S03E05 - Claw and Present Danger

"Claw and Present Danger" is the fifth episode of Season 3 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It brings the season's three lines of pursuit into a single afternoon: Nick and Judy hunting the mammal who killed their witness inside Precinct 1, Luther working undercover at ZCF, and Pawbert alone in general population. It is the day the conspiracy's preparations inside the prison finally move.

Synopsis

At Precinct 1, Officers Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps work through fourteen personnel files, hunting the officer who killed the courier Quillford in custody. Alibis clear name after name until a dispatcher places Officer Jasper Paddock, a beaver with six spotless years, outside holding during the camera gap. Undercover inside Zootopia Correctional Facility, Luther follows a nervous inmate into the sub-basement and finds crates of demolition charges awaiting installation. A jaguar in maintenance coveralls catches him; Luther fights clear, but the jaguar reaches his radio and orders the detonation early. Every guard he stops takes him for a raving convict. Nick and Judy arrest Paddock in the parking garage with a packed go-bag; in interrogation he says he was planted years earlier to be in place when the day came. Prison therapist Dr. Saha Venn presses Pawbert Lynxley about seeing Luther in every gray wolf, then asks what it would mean if the wolf who shoved him was Luther. He answers that it would mean he is not alone, and the charges blow. Pawbert shields Venn, beats down a bobcat who forces the door, and searches the smoke until he finds Luther. Pawbert's siblings Cattrick and Kitty walk out through the maximum security breach, leaving their father Milton for Officer Kett to tackle. Kett recognizes Luther as undercover and waves the pair through. From the hole in the wall they watch Leodore Lionheart board a convoy of transit trucks and pull away as Nick and Judy race toward the prison.

Plot

Day 125 opens with Nick and Judy at a shared desk in the Precinct 1 bullpen, fourteen personnel files between them: every mammal with access to holding on the night Quillford died in custody. They work the list down by alibi. A boar officer was signing in a drunk driver with three witnesses to confirm it. A rhino sergeant never left the command post, and the footage agrees. A raccoon technician was on an HVAC call two floors away, and a badger dispatcher was taking personal calls in the parking lot. By early afternoon eight names are gone and six are left. It is Dispatcher Pawley, an otter, who hands them the one that matters: he passed Officer Paddock coming out of holding that night and thought nothing of it. Paddock had not been on either priority list, because six years at the precinct had produced a spotless record and nothing worth a second look. They pull his file and find a beaver who transferred in from municipal maintenance, quiet and competent and entirely unremarkable, with a background in city infrastructure that would have given him access to everything. Nick concludes that there was nothing to notice because Paddock was waiting.

Inside ZCF, Luther wakes in A-Block to word from his cellmate Krazek that Stripes wants him at breakfast. He takes the seat at the tiger's table he earned the day before, says little, and is told only that a big day is coming and to stay close. At a table nearby the weasel from the loading dock eats fast, checks his watch, and keeps glancing toward the maintenance corridor. Elsewhere in the block, Officer Kett finds Pawbert flat on his bunk having skipped a second meal, and tells him Dr. Saha Venn has asked for an off-schedule session that afternoon.

During yard time Luther peels away from the crew and tails the weasel to an unmarked sub-basement door left ajar against its frame. The room behind it holds dozens of professionally staged crates: industrial demolition charges, and with them detonators, wiring and timers, enough to open several holes in a prison wall and all of it uncoupled, waiting to be installed. Through a half-hidden side door he hears two mammals discussing the last set, due to go into the administrative wing that night, which tells him the rest are already placed. He turns to leave and finds a jaguar in maintenance coveralls in the doorway, the weasel behind him and two wolves flanking it. Luther fights all four in a room of splintering crates and wins, but the jaguar gets a paw to the radio on his belt first and calls for the detonation to be brought forward.

Luther comes out of the restricted corridor bloodied, in prison grays, with nothing on him that explains any of it and no way to reach the outside. A ram and a young ocelot order him to the ground and swing when he keeps talking, and he puts both down and steps over them. At the A-Block junction a hippo shoves him into a wall while a ferret never looks up from her paperwork, and at the C-wing checkpoint an armadillo sergeant draws a taser and levels it at his chest. A moose near the central hub calls for backup instead of listening. The cover Luther built to be forgettable to staff is working exactly as designed, and it works against him now, because the warning has nowhere left to go.

At Precinct 1, Paddock is missing from his desk, and a capybara desk sergeant last saw him heading for the back stairs. Nick calls Judy down to the parking garage and comes in behind the beaver as he reaches his car with a bag over his shoulder. Paddock makes three steps before Nick catches him in two strides and puts him down against a support pillar, and the bag spills clothes, cash and a burner phone across the floor. From the ground he tells them it has already started and they cannot stop it. In interrogation he concedes nothing and gives away everything by manner: the killing is circumstantial, whoever hired him is above his pay grade, and his six years were spent being in place for whichever day they chose. Nick starts dialing ZCF. Before anyone can finish answering, every phone in the precinct goes off at once with emergency alerts, and Paddock smiles.

In the ZCF therapy room, Venn tells Pawbert this is the first time in all their months of work that she has had to request a session off-schedule, then works him toward the yard. He admits he has been seeing Luther in every gray wolf since the fire moved him out of protective custody, and that they always turn around and are somebody else. Venn declines to call it hallucinating and calls it hoping. Pawbert describes the wolf who carried himself exactly like Luther, looked straight at him, and shoved him into the dirt, and repeats what the wolf said to him. Venn then asks what it would mean if that wolf had been Luther. Pawbert works it through aloud: Luther would be inside, undercover, unable to acknowledge him. He answers that it would mean he is not alone, and the first charge goes off before Venn can respond.

The charges fire in sequence against structural points: the outer wall, the maximum security junction, the cell blocks. The vehicle tunnel comes down on a transport van and kills the driver. The administrative wing is untouched, because its charges were never installed. Inmates pour out of blown and panic-opened cells and the blocks turn into open fighting. Sergeant Shellguard, an armadillo, tries to pull the six officers left in C-wing back toward the administrative core and is taken down from behind. In his office, Warden Ironsnout watches the facility come apart on his monitors, orders his aide to lock the door, shoves his desk and a filing cabinet against it, and leaves his officers to it.

Pawbert puts Venn behind her desk and covers her through the blasts, then holds the doorway when a bobcat forces it and sees the small mammal behind him. He refuses twice to move, breaks the charge with a chair, throws a hardcover off Venn's desk into the bobcat's face and finishes him with the desk lamp. He ties the bobcat with the lamp cord, drags him into the corridor, tells Venn to barricade herself in, and waits for the lock before he goes. Fifty feet into the smoke he stops. A gray wolf is standing still in the middle of the panic, looking at him. Pawbert says his name, the wolf's guarded expression finally gives, and they run at each other through the crowd and lock paws in the middle of the corridor. Luther tells him the shove in the yard was for the crew watching. A blast outside the window puts them both on the floor, and when the dust settles they can see through the hole that the outer wall is gone, a thirty-foot gap with the sunset coming through it.

On the way out Pawbert stops at the sight of what is left of maximum security. Cattrick and Kitty are coming through its breach ahead of Milton, who cannot keep up and is calling after them. They stop long enough to talk. Cattrick places Luther as the wolf from the visiting room, the one who fell apart in front of him asking for help, tells him he did more than try to keep Pawbert safe, and says their father was wrong about a great deal, love included. Kitty leaves Milton a message with Pawbert: they are done being his. Both say goodbye and walk out through the breach, and Pawbert asks Luther not to stop them. Milton reaches the same spot, asks where his children are, and is told. Kett tackles him before he can move again, with other guards closing in behind. Kett reads what Luther is in a single look, orders his officers to let the pair through, and turns back to securing Milton.

Luther and Pawbert reach the hole in the outer wall. Beyond it, ZTA trucks with official markings are loading an entourage: armed mammals moving like a strike team in transit uniforms, corrupt guards still in uniform covering the vehicles with drawn weapons, and specific inmates falling into formation. Leodore Lionheart gives orders beside the lead truck, looks back at what he has done to the facility, smiles, and boards. The convoy pulls away toward the ZTA tunnel access. Luther names him as the mammal behind all of it and says he is heading for the transit system. Pawbert asks what they do now, and a split screen holds the two of them in the breach against Nick and Judy's cruiser running toward ZCF with the smoke plume in the windshield.

Key Moments

• Nick and Judy work fourteen personnel files down by alibi until Pawley's account puts Paddock outside holding
• Paddock's file shows six unremarkable years after a transfer from municipal maintenance
• Luther is told at Stripes' breakfast table that a big day is coming
• Kett tells Pawbert that Dr. Venn has requested an off-schedule session
• Luther tails the weasel into the sub-basement and finds crates of demolition charges staged for installation
• Luther fights four conspirators; the jaguar reaches his belt radio and calls the detonation forward
• Luther is turned away by every guard he warns, because no one believes an inmate
• Nick takes Paddock down in the parking garage with a packed go-bag
• Venn asks Pawbert what it would mean if the wolf who shoved him in the yard had been Luther
• The charges fire in sequence, opening the outer wall, the maximum security junction and the cell blocks
• The vehicle tunnel collapses on a transport van and kills the driver
• Warden Ironsnout barricades himself in his office and leaves his officers to the riot
• Pawbert shields Venn through the blasts, then beats down and ties up the bobcat who forces the door
• Luther and Pawbert find each other in the corridor and lock paws
• Cattrick tells Luther he kept Pawbert safe, and allows that their father was wrong about love
• Cattrick and Kitty walk out through the maximum security breach and leave Milton behind
• Kett tackles Milton, recaptures him, and orders his guards to let Luther and Pawbert through
• Lionheart's entourage loads into ZTA trucks and drives for the tunnel access
• A split screen holds Luther and Pawbert in the breach against Nick and Judy racing toward ZCF

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Precinct 1 — Bullpen, records room, interrogation room, parking garage
• Zootopia Correctional Facility:
  • Sub-basement (demolition charges cache)
  • Therapy room (Venn's office; bobcat attack)
  • A-Block (mess hall, cells)
  • C-Wing checkpoint
  • Maximum security breach
  • Outer wall breach
  • Warden's office (barricaded)
  • Various corridors

Items

• Demolition charges - Industrial-grade explosives staged in sub-basement crates with detonators, wiring and timers; uncoupled and awaiting installation
• Paddock's go-bag - Clothes, cash and a burner phone; spills open when Nick takes him down in the parking garage
• The Boarne Identity by Robert Ludlamb - Hardcover from Dr. Venn's therapy-room desk; Pawbert throws it at the bobcat
• Venn's desk lamp - Swung as a weapon, then its cord used to tie the bobcat
• The jaguar's belt radio - The object that brings the detonation forward
• ZTA trucks - Transit vehicles with official markings, used to load Lionheart's entourage out through the breach

Notes

• This episode marks the convergence of all three parallel storylines from E01-E04.
• Milton's failed escape further isolates him: all three children have now abandoned him.
• Luther's discovery of the sub-basement charges saved lives by preventing the administrative wing detonation.
• The title is a pun on Clear and Present Danger (Jack Ryan). All Season 3 episode titles pun on James Bond, Jack Reacher, or Jack Ryan titles.
• The book Pawbert throws at the bobcat, The Boarne Identity by Robert Ludlamb, is a pun on The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. All books characters read (or throw) in Season 3 are Zootopia-adapted versions of real thriller novels.