Smoke & Mirrors

"Smoke & Mirrors" is the seventh Season 2 episode of Shadow Unit, with production number 2x07. It was written by Elizabeth Bear and originally aired on September 6, 2009.

This episode was originally assigned production number 2x08. The episode originally assigned production number 2x07 ("Basilisk Hunt") was moved to season 3 "due to casting issues".

Basic Statistics
Location: Arlington, VA, Washington, DC, Miami, FL

Point of View Characters: Chaz Villette, Solomon Todd, Stephen Reyes, Daniel Brady

Away Team: Reyes, Chaz, Todd, Brady

Timeline: February 13-16, 2009

Unsubs: Carey-Ann Petit, Tameka Santiago

Major backstory revealed: Why Reyes didn't intervene with Chaz's foster care, why Chaz stopped BASE jumping, Todd's first brush with the Anomaly

Easter Eggs

 * "Opportunity Cost"
 * "Opportunities"

No playlist was posted at airtime. However, on August 21, Bear posted the playlist "a little bit in advance, this time, because I can".

Pre-Air-Date Speculation
Elizabeth Bear shared the evolution of the following sentence (presumably from "Smoke & Mirrors") in a LiveJournal entry:
 * "As if his words--or the smell of cheap coffee--had been an invocation, Todd materialized in the doorway clutching the handles of a grease-spotted paper shopping bag."

In another entry, Bear revealed the first three lines:
 * ''The dream is smoke.
 * ''Smoke. Not fire. Not yet.
 * But you know the fire is coming.

In her commentary on Criminal Minds episode 4x17 "Demonology", Bear noted that Spencer Reid was neatly and stylishly dressed (very unusual for him). Then she made the following parenthetical comment:
 * (Also, Reid's watchchain cracks me up. Nobody's going to believe that a thing in late season SU got wrote lo these many months ago. I begin to think the CM folks are reading my brain. Where's my tingfoil hat?)

As "Smoke & Mirrors" is the Bear-written episode occurring latest in Season 2, this comment may imply that Chaz Villette will be neatly dressed, with a watchchain, in this episode.

Bear had a public reading in Seattle, in which she read parts of "Smoke & Mirrors". Those who attended the reading report that "Smoke & Mirrors" is set in February 2009.

On July 19, Bear posted the following on Twitter:
 * Working on Smoke & Mirrors. This entire ep is about Chaz and Todd standing around having fraught conversations while people die off screen.