These are the things I learned from the American television show QUANTICO.

The FBI is a sadistic place where trainees get brutalized and hazed. Where, to be polite, they mess with each other with the encouragement of their management. The director has a son who’s a menace to society but about to be released (flashing a Hannibal Lecter smirk; is he going to eat mother in the season finale?).The assistant director is a washed up case who is somehow rehabilitated (the FBI of this show is a very forgiving place). He does have a granite jaw. This button-down den of spy training is actually Peyton Place in, well, Quantico.

The audience faces moral dilemma each week. Who should they root for? The prom queen, or the secret IDF, or the veiled secret?

The IDF guy– I was more amused by the Williamsburg reference. How can he afford the rent?

In this show, being IDF is a bigger secret than being gay.

The sister is no ordinary trainee either, she is twins (“the first such experiment” in FBI history). None of these require a spoiler alert. They reveal it pretty early.

Who should we root for? Priyanka Chopra? The spray on muscles? The brooding dark secret (with blue eyes)? Are there no homely people in the FBI? Not on this show.

And then in episode 5 (written by Jake Coburn & Justin Brenneman), this dialogue suddenly pops up.

Tell us about your missing year in India.
Well, not exactly missing.
Backpacking through Pakistan? Iran?
What about the people you were with?
Specifically, Amir Salaam.
Did you know he had ties to Pakistani intelligence?
Did you know he was responsible for a club bombing in Bangladesh?
[dance music plays]

Bangladesh doesn’t have nightclubs, and they haven’t been bombed (Indonesia has). Indeed events have happened in Dhaka, at different locations. But scripts propagate the idea. Ideas granulate and become reality. Reality of false flag ops.