Show Notes
Junior's about to head to Europe for a run of concerts, and there's no way Barry can afford to follow him there. After multiple failed attempts at the kidnapping - not to mention the seismic upheaval of President Kennedy's assassination - Barry has a dark night of the soul. He resolves to give up on the Plan of Operation, and decides to give the scheme a send-off by drinking a bottle of whiskey. But somewhere towards the bottom of the bottle, Barry realizes he can't bear to abandon his vision. When he discovers Junior's making a pit-stop in Lake Tahoe before heading overseas, Barry decides to roll the dice one more time.
More from The Grand Scheme
Back on the streets after four and a half years behind bars, Barry gets right back to scheming. Before long, he finds himself rich with casino money, and retires to a farm. But as the years go by, something starts to nag at him: even though the Wes gambit failed at trial, the narrative that Junior plotted his own kidnapping lingers in the popular imagination. Barry longs to tell his side of the story - but what if Frank Sinatra Senior won't let him?
Barry's trial is an overnight circus, and the evidence against him is overwhelming. But when Junior takes the stand and reveals his compliance with the demands of Barry and his accomplices, the defense team smells an opportunity. Determined to convince the jury that Junior's kidnapping was engineered by the Sinatra family as a publicity stunt for his concert tour, Barry cooks up a story about a mysterious operative named Wes who put him up to the kidnapping. It's a bold gambit - and, it turns out, a spectacular failure.
Barry makes one last attempt to ride off into the sunset with Pam, but by the time he makes it to her house, she's got company. And it turns out the FBI's been listening in on their phone calls. After a series of narrow escapes, Barry finally finds himself handcuffed and brought up on serious charges. And then, just as he's writing out a confession, the man Barry hoped would be saved by the Plan of Operation (his dad) intervenes to save Barry from the Plan of Operation.
While hiding out at a friend's house, Barry counts out cash as the plot thickens around him. He's lost track of his accomplices, and when he switches on the radio, he discovers he's also lost Frank Sinatra Jr. By the time Barry tracks down John Irwin and Joe Amsler, there are sketches of his face on the front page of the LA Times. Time is running out - but as usual, Barry has a plan. And that plan is: to go Christmas shopping.
Barry and Pam sneak back into his hotel room in Lake Tahoe to clean up the evidence he mistakenly left behind the previous night. The place is crawling with cops and FBI agents, so Barry and Pam go undercover as honeymooning skiers, and take to the bunny slopes to evade capture. The plan works like a charm. But when Barry gets back to Los Angeles, he's got a mutiny on his hands. Forced to improvise, Barry re-jiggers his ransom plan on the fly, and before long, he finds himself in a stand-off with the FBI.