Monday, December 26, 2011

Person of Interest - "Number Crunch"

Person of Interest 1.10: “Number Crunch”

“Finch, you said the machine would give us the number in time. It didn’t.”
- Reese

We begin this week in the Machine’s POV for once and we see a car flip and crash on an empty road. We also hear some kind of phone conversation between two men who are looking for a kid. We jump to HQ where Reese wanders in but doesn’t find Finch. He heads to one of the bookshelves and finds a picture of Harold and his partner from back when they first starting the whole project. Finch materializes (sadly not out of a break in the space-time continuum) and says they have 4 numbers. Three women and a man, all seemingly unconnected. Finch sends Reese off to find Claire, she was the first number.

Over at the police precinct, Carter is dealing with an inquiry over the shooting between her, Bottlecap (her CI) and Reese. She maintains she thinks it was Reese who saved her but that she doesn’t know and she didn’t see him. She tells them she won’t talk again unless her union rep is present and slinks back out to her desk where she’s been placed until everything is sorted. Lionel says that maybe it’s good she didn’t see Reese’s face because she wouldn’t know whether to thank him or arrest him. She says it would be easy to arrest him. Speaking of Reese, he shows up at Claire’s apartment to find it crawling with cops. He somehow manages to slip on a CSU jacket without anyone noticing and getting into the crime scene. Claire is dead.

We get another view of the car accident and this time we see 2 cars drive up on the scene and the drivers get out before cutting back to Claire’s apartment. It’s definitely a new way of using the Machine to sort of build the story throughout the episode. Anyway, Reese manages to snag Claire’s cell phone and downloads a little off her laptop before Lionel and his temporary partner (Detective “Happy”) show up. It appears Claire recently came into some money and bought all kinds of things for herself before she got beaten up and shot. Outside, Reese tasks Finch with tracking the guy of their quartet while he plans to put Lionel on one of the remaining women. Back at the precinct, Carter gets called into the Captain’s office and meets a guy in a suit (government type) and ends up admitting that Reese did shoot her CI. She doesn’t seem happy about it.

Reese is following Wendy, a hair stylist and she’s at work at her salon. This is one of the funniest bits of this show to date. He follows a guy on a motorcycle into the salon only find out he’s a messenger and then Reese gets snagged into a haircut. He looks absolutely befuddled at what’s happening. It’s honestly kind of cute and adorable (not 2 words normally associated with Jim Caviezel). Out on the street, Lionel is trying to keep an eye on Paula but she spots him and takes off after possibly buying a gun. Meanwhile, Finch is keeping an eye on the guy (Matt). Unfortunately, Wendy’s also given Reese the slip. Finch sees Matt buy a motorcycle after quitting his job. Just as he gets back in his car, a woman walks by and leaves a baby stroller which turns out to be a bomb. So that’s two of the four numbers down.

Finch is kind of going into overdrive analyzing what he should of done differently to try and save Matt. But Reese tells him that there’s nothing he could have done and they need to focus on finding Paula and Wendy. Finch has figured out that Wendy, Claire and Matt were all at the same car crash (the one we keep getting snippets of). Reese heads off to Wendy’s mom’s address in the hopes of finding Wendy. The cops (thanks to Carter’s boredom) find out that the driver was the son of a Congressman who is friendly with the police unions and auditing the Wall Street banks. Guess that’s one way to hush it up. Reese, Finch and Lionel have a little conference call where Reese verifies what he already knows and Finch tells Lionel to keep his phone on when talking to the Congressman.

The interview with the Congressman yields some interesting information. The Congressman’s son was at a party hosted by one of the men the Congressman was auditing. And Finch discovers that the route from the party to the crash site is nowhere near the son’s house. Things are looking a little fishy. Meanwhile, Reese has found Wendy and Paula. Paula has a gun and Reese is getting ready to shoot her (because everybody carries sniper rifles with them) when the girls embrace. Turns out they’re foster sisters. And Reese has arrived just in time to keep them from getting riddled with bullet holes. Too bad they run off as he’s fighting the shooters.

After a little digging, Reese and Finch discover that Wendy and Paula’s mom was about to lose her house to foreclosure. So at least they had a use for the money they took. Meanwhile, Lionel and Carter get the crash footage and Carters over to the 82nd precinct to talk to a Detective Foster. Turns out it was bogus and Carter makes the 2 CIA guys following her. They head for a café to have a chat. Honestly, I was surprised it took us this long to get to the parts that were used in this week’s promo. The CIA guys explain to Carter who Reese is and claims he killed his partner and went underground. They want to bring him in and since they think Reese trusts Carter, she can help them. Yeah, I don’t trust these guys.

Lionel and Detective Happy talk to the banker and he says the same thing about the Congressman’s son as the Congressman. They’re working something together. Meanwhile, Reese has found Wendy at the hospital and we learn that she and Paula want to give the money back. Finch also discovers that the son was heading to the Caiman Islands on the banker’s private jet. Unfortunately for Wending and Paula, one of the bad guys nabs Paula at the vending machine and demands the money from Wendy as a ransom. Finch pays the Congressman a visit and plants the seed that the banker is going to screw him over with his son’s charity. He gets a video recording of a phone call between the Congressman and the banker plotting to tie up loose ends before moving the money. Meanwhile, Reese calls Carter to kind of apologize for getting her in hot water at work. She thanks him for saving her life and he hangs up on her after telling her about the money exchange in the parking garage. So she’s thanked him and now she’s about to get him arrested (she calls the CIA guys). At least she looks a little regretful while she’s making the call.

Reese wraps up the shooters after Paula and Wendy easily enough (one was a woman who looked like a nurse). Unfortunately, Reese walks out to the roof towards his car only to be stopped by Agent Snow and Carter. Finch rewatches the video feed on Carter and sees she sold Reese out. He’s on his way but it’s too late. The second CIA guy shoots Reese once in the stomach and once in the leg. He manages to get away but he’s not looking hot. He’s all sweaty and bleeding. He tries to tell Finch to stay away but that only makes Finch drive faster. And Carter’s on Reese’s trail. She finally catches up just as Finch is helping Reese towards the car. She recognizes Finch (from one of the bank robbery episode) but ultimately decides to let them go. She even helps Reese into the back seat. This going to be an interesting second half of the season when it comes back from hiatus.

Person of Interest - "Get Carter"

Person of Interest 1.09: “Get Carter”

“We got into this to stop bad things from happening to good people. Carter’s been doing that her whole life. She’s not just another number, Finch. Some people the world can’t afford to lose.”
- Reese

We find ourselves back in time in 2004 in the Middle East in an underground bunker. It turns out the US military has captured a man named Yusef whom they believe to be helping Al Qaeda. He claims to only sell fruits and vegetables but the soldier talking to him isn’t buying it. He tells Yusef he’s going to have to talk to his boss. And in walks Detective Carter. I guess she was military before she was police. Back in 2011, we have a voice over of Elias saying that Carter needs to go. At the precinct, Carter gets in to find a chronic battered wife, Mrs. Kovach, there to bail out her abusive husband. Carter tries to impress upon the wife that she needs to stop making up excuses for the injuries but it doesn’t seem to help. Mr. Kovach does take Carter’s card. Just as she and her husband are leaving, Lionel shows up. It looks like Elias himself tried to take out Carter at the shooting a few episodes ago. So she pays his father a visit in prison. It goes nowhere fast and as she’s leaving, Elias’s father says that from the looks of things, Elias is going after her. Not the other way around.

Later that night, both Carter and Lionel show up at the homicide of a young man, Ronny Middleton. He was shot in what appeared to be a drive-by. And he was a witness against a local thug, Hector Alvarez, in a shooting but recanted and the DA dropped charges. Carter is out for blood now. She isn’t going to let the thug get away. Lionel starts shouting to get people’s attention for potential witnesses but runs into Reese. He can be a little creepy sometimes. Meanwhile, Carter tries to get information out of Mr. Castillo, a bodega owner where Ronny bought a Mexican soda before he was shot. Reese has finished talking to Lionel when Finch gets in touch. They’ve got a new number; Detective Carter.

The next morning Carter is having breakfast at a diner with her son, Taylor. Reese is a little surprised that she has a son but he’s been checking into her and knows the dad has been out of the picture for a while. Finch is installing a camera and GPS tracker in Carter’s car and almost gets caught. Reese tails her on a motorcycle (he gets to not wear his usual suit for this episode. He looks kind of good in leather.) to Alvarez’s auto shop where she confronts Alvarez and promises she’s going to get him for Ronny’s murder. Back at HQ, Finch is inserting a camera into a police bobblehead that Reese is going to give to Lionel to keep an eye on Carter at the precinct. We also learn a few interesting things about Carter; she was an army interrogator (which we saw at the start of the episode), she went to law school and passed the New York bar in 2004 but went back to the police force. And she has 3 major threats that could be trying to take her out; Elias, Alvarez and Mr. Kovach. So Reese has his work cut out for him. He knows he can’t get too close or else he risks getting caught but he can’t let her catch a bullet either.

At the precinct, Lionel has gotten the bobblehead and after a little funny scene where Reese tells him to turn to face Carter’s desk,. Reese also tells Lionel to get in touch with some of his corrupt cop buddies to see what they know about wanting to take Carter out. When Carter finds out the bodega owner never showed, she heads off to have another chat. Reese follows her and she hauls some guy into her car. Turns out the guy (Bottlecap) is one of her CIs. She asks him to check around about Elias and Hector. She gives him a small wad of bills for his time and the really heads out to see Mr. Castillo. Meanwhile, Lionel meets up with the Captain on a roof to inquire about getting rid of Carter. The Captain says that Elias runs a tight ship but it’s organized and low profile. And getting rid of Carter has gone all the way up the chain of command and has been approved. The Captain also tells Lionel to keep his distance.

At the bodega, Carter questions Mr. Castillo again. He says he didn’t see Alvarez’s car that night but he’d been in to buy condoms and beer before. But he refuses to give a statement otherwise. Carter walks outside and Hector rolls up in his purple car. She tells him to get lost and before he drives off, he makes a gun with his hand and points it at Mr. Castillo. Not good. Reese follows Carter to a bar where she confronts Mr. Kovach and he promises that if she goes after him, he’ll exercise his Second Amendment rights. She really needs to stop antagonizing these guys.

Back in 2004, Carter is interrogating Yusef and she’s much calmer and more compassionate than the guy who started the interrogation. Despite her compassion, she doesn’t get very far. Yusef pretty much tells her he’d rather die than help because Al Qaeda would murder his wife and son. Back in the present, Carter is back at the precinct looking at Ronny Middleton’s phone. She and Lionel have a little brainstorming session about why Hector would go downtown for condoms and booze when Lionel says Hector probably has a girl on the side. So Carter is going to make some calls and Reese calls Lionel to put him on Carter watch. Reese is going to have a little word with Hector and his boys. He also promises that if anything happens to Carter, Reese is going for Lionel next. Reese blows the door to the auto shop open with some kind of incendiary device, shoots the workers and makes off with the guns they were running and jacks Hector’s car.

We jump back to 2004 where Carter promises to protect Yusef and his family if he helps them. Carter rattles off a lot of personal information about Yusef and his family to show she’s not just in it to negotiate to get rid of dangerous explosives. She convinces Yusef to help, for the sake of their children, and he helps. But when the team gets back, she learns that they killed Yusef. She’s really pissed but she finds the men in her unit don’t care less.

Carter and Lionel head to meet up with her CI about Hector’s other girl. She promises to take her CI to his favorite place for dinner if the lead pans out. She certainly makes a lot of promises to people. At the precinct, in a rather amusing scene, she and Lionel introduce Hector’s two girlfriends to each other. Carter promptly locks them in a room with Lionel to sort it out. She also gets the news about Reese shooting up Hector’s shop. Reese feels confident that Hector is out of the picture as he’s on the run. Finch isn’t so sure. And Reese agrees when he mentions Hector is heavily armed.

At the precinct, Hector’s girlfriends give him up. Downtown Girl says he changed his shirt after coming back from the market empty handed and Uptown Girl tells them he has a warehouse in Queens he goes when he’s expecting a shipment. Just as Carter and Lionel are about to head out there, Carter gets a call from Mr. Kovach. She’s panicked and says her husband has a gun. When Carter and Lionel get there they find Mr. Kovach dangling from the rafters by his wrists and Mrs. Kovach hiding in the bathroom. The phone rings and she hands it to Carter. Reese warns her that someone wants her dead and that Alvarez is heavily armed. He hangs up and ducks out before she can ask any more questions. Carter gets back to the precinct to find they have a warrant for Hector’s warehouse and sympathy flowers waiting on her desk (which Elias just delivered). It’s clear he’s out for her.

The cops raid Hector’s warehouse and Reese is there undercover as a member of ESU. While there’s a big gunfight going on inside, Hector sneaks out in his truck around back and Carter manages to take him down without getting shot herself. So two of the three threats are taken care of. Unfortunately, she goes to meet her CI and he shoots her, claiming Elias gave him the choice of his life or Carter’s. But Reese has found her and shoot the CI before he can deliver the final shot. We then see that Carter was wearing a bullet proof vest (thanks to Reese’s hint about someone wanting her dead). Reese leans over just out of sight in the shadows and tells her that he knows she’ll still come after him but that she’s not alone. And he uses her name, Joss. The next morning, Reese manages to get back the surveillance equipment as Carter has breakfast with her son and grills him about the dance he went to. Just as Reese slips out of Carter’s car, he sees a picture of a soldier, clearly Carter’s husband. Guess he died in the line of duty.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Body of Proof - "Your Number's Up"

Body of Proof 2.10: “Your Number’s Up”

“What do you do when there are no answers? What do you tell people then?”

“Sometimes even the answers don’t help. Ultimately, it’s about giving comfort to the living any way we can.”

- Lacey and Megan

We start this week with a group of kids playing touch football in the street when suddenly it’s raining money. Not surprisingly, everyone goes for the dough and a kid grabs a handful and finds a bloody bill. Across town, Lacey is chatting with her friends via webcam about the new hat she just bought. Megan walks in and promptly finds out it cost $300 and Lacey used Megan’s credit card to buy it. So on her way to the crime scene, Megan has to return it. And apparently while returning the hat, she got some new shoes. They head up to the apartment where the money fell from ($50,000) to find Walter, the tenant laying dead on the floor with a wound in his gut and defensive marks on his arms.

Back at the lab, Dani is helping Ethan studying for his pathology boards. Which seem to go fine until Kate shows up to drill him and starts with information he didn’t think was important. The woman he was discussing was young and aside from a burst appendix, had been relatively healthy. But obviously that didn’t last long since she’s lying on a slab in autopsy. Meanwhile, Megan and Curtis are examining the wounds on Walter’s body. Curtis is being helpful and Megan is being unusually quiet until Peter shows up and announces to the room about Lacey snagging Megan’s credit card. But Peter’s having trouble finding out anything about Walter. His fingerprints weren’t in the system and the name is too common to find accurate work records. But as they do the external physical exam it becomes clear that things don’t add up. He’s had elective surgeries, a deep tan and trip to the tropics. But his hands are callused and burned so he’s done hard labor. Eventually, Megan notices a coal tattoo (when coal seeps into an open cut) on his face and we learn that Walter used to work at a coal plant but left when he won $50 million in the lottery.

Walter’s former co-workers have mostly nice things to say about him. After he won the lottery, he lived a fast, lavish life but tried to help people and make them happy. His cousin was a little resentful because he always played the lotto and the one day he missed was the day Walter played. He also mentions that once Walter won, a whole slew of unknown cousins climbed out of the woodwork looking for handouts. Back at the lab, Megan is putting Lacey to work to pay off the hat. Lacey complains quite a bit but Megan snaps that she doesn’t like it either. It is now time for Ethan to talk to the dead girl’s family and he fails. The father is furious that Ethan can’t give them answers. Luckily he’s saved by Kate.

Walter’s internal exam turns up some strange things. His liver was enlarged from drinking and his heart was bigger than average, too. He had signs of anxiety and ulcers, even though he seemed to be living it up. And all the blood on the money tossed out the window was his. Bud and Sam are having some luck too. They found a mansion Walter rented for charity events and had a cooking lesson scheduled so they’re going to check it out. Meanwhile, Ethan is continued to exam his dead woman and finds some strange findings in her lungs. So he and Kate are going to investigate at the hospital in the morning. Turns out Bud takes Peter with him to the mansion and they find a big party ins wing for an Italian cooking lesson. Bud volunteers and flashes his badge once he finds a match to the knife that killed Walter.

Bud takes the chef down to the station for questioning and he explains that he does a knife trick where he tosses it in the air and when Walter tried it, he cut himself. That’s where the cut on his arm came from. He also says that the day before, Walter had been very angry and upset about a party crasher. The next morning, Peter drops by Megan’s office with invoices and mail for Walter for the past month. Everyone seemed to be hitting him up for money. Curtis has some new information, too. The bruises on his chest had traces of chemicals found at the place where Walter used to work. Plenty of suspects to go around.

We get a brief scene where Lacey tries to comfort the sister of Ethan’s dead girl. Things aren’t going especially well for Ethan. He’s kind of interrogating the doctor at the hospital and Kate tells him to head back to the lab. Honestly, Ethan cares about this girl; he just doesn’t know how to express it. Megan and Sam pay a visit to one of the coal miner guys because of the trace found on Walter’s chest. We get some more information about Walter’s behavior from his old friend. He was manic and impulsive after winning the lottery and pretty much stopped talking to his friends. Walter’s friend admits to confronting him the day before at the party and he says he didn’t think money could change someone so completely. Megan seems to be worrying about that with Lacey. It turns out Walter didn’t change because of the money. He had a tumor on his adrenal gland that was making things wonky. Meanwhile, Sam gets to do an exciting chase scene on a motorcycle and catches a young woman on it (it was Walter’s).

She claims she met Walter when he opened a nursing home and she was doing an article on it. They’d been together ever since. She says his moods were because he was so dedicated to his charity work. Yeah, not likely, sweetie. Over at the lab, Curtis and Ethan kidnap Lacey to the break room for a much needed donut break. Curtis gets called away, leaving Ethan and lacey to sort of bond over the case he’s been working. She gives him some encouragement as he gets a page from Dani. She has another body and it’s got similar symptoms to his first case. She runs off for a quick make out sessions with Peter, leaving Ethan to examine the body alone. We get a small tie in back a few episodes. He’s got the names of his birth parents but he’s afraid to open it.

Meanwhile, Megan has found something odd in Walter’s leg x-ray and she swings by her office to tell Lacey it’s going to be ten more minutes. Lacey asks what happens when there are no answers and Megan says they just do the best they can. Ethan brings his findings to Kate and they realize that there’s an infection in the OR at the hospital where both of their bodies were treated and race off to try and do something. They manage to find out the problem. Air bags used in the ER had been contaminated with mold. Good catch Ethan!

Back at the lab, Megan keeps poking Curtis with a plastic knife, trying to figure out the force used to imbed the tip of the knife in the spine. Curtis, in-between pokes, reveals there was glue on the knife point and Megan and Bud head back to Walter’s friend from the coal plant. They find him at work since his family has been low on cash and arrest him. He admits to going to Walter’s old place after the party to find Walter in a rage. He was cutting open stacks of money and tossing it out the window. He says stabbing Walter was an accident. Megan interrupts just as Bud is about to slap the cuffs on and says Walter was an accomplice when she touches the guy’s neck and he flinches. Megan shows that he has muscle atrophy that meant he couldn’t have stabbed Walter. He says that Walter lunged and they fell. He’s got a corresponding bruise to prove it. Ethan manages to bolster enough courage to talk to the dead girl’s family and lacey, after getting her first paycheck, goes and buys a locket for the girl’s sister. Bud wins $20 on a scratch lotto ticket (gotta put it away to pay for baby Bud’s future) and Peter finally opens to letter about his birth parents.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Body of Proof - "Gross Anatomy"

Body of Proof 2.09: “Gross Anatomy”

“You’re committed. You have a good heart. You want to know how things work from the inside out. And I see the same things in Lacey.”

- Joan Hunt

We begin this week with what looks at first glance like a funeral. It turns out it is the close of the semester and an anatomy class is saying goodbye to their cadavers before cremating them. One girls opens up her body bag to say goodbye and instead of the guy she was expecting, finds a young woman. Over at the Hunt apartment, Megan finds Lacey ready for school and talking with a friend. But Megan’s got it a little wrong. Lacey has a club that meets at 7:05 and Megan’s not dressed yet.

We are back at the med school and the professor is insisting it was just a mix up and not a murder. Megan disagrees with him vehemently and finally gets custody of the body. She also brings the class with her back to the office so they can observe a real autopsy. The student who found the Jane Doe, Dora, is excited to go because she’s in awe of Megan.

At the autopsy, Curtis makes all the students stand on stools so they can’t touch anything and has them sign waivers and confidentiality agreements. Megan begins her assessment and when one of the guys makes a snarky comment she orders him to tell her what color the girl’s hair is. It appears blond but apparently, based on the roots, she’d dyed it red and brown previously. And when Megan asks what color Jane Doe’s eyes are, the guy (and the one standing next to him) immediately answer green. After going through some medical jargon, Megan agrees they were green the day before and wants to know they knew that.

Bud and Sam get their crack at the guys. The first one denies knowing the girl and he says he didn’t kill her. Bud makes the comment to Megan that if he ever got shot and jerk #1 was his doctor, to let him bleed out. Megan agrees. Bud takes a whack at jerk #2 and he admits to knowing the girl, but only because they met her at a bar once off campus. He and his buddy hit on her but she turned them down. Bud and Sam make the trip to the bar and after Sam gets in the bartender’s face about how Jane Doe changed her hair color a lot and had a really impressive full back tattoo of a dragon fly, they learn her name was Jackie and she worked for the limo service across the street.

Megan’s finding it harder than she expected having Lacey stay at her place more often. Lacey doesn’t like what Megan cooks and she is spending all her time on the computer video chatting with her friends. That night, Megan gets a call from Dora, thanking her for the experience. Megan invites her to observe the internal exam in the morning. Back at the office, Dani is trying to hit on Peter but he turns her down. Kate overhears and says he did the right thing. In autopsy, Megan finds an infection in Jackie’s body and siphons out some blood so Ethan can do blood work. She also observes that Jackie’s uterus is enlarged and lumpy. She has Kate take over the autopsy when Sam shows up. She and Bud hit up the limo service and found out that Jackie wasn’t the girl’s real name. Her identity is still unknown. The company had been paying her under the table. So now they’re off to check out the address they found. It’s a dump of a place but they find blood on the wall and the sheets.

Kate pays the professor a visit (she’s a former pupil). She wants to know if he killed the body on her table since she was his type. He denies it and says he was at a conference during the time of death presenting a new theory. Kate looks really annoyed by that. At the victim’s place, they find that she moved in after she quit her job at the limo service. Peter says he found some hairs in the kitchen and Megan hands off a bottle of generic pills for him to take back to the lab. Speaking of the lab, Dani is prying over Ethan’s shoulder as he’s doing the blood work and Dora appears, worried that Megan forgot about her. She’s still not supposed to touch anything and Megan is ripping mad when she gets back to find her and Ethan examining the body. But what they’ve found proves to be useful. Her lymph node is green with tattoo ink and with the ALS light, Megan finds a Celtic knot tattoo in green in with the name Ronan under her big dragonfly tattoo.

Bud and Sam pay Ronan a visit (and can I just say the accent and the look made me swoon a little). He says Jackie’s last name was O’Shea. They’d been childhood sweethearts but since he had kind of a bad time and quite the lengthy rap sheet, she up and left. He tried to find her once he’d cleaned up his act but it didn’t work. Sam believes him (as far as loving Jackie). She also sympathizes with him about his tough time. Meanwhile, Megan interrupts Lacey’s latest video chat to force her to have family time the next day. Meanwhile, Peter runs into Dani in the elevator and we get a little of her backstory. Her dad left when she was five and now he’s trying to get back in her life after finding God. She’s not pleased.

At the lab, Kate finds Megan sans protégée. Megan says she kicked her out for breaking the rules. Thanks to a little 4-person pow-wow of lab crew, we discover that Jackie had been pregnant and could have delivered 5-6 weeks ago. So now it’s a hunt for the baby. Bud can’t believe the medical team missed that Jackie had given birth. But he seems to forgive the oversight when they realize she probably had a home birth with a midwife. Soon enough, Peter tracked down the one Jackie used and we not only see a picture of Jackie and her baby, but find out she was going to give the baby up for adoption but had been having second thoughts.

Sam has called all the adoption agencies in the area but none of them had contact with Jackie. Just as Bud starts unloading the possible murder weapons he had collected around Jackie’s place, Curtis calls with a description. Luckily, Bud had a black baseball bat. Ethan is waiting for the results at the crime lab when Megan gets home to find her mother over. She’s not happy about Lacey inviting grandma for family dinner. Especially Joan is telling stories about what Megan was like as a teenager. But Dora calls and gets Megan over to school. Dora found her original cadaver and she figured out that someone had messed with the body. The knots on the Y incision were done with a sailor’s knot. Just like the one Jerk #1 uses. So Bud and Sam haul him in for questioning again and he denies sleeping with Jackie or getting her pregnant. He alibis out (he was at the library). Sam is digging into his buddy when Bud gets another call from Curtis. They found blood on the bat. It seems Jackie’s killer and the father of her baby were the same person, her ex Ronan.

The interrogation doesn’t go as hoped. Ronan says he gave Jackie the bat ages ago and didn’t know she was pregnant. He’s really worried about his baby. Bud believes and after a little arm twisting and digging, Sam does too. They both interrupt as Megan’s mom tries to apologize about the night before. Jerk #1 worked at the limo service and Megan figures out the guy that’s been there the longest is Jerk #1’s brother. He starts to run but Sam takes him down in an awesome running tackle. As soon as Megan gets in the interrogation room with him, he spills everything. He set up the adoption between Jackie and an older couple he drove for. But he freaked out when she said she wanted to keep the baby because it meant he wouldn’t get paid. He hadn’t meant to kill her. Bud and Sam find the baby and Bud manages to calm her down. And the look on Ronan’s face when he shows up with the baby is priceless. I have to say I’m glad he was innocent.

Peter runs into Dani again in the elevator and this time they don’t keep things professional. I’m not sure I like them hooking up but I suppose Peter needs some lovin’ too. When Megan gets home, she finds Lacey waiting, cell phone and webcam free with popcorn. They’re going to spend the night watching Twilight movies (and they are apparently Team Edward).

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Person of Interest - "Foe"

Person of Interest 1.08: ‘Foe”

“I was you, Kohl. Revenge won’t help.”

- Reese

This week finds us in a train station with an older man (played by LOST’s Alan Dale), looking around nervously. He spots a younger man who keeps glancing up from a photo and manages to get away. At HQ, Reese has arrived with coffee and tea for Finch and learns they have a new number. It belongs to Wallace Negel, a German national who came to the US in 1980. But Reese picks up on all the oddities in Negel’s background. He’s a spy. On the street, we see Negel pull a piece of the handle off of his suitcase and disappear out of view. Reese also noticed that there weren’t any electronic transactions in Negel’s name after 1987. It turns out around that time; he bought a cemetery plot which is still there. So while Reese goes to check that out, Finch pays a visit to a guy who sells German books (and other things like submarine schematics illegally). Reese finds the cemetery plot dug up. Negel stashed a kit there. So Negel The Spy is back.

Mr. Bookseller reveals he knows things about the East German intelligence community from back during the Cold War. Negel’s real name is Ulrich Kohl and he was party of a team that went around “neutralizing” East German defectors in Europe and the US. He fled in 1989 when East Germany collapsed with his wife, Anja, but she was killed in a car accident. Since then Kohl went underground. Kohl (in present day) shows up at an old man’s apartment, shows his wife’s picture and shoots the occupant.

We’re in for another Reese flashback this week. We find Reese in what looks like maybe Paris in 2006. He’s meeting a woman named Stanton and it turns out this is right after he saw his ex-girlfriend in the airport. He tries to introduce himself but Stanton says his alias didn’t pass muster so he’s no one and she’s going to decide what name he gets. Honestly, that’s a little disturbing to me. Plus she’s kind of pushy.

Finch is examining the coin Reese found in the cemetery and discovers it is East German currency but has been out of circulation for years. And Kohl just sold an entire collection of them to a rare coin dealer, used the phone and left. Finch sends Reese to the address and we find the old man, dead in a chair with lots of needle pricks in his neck. After a little digging, Reese figures out the old man was the case managers from Kohl’s 4-man team. Too bad the young guy from the train station shows up. Reese deals with him easily enough and makes a call to Lionel. He tells Lionel that there’s been a homicide and he thinks the killer will do it again and fires his gun so that the cops will get called.

Reese and Finch figure out that Kohl is going after the forger, Wernnick next. He finds Wernnick in a café and doses him with some kind of poison. Kohl explains he got captured in 1987 and put in a hole for years. He didn’t have the luxury of forgetting what happened to his wife. It seems her accident is what is motivating his vendetta. But Reese is sure it was a staged accident. He gets to the restaurant in time commandeer the ambulance with Wernnick in it. Reese keeps Wernnick alive long enough to learn the team sold Kohl out and were responsible for his wife’s accident (or so they think). There’s still one more member of the team left for Kohl to kill.

Over at Police HQ, Lionel and Carter are leaning on our German intelligence guy that Reese knocked out at the first crime scene. He gives us a nice little info dump about Kohl being a killer and how he’s not supposed to exist. But before they can get much further, a guy from the German Consulate shows up with orders from the State Department to extradite him back to Germany. So much for that lead.

So Kohl has found the fourth member of his team. Finch found him too, through a German heritage organization. In an attempt to keep Kohl from killing him, the fourth member reveals that Anja is actually alive. She was terrified of her husband and that’s why she ran. Unfortunately for member #4, he gets tossed off a ledge. It looks like Kohl is going to find Anja and add her to his list of betrayals that need to be taken care of. Reese and Finch are on the hunt for her too, to try and keep her safe. Lionel texts Reese the make and model of the diplomat’s car and in a rather impressive shot, he takes the hood off the car with a sniper rifle. The diplomat passes Reese Anja’s alias (Anna Klein) and they’re off to find her.

Kohl shows up at Anna’s place to find Reese waiting for him. Reese acts like his typical bad-ass self until Kohl grabs him by the throat and incapacitates him. Kohl thinks he can torture Anja’s location out of Reese. Yeah, that’s not happening dude. Reese slips back into the flashback from before and we see two guys who are CIA that likely got paid off by a terrorist to slip out of the country unnoticed. Stanton kills both of them. Meanwhile, Finch is trying to get Anja into police custody but she insists she has an important phone call to make first. And Carter’s just gotten the call about Reese shooting the diplomat’s car off the road. Finch calls up Lionel to tell him to do something since he hasn’t heard from Reese. Lionel really isn’t happy about them calling him at the station.

At Anja’s place, Kohl and Reese have a little heart to heart about the nature of killing. It is always a little creepy when Reese can identify with the bad guys. But I guess he did what he had to. And Ulrich is back to torturing Reese. In the car, Anja explains that she knew her husband was a spy but not that he was a killer, until the Americans grabbed her as she was escaping to the Soviet Union and showed her pictures. Unfortunately, Ulrich has now figured out he has a daughter and he’s going to find her. He is about to shoot Reese when Lionel shows up. Time for the big showdown.

He grabs his daughter at school and demands that Anja meet him in Central Park, alone. As he and Marie (his daughter) are waiting for Anja to show up, she tells him that her father had been a war hero and died getting her mother to freedom. The cops are in the park too thanks to an anonymous tip (from Lionel) and are searching for both Ulrich and Reese. Anja begs Ulrich to forgive her for what she did and as he raises his gun, Reese shoots him. Ulrich’s gun was empty. He was prepared and ready to die. The cops finally find him but Reese is gone.

We finish up our flashback with Stanton telling Reese to clean up the two dead bodies and get rid of the gun. She also tells him that what he’s doing is right and that his country needs him (the same thing the East German government told Kohl). Back in the present, we find Reese at Ulrich’s burial plot. He and Finch muse about whether people will know and care about who they are when they’re dead.

Body of Proof - "Love Bites"

Body of Proof 2.08: “Love Bites”

“Oh don’t you worry. Lacey is never going to feel the way about me that I feel about you.”

- Megan

This week we find ourselves with a young man who appears to be drowning. He reaches out to a woman only to realize she’s dead. Meanwhile, Megan is at home trying to pick a color to paint the room Lacey will be staying in. Megan’s mom stops by and seems a little skeptical of Megan insisting on spending more time with Lacey. Lucky for Megan, she’s saved by the crime scene. She runs into Dani (the new morgue driver) and introduces her to Peter. Peter seems kind of sweet on her, or at least a little defensive of her name to Bud. Th victim doesn’t appear to have any obvious causes of death, though she does have a broken arm, complete with bone stick through the skin. Peter collects some river water samples to check to see where she went into the water and if she drowned. Back at the lab, Kate arrives, even though it is her day off. By the look of things, she and Todd aren’t doing so well (though he’s not going to California anymore). She and Megan have words but Bud and Sam insist on getting on with the case. Their victim’s name is Amy Green and she was a pharmaceutical representative (her prints were in the FBI database).

Ethan is trying to get a blood sample from Amy’s ephemeral arteries but there is no blood in her body. He has a cute little conversation with Dani about maybe Amy being a vampire. But Peter shows up with diatom analysis of the river water. Ethan pulled some diatoms from Amy’s bone marrow. They don’t match. He calculates that she drowned in the Gulf of Maine. That night, Sam and Bud are checking the address the drug company had on file for Amy. There’s a huge party going on and Bud and Sam quickly learn that a bunch of reps were sharing the apartment. Two of the women explain that Amy flew out to Denver two days ago for a conference. When Sam mentions she was in Maine, the two other reps mention she had been seeing a guy but they thought she broke it off.

Back at the lab, Megan discovers that Amy didn’t drown. All the other signs aren’t there. And Curtis has the answer to how the diatoms got in her bone marrow. She ate a rare kind of oyster. And he knows a guy who flies them in fresh. Turns out this guy is at the airport. Bud and Sam get the security footage from two days earlier and see Amy’s assistant, Beth, (one of the women they talked to already) pulling her away from the bar. Meanwhile, Megan and Kate are talking to Amy’s mom. She says her daughter was a nice person and that she hadn’t wanted Amy to take the rep job.

The next morning, Megan has Lacey over before school to show her what she’s doing with the bedroom. Lacey said it was fine the way it was and there’s a little tension as to whether Lacey wants to spend more time at Megan’s place. Over at the precinct, Beth explains that she took Amy to a big wig cardiologist to try and get his account for the company. Beth kept quiet about it since it was a very competitive account. Over at the lab, Kate shows up to share the x-ray information. There were a bunch of hairline fractures to various parts of Amy’s body before she died, but the broken arm was done postmortem. Still not explanation for the blood loss. Based on Megan’s examination of some of the organ tissue, it is possible Amy had a reaction to a drug. So Bud, Sam and Peter head over to the cardiologist to have a chat and run in to the other woman they talked to at the apartment. The doctor said he went with Molly’s company instead of Amy’s because Molly’s was bigger. Peter sweet talks to receptionist in to telling him that the reps often left food. The doctor confirms that Amy brought oysters every time they met.

We’re back to the oyster guy. He was Amy’s boyfriend but they broke up a month ago. He denies he had anything to do with her death. Megan says she might have been given a drug and asks if she had any she had to be careful with. Bud escorts her out of interrogation, mainly because she was giving the suspect information. He also was annoyed she was on her phone. But it was about Lacey so as we know, Megan kind of gets tunnel vision. She gets back to the lab and Ethan tries to give her an update on the case but she blows him of. Her mom and Lacey are waiting in her office. And Kate gets dragged in. The little family meeting doesn’t go far as Kate ushers Ethan off for the update and Megan sort of blows her mom off. But they have a breakthrough in the case. Still not cause of death but possibly a location. The trace found under Amy’s fingernails is likely from old wallpaper. The gang finds an old house thanks to the forensics team and it appears they have found here Amy died. And with some serious luminal spraying, they find where all of Amy’s blood went.

At this point Bud is kind of freaking out with how much blood there was. Megan explains that they didn’t is anything in autopsy and it is possible she bled out from every pore in her body. A horribly painful way to go. She tasks Peter with rushing blood samples to the lab and leaves him to photograph the room. Kate tells Curtis to put a rush on the drug samples Amy left at the cardiologist’s office for anticoagulants. Meanwhile, she’s dodging all of Todd’s calls. While photographing the room where Amy died, Peter finds the impression of the flowers that get sent to the cardiologist’s office every day. And the gang goes to confront him about the fact he had a party at the old house the night Amy died. Megan accuses him of having access to drugs that would cause Amy to bleed out. He admits he was there but that he went to make a call to his wife (he and Amy were having a fling) and when he got back she was already dead. He took her to the river and cleaned up the scene. Megan calls Peter to tell him to check for all the anticoagulants that the cardiologist used and he delivers the news that interior designer her mother insist she hired has been fired. So Megan goes to her mom’s chambers and rips her a new one. They really have a bad relationship.

Peter can’t get a list of the anticoagulants from the cardiologist’s office but Ethan say none of the drugs currently approved by the FDA would cause Amy’s systems. So we get a funny scene with Peter using his actual Aussie accent and it pays off. The rival drug company was about to roll out a new anticoagulant. Bud, Sam and Megan track the rep down but she doesn’t have any of the drugs on her and she says she didn’t kill Amy. And she denies knowing anything about Amy’s affair with the doctor. At this point, I’m not even sure who the killer is. While all that is going on, Kate finally takes Todd’s call and breaks up with him. Good move if you ask me. I find Todd annoying and it was tiresome with the Megan/Kate drama.

Back at the lab, Megan and Peter run into the drug rep. She’s decided to be helpful and gives them the specs on the new drug. She also says that Amy was in love with the cardiologist. Unfortunately, the drug reactions listed on the spec sheet don’t match Amy’s symptoms. So Megan suggests they bring the doctor in again and he says she found Amy on the ground in the fetal position, holding herself. Megan angrily tells Bud to get the doctor out of autopsy and she finds fang marks in the vein in her left arm. Megan find out it was a snake bite. She ends Ethan and Curtis to find the snake at the house and we get some great physical comedy from the pair of them when they spot the snake. It’s only a baby, but apparently that is when this type of snake is most deadly. And we’re back to the bartender/oyster guy. He admits to putting the snake in Amy’s bag as a joke because he was jealous she was seeing the cardiologist.

Later, Amy’s mom comes to take Amy home and shares some choice words of wisdom with Megan. You can’t hold on to your kid too tight or else they just start slipping away. And Kate shares the news about her break up with Todd. So things are looking good on the Megan front, especially when she shows Lacey the bedroom is empty and blank, ready for Lacey to do with it what she wants.

Dream Desert Island

It has finally happened here on the blog. I have reached 100 posts. I know it may not seem like a lot but for me it is a milestone. I thought I would celebrate in similar fashion to More TV Please! But with a twist. I am going to share with you the five characters I would like to be stranded on a desert island with.

1. The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Ideally, I would love to be stranded on a deserted island with The Doctor. For one thing he is always good for a laugh. Brits usually are pretty funny, even if we Yanks don't always understand their special brand of humor. But most importantly, I'd want The Doctor around because we could have loads of adventures all while stranded on the island. And who wouldn't want to take a trip to Stormcage to meet the Mrs.?

2. Captain Jack Harkness (Torchwood)

Sure, Jack could maybe get his vortex manipulator working long enough to get one or two people off the island, but really he's just there to be really pretty. And sexy. I wouldn't mind having to potentially populate the world with Captain Harkness. In fact, it would be an honor. Besides, he's lived so long he would have endless stories to tell about the universe. We certainly would never be bored.

3. Ziva David (NCIS)

You need a little balance of the genders on this deserted island. And who better to have than kick-ass ex-Mossad agent Ziva David. She's badass and able to fend for herself so survival on the island wouldn't be much of an issue. She'd provide that feminine touch needed to keep things sane and she's just really all kinds of awesome.

4. Leroy Jethro Gibbs (NCIS)

Gibbs is on this list simply because of the compassion he shows for his team. We'd need someone to keep us grounded on this island (even if we are off having random adventures with The Doctor). He'd provide stability and comfort whenever needed. And he could be a hardass when necessary, too. Plus he's up there with the hunting and killing skills. I don't necessarily trust his cooking skills (meat rare anyone?) but I love the guy anyway. Plus, he could totally build us an awesome boat with which to escape the desert island.

5. Willow Rosenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

This would most definitely need to be season 7 Willow. Preferably near the end when she actually had control of her powers. We wouldn't need her necessarily to get off the island (we have Gibbs and The Doctor for that) but she could entertain us with some magic and who knows, she could somehow mount a rescue party full of slayers. And let's be honest, we need to balance the male-female ratio.

Person of Interest - "Witness"

Person of Interest 1.07: “Witness”

“The machine found the man who was targeted for death. We just didn’t know he was also a killer. John we have limited information. We knew when we began this that we might make mistakes.”

- Finch

This week we begin with a phone call where two guys, one sounds Eastern European, set up a hit on an unnamed target. Through surveillance footage we see a guy get shot twice in the chest at close range in a convenience store. Carter and Lionel are on the scene and it turns out the victim was Benny Degastino, a member of the Italian mob. There’s a gang war going on between them and the Russians and this murder was likely payback for a slew of murders a few weeks earlier. And it turns out our mysterious Elias is the head of the Italian crew. But, the cops think they’ve gotten lucky. There is a witness. Meanwhile, Reese is busy snapping photos of Charlie Burton, a high school history teacher living in Brighton Beach (Russian mob territory) (played by the wonderful Enrico Colantoni of Veronica Mars fame). Just as Finch relays that there’s nothing really special bout Charlie, Lionel calls tell Reese about the missing witness. Turns out the witness and Charlie are one in the same. And a Russian hit team has just showed up at Charlie’s apartment to finish what they started. Reese has no choice but to go in.

In typical Reese fashion, he just appears in Charlie’s living room. I have to admit I would be a little freaked out too. But he gets Charlie to go with him. They get out of the building without being spotted and Reese takes out one of the guards but his phone gets smashed in the process. So he and Charlie are on their own. Reese steals a car to try and get Charlie back to Manhattan to tell the cops what he knows but the Russians shoot up the car and one of the bullets hits Charlie. Another exciting casting choice about this episode is that one of the Russian is played by Enver Gjokaj (Victor/Anthony from Dollhouse). And his character kind of reminded me a little of some of the imprints he had as a doll. Anyway, Reese and Charlie head in to the Double Bs, an apartment complex run by a Bulgarian drug lord. Even the Russians are scared to go in.

They wander through the building, spotting some drug dealers, before finding an empty apartment that is pretty disgusting. But it will work. Reese gets Charlie’s story and it seems credible. He was grading papers late and went to get something from the store when the Russians showed up. He claims Benny had a message for Elias that Vinnie would finish the job. But Charlie says he doesn’t know anyone named Elias. Reese inquires as to why he didn’t’ call the cops and Charlie says that the Russians own the neighborhood and you never know which side they are on. Back across the river, Lionel, Carter and their gang task force buddy are talking to Benny’s wife. She tells them that it doesn’t matter if they find the Russians that killed her husband because Elias will and he’ll kill them all. She says that Elias is on the war path and is going to reunite the five families and wipe the Russians out.

Near Charlie’s apartment, we see Finch fiddling with an ATM camera, likely to hide the footage from the shooting so that they can’t find Reese or Charlie. But a bystander caught some of it on her phone and they find out one of the guys that were after Charlie is the son of the head of the Russian mob. Apparently, Finch didn’t wipe the ATM footage; he just made it so he could remote access it from HQ. He’s checking the footage and finds a silver SUV pulling up in front of Charlie’s building and a cop getting in. He calls Lionel to have him the license plate and says the Russians might not be the only ones looking for Charlie. Speaking of the Russians, Lazlo (Enver) wants to bust in to the Double Bs and hunt down Reese and Charlie. But his brother, Peter, tells him they have to respect the agreement with the Bulgarians. They will cover all the exits so that Reese and Charlie can’t get out.

Inside, Reese is trying to bond a little with Charlie, asking how he got involved with teaching. It’s not nearly as complicated as his own change in career. Charlie is trying to help his students, many of whom are descendants of Russian mob members, to get out of the life. It doesn’t always work. Reese outs down to the guys we saw earlier to get some drugs to help Charlie with the pain. It wouldn’t be an episode of Person of Interest if he didn’t get to beat some people up while spewing witty banter. Meanwhile, Finch pays a visit to Lionel and tells him to report the car (which could belong to Elias) stolen and to send the report to an email address.

At police HQ, things are starting to fall into place. Carter makes the connection that Elias’ father last ran Brighton Beach before he got locked up. So junior is trying to clean it up and claim what is his. Reese returns to their crappy hiding place with the drugs (cocaine) and some crazy glue to numb the pain and seal the wound. Unfortunately, the Russians and the Bulgarians are going to hunt them down together since Reese beat the Bulgarian boys up and stole their drugs. Reese goes all MacGyver and finds a still-working landline to call Finch. He explains the situation and tells Finch to get a message to Lionel that they will be on the East River ferry to Pier 11 at 7am. And Finch finds them an escape route. Unfortunately, they don’t get to use it. But one of Charlie’s students, Will, let’s them hide out in his apartment. He’s even tough enough to make the Russians go away.

Finch gets the vehicle report from Lionel and calls Vehicle Recovery to get the GPS locator and microphone in the car turned on. He’s going to do a little surveillance of his own. He tracks the car to a parking garage and snaps a bunch of photos of the cop he saw before. He speeds off pretty quick when he gives a report that the Russian have Charlie trapped in the Double Bs. Finch thinks this cop could be Elias. Reese and Charlie are still hiding out in Will’s apartment when he tells them they should use the old entrance to the building. So, they head back the way they came and end up having to hide out in the same apartment to keep from being spotted. And they manage to snag Lazlo as a sort of hostage.

Back in the city proper, Carter and her gang buddy are paying a visit to Peter’s dad, the head of the Russian mob. He denies knowing anything about the convenience store shooting and alibis his son a being in the house all day. He also says that he didn’t start the war. Elias did by coming into the Russians’ territory and making trouble. Back in the Double Bs, Reese gets a message to Finch to let Carter know where the Russians and reminds him to let Lionel know where to meet them. Things are starting to look up when Finch overhears a conversation in the silver SUV in which someone says they got a tip that Charlie and company would be a pier 11. Finch thinks Lionel is the leak. Unfortunately for Lionel, the other cop shows up and knocks him out when he’s on the phone with Finch. We see the cop take Lionel’s gun as the ferry is approaching.

On the ferry, Reese is trying to get Charlie to agree to testify but things take a turn for the weird. We get intercut between the ferry and the interrogation room with Carter and Peter and we learn that Charlie is Elias. I have to say I thought Elias would be younger. And I’m not sure I like that it was sort of wrapped up in this episode as to his identity and what he wanted. But, he makes Reese flex cuff himself to the railing and he shoots Lazlo in the leg. Elias tells Reese that if they stay out of each other’s way, they won’t have any problems. Elias gets away clean and Reese is not happy that because they saved this one man, more number could come up. We see the cop shooting the Russian mob boss in his office before meeting up with Elias on the pier and walking away.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Body of Proof - "Hard Knocks"

Body of Proof 2.07: “Hard Knocks”

“I’m the child and you’re the adults. You’re supposed to be worried about my happiness. I’m not supposed to be responsible for yours.”

- Lacey

This week finds us with a young guy calling 911 but it doesn’t do much good. He passes out before the operator can get much useful information. Jump to Megan’s apartment where Lacey is bugging her mom about what guy she (Megan) is seeing. Megan tries to brush it off but finally tells her it is the FBI agent from the kidnap case. They have a coffee date. Unfortunately, Megan gets called to the crime scene of the 911 caller. He died before the EMTs arrived and Ames cancelled their date. Turns out the caller is 17-year-old Jake Brady. Megan finds bruises on his stomach and he smells like alcohol. She also finds black light paint on his cheek and Peter leads them on a trek to a rave spot. Bud and Sam go to notify the parents.

At the lab, Ethan announces that there was some kind of drug in Jake’s system but none of the party drugs they were expecting. Peter finds some strange yellow pills and Megan snatches them up and takes them to Ames since he has access to the federal drug database. When she gets back to the lab, Ethan shows that there were ligature marks on Jake’s wrists and Megan finds a spot on his side that determined time of death. Apparently when the 911 call was made, Jake had already been dead for four hours.

Over at the police station, Bud and Sam find a website for who holds the raves and pick her up at the airport. She denies knowing Jake or anything that happened to him at the rave. As Megan is cutting up some body part, Curtis reports that Jake had no broken bones and Peter adds he had nothing in stomach to absorb the alcohol. Signs still point to an overdose. And then Agent Ames shows up with the yellow pills. Megan had told him to call with the results. He tells her that she could have found out what the drug was from her own database. It’s an ADD drug. They have a slightly awkward flirty moment when he asks her out to dinner that night before he hands over the evidence. Later, Bud and Megan head back to Jake’s parents’ house as Bud hasn’t heard anything from the dad. He’s got serious anger management issues. But he swears that Jake never took the easy way out (i.e. using drugs of any kind). They do manage to get a name out of him, Patrick.

Bud and Sam haul him in to interrogation and he admits to giving Jake the drugs and says he made the call because he freaked. But he didn’t put the sign on Jake. When Bud and Sam look confused, Patrick pulls up a picture on his phone. Jake is sitting on the ground with a sign that says “Dead Meat” on it. And from the picture they determine cause of death. Jake’s hands were bound and the sign was propped under his chin in such a way that it closed off his airway and he suffocated. So Ethan and Curtis are sent back to the rave spot to find whatever bound Jake’s hands. And we get a pretty funny scene with them breaking it down to Ethan’s sort-of techno beat boxing before they actually find the cable that they’re looking for.

On a wholly unrelated plot point, Todd is thinking of accepting a professorship at a law school out in California. Lacey is obviously not pleased about the possibility of moving. They’re going to fly out in a few days so Todd can meet the Regents and he’s taking Lacey along. Back at the lab, Megan is running DNA on the skins cells found on the cable. It pops but it is a restricted profile. That means it is from a parent who submitted their child’s DNA in case the child got abducted. So Megan’s off to pump Ames for more favors, except he says no, especially since they aren’t dating. Megan offers to change that and they end up at her apartment drinking wine. Just as things are getting a bit sexy, Lacey interrupts in a rather Ethan-esque fashion.

Lacey says she doesn’t want to move to California but she didn’t want her parents to divorce and it happened anyway. Poor kid. The next morning, Bud and Sam confiscate the computer of the editor of the school newspaper and with Megan’s help and the information that the person they’re looking for as a rare chromosome disorder, find the kid who tied Jake up. Bud and Sam bring the boy in but he says he moved the sign when Jake started to move and went home. So the sign position didn’t kill Jake. Megan continues to check the body but Todd shows up and they have another argument (Megan certainly does a lot of it). Kate interrupts and it’s even more awkward since she doesn’t know about the California move yet. She’s not pleased when he does dump it on her and she gives him a “are you kidding me?” look when he asks if Kate wants to go with him.

Megan is ranting at Peter about how she is going to lose Lacey when she realizes what killed Jake: a punch to the heart. She’s back to exam the body, taking out stitches from the Y incision over Jake’s heart when Ames shows up with roses, likely to apologize. She kind of sends him away though because the flowers could contaminate the area and Kate walks in. Kate turned Todd down for the move to California and it’s obvious Megan is a little happy. The rest of the crew gathers and Megan finds the impression of a Greek Sigma. Looks like Jake’s dad punched him. As with the rest of the investigation, it’s not exactly as it seems. And Bud blurts out that he and his wife are expecting. And Megan determines why Jake’s dad isn’t responsible when Kate pops by to tell her to call Ames. She and Megan were both in honor society and pre-graduation they wore the ring one way and after they turned it around. Jake’s dad’s ring was facing the wrong way. Maxine, the editor of the newspaper is the real culprit. She tutored Jake and when she saw the photo of him with the sign she went to go help him, but he didn’t even remember her.

Later that night, Megan and Ames are sharing another glass of wine when she tells him that she needs to focus on Lacey if she stays. Todd shows up frantic because he doesn’t know where Lacey is, only to find her hiding out in Megan’s apartment. Lacey doesn’t want to go. But she doesn’t want to ruin her dad’s career or Megan’s love life. When Megan and Todd finally get their heads on straight and ask Lacey what she wants, it becomes clear that she wants Todd to go to California and she can move in with Megan.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

November is upon us!

So every year of the past seven, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal: write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days in the month of November. And yes, i've done it every year I've participated. I hope this year will be no exception and so far I'm off to a good start.

I'm aiming for a 2500 word/day goal with obviously the chance to do more on weekends and days when i have less going on for school. This year I am writing an historical romance. A new genre for me so we will see how much I can play with it. I just wanted to share my plans with you (I'll keep you updated throughout the month).

One final thing, look forward to a special post for my 100th on the blog in the next week or two.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Person of Interest - "The Fix"

Person of Interest 1.06: “The Fix”

“I never thought I would know what happened to her. And now I also know the man responsible.”

- Finch

This week we begin with a woman, Zoe Morgan, walking out of her apartment and Reese greeting her at the car. He’s obviously not who she’s expecting and she even calls to verify his story of her usual driver being sick (she gets Finch on the other end of the line). As Reese drives off, Finch appears. Looks like he’s going to do some leg work this week. He complains about not being able to pick the lock as Reese arrives at the location he’s supposed to be taking Zoe. Finch gets inside and finds nothing personal at all in the place. And from Reese’s perspective, it appears Zoe has just done a drug deal with some shady kids. Finch finds a gun in her living room under the sofa. Only problem is, it wasn’t drugs she got from the shady guy. It was a gun. Zoe has Reese drop her at a swanky party. Reese isn’t so sure it’s a good idea to stay in the car so he follows Zoe inside and sees her hand over the gun to a cop. Apparently his nephew (also a cop) left it in a subway bathroom. Woops. Turns out Ms. Morgan is a fixer.

We also have a case of the week for Detective Carter. She’s got a 70-year-old dead guy who happens to be an enforcer and gangster. And he skated on the murder of Marlene Elias (she was stabbed multiple times in the chest with a kitchen knife). So I guess we know why the crew a few weeks back wanted that knife. Out in the city, Zoe has another meeting. She’s going to make a blogger shut up about a high-powered executive’s affair so his CEO father-in-law doesn’t find out. She pays the blogger 40 grand. He’s creepy and a blackmailing jerk but not capable of killing Zoe.

Carter has asked the cop who worked the Elias murder to come in to fill in some of the blanks. It seems a pretty typical case. Cocktail waitress has an affair with an upper level mobster and when she keeps begging him to leave his wife; he has his knife man off her. Too bad Mr. Mob and the Elias had a kid together. Seems likely, now that he’s all grown up, he could be the killer. Reese is driving Zoe to another meet and he gets the vibe that things are off when there are two guys waiting. She brushes him off and tries the make the hand-off of the recording she got from the blogger when a third guy appears and they try to grab her. Reese intervenes and gets Zoe out of there without too much damage (well the back window of the car is shot out). They need to find out what was on the recording. Zoe made a copy but it’s not very high quality. They pull up to find one of the business men dead from heart failure. Someone’s cleaning house. Unfortunately, Zoe’s taken off in the minute Reese left her alone in the car.

Back at HQ, Reese is working on cleaning up the recording from the flash drive and he discovers the woman’s voice belongs to a woman named Dana Miller. She worked for the company that hired Zoe to fix the problem. She was having the affair with the heir apparent to the empire and she died six months earlier from a brain aneurysm. Finch knows this because she was one of his numbers before he met Reese. And now Finch is off for a very important business meeting. He’s just bought stock in the company and he uses the opportunity to meet with Lawson (the heir and the one who had Dana killed) and plant a bug in his office. Lawson’s muscle reports in about getting the flash drive and killing the other guy but Lawson says they need to get rid of both Zoe and Reese.

Back on the Elias case, Carter gets a call from the former cop. He found some information on Elias’s son. He was a runway except for one woman who looked after him. He sent her Christmas cards. So Carter is going to swing by to get them. I’m not sure I trust this guy. But then again, maybe I’ve seen too many cop drama. Anyway, Finch manages to clear up the audio a bit on Dana’s recording. She was going to blow the whistle on an unsafe drug. Reese hasn’t had any luck finding Zoe until she turns her cell phone back on. He meets her at fancy restaurant and she explains that Dana worked in clinical trials and five days before she died, she was transferred out and her access suspended. So now Zoe and Reese are going to team up to do something illegal. Apparently Zoe’s got connections on the force because she strong-arms a cop into making sure no one responds when there’s a break in at the company that night.

The break-in is going fine at first. They find that the new migraine drug that has just been FDA approved was altered. Well, the report anyway. Six people died and were dropped from the list. Finch also manages to clean up the rest of the recording. It turns out Dana was going to go to the CEO about the drug. Unfortunately, Lawson’s muscle and the cop that Zoe strong-armed show up and Zoe and Reese get taken hostage.

We get a little moment where Reese and Zoe bond. We find out why Zoe became a fixer (she met one when her dad got caught up in a corruption case). Things start spiraling out of control as Finch tries to reach the CEO. He gets to hear the rest of the recording. The CEO was in on the whole thing. Back at the offices, Zoe bargains her way out of handcuffs (she says she sent a copy of the report to a friend and she’ll take them to the person who has it. She also slips Reese a way to get out of his own cuffs. They could make kind of a fun team. Reese manages to stab his captor with a syringe (so his body count for this episode is 1). And while on the road, Zoe calls Finch with a location; the navy yard. Reese swoops in to save the day as Finch has dinner with the CEO and ruins him quite spectacularly. Finch takes all of the CEO’s money. Zoe obviously gets a portion and Dana Miller’s family does as well. And Zoe’s cop finds himself facing corruption charges. All in all, not a bad haul. I really do hope they bring Zoe back. We end with Carter showing up at the former cop’s apartment to find him dead. She exchanges fire with who she assumes is the killer and she nails him enough to leave some blood.