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There's no crisis situation they can't handle ... unless it involves each other.
Matt Flannery (Ron Livingston, "Sex and the City," "House") and Emily Lehman (Rosemarie DeWitt, "Cinderella Man") are the top-ranked negotiators in the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU). They're trained to talk their way through volatile situations. They're experts at knowing what makes other people tick. They're also sleeping together a secret that they agreed to keep to themselves, until Matt reveals it to the entire world during a tense hostage standoff. The public revelation causes friction between Matt, who relies on gut instinct, and Emily, an academic who analyzes every move. Their relationship also gets them into major trouble with their boss Cheryl Carrera (Gina Torres, "Alias," "Firefly," "24"), head of the Los Angeles CNU, and raises eyebrows among their CNU colleagues, including intelligence officer Lia Mathers (Raquel Alessi, "Ghost Rider"). While Matt and Emily really should be split up for being romantically involved, they're too valuable as a team. "Standoff" combines the relationship banter of audience favorites like "Moonlighting" with the adrenaline-paced suspense of hits like "24." The series advances a fundamental idea: that in life and in love, "Everything is a negotiation."
Theme song: "'Late Nights and Street Fights" by Dirty Vegas
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Choose Season: 1 | All Seasons |
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| 1x01 - Pilot: | | The pilot introduces Matt and Emily, a man and a woman who deal with their personal relationship while focusing on their jobs as hostage negotiators. In this episode, the CNU deals with two separate crises: one regarding an estranged father about to lose custody of his sons and another revolving a young man who takes control of a coffee shop. |
| 1x02 - Circling: | | When Air Traffic Control error is blamed for a plane crash killing 180 people, the controller at fault hijacks the control tower in defense of his innocence. The stakes are high as dozens of planes circle above, but when Matt and Emily learn that the hijackers wife is having an affair, the negotiators realize that the pressures at work arent the only issues the hijacker is coping with. The situation hits a little too close to home as Matt and Emily get a glimpse of what could happen when personal [...] (More) |
| 1x03 - Shanghai'd: | | What seems to be a textbook child kidnapping becomes a tangled mess when it is revealed that the victim is the daughter of David Lao - an Asian crime lord who is currently under FBI investigation. To save the young girl's life, Matt and Emily must compromise the investigation, infuriating the Crime Division's Chief, and deal with a corrupt father who doesn't want their help. With two FBI teams on opposite sides of the same case and a kidnapper who is more experienced than he's revealing, Matt and [...] (More) |
| 1x04 - Partners in Crime: | | When a serial bank robber hits a string of banks along the California coast, Matt and Emily are determined to catch the thief. But when a confrontation at the next target bank goes awry and Emily becomes a hostage, Matt has trouble putting his personal feelings aside. The chase is on and after realizing that the suspects are a couple in love, Matt uses his knowledge of mixing business with pleasure to catch the robbers before Frank and the team take them out in. |
| 1x05 - Life Support: | | When a girls health takes a turn for the worse, a young boy takes hostages in a hospital to force a surgeon to operate on his terminally ill sister. But the renowned doctor is on vacation, and the remaining surgeons refuse to perform such a complicated procedure without his help. With lives on the line, Matt and Emily must appeal to the doctors past and the young boys future in order to save the hostages and prevent the boy from doing something he will regret. |
| 1x06 - One Shot Stop: | | When a mysterious sniper kills a string of random people, CNU is determined to find the snipers hideout. But when they catch a suspect and announce their success, a police captain is shot and they learn that the man in custody is actually copycat. With the real sniper on the loose, negotiations arent enough and Matt and Emily must work with Frank and Duff to catch the killer before he hurts one of them. |
| 1x07 - Man of Steele: | | After a surrogate mother scams a desperate husband out $50,000 for her newborn baby, the distraught man takes matters into his own hands. He shoots the social worker who arranged the illegal adoption and then flees, taking the newborn child and the babysitter hostage. The resulting high-speed chase ends at the scam artist's home, where, in an attempt to defend his actions, the man calls shock-jock radio personality Avery Steele's show and his plight goes live on the air throughout Los Angeles. Matt [...] (More) |
| 1x08 - Heroine: | | Matt and Emily save a young woman from a hostage situation, but their work isn't done, as the woman becomes prey to a stalker. When Emily discovers the woman has developed feelings for Matt, she questions the authenticity of the woman's claims. As the situation escalates, it becomes clear that the woman is holding secrets, but having saved her once, Matt takes it upon himself to save her again. |
| 1x09 - Peer Group: | | When a father finds his teenage sons notebook full of violent images and blueprints of his high school, he turns to CNU to prevent a hostage situation before its too late. Unfortunately, Matt and Emily are one step behind and by the time they arrive at the school, the tormented teens have already kidnapped their enemies. With the tables turned, the harassed become the bullies as they torture their captives and broadcast it over the Internet. |
| 1x10 - The Accidental Negotiator: | | When bank robbers refuse to communicate with Matt and Emily, the negotiators are forced to bring in a third party, Angela, to help with the negotiations. But Angela takes matters into her own hands and accepts the robbers demands without consulting CNU. The situation escalates as Matt and Emily must now deal with the bank robbers while finding a way to use Angela and end the standoff. |
| 1x11 - Borderline: | | After capturing a Mexican drug lord, Felix Aguila, Matt and Emily find themselves in a new predicament when he makes a run for the border and they are left stranded in Mexico. With their judgment call questioned and no escape plan, Matt and Emily hide out in an abandoned bar until Felix calls for backup and his armed friends invade the bar. As the situation turns violent and people are injured, Matt and Emily must find a way to negotiate themselves out of the situation. |
| 1x12 - No Strings: | | Paul Fisk, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, compromises his credibility when he insists that a container enter the Los Angeles Port without an inspection. When Pauls colleagues challenge his judgment, Paul threatens them at gunpoint. In minutes, the situation escalates to a hostage crisis and the FBI and the police step in, wondering what the contents of the container might be. As the situation progresses, Matt and Emily realize there is more to the case than meets the eye. After [...] (More) |
| 1x13 - Backfire: | | Panic strikes when two suspected bank robbers take 25 people hostage on the metro train, and Emily is left alone to negotiate when Matt is called to another hostage scene. Although the two men threaten to start killing passengers, Emily suspects that the hostage stunt is actually a cover-up for a getaway. Meanwhile, Matt tries to calm a schizophrenic patient, Neal, who has taken his therapist and her husband captive. Having handled four similar situations previously involving Neal, Matt knows what [...] (More) |
| 1x14 - Road Trip: | | Matt and Emily take on the case of Warren Keegan, a polygamous cult leader whose fanatical ways have earned him a place on the Ten Most Wanted list. When one of Warren's daughters, Darah, attempts to escape the cult, Warren and his wives abduct her in his motor home before she can reach freedom. Matt and Emily track Warren as he flees with Darah and his wives, and they attempt to pinpoint where he might be driving them. With help from one of Warren's former wives who had successfully left the cult, [...] (More) |
| 1x15 - Lie To Me: | | When a young boy is kidnapped and held hostage, the hostage-taker claims a direct connection to Emily. He releases a videotape of the captive boy holding a sign saying "Emily Lehman did this," and the situation becomes all too personal. As the search for the boy continues, it becomes evident that the hostage-taker has been planning his charade for months and is bent on seeking some sort of revenge. When the hostage-taker releases risqu video footage of Emily and Matt to the media, Emily is forced [...] (More) |
| 1x16 - Ex-Factor: | | When the key witness in a federal money-laundering case and his wife are kidnapped and held hostage, the hostage-taker demands $2 million to free them. Cheryl's ex-boyfriend, Sam, happens to be the FBI agent working on the case, and he steps in to take full control. Matt, suspicious of Sam and his involvement in the case, keeps a watchful eye on the investigation. The hostage's life-threatening heart problem becomes leverage for the hostage-taker, who raises the ransom price with the threat of [...] (More) |
| 1x17 - The Kids in the Hall: | | Teenage inmates at the Dunne Hill Juvenile Detention Center in California overtake the facility by taking several of the guards hostage. Called to the scene to talk the boys down, Matt and Emily are surprised to learn that the inmates do not want to break out of jail. Rather, their motivation is to keep the Dunne Hill facility, which is scheduled to be torn down the following week, open thereby avoiding transfer to a crowded Supermax facility. The hostage-takers' only request is to speak to the [...] (More) |
| 1x18 - Severance: | | Matt and Emily hurry to resolve a hostage situation in which a recently fired corporate executive holds 16 hostages in the company's boardroom. The team stages an argument while engaged in negotiations with Finch to cover for a breach operation, ending the case without casualties. Inspired by the excitement of that case, Emily and Matt share a brief passionate moment, but afterward decide to remain just friends and request a reassignment of duties. Matt takes the lead in the next case, in which [...] (More) |
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Choose Season: 1 | All Seasons
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General Info:
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