'Before We Die' Recap: Episode 5

Before We Die airs Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. WTTW Passport members can stream the whole show now. Recap the previous and following episodes.

Stefan’s death still haunts Christian, and Christian’s volatile emotional state is now exacerbated by an inability to reach Bianca, who is ignoring his calls and texts in the wake of her discovery that Christian is the one who shot Stefan. When Christian sees Bianca in person, she tells him to stay away from her; she knows what he did.

Christian is in a bad state when Hannah checks in on him. He can’t sleep and has called in sick to work. Hannah tries to comfort him, telling him he will eventually be able to move past this, and that it was the right thing to do because it protected him. This is my fault, she says; I’ve made so many mistakes with you, your father, Sean. I’m sorry.

Hannah continues to check up on Christian, and good thing: she arrives to find his door unlocked one evening and him slumped unconscious in a chair next to a bottle of pills. She calls an ambulance.

Christian is saved. The doctors believe him that the overdose was an accident, although they still want to provide counseling. Hannah looks through Christian’s phone while he sleeps at the hospital and discovers a series of increasingly desperate texts to Bianca, all unanswered.

When Hannah next visits Christian in the hospital, he has discharged himself, to her dismay. She wants him to get counseling, but he insists on finishing the job and nailing the Mimicas. When he returns to their restaurant to work, he explains his stay in the hospital as the result of having a mild seizure.

Someone else may be closing in on the Mimicas. The desk officer at the police station whom Bianca asked about Stefan’s body notices another police officer, Fran, with photos of her investigation of the Mimicas—and recognizes Bianca. The two officers put together that Bianca is the anonymous caller who identified Stefan. Fran approaches Bianca at her college, but Bianca won’t say anything except that she wants it all—the crimes of her family—to stop.

But Fran’s questioning, or perhaps Dubravka’s lie that she spoke to Stefan recently and he is doing fine, leads Bianca to do some sleuthing. She opens Davor’s laptop and guesses his password (“krajina”) to find a video of Sean being tortured, but has to quickly close it when Dubravka appears: Dubravka’s 60th birthday party is approaching, and they must prepare the house.

Bianca meets Fran again and shows her some photos of the Mimicas—including one from the dinner they had with Christian and Hannah. Fran recognizes Hannah and begins to follow her, seeing her meet with Christian. She also asks Bianca for a copy of the video of Sean’s torture.

Andri, the drug dealer whom the Mimicas have framed for the murder of Sean, is still being interrogated by the police. While he continues to stonewall them, they do make some progress when they show him photos of his wife and son and warn him of the life they will lead without him if he’s in prison.

Sliding a photo of his wife and son under his prison door while he’s alone proves even more effective. This is apparently a message from the Mimicas via their source inside the police station, as Andri asks his lawyer to contact Davor after receiving it. He will do what Davor wants, but needs a guarantee of his family’s safety in return.

Andri then confesses to killing Sean, explaining that he knew Sean was keeping tabs on him and so he wanted to rough him up. When Sean escaped, he had to kill him. Back in his cell, he removes a razor from inside the photo slid to him and kills himself.

Tina is now afraid that Billy and Hannah are wrong and Andri is Sean’s killer, but Billy defends their investigation. Tina’s boss overhears their argument, but not any incriminating details, and demands a full report of all of Tina’s lines of inquiry in the investigation.

Christian is upset by the revelation of Andri’s confession and suicide. The Mimicas might now get away with murder while Christian himself could be charged for Stefan’s death. But Hannah tells him Stefan was shot three times; Christian may not have been the one who killed him.

Tina, Hannah, Billy, and an associate of Billy’s whom he fought with in Bosnia but is not a police officer are going to try to apprehend the Mimica as they receive an incoming shipment of cocaine. They don’t know where the submarine carrying it will land, but they do know it will happen during Dubravka’s party and that Zvonomir will meet the shipment. Christian offered to join Zvonomir, but Davor says it’s a one-person job, and that Christian needs time off after his seizure.

At Dubravka’s party, Christian slips a tracker onto Zvonomir’s motorbike while fetching more champagne. When Zvonomir sets off, Christian uses his burner phone to inform Hannah and the others, who set off in pursuit, at a distance—with Fran sneakily tailing them. They follow Zvonomir to a secluded cabin on the water in a forest.

Bianca engages in her own dangerous espionage, copying the video of Sean’s torture onto a drive for Fran while Davor toasts his mother. She watches the video on her own laptop in her locked room and is horrified by what she sees. She returns to the party and grabs Christian. You need to see this, she tells him, showing him the video.

Sean could only resist so much torture. In the midst of it, he confessed the name of his source within the Mimica family: Christian.