Spoilers ahead for Episode 11 of FBI Season 5, called “Breakdown.”
FBI returned to CBS with an episode that shifted the focus over to Jubal, not too long after shining a spotlight on Isobel. Unlike that case, however, the crisis of the week combined with a problem in his personal life meant a combination of exactly the wrong factors for Jubal to fall off the wagon in “Breakdown.” For the first time in years, Jubal was not only drinking, but drinking on the job, with only Maggie to call him out. Actor Jeremy Sisto spoke with CinemaBlend about what happened and what was originally going to be different.
At the beginning of “Breakdown,” Jubal’s biggest problem was that his morning bagel was almost toasted instead of served chewy, but that quickly changed. A bioweapon that was released on a train had left two MTA workers dead and another in the hospital with their future not looking bright, plus his son Tyler found a lump that raised the possibility that his cancer had returned. Jubal had to race to the office and wonder about his son while his ex-wife took him to the doctor.
Jubal is usually able to compartmentalize his personal life, which has been necessary for reasons ranging from the death of a loved one to his son’s involvement in a case. That just wasn’t the case this time, and viewers learned before the end of the episode that he was drinking alcohol in his coffee (followed by breath mints) throughout the day. When I asked Jeremy Sisto whether Jubal falling off the wagon was cumulative due to everything he’s been through over the past few years or a perfect storm of things going wrong in this episode, the star shared:
With an addict, they say to take it a day at a time, and I think the reason for that is because you just never know what confluence of moments and events can click that switch in your brain that says, 'Screw it.' It happens really quick. You can keep up so much resistance to that idea. 'There's no way I'm going to do that. I'm good. I'm never going down that road again.' But if you're an addict, there is always that little space that is open to completely make the wrong choice. I found it very interesting that the writers chose to take a concept they had used before, something that Jubal has already been to the depths of. His kid had cancer already, now he's in remission. So this possibility of this lump being a bad thing, it's just that. It's a possibility.
As Jeremy Sisto previously noted, Jubal's relationship with his son and his son’s health “were pretty solid” before he began drinking again. Even though he only had the news that his son’s cancer might have returned, that was enough for him to start spiraling… which he was pretty good at hiding it from his coworkers. The star continued:
Jubal is usually quite good at delaying his reaction until he has the real news, but for whatever reason, on this particular day, he just starts to get a little paranoid. He feels like he has that feeling, like a hunch when he's hunting a criminal, where he's like 'I have a feeling,' and he just has this feeling that this is gonna be awful, that this is the beginning of something that he won't be able to handle. And there happens to be some alcohol just in his line of sight in that particular moment that his eyes catch.
If only Jubal had more time between the news about the chemical attack and his son finding a lump, would the episode have gone differently? Or if he had gotten those bits of bad news somewhere far away from bottles of alcohol, would he have coped without falling off the wagon? We can only speculate about how everything might have gone right if only something had been different, but Jeremy Sisto weighed in on why he thinks that this wasn’t a cumulative issue, saying:
That's the thing. I don't think it was cumulative. I think if it was cumulative, it would have happened when his girlfriend died in his arms just after he found that his son had cancer. There's been other times where things have been [bad]. This was in a time of relative strength and stability, and I think perhaps that is more for why he finds himself succumbing to his addiction.
Jubal definitely hasn’t had an easy ride over the last few seasons, and the death of Rina back in Season 4 seemed to push him about as close to the edge as he’d ever gotten before the events of “Breakdown.” The actor shared at the time that losing her could have been “really dangerous” for him in his recovery. (You can revisit the Rina episodes streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.) He stayed on the wagon at the time, and improved his relationship with his son. Tyler didn’t know that his dad was drinking by the time the final credits rolled on "Breakdown," but Sam did.
And so did Maggie! While most of his coworkers noticed that he was more on edge and volatile than usual in his handling of the bioweapon case, nobody other than Maggie seemed to connect the dots about what could be the cause of his actions… along with cup after cup of coffee, followed by breath mint after breath mint. After one of his coffees spilled, Maggie noticed a smell of alcohol, and she didn’t just keep quiet about it.
Although she was as tactful as she could be while speaking to somebody with addiction issues who also happened to be above her in the chain of command, she was also direct in asking if he was drinking again. Jubal protested so much that his denials pretty much confirmed what she suspected, and she had doubts about whether he was sober enough to handle the scene when the clock was ticking before a chemical bomb went off. Jeremy Sisto opened up about what it meant to Jubal that Maggie was the one confronting him about it:
He knows she's dealt with it, but he's not happy with it. She does help influence him to make the right choice, but ultimately, he knows he cannot admit it to her. He keeps a sense about it. He's not going to put her in the place of admitting to it, because then she would have to do something. There's no way she couldn't, and so it is just a nuisance because he is going to deal with this case, and he's going to continue careening off the edge, at which point she could really stop him. But especially throughout the case, as she's trying to get a hold of what's going on with him, I think it's just really annoying for him to deal with it because he's already battling in his head with everything that's going on.
Maggie has had her own problems with compartmentalizing her personal feelings during cases in the past due to her sister’s struggles with addiction, so she had some experience with what Jubal was trying to hide from everybody. It tracks with why Isobel noticed that something was wrong enough to get the story about Tyler, but why Maggie was the one to connect the dots. According to Jeremy Sisto, Maggie wasn’t originally intended to be the person to have these moments with him, as he shared:
The only moment that really affects him is at the end after it's over. She just won't believe him. He really tries to convince her. 'You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong.' And just there's no convincing her. It makes sense. They changed that, actually. Originally it was another character that had a sense of what was going on and they changed it to Maggie because of her history with her sister's addiction and me being a part of that, or at least giving her my advice on it as an addict. So we have some history within that conversation.
Although Jubal did confess to drinking again when he visited his ex-wife to get the test results on Tyler and seemed miserable enough about it that he didn’t want his son to see him like that, he didn’t end “Breakdown” drowning his sorrows in a bar. He attended an AA meeting, which hopefully is a sign that he’ll be back on the wagon sooner rather than later.
Find out how Jubal moves forward after giving in to his old demons in “Breakdown” with new episodes of FBI on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, ahead of FBI: International (which has been dealing with some big problems for Forrester and the Fly Team running out of time) at 9 p.m. and FBI: Most Wanted at 10 p.m. There are still more shows on the way in the new year, so be sure to take a look at our 2023 TV premiere schedule.
