It bugs me when TV shows feature characters who project their own guilt onto others and posture themselves as victims, and then fail to offer a critical view of that nonsense. Julian Randol shot Carlos Fenegra, and held him and Kiera hostage in his father's farmhouse. He held his parents hostage as well. When the police surrounded the farmhouse and made a phone call to the house, Julian answered the phone, AND HE IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS ROLAND RANDOL, HIS FATHER. Then he spouted off his revolutionary Liber8 drivel, claiming he was willing to die for the cause, ready to shoot the hostages, etc.

Julian told the police THAT HIS FATHER was a terrorist with a truck bomb who was holding people hostage. The police knew that Carlos had been shot. And Julian told them that Randol was willing to kill the hostages. Julian killed his own father by convincing the police that his father was an active shooter who was willing to die for his cause, who had already shot a police officer, and was planning on killing hostages. Julian is responsible for every action leading to his father's death.

Afterward, Julian told anyone willing to listen that the police "murdered" his father. OK. It's not uncommon to see this blame shifting from people like Julian. Julian portrays himself as an injured victim, and such people commonly avoid admitting their own guilt, their own fault, and instead shift the blame for their misdeeds to others.

But what bugs me is how the TV show fails to have any of the other characters expose that as the revisionist nonsense it is. Rather than call Julian on his bullshit and hit him with the facts he wants to avoid, people like Carlos and Kiera seem to go along with his version. They're apologetic in response, thereby validating Julian's revisionist bullshit.

Could the police on the scene have made different decisions? Sure. But given the misinformation they had to operate under, misinformation given them by Julian himself, they would have risked the lives of hostages had they not taken the shot on Roland.

But people like Julian Randol take the position that it doesn't matter what they themselves do. If something bad happens as a result of their actions, they blame it on others. They exempt themselves from any blame for their actions, but if the police make an error, they condemn them. And in this case, it's hard to blame the police. They were acting on the best information they had at the time; the sniper saw Roland Randol with a gun in his hand pointed at a hostage, in the midst of a firefight. They believed Randol was a terrorist pointing a gun at a hostage-and that is Julian's fault.

Julian to Alec "no matter what I do, some people will always think of me as a terrorist; that won't change." [News alert Julian; you are a terrorist. You tried to blow up a skyscraper. The fact that you failed to accomplish that doesn't make you an upstanding citizen. You built a truck bomb, shot a police officer, took hostages, and engaged in a firefight with the police. You've got no place complaining that people view you as a terrorist. And yet you do. Stop whining because people don't see you as a nice guy. ]