A secret organization that would kidnap, prep, brainwash and guide people to be in charge of governments and big business sounds a lot like the premise of a Robert Ludlum novel but it doesn't fit here: I could understand using Fairchild and grooming him to become ambassador. Maybe the plan was to have him become secretary of state. But what about the hostages we have here? What possible plan could Janet fill?
Charlie may have 80 million so he could be a good candidate to infiltrate a given corporation but why kidnap him? They could simply have blackmailed him about his wife's murder.
McNair was a good soldier who went through a terrible experience which is a lot like David Webb's backstory but Webb was trained to become Jason Bourne the assassin. What training is McNair following?
Then there's the insignificant Blackham and the ex-con Erika...
It simply doesn't fit so I believe that's the story the "Sponsors" have fed to their operatives, of which Joe and Tom are the only two we know. Those operatives were probably the ones being prepped for "greater things". I could see Moira being one of those being prepped. She's different than the rest. In fact, I see a possible connection between Moira and the mysterious South American doctor. Could they be one and the same?
I was thinking of your "rat in a maze" theory for Renbe when Fairchild and Mafioso boy wound up both helping him. How can opponents suddenly embrace the same goal? The only possible answers are that they don't have the same goal or, more likely, their opposition was fake all along.
This episode was better than the last but I still hate the way the scenes are cut and now it even happened in town, not only in the outside scenes. We're here, we're there, we have Joe in chains, Joe in jail, Joe at the pain wall but there's no continuity. What I think is lacking is a narrator or at least following the events from someone's point of view. We mostly see what Janet sees but it isn't consistant.