The central mystery of Keith’s disappearance and apparent return took a big leap forward in “Alert” Episode 4, as Sidney finally decided to inform the authorities about a drowned body in the lake. The current relations of Nikki and Jason with their respective partners worsen, thanks to their irresponsible and reckless behavior. “Keith” overhears the conversation between Jason and Nikki regarding his DNA test, which was conducted to assure Sidney by taking Keith’s DNA sample without his knowledge. Episode 4 of “Alert” also posed an interesting question regarding professional and personal ethics, while Mike’s “by the book” approach was put against Nikki and Jason’s sentimental decision-making regarding a sensitive case. The fifth episode of “Alert: Missing Persons Unit,” “Miguel,” highlights the majority of these issues in varying capacities.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In ‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit’ Episode 5?
“Alert” Episode 5 begins by showing a man and a wounded woman stuck in a car during a traffic jam. The man anxiously looks back to spot someone trailing them and continues to comfort the woman, conversation with whom implies that the man had a baby with her. The couple is being chased by an armed man, and as he is about to locate them, the aforementioned person drives his car through a market. Attracting public attention and thereby evading their chaser, the man vanishes in the crowd, leaving the injured woman behind.
The scene shifts to Nikki’s household, where we find “Keith” venting out to his parents, Nikki and Jason, about them conducting a DNA test on him to verify his identity, unbeknownst to him. Nikki takes the blame on herself and tries to assure Keith of their trust, all the while vouching for Sidney’s well-placed intentions. Keith looks outside and sees a car suspiciously watching over their house. Following the pattern of former episodes, their morning chat gets interrupted by the MPU alert, the person in question being the man who fled the scene, identified as Miguel Salgado.
Mike brings Nikki and Jason up to speed regarding the case. Miguel was a worker in a foster care agency that reported him missing, and the next of kin is his brother, Dr. Pirai Selgado, who is a significant presence in global healthcare, with his foundation saving thousands of people in third-world countries from the onslaught of epidemics. We also get to know Pirai and his brother Miguel are the only surviving members of the Juma, an indigenous people of the Brazilian rainforest. Pirai wishes to use his foundation to preserve the culture and language of the Juma. As they interrogate Pirai regarding any details concerning the history of his brother that led to his brother’s disappearance, Mike receives a video that showcases the aforementioned incident of Miguel fleeing the scene. Pirai denies ever having seen the injured woman.
Mike and Jason go to search Miguel’s impounded vehicle for clues, and Mike informs Jason about the department superior’s hesitance regarding keeping Jason on the MPU team, given his past tendency to misconduct by bending the rules. Quite inexplicably, Nikki and Kemi manage to track down Miguel, who is standing despondently in a subway station. On the way, Kemi gets distracted after seeing a familiar face but dodges Nikki’s question regarding it. Miguel jumps onto the tracks, and Nikki does the same to save him from an inbound train. Unable to reason with him, Nikki is forced to return to the platform at the end and sees Miguel getting run over. His last words were addressed toward the injured woman in the car, Shane Weems.
Back at MPU HQ, Mike is furious at Nikki over her continual recklessness. Just as the group thinks the case is closed after Miguel’s death, Kemi reveals that Shane Weems, who is the mother of Miguel’s child, is missing too. Nikki informs Pirai about his brother’s death and repeats her question regarding his knowledge about Shane Weems, to no avail. As Nikki leaves, Pirai calls the armed assailant, who is on a mission to kill Shane. After searching Miguel’s job record, the team figures out that multiple missing women are linked with the two brothers, and their children were enlisted in foster care through Miguel’s association with the facility. Jason and Mike arrive just in time to save Shane Weems from the assailant, and Jason manages to once again make a mockery of protocol by killing the perp in a risky situation while the hostage is dangerously close.
Once again, in HQ, Mike confronts Nikki and Jason about their absolute carelessness and links that change with Keith’s return. Professional disagreement soon turns personal as Mike spells out the bitter truth of their questionable ethical laxity. Meanwhile, Kemi, using her tech gizmos, discovers that the motivation behind Pirai’s action might lie in the neocolonial actions of the government and greedy corporations, which led to the extinction and destruction of the Juma people, their culture, and their habitat (deforestation). In a sick, twisted way of exacting revenge, Pirai and his associates have been targeting the female heirs of corporate giants who were responsible for the Juma genocide and impregnating them in seclusion—thereby keeping their bloodline alive. Miguel fell in love with one of the captives, grew a conscience, and tried to resettle her in her former way of life by attempting an escape, but as we know, he failed in the end.
Meanwhile, developments regarding “Keith” move forward as we see that the authorities have managed to recover the remains of the person. Sidney and her friend secretly follow Keith during their school hours and find out he has access to a gun. Kemi, on the other hand, recovers a still of the person (whose sight unsettled Kemi in the subway) from CCTV footage and runs that by C, who de-ages the image as per Kemi’s request. A shaken and distraught Kemi confronts her father about the person, named Isaiah Denzamo, who was Kemi’s abductor years ago; up to this point, she believed that the perp died during a police raid. It turns out her father had falsified it to protect her from the truth.
The team raids Pirai’s secretive location, where the women are held in captivity, and finds out one of them is giving birth. Using this as a distraction, Pirai escapes and later holds Jason hostage in front of Mike—a similar situation enacted earlier. Mike manages to reason with Pirai and saves Jason. Later in custody, when accused of rape, Pirai exclaims he didn’t touch those women, and impregnated them through IVF, to which Nikki retorts that hardly lessens the gravity of his crime. Pirai remarks he will get what he deserves, but not for what he did – rather for what he didn’t. He confesses during his younger days, he failed to value their tribe’s way of life and thought them backward. Hence, he went on to achieve great personal success at the cost of losing his family, tribe, and everything he now dearly values. In the end, the seven mothers are reunited with their nine children—a significant success for MPU.
Meanwhile, Sidney arrives at HQ and refuses to spend the night at their house—now that “Keith” has a gun. Nikki and Jason return to their home and ask Keith, who has suddenly grown a liking for sleeping in the basement, about it; to which he replies it made him feel secure from the abductor, who is still out there scouring for him. The former couple leaves “Keith” to his devices. In the HQ, C tells Sidney that he has managed to ID the bones belonging to a 10-14-year-old boy. Sidney seems absolutely sure of her assumption that the remains are Keith’s (the real one’s).
Thoughts
The central mystery of Keith is gradually getting stretched to an annoying point, as the boring pattern of addressing the most interesting plotline at the tail end of each episode takes the immersion away from the rest of the story. For a change, Kemi is not busy with her ritual chores, and a plotline has popped up regarding her past life, which may connect to her profession much more personally than we knew—as she too was a victim of abduction. C returns in “Alert” Episode 5 but once again is given too little to work with; at least the eventual identification of the recovered remains will be worth the wait. The central case was bizarre, to say the least, but not something outlandish. There have been heinous real-life instances of women getting exploited in the same manner for absurd reasoning, but most of the time, the real-life perps turn out to be cult leaders or fake gurus instead of indigenous scientists taking revenge for neocolonial horrors. Sidney going to odd lengths to keep the truth from her parents will only blow back in worse ways, as the probable imposter “Keith” seems to be drawing his guards against her already. It is either funny or appropriate that both cop parents, Nikki and Jason, are oblivious to the flat lies and deceptions of “Keith,” and none of the adults suspect anything to be out of the ordinary regarding the Keith-Sidney situation. Amidst all these, only Mike seems to still have kept his head in the game, and he inadvertently struggles as the rest of his team members keep muddling the balance by entangling their personal lives with their professions. Hopefully, in “Alert” Episode 6, we will see the only competent member of the team getting more highlights and, just for once, the Keith mystery getting central focus.
