectives' car, right next to Bud. "Welcome to your worst nightmare, Mr. Westen," Paxson says. "Detective Paxson -- Michael's Worst Nightmare," say the subtitles. Those subtitles are pretty gullible, if you ask me.