The BEST episodes of The Border
Every episode of The Border ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Border!
In this post-9/11 world the once "undefended border" that divides Canada and the U.S. is no longer considered soft. This CBC program lifts stories from the headlines to fuel an action-packed, dramatic series about maintaining security in today's world. The series follows the Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) main team led by Major Mike Kessler.
#1 - Going Dark
Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/22/2008
ICS discovers that toxic sludge is being trucked across the border and dumped in the Canadian wilderness. They follow a trail to a vicious criminal gang, who gain control over Gray and his father. As Gray struggles to save his father, he sets off a chain of events which bring about the season's shocking conclusion.
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#2 - The Dead
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/8/2009
Kessler and Carver hover near death while Gray hunts down Layla’s killers. A bloody highway shoot-out with the crime mob ‘Ndrangheta has left Major Kessler and Agent Carver fighting for their lives. The Squad is forced to the sidelines, as Special Counsel Louise Tilden investigates the role of ICS in the much-publicized tragedy. Meanwhile, Gray, who has been suspended from duty, sets out to avenge the murders of Layla and his father Dougie.
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#3 - Grave Concern
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/24/2008
ICS intercepts a pedophile and finds an image of a kidnapped child on his hard drive. Her captor, a psychological sadist known only as Skinner, has managed to evade the law for over a year. Now time is running out. Skinner's "experiment"? is coming to a close – and he's selling his captive to the highest bidder.
#4 - Restricted Access
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/3/2008
A sailor jumps ship in Halifax harbour and tells a disturbing tale: the ship's captain, Ryan McKay, threw a Nigerian stowaway couple overboard to drown – and somewhere on the ship, their two children await a similar fate. But is the sailor telling the truth? Or simply getting even? As Kessler and Agent LaGarda search for the truth, Gray and Layla make a shocking discovery – a terrifying virus which threatens to turn the rusted freighter into a ghost ship.
#5 - Normalizing Relations
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/10/2008
A visiting Cuban official is marked for murder by an anti-Castro assassin, and it's up to ICS to stop it. Gray and Layla target the assassin's son – an up-and-coming boxer named Roberto Abrantes. Then Kessler and Slade discover another surprising family connection – between the visiting official and Agent Lagarda. Could ICS be tracking the wrong killer?
#6 - Civil Disobedience
Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/17/2008
When his daughter Zoe is arrested during a protest at the border, Kessler is suspected of leaking classified information. With his career in peril, and forced to withdraw from the case, Kessler struggles to protect his daughter from nuclear saboteurs.
#7 - Enemy Contact
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/25/2008
ICS and CSIS uncover plans for a major terrorist attack on Toronto. Kessler believes the key to preventing the attack may lie with an unlikely source – Sorrayya, a burqa-clad wife and mother. Can ICS manipulate a mother's love to find out crucial information? And what collateral damage is Kessler willing to risk to prevent catastrophe?
#8 - Family Values
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/18/2008
When Toronto hosts a U.N. conference on "Children in the Crossfire,"? ICS allows a movie star to enter Canada with her latest accoutrement – her adopted son Ali, a Darfur refugee with no papers or official passport. Then a man arrives from the Sudan, claiming to be Ali's father. A shocking chain of events follows, splitting the squad and exposing the boy's true identity.
#9 - Bride Price
Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/19/2009
Khali becomes personally involved in the case of Mina Diwan, a strong-willed Indian 18-year-old who arrives in Canada looking for her "runaway groom". Using a false identity, Anwar Singh has married Mina in the Punjab and stolen her family's $50,000 dowry. Unwilling to return to her strict Indian family, Mina seeks out Canadian relatives to sponsor her for citizenship, but they too disapprove of Mina's modern ways. ICS learns that one of Anwar's previous brides is missing and presumed dead. When Mina goes missing, Khali and the Squad must race to save her.
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#10 - Broken
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/15/2009
Agent Bianca LaGarda escorts seventeen year-old Ali Jabir, a Canadian resident with ties to terrorists and just released from Guantanamo Bay, back to Canada. Kessler and ICS enter questionable moral territory as they use Ali as bait to capture notorious terrorist Nasim Mujab, Ali’s childhood friend. Slade – assisted by CSIS agent and language expert Khalida Massi - uncovers an impending terrorist attack on Toronto. At the official inquiry into the ‘Ndrangheta shoot-out, the future of ICS is at risk.
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#11 - The Sweep
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/17/2008
A media frenzy erupts when it's leaked that 41,000 illegal immigrants, all with deportation orders, have gone missing across Canada. As Minister Fleischer takes the heat, Kessler and his ICS squad swing into action, rounding up illegals: from Colombian drug lords to South Asian cyber-sweatshop workers. When Maggie encounters two young Filipino children, victims of human trafficking, she crosses the line, and becomes personally involved.
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#12 - Dark Ride
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/26/2009
A snuff film is confiscated at the Maine-New Brunswick border, and Carver finds the body of the film's victim Stateside. ICS traces the video back to the vicious biker gang, Satans Guard. Maggie goes to the east coast to see her estranged daughter Kim whose boyfriend, a former member of the gang, is eager to inform on his former associates. Meanwhile, ICS learns of a cross-border serial killer – who has just set his sights on Kim.
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#13 - Shifting Waters
Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/15/2008
With global warming, the Arctic has become navigable, and the race to claim it heats up. As a four-nation conference on the issue unfolds in Toronto, a faraway collision under the polar ice turns a group of Canadian sailors into bargaining chips. Kessler and ICS must find a way to broker a deal that saves the sailors without selling out Canada's future in the Arctic -- even if that means betraying personal bonds to U.S. Agent Carver, and British operative Charlotte Bates.
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#14 - Peak Oil
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/27/2008
In southern Alberta, an eco-terrorist sabotages a pumping station, and cracks the mainframe of Westech Oil. Gray and Layla travel to Calgary, where they uncover an international corporate espionage scheme to disrupt the sale of groundbreaking oil extraction technology. Layla meets, and falls for, Jimmy Kosik, a hot "environmental consultant"?, but Gray discovers that Jimmy is not who he seems.
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#15 - Hate Metal
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/29/2009
Now back on active duty, DHS Agent Liz Carver tracks a murder suspect, the notorious white-supremacist Cole Thorpe, to Canada. Kessler assigns Gray to infiltrate Thorpe's British Columbia-based neo-Nazi operation. Carver still blames Gray for the 'Ndrangheta debacle and her own injuries. When Gray learns the neo-Nazis are planning a devastating act of racial terrorism, Carver must work with him to stop it.
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#16 - Missing in Action
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/5/2009
In Afghanistan to consult on border security, Kessler and a young DHS agent, Henry Masoud, are kidnapped and held for ransom. Kessler must calm a fearful Henry as they face torture and intimidation. Darnell and Carver join NATO's search and discover that General Zaki, their prime suspect, is also their best hope of getting Kessler and Masoud out alive.
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#17 - Blowback
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 3/31/2008
When Kessler discovers a Croatian warlord living under Canadian protection, it brings back painful memories of the war in Bosnia – and the massacre he helped cover up. Unable to let it go, he prepares to sacrifice everything in the name of justice.
#18 - Unacceptable Risk
Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/8/2008
MI-6 Agent Charlotte Bates escorts a Tamil gang member to Toronto for his son's life-saving surgery. In return, the man will testify, in a British court, against a leading terrorist. The neurosurgeon set to perform the boy's operation is killed and violence erupts in the city's Tamil community. Faced with an escalating gang war, Kessler must make an agonizing choice.
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#19 - Killer Debt
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/22/2009
When wealthy philanthropist Benjamin Herzog is murdered, the prime suspect is his financial advisor Cyrus Church. Church has engineered a massive Ponzi scheme to defraud his investors of billions. Foreign operatives determined to recover stolen funds are also looking for Church. And complicating matters, Church's new trophy wife is Svetlana Karpov, a dead-sexy Russian stripper from Kessler's past. ICS's newest agent, Khalida Massi, finally gets a chance to prove herself in the field.
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#20 - Gross Deceptions
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/28/2008
A dangerous Belgian arms dealer arranges the theft of anti-tank weapons from a Canadian military base – and they seem to be headed stateside. As they track the weapons, Kessler and LaGarda must contend with disgruntled ex-Airborne soldiers, a criminal mastermind who's three steps ahead of them, and the young truck driver caught in the middle.
#21 - Compromising Positions
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/4/2008
Kessler bows to pressure from ex-lover and Cabinet Minister Suzanne Fleischer to arrange the release of three illegal Russian strippers. The story is leaked to the press, and the Squad is exposed to ridicule. When the strippers' Russian boss turns up with a bullet in his head, Kessler unearths a conspiracy that mingles sex, blackmail, and political intrigue at the highest level.
#22 - Physical Assets
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/11/2008
Gray and Layla take down a human-trafficking operation in Vancouver, but the ring leader, Lo Hok-Yin, evades capture – with possible help from CSIS. As Slade struggles to stop a leak in ICS security, the team unearths the crime lord's grisly new business. And the bloody trail leads to an old adversary.
#23 - Bodies on the Ground
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/21/2008
A Rendition aircraft goes down in the town of St. Calais in Quebec with 3 Muslim terrorists attacking a local constable and seizing his vehicle with a Military police officer as a hostage after escaping from US Military custody, forcing Mike Kessler to hunt down the 3 men with Joint Task Force Two commandos sent in to capture them.
#24 - Pockets of Vulnerability
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/7/2008
Major Mike Kessler and his Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) Squad arrest Tariq Haddad, a Syrian terrorist, at the Toronto airport. They also detain the man seated next to him, Nizar Karim. But is Karim really an accomplice or merely an innocent bystander? When CSIS sends Karim to Syria's infamous Tadmoor prison, Kessler vows to bring him home. (Note: This is the pilot episode, shot in October, 2006.)
#25 - Double Dealing
Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/1/2008
A Russian man is found frozen in a railway car. He turns out to be a former KGB agent with Russian mob connections. As ICS investigates, they travel from the high arctic, where African blood diamonds are being "laundered"? by Canadian mines, to an upscale New York City penthouse, where Layla encounters an old flame.
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