3 out of 5

It’s 1995, and we switch Declassified focus from Crocker to Wallace: his recruitment; then later, the mission that set the stage for Crocker to move from Minder One to D-Ops.

Okay, so maybe the focus is sneakily Crocker, which is kind of where this arc falls flat.  Wallace’s move from military to special ops isn’t uninteresting, but it isn’t necessarily illuminating, either.  We skip the introductory chunk of time to when he’s settled in as Minder Two, and the next op he’s on is pretty understated, sussing out a station traitor right before the ‘handover’ when Hong Kong’s sovereignty switched from the UK to China, something my dumb, ignorant ass had no idea ever happened.

It’s good seeing Wallace be razor sharp in the field, and it’s fun seeing that Crocker was a masterful son-of-a-bitch even as a Minder – he goes above his D-Ops to C to drop hints that his current leader ain’t really on top of things, but this felt like more of a one issue flashback than something deserving of a mini-series.  Rich Burchett’s art has a classic newspaper quality to it, which sort of matches the moment-by-moment episodic feel of the story.