The copycat group mimicking the tactics of the Symbionese Liberation Army, identifying themselves as the Emancipators, abduct five low level employees from major Los Angeles corporations, demanding the companies in question pay what they owe in taxes as ransom for the hostages.
Tropes
- Better to Die than Be Killed: One of the Emancipators, when cornered by S.W.A.T., chooses to kill himself rather than surrender.
- Breaking Speech: Hondo gives one of these to a captive female Emancipator, bluntly telling her that they're no better than the Manson Family or the Branch Davidians. It provokes her into angrily blurting out the Emancipators' real plan.Gelina: It's a mistake to underestimate him.Cortez: Who? Cinque?Gelina: He's chosen.Hondo: Chosen, huh? What, like Manson? Koresh, Jim Jones? How'd things turn out for their followers, Kate? See, I got another theory. Cinque is using all of you, and convinced you to take the fall for him while he nets millions.Jessica Cortez: Honestly, I expected a Stanford grad to be smarter, Kate.Gelina: Don't. Use. That. Name.Hondo: Listen to me, you tell me where the hostages are and then you're...Gelina: Oh, the hostages, the hostages! It's not about the hostages. It's about cutting the head off the snake!Hondo: [realizing]The C.E.O.s. (Gelina realises what she just said)
- Bullying a Dragon: One of the C.E.O.s targeted by the Emancipators gives a press statement refusing to pay and deriding them as cowards. They retaliate by sending a bomb to his office.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Hicks quickly gets the impression the corporations being targeted by the Emancipators are perfectly wiling to sacrifice their employees to protect their profits.
- Decapitated Army: A variation: the Emancipators wanted the C.E.O.s of the companies they targeted gathered in one place for a surgical strike.
- Domestic Abuse: The episode opens with the team dealing with an abusive ex-husband confronting his ex-wife on the whereabouts of his children.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Hondo lashes out at his team for allowing a suspect to escape. Cortez, who overhears him reprimanding them, calls him out over it.
- I Surrender, Suckers: What the Emancipators' members surrendering to S.W.A.T. comes across like.
- Killed Offscreen: Allen, the abusive ex-husband, killed his ex-wife's parents prior to the episode.
- Motive Rant: Cinque gives a lengthy one about his anger at what, in his eyes, capitalism has done to Los Angeles. Hondo is unimpressed.Cinque: You know where you are, Sergeant? Factories like this used to employ thousands of people. The area was flourishing. So much potential wasted. Then the unions got busted. Workers replaced by cheap labor or robots. They locked us in ghettos and called them "projects". The police stopped policing, and let the gangs pump our veins with poison. And only then did the police return, in full militarized force, to imprison the very addicts and dealers they created in the first place.Hondo: You making a point or are you just wasting spit?Cinque: They tell us to put our faith in institutions. This is what institutions give you. Neglect. Abandonment. Destitution.Hondo: You want that to change, why don't you run for office?!Cinque: (scoffs) You're an optimist. Well, I guess you'd have to be, black officer at your level. I bet you joined the LAPD thinking you'd change the system from within. How's that working? We want the same thing. We've tried it your way. Now we try it mine. Burn it all down and rebuild from the ashes.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hondo doesn't bother to hide his contempt at the Emancipators to one of their captive members.Hondo: You think we're supposed to take you seriously? You're nothing but trick-or-treaters with guns.
- Shout-Out: The Emancipators leave their hostages with guns bound to their hands, expecting S.W.A.T. to shoot them in the heat of the moment, like the Joker and his goons did in The Dark Knight.
- We Will Meet Again: Cinque, the ringleader of the Emancipators calls Hondo at the episode's end, wishing him good luck in their next encounter.
- Worthy Opponent: Cinque seems to consider Hondo this.Cinque: Sergeant Daniel Harrelson? The sergeant from South L.A.? I wanted to talk to the officer who's been obstructing me.Hondo: Oh, I'm sorry about that.Cinque: No, I admire your dedication.
