When we return, Matt starts to explain, but Mary realizes they're out in an open hallway where anyone can hear them, so they all duck into the control room. Matt explains the finer points of Trask: international firm, specializes in Kidnap & Ransom insurance, has contacts in Kabul. Tom, because he's a Sorkin character, conveniently knows all about K&R insurance. Mary says Trask has gotten a bead on where the hostages are being held, and Tom asks if they're sharing this information with anyone like, oh, say the U.S. military. Mary says the guy who talked to the guy who talked to the guy she talked to says they always share their info with the military. Jack picks up on the six degrees of separation between Mary and Trask's Kabul branch and asks just how far removed she is from the people who can actually do something. "I'm a sexual harassment lawyer," she deadpans. "I'm not with the A-Team." Oh, Mary Tate. Maybe we'll rescue you from Burning Studio 60 Island, too. She explains once again the people who make up Trask and how they go about doing their business. Tom asks if it's legal, and Mary says it's complicated. Her actual response is, "Let's just say 'yes.'" Love it. Cut to an angle where we can see that Captain Boyle has a full view of this Mom-and-Pop rescue mission meeting from Matt's office. Smooth. If it's legal, asks Tom, why doesn't everybody use them? Mary essentially says not everyone can afford them. Tom asks about the success rate, and Mary says it's 50/50 odds, but she doesn't get to the part about how that may or may not be better numbers than the military has. Tom's reluctant to do anything that could screw up whatever the military has planned, but just out of curiosity, he asks how much money we're talking. Jack and Matt assure him that's not a question he needs to worry about.

His mind sufficiently blown, Tom spicily wanders back into Matt's office, where Boyle is waiting with some random crap about wanting to buy some Sinatra record on vinyl. When Tom won't take the bait, Boyle gets serious and tells him not to consider, for even one second, the offer he just received. Okay, who is this guy, Bagger Vance? A minute ago, he didn't know who Mary was, and now he's all clairvoyant about the fact that Tom just got offered a K&R deal? I mean, it's certainly possible that Boyle got word from the military that Trask was sniffing around the Jeter kidnapping on behalf of Gage Whitney and he made the necessary connections, but this whole "playing it coy" thing comes off as a cheap excuse for Boyle to fill the role of Airman Santa Claus, who sees you when you're sleeping, knows when you're awake, and knows when your bosses have offered you a chance to buy back your brother's life via ethically gray channels. Granted, it's harder to fit those lyrics into a melody. Boyle starts to tell the story of a kidnapping in Columbia a while back, but Tom interrupts to incredulously ask if there are really companies that sell kidnapping insurance. Oh my God, he JUST told Mary he knew what K&R was! Now he's, what, playing dumb? Whatever, 1.5 episodes to go! So Boyle explains that, because this one company paid the Colombian terrorists their ransom instead of letting the government work out a deal, the kidnapping rate went up and the terrorists were able to better fund their operation. "We don't give them a nickel," says Boyle. "Not ever." And that's a fine argument, and one I largely agree with, but sell it to someone who doesn't have a brother with an axe against his neck. But because it's Tom and he's desperate to toe the military line, he agrees. Boyle sees Simon on TV and laughs that "homeboy" really stepped in it. He says Simon should really apologize before it all gets out of hand. "He won't," Tom assures him. "Because like the song goes, 'This is all just a little bit of history repeating.'" And on that cloying little note we WHOOSH...