“When they incarcerate us, don’t talk.” – Zuly
In only its second episode, husband and wife duo Jimmy and Zuly provide a perfect blueprint for winning $100,000 and expose the inherent flaws in the set-up of ABC’s Take The Money and Run. I spent a lot of time and energy describing the problems with the show and offered suggestions for improvements last episode, so I won’t delve too deeply into it again. Instead, I’ll show you how Jimmy and Zuly used the loopholes I pointed out to make themselves $100,000 richer.
The way the show is currently configured, there are only two ways that the detectives can possibly win. The first is sheer luck. The detectives could be driving along the road and happen to run right into the briefcase. Obviously, this is extremely unlikely. The second way the detectives can win is if one or both of the hiders crack. If the hiders are too weak to sit in a holding cell for 48 hours or too stupid to keep their mouths shut during interrogation, the detectives have a chance. If Take The Money and Run were a trivia show it would be like Jeopardy, but instead of three contestants there would only be two. And one of those contestants would have access to Google. The only way for the contestant without Google to win would be to luck out and be matched up against someone who is completely technologically illiterate. Which is to say, the only way for the detectives to win is to be matched up against a hider who is a complete moron (like the chubby brother from last week’s premiere).
If Take The Money and Run was designed to be an equal playing field, there is no way Jimmy and Zuly would stand a chance. One of the detectives tasked with hunting down their hidden case is Lieutenant Joe Schillaci. If you were watching last night’s episode and thinking to yourself, “Man, I know I’ve seen that cop with the pencil-thin mustache and man-boobs somewhere,” it’s because you have. Joe is a 21 year veteran of the Miami Police Department and one of the top dogs on the homicide unit. He’s also one of the stars of A&E’s hit docudrama The First 48. The dude is no freakin’ joke, he’s real-life Murder Poh-Leece. If he can take down Miami’s toughest killers, he should have no problem finding a silly little briefcase, right? Wrong.
Joe and his cop buddy Al are the ones that don’t stand a chance. And not because they aren’t good at their job, but because the game is rigged, the deck is stacked against them. The hiders, Jimmy and Zuly, are smart and they use the flaws in the system to their advantage and in doing so they show all future players just how easy it is.
As soon as they are given the case, Jimmy and Zuly hop in the car and speed off. The first thing Zuly does is call her daughter. She asks her daughter to call a friend of the family who lives nearby to see if they could take the case to his house. This is smart because the detectives won’t be able to track the phone call to the friend, only the daughter. And if the daughter doesn’t snitch, there is no way of connecting the friend to Jimmy and Zuly. The daughter makes the call and arranges the drop off. She informs Zuly that the friend keeps a spare key inside the grill in his back yard and they are welcome to use it to let themselves in.
When they arrive at the friend’s house, they park a few blocks away and keep the car running so the detectives will assume that they’re simply at a red light. They run a short distance to the house and stash the case. Now all the have to do is keep their mouths shut and they are home free.
And that is exactly what they do. The interrogators try and try to get them to talk, but they have no clues and leverage. Jimmy and Zuly didn’t make any unnecessary phone calls, they didn’t park the car right in front of their hiding spot and they don’t have a problem spending two nights in a cell. They figured it out, just like I did last week. They found the show’s weaknesses and exploited them. Good for them.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.