Body of Proof 1.06: “Society Hill”
“Where were you?” “I was right here for you, Megan.” “No. You were too embarrassed. You were too worried about your friends.”
- Megan and Joan
We begin in what looks like a pretty nice enclosed yard. Until we see an overturned table and chair and a dead woman floating in a pool. It turns out the dead woman lives in a really rich neighborhood. Peter makes fun of Megan for saying she didn’t really miss all the perks of living there as they walk in to find Bud working the case solo. Sam’s dad is sick so she’s visiting him in DC. I kind of miss the fun Bud/Sam dynamic. We quickly learn that the victim is Daphne Zimmer, an old friend of Megan’s mom. Bud tries to impress Megan by saying she died that morning. But Megan proves him wrong. She’s passed rigor and has been decomposing for at least two days. At the lab, Peter reads off her past like a fact sheet. Fairly impressive resume but not a lot of personal life. Megan hands over some maggots to Curtis to see if he can confirm time of death and the errant hair sample they found in the pool to Ethan for full analysis. And with that, Megan and Peter are off to see if they can find a match for the sample while Daphne’s body dries out.
Bud, Megan and Peter show up at the fashion magazine where Daphne worked to find pretty people scurrying all over the place. Apparently the show must go on. They run into a guy with dark hair that at least from far away matches color-wise to the sample fished out of the pool. He tells them that he can’t disturb Daphne because she’s in a meeting.
And then everyone at the magazine learns that Daphne is dead. Megan goes through pointing out all the various problems people have, from nail biting and excessive drinking to compulsive hair pulling. Turns out the hair puller, Steve, was Daphne’s assistant so Bud takes a crack at him first. We discover that Daphne would disappear for days at a time and not tell anyone where she was going so the assistant would inform interns that if anyone asked, Daphne was in a meeting. And the last time he spoke with Daphne was five days earlier. Back at the lab Ethan walks in on Kate making a rather private phone call. She hangs up and after admonishing him too knock next time, asks him what he has on Daphne’s case. All he knows is that the hair is human. Just as Megan and Peter get back to the lab, Megan’s mom calls. She’s heard about Daphne and want to know what’s happening. Megan of course can’t say a word and turns down going to a black tie event with her mom that night because she had a miserable time at the last one.
Daphne’s body has dried out by this point and Megan finds nail marks in her skin. Square and deep. Made by acrylic nails. One of the women at the magazine had fake nails. So Bud interviews her. Apparently Daphne ran an award and opened it up to everyone this year. It pissed off a copy editor and he went after Daphne. The officer manager (acrylic girl) had to pull Daphne away. So next up is the copy editor. Bud also discovers a hidden camera in the wall clock in Daphne’s office. Megan still doesn’t know what killed Daphne. Her lungs are clear (including no water). But she did have some kidney damage and high calcium (which apparently can lead to mood swings and paranoia).
He takes the videotape back to the station and a CSU tech finds video from when Daphne’s assistant talked to her last. He looks really upset and ends up throwing the phone off the desk. Bud talks to the guy again and the guy says he was pissed because Daphne demanded he get a scarf for the mayor’s wife’s birthday and so he spent the weekend in Chicago trying to find it. Bud basically tells the guy he’s full of crap but the assistant claims he didn’t do it. He says there are plenty of high society people who Daphne has pissed off with magazine content in the past.
Megan’s examined Daphne’s corpse a bit more and discovered that she suffered some health issues related to being assaulted. She probably saw a private doctor for it. And based on the x–rays, it appears the injuries occurred about a year ago. And she died longer than two days ago so her assistant couldn’t have killed her. Megan and Peter go through a bunch of issues of the magazine and find a suspect of their own, Colin Lloyd. Meanwhile, Ethan is trying to figure out how to get DNA from the hair sample while Curtis sings to his little maggots. Somehow, I am reminded of Grissom on CSI. Ethan tells Curtis to be quiet so he can concentrate and then weird things happen. The hair follicle just breaks. So he goes to ask Kate for some help.
Meanwhile, Bud’s found out who assaulted Daphne; a guy named Tillman. She refused to testify so he only got three months in prison. Too bad he’s dead. But he did work Lloyd. Maybe he sent Tillman to assault her and then killed her a year later. They’re going to have to go undercover. Guess Megan will be going to that club dinner after all. With Peter as her date. Megan and Peter run into some old friends of Megan’s on their way in to the dinner and Megan manages to convince her mom’s date to introduce her to Colin Lloyd. She makes a scene and snags a piece of his hair and has Peter take a picture. Megan’s mom is mortified as Megan and Peter duck out to continue work on the case. Megan needed to make a scene because she needed Lloyd to open his eyes. It turns out he’s got a disease that affects the irises (benign nodules that form in the eye) and the intern that we met at eh beginning of the episode has them too. It’s genetic. He’s Lloyd’s son.
Bud and Megan confront the intern but he claims he wouldn’t have killed her. He went to her with the information that led to the expose on his dad. She gave him an internship in return. He wanted nothing to do with his father. And he would do whatever Daphne asked. After listening to the types of errands he ran for her, Megan says that it was related to her kidney issues. Still, no time or cause of death yet. Megan is leaving the building and her mom confronts her. She yells at Megan for embarrassing her in front of her friends. Megan isn’t interested in listening. It’s clear she and her mom don’t get along (hard to tell if that’s because of the accident or just their relationship).
Kate is just as baffled as Ethan is by the results. Apparently the attacker why high and put resin in their hair. So she tells him too run more tests. Curtis has some information though. Daphne did die about two days previously. She had aspirin in her system (which could make her potassium spike). Te maggots are apparently high on the stuff. Only one person knew her medical history. And we’re back to Steve as the prime suspect.
Steve admits to giving her aspirin but he didn’t think it would kill her. Megan and Bud don’t buy it. Steve says every day he gave her some and she stayed home, he could just focus on his writing. So it looks like things are wrapped up but Megan still isn’t satisfied. She tells Peter that they still don’t have a cause of death. In an attempt to cheer her up, Peter invites Megan out for drinks with a few other people from the lab. She initially declines, saying that her mom wants to call a truce over dinner. She doesn’t exactly reconsider but she realizes she missed something. Back at the lab she reexamines some cells from Daphne’s body and discovers that the cells in her heart changed dramatically in the seconds before death. Daphne was electrocuted (which Megan demonstrates by rubbing a plastic bottle on her sleeve and then tapping it on Peter’s head.
Both Megan and Peter and Bud and the CSU tech are looking for what could have cause the electrocution. Together they discover it was the space heater that her intern (Lloyd’s son) bought her. And Kate has a breakthrough on the hair. It was over one hundred years old. Megan and Bud put it together. It was the office manager. She was upset about the journalism award being opened up to interns and so she confronted Daphne. Daphne fired her and the manager pushed her in the pool and then threw the heater in. The manager burned herself when she tried to unplug the heater and that’s what gave it away for Megan.
So Megan heads for dinner with her mom while Curtis, Peter, Ethan and Bud go for a boys' night and Kate presumably meets the guy she’s been calling/texting throughout the episode. Seems everyone’s ending on a high note this week.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Body of Proof - "Dead Man Walking"
Body of Proof 1.05: “Dead Man Walking”
“You solved a crime and you saved a life. Not just George White’s.”
- Kate
Overall I thought “Dead Man Walking” was a decent episode. It was a bit whacky and broke form a little bit because we had two cases going at once. And it had Whedon alums, Christina Hendricks (Saffron from Firefly) and Marc Blucas (Riley on Buffy) beefing it up.
We begin with a man walking down the street looking a bit freaked. He stumbles near a staircase and we see an imposing figure following him. The first man (who we later learn is Ted Harbinson) begs for help and then the screen goes black. Cut to Megan and Peter arriving on scene. The scene is only a few blocks from Northeast General (Megan’s previous place of employment). Sam’s working this case alone again. She thinks it was a mugging gone wrong but Megan says the cuts to his body weren’t enough to kill him. One of the other officers on scene recovers the duffle bag the guy had and Megan quickly deduces they are looking for someone who either works at or was recently a patron of a cheese steak place. So Sam and another officer go hoofing it to all the cheese steak places around and just as Sam is getting fed up, they catch the guy.
Back at the lab, Ethan and Curtis have their own case to deal with. A seemingly healthy woman in here thirties, Jessica Archer, was found dead in her hotel room. She died from a giant blood clot (looks like a big leech) blocking her arteries. So now they have to figure out what caused it and the case only gets freakier from there.
In interrogation, Sam finds out that the guy that took Ted’s duffle because it was on the ground and he didn’t see a body fall into the bushes. Meanwhile, Megan and Peter are doing the autopsy on Ted. The other stuff in his bag was kind of odd (accounting magazine and pilot logs). He also had a post-op drug and Megan finds surgical incisions in his stomach. She cuts him open and there’s lots of blood. Definitely not a good thing. Megan’s first instinct is that Ted’s surgeon, Mark Chandler (played by Marc Blucas) is responsible.
Megan and Peter are talking to Ted’s wife and she’s pretty upset about what happened. He told her to go to work and that he’d be fine. They also clear up why he had pilot logs in his bag. He got his license to conquer his fear of flying. And he had the surgery to remove his gallbladder because he’d had problems before. Ethan and Curtis think they have found something on Jessica. She was on the pill and given the location of where she died, they think she just got off a long flight.
Megan and Peter are on their way to Northeast General to talk to Ted’s surgeon and it is admittedly kind of an emotional moment for Megan. She hadn’t been back since she closed her practice and Gwen took over (had a myriad of jobs before becoming a hospital administrator). They walk in to find Gwen pruning a bonsai tree. Apparently it has become an obsession. Thinking it will get her attention, Megan says they’re there to discuss Ted Harbinson and the fact that he died from what appear to be surgery related injuries. Megan and Gwen have a little bonding moment where we learn that Gwen was all distant when Megan had her accident because she (Gwen) lost her son around the same time. He OD’d at a frat party.
The discussion with Dr. Chandler doesn’t go well. He insists that the surgery went perfectly and that he checked everything he was supposed to. He tells Megan to check the videotape of the surgery for proof. But it’s going to be hard to get it since Gwen is now stonewalling them. Adding to the theory that Chandler did it, one of the surgical nurses says that Chandler is reckless and has been known to leaving surgical equipment in patients and then blames it on nurses. Megan’s not happy to hear that.
Back at the lab, Megan is examining Ted’s artery and finds that there were clips on the artery but they’re gone now and she finds them in the blood. She brings Kate and Sam in on it and puts out her theory that it was either malpractice or murder made to look like malpractice. So Sam goes off to try and figure out if Chandler and Ted had any other connection and Megan tells Kate (yes tells, demands even) to go get the tape from Gwen as well as the staple guns used in the surgery.
Back to our other plot of the episode, Ethan gets back to lab and has someone waiting for him, Jessica’s twin sister Karen (played by Christina Hendricks. Yep, she’s the third Whedon alumna to play twins, including Charisma Carpenter and Sarah Michelle Gellar). Ethan’s got quite the crush already. Karen says that she and her sister were close growing up but they’d grown apart as adults. Ethan explains what he believes killed her sister (the blot clot due to deep vein thrombosis) but Karen says that her sister hadn’t been flying. She was staying at the hotel while her apartment was being painted. After some arm-twisting and slight equivocating on Ethan’s part, he agrees to help Karen pack up her sister’s things.
Sam is talking with Ted’s wife and finds out that they didn’t have any connection to Chandler before the surgery. He was a referral from Ted’s wife’s OBGYN. As Sam goes to throw a water bottle in the recycle bin she notices wrappers from the same cheese steak place where the guy who stole Ted’s duffle works. Meanwhile, Kate also gets stonewalled by Gwen. There apparently was no tape. The equipment wasn’t turned on. She phones the mayor (she’s on a first name basis with his secretary) to leverage the fact that the hospital needs the tax breaks from the city council when the general counsel for the hospital says that there really is no tape. But they’re handing over all employee files for personnel who had access to the equipment. And Kate wants access to their bio waste. Poor Curtis and Ethan. They look like giant bananas in their biohazard suits and they got sucked in to sorting waste all because Ethan made a deal with Megan. He and Curtis help her with her case and she helps them with theirs. By luck, Curtis knocks over a box of stuff and out pops the staple guns from Ted’s surgery.
Megan gives Peter a little lesson on what happens to physicians who kill patients on the table. It seems rather depressing honestly (independent commission evaluates but it can take as long as it wants and meanwhile the doctor is still practicing). Megan is a little righteous in saying she could have hid behind malpractice lawyers but she didn’t. Curtis and Ethan show up with the staple guns and after Megan tells them to check for hereditary disorders that could have caused a blood clot, she tests the guns. Two are fine but one was tampered with. And since the equipment is supposed to be kept sterile, Curtis swabbed it and found spores of some kind.
Sam is back at the cheese steak place grilling the guy who took Ted’s bag. He swears he’s never seen her before but the manager has. She was in the restaurant with a nurse (the surgical nurse that Megan and Peter spoke to). And the plot thickens. They’ve had more than two red herrings this week.
At Jessica’s apartment, Ethan is helping Karen move out the rest of her sister’s belonging sand things get kind of emotional and awkward. Megan and company are having a little status pow wow where they discover that Nancy (the surgical nurse) may have had motive to tamper with the equipment. Chandler had written her up multiple times. And Ted’s wife may have been in on it since his life insurance was gone. But it turns out that Nancy and Ted’s wife went to the cheese steak place because Nancy was trying to dissuade them from going to Chandler. In fact, Ted wasn’t even supposed to be operated on the day he died.
Megan interrupts Sam’s interrogation of Nancy to share the info about Ted’s wife. Nancy also reveals that they only used one new gun from the pack instead of all 3. So instead of just one tampered gun, they’re looking for two. Chandler had another surgery at 10pm that day and that was likely the intended target. So with Kate being totally kickass, they shut down the hospital. In short order, they find out who the 10pm surgery was and Megan and Peter race off. An ambulance is supposed to meet them there. But there is no ambulance. They find the patient unconscious and lying on the floor. And Megan has to operate to save his life. She’s nervous (last time she performed surgery, the patient died) but Peter tells her that she can do it.
At the lab, Ethan is calling Karen because Curtis discovered that Jessica had a hereditary disorder that caused the clot and Karen (being her identical twin) likely has the same symptoms and risk factors. So Ethan races off to find Karen. He ends up at her sister’s apartment and gets her to go with him. He and Curtis explain what happened and that she needs to medication and to see a doctor. And there may still be hope for romance for her and Ethan. He’s like a little school boy with a crush.
Back at the hospital, Megan starts to figure things out when she talks to George (the guy she saved). He talks about his frat and things really start to click. It turns out Gwen was responsible for Ted’s death. She tampered with the gun because George was the president of the frat where her son died. She wanted revenge. And the bonsai spores gave her away. Later that day, Megan stops by to talk to Candler as he arrives. She makes it clear that he better not have any of her patients in his care ever again. And if he does, his work better be perfect. I have to say, he is really a snarky cocky prick. Definitely reminds me of Riley during season 5.
Kate and Megan have a little heart to heart where Megan learns that by saving George, they found the last staple gun and saved a little boy’s life. Guess things worked out mostly for the best in the end.
“You solved a crime and you saved a life. Not just George White’s.”
- Kate
Overall I thought “Dead Man Walking” was a decent episode. It was a bit whacky and broke form a little bit because we had two cases going at once. And it had Whedon alums, Christina Hendricks (Saffron from Firefly) and Marc Blucas (Riley on Buffy) beefing it up.
We begin with a man walking down the street looking a bit freaked. He stumbles near a staircase and we see an imposing figure following him. The first man (who we later learn is Ted Harbinson) begs for help and then the screen goes black. Cut to Megan and Peter arriving on scene. The scene is only a few blocks from Northeast General (Megan’s previous place of employment). Sam’s working this case alone again. She thinks it was a mugging gone wrong but Megan says the cuts to his body weren’t enough to kill him. One of the other officers on scene recovers the duffle bag the guy had and Megan quickly deduces they are looking for someone who either works at or was recently a patron of a cheese steak place. So Sam and another officer go hoofing it to all the cheese steak places around and just as Sam is getting fed up, they catch the guy.
Back at the lab, Ethan and Curtis have their own case to deal with. A seemingly healthy woman in here thirties, Jessica Archer, was found dead in her hotel room. She died from a giant blood clot (looks like a big leech) blocking her arteries. So now they have to figure out what caused it and the case only gets freakier from there.
In interrogation, Sam finds out that the guy that took Ted’s duffle because it was on the ground and he didn’t see a body fall into the bushes. Meanwhile, Megan and Peter are doing the autopsy on Ted. The other stuff in his bag was kind of odd (accounting magazine and pilot logs). He also had a post-op drug and Megan finds surgical incisions in his stomach. She cuts him open and there’s lots of blood. Definitely not a good thing. Megan’s first instinct is that Ted’s surgeon, Mark Chandler (played by Marc Blucas) is responsible.
Megan and Peter are talking to Ted’s wife and she’s pretty upset about what happened. He told her to go to work and that he’d be fine. They also clear up why he had pilot logs in his bag. He got his license to conquer his fear of flying. And he had the surgery to remove his gallbladder because he’d had problems before. Ethan and Curtis think they have found something on Jessica. She was on the pill and given the location of where she died, they think she just got off a long flight.
Megan and Peter are on their way to Northeast General to talk to Ted’s surgeon and it is admittedly kind of an emotional moment for Megan. She hadn’t been back since she closed her practice and Gwen took over (had a myriad of jobs before becoming a hospital administrator). They walk in to find Gwen pruning a bonsai tree. Apparently it has become an obsession. Thinking it will get her attention, Megan says they’re there to discuss Ted Harbinson and the fact that he died from what appear to be surgery related injuries. Megan and Gwen have a little bonding moment where we learn that Gwen was all distant when Megan had her accident because she (Gwen) lost her son around the same time. He OD’d at a frat party.
The discussion with Dr. Chandler doesn’t go well. He insists that the surgery went perfectly and that he checked everything he was supposed to. He tells Megan to check the videotape of the surgery for proof. But it’s going to be hard to get it since Gwen is now stonewalling them. Adding to the theory that Chandler did it, one of the surgical nurses says that Chandler is reckless and has been known to leaving surgical equipment in patients and then blames it on nurses. Megan’s not happy to hear that.
Back at the lab, Megan is examining Ted’s artery and finds that there were clips on the artery but they’re gone now and she finds them in the blood. She brings Kate and Sam in on it and puts out her theory that it was either malpractice or murder made to look like malpractice. So Sam goes off to try and figure out if Chandler and Ted had any other connection and Megan tells Kate (yes tells, demands even) to go get the tape from Gwen as well as the staple guns used in the surgery.
Back to our other plot of the episode, Ethan gets back to lab and has someone waiting for him, Jessica’s twin sister Karen (played by Christina Hendricks. Yep, she’s the third Whedon alumna to play twins, including Charisma Carpenter and Sarah Michelle Gellar). Ethan’s got quite the crush already. Karen says that she and her sister were close growing up but they’d grown apart as adults. Ethan explains what he believes killed her sister (the blot clot due to deep vein thrombosis) but Karen says that her sister hadn’t been flying. She was staying at the hotel while her apartment was being painted. After some arm-twisting and slight equivocating on Ethan’s part, he agrees to help Karen pack up her sister’s things.
Sam is talking with Ted’s wife and finds out that they didn’t have any connection to Chandler before the surgery. He was a referral from Ted’s wife’s OBGYN. As Sam goes to throw a water bottle in the recycle bin she notices wrappers from the same cheese steak place where the guy who stole Ted’s duffle works. Meanwhile, Kate also gets stonewalled by Gwen. There apparently was no tape. The equipment wasn’t turned on. She phones the mayor (she’s on a first name basis with his secretary) to leverage the fact that the hospital needs the tax breaks from the city council when the general counsel for the hospital says that there really is no tape. But they’re handing over all employee files for personnel who had access to the equipment. And Kate wants access to their bio waste. Poor Curtis and Ethan. They look like giant bananas in their biohazard suits and they got sucked in to sorting waste all because Ethan made a deal with Megan. He and Curtis help her with her case and she helps them with theirs. By luck, Curtis knocks over a box of stuff and out pops the staple guns from Ted’s surgery.
Megan gives Peter a little lesson on what happens to physicians who kill patients on the table. It seems rather depressing honestly (independent commission evaluates but it can take as long as it wants and meanwhile the doctor is still practicing). Megan is a little righteous in saying she could have hid behind malpractice lawyers but she didn’t. Curtis and Ethan show up with the staple guns and after Megan tells them to check for hereditary disorders that could have caused a blood clot, she tests the guns. Two are fine but one was tampered with. And since the equipment is supposed to be kept sterile, Curtis swabbed it and found spores of some kind.
Sam is back at the cheese steak place grilling the guy who took Ted’s bag. He swears he’s never seen her before but the manager has. She was in the restaurant with a nurse (the surgical nurse that Megan and Peter spoke to). And the plot thickens. They’ve had more than two red herrings this week.
At Jessica’s apartment, Ethan is helping Karen move out the rest of her sister’s belonging sand things get kind of emotional and awkward. Megan and company are having a little status pow wow where they discover that Nancy (the surgical nurse) may have had motive to tamper with the equipment. Chandler had written her up multiple times. And Ted’s wife may have been in on it since his life insurance was gone. But it turns out that Nancy and Ted’s wife went to the cheese steak place because Nancy was trying to dissuade them from going to Chandler. In fact, Ted wasn’t even supposed to be operated on the day he died.
Megan interrupts Sam’s interrogation of Nancy to share the info about Ted’s wife. Nancy also reveals that they only used one new gun from the pack instead of all 3. So instead of just one tampered gun, they’re looking for two. Chandler had another surgery at 10pm that day and that was likely the intended target. So with Kate being totally kickass, they shut down the hospital. In short order, they find out who the 10pm surgery was and Megan and Peter race off. An ambulance is supposed to meet them there. But there is no ambulance. They find the patient unconscious and lying on the floor. And Megan has to operate to save his life. She’s nervous (last time she performed surgery, the patient died) but Peter tells her that she can do it.
At the lab, Ethan is calling Karen because Curtis discovered that Jessica had a hereditary disorder that caused the clot and Karen (being her identical twin) likely has the same symptoms and risk factors. So Ethan races off to find Karen. He ends up at her sister’s apartment and gets her to go with him. He and Curtis explain what happened and that she needs to medication and to see a doctor. And there may still be hope for romance for her and Ethan. He’s like a little school boy with a crush.
Back at the hospital, Megan starts to figure things out when she talks to George (the guy she saved). He talks about his frat and things really start to click. It turns out Gwen was responsible for Ted’s death. She tampered with the gun because George was the president of the frat where her son died. She wanted revenge. And the bonsai spores gave her away. Later that day, Megan stops by to talk to Candler as he arrives. She makes it clear that he better not have any of her patients in his care ever again. And if he does, his work better be perfect. I have to say, he is really a snarky cocky prick. Definitely reminds me of Riley during season 5.
Kate and Megan have a little heart to heart where Megan learns that by saving George, they found the last staple gun and saved a little boy’s life. Guess things worked out mostly for the best in the end.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Body of Proof - "Talking Heads"
Body of Proof 1.04: “Talking Heads”
‘We’re trying to understand how this man died based on the parts we can see and it’s getting us nowhere. Has it ever occurred to you that Lacey is trying to understand you but all she can see are the parts that you’re willing to show her?”
- Ethan
Unlike the last couple episodes, we begin not with the murder itself but with a homeless man finding what appears to be a dead body while he’s out collecting bottles. We cut to Megan dropping Lacey off at the library which is kind of a nice bonding moment. Then again, Megan’s ex called her last minute to be a parental taxi. Still, Megan doesn’t seem to mind. Until Lacey asks if she can film Megan at work for a school project. Megan tries to say that her job isn’t really conducive to filming (or likely a safe place for a twelve-year-old) but Lacey assumes it is a yes. At the crime scene, we find Sam working the case solo because Bud is off at court. In short order Megan discovers that the hand and foot they found aren’t actually connected. Their victim has been dismembered.
Megan gets the body parts back to lab and is rather surprised to see Kate in scrubs. I have to say I was quite happy to see Jeri getting her hands dirty. We get a little montage of the two of them examining the hand and foot and then our team has a little pow wow to share what they’ve discovered. The hand and foot belong to the same person, a man likely in his 50s who was a welder. Megan also points out that he likely had sunglasses because the UV radiation from welding causes sensitivity to light. They also find a stamp from a casino on the hand. And lucky for them, Kate’s got an in with the casino general manager (she plays a mean game of Texas hold ‘em).
At the casino, the manager identifies their victim as Cal. He didn’t play a lot of big games until the week before when he won big ($25,000). And the surveillance show he was with a woman named Wendy who tries to separate the winners from their earnings. Though according to Wendy when she talked to Sam at the station, she wasn’t successful in getting him to spend much. She saw him get into a dark sports car with some mystery guy. At the lab Ethan finds some sort of stuff under Cal’s big toe which Peter identifies as cilantro. So the two of them and Megan head out to search near the crime scene and end up finding two more body parts as Megan panics about not being at the lab when Lacey arrives.
Ethan discovers that the knee had a replacement in it and gave Peter the serial number to track down. Megan sends Ethan back to the dump to try and find more body parts. Just as Megan’s heading back to her office, Lacey shows up. Megan gives her all the rules (including no filming of bodies) and a schedule and list of questions to ask all of Megan’s co-workers, starting with Kate. Meanwhile, Peter’s gotten the serial number results back and they have a positive ID on their victim. He’s got a daughter and son-in-law and things don’t really go well at the notification. I still don’t get how Megan can get away with going on next of kin notifications but whatever. His daughter loved him but her husband was not a fan. He felt his father-in-law was too needy and always asking for money and he’s really pissed to find out that Cal won big at the casino.
Back at the lab, Lacey is interviewing Kate and while Kate tries to stick to the script, Lacey’s more interested in seeing dead bodies and finding out that her mom is the boss even though she’s not technically the boss. It’s an interesting scene to get Kate’s take on Megan. Sam and Peter head to Cal’s apartment to look around. At first they don’t find anything but back at the lab Megan realizes that Cal’s body was frozen. So she calls Peter and he and Sam find the rest of Cal packaged in little green plastic bags in the freezer. Yeah, because that’s not creepy at all.
Megan shows up at the scene to find out that Cal’s head is still missing. Would be too easy if the head was with the rest of the remains. And it looks like the bathtub was the dismemberment point. CSU sets to cleaning out the drains to see what they can find. Back at the lab, Ethan gets back from the dump and finds Lacey waiting for him. He tries to be cool but it kind of doesn’t work. He mentions Megan’s questions but Lacey has a point. They’re kind of lame and they don’t really show her what her mom does. Still, she can’t see the dead body of the week.
Megan has Curtis run a tissue sample to see what kind of arthritis medication Cal was on while she and Kate determine that the killer was right handed and find a smudge above the wrist (hopefully transfer from the casino mystery man). Back at Cal’s apartment they discover that $25,000 is also missing and CSU finds a blue contact lens in the sink drain. The photo in Cal’s apartment of his daughter shows she has brown eyes but during the notification she had blue eyes. So, Sam and Peter head back to the daughter’s house and find her and her husband arguing over (quite literally) a giant pile of money.
Peter and Sam are interviewing the daughter and husband and it’s still a crap shoot about who to believe. The daughter says her dad gave her the money so she could get out of her marriage and follow her dream of going to art school. The husband was just surprised to find out Cal was getting social security money in the amount of $500 every other week. Megan gets back to the lab and Lacey immediately asks about the dismembered body. She says that Ethan told and Megan is pissed. She tells Ethan (in private) that she doesn’t want Lacey to see things in the wrong content and that seeing one’s first dead body is traumatic. But Ethan makes the point that maybe Lacey is trying to get to know and understand her mom but she can’t because Megan will only let her see certain aspects. As they finish talking, Ethan finds something in one of Cal’s arteries.
Meanwhile, Lacey is supposed to be talking to Curtis but she doesn’t see the point since her mom is just controlling everything. So Curtis says to hell with Megan’s list of questions and shows Lacey a slide under the microscope. The smudges on the wrist were cigarette ash. And one would need to be a pretty heavy smoker to have that much buildup on your fingertips. Megan catches Curtis showing Lacey the slide and tells him to call Sam with the information and find out what brand Cal’s neighbor smokes. Sam confronts him and finds out that he went out for a guy’s night and saw Cal at the casino and helped him home. He didn’t mention it during the canvas because he knew his wife would get pissed off. Apparently she hated Cal for blaring his music so loud that they had to soundproof their whole apartment so their baby could sleep. Sam says she can’t believe staying home all day with the baby is that hard with a full time nanny. The neighbor is shocked to even hear the word.
At the lab, Megan sits down with Lacey and talks to her about what she does in a very matter of fact but relatable way. She talks to Lacey about what her hand tells about her life and then shows her the photo of Cal’s hand and what it says about him. She tries to impart in her daughter that the victims they see aren’t just dead bodies but it is the story of the life they lived and how they died. She even shows Lacey the tissue Ethan found in Cal’s artery. And it turns out Lacey may help lead to a breakthrough in the case.
We hop over to a status pow wow trying to figure out what they know. They still can’t decide on who the killer is or even how it happened. Enter Megan and Lacey. Megan says it was blunt force trauma to the head. When Ethan remarks that they still don’t’ have the head, Megan says that they don’t need the head either. Cal was struck so hard on the head that some of his brain tissue travelled into his heart. Right then, Curtis comes back with the arthritis medication Cal was taking. It had to be by injection and given how weak his hands were, he had to have someone do it for him. Ah, the pieces are falling into place. Megan gets a call from her ex-husband that he’s there to pick up Lacey but she doesn’t one leave. She wants to see how the case turns out.
Just then Sam shows up with her own news. Megan tasks Peter with getting Lacey down to her dad while she fills Sam in on what she found out. They’ve got the same person. The woman who claimed she was the nanny for Cal’s neighbor. The name she gave isn’t real. Sam finds out her real name and brings her in for questioning. Sam’s attempt to get her to talk fails miserably. So Megan gives it a try. And she’s much more successful. According to the woman, she liked Cal. He paid her under the table and he was going to help her bring her son to the States. But the day he died, she found him in the bathtub. It looked like he’d fallen and his hit head (blunt force trauma and the blood pattern in the tub). She cut him up because if he was found dead, her attempts at finalizing immigration status would be off. Megan says she believes her but that she needs the head for proof. So they head back to the dumpsters and they find his head in a green bag. But there was a second wound in his head. It turns out it was the landlord. He wanted Cal out because he was the last rent controlled tenant.
Cal’s daughter comes by the morgue to pick up her father’s remains to have them cremated. She’s leaving her husband and going back to art school. Her dad would be so proud. Later that night, Peter stops by to find Megan still in her office working. She swears she’s wrapping it up. Peter says the DA is deporting Cal’s caretaker instead of filing charges against her. As Peter leaves for the night, Megan gets an email from Lacey with the video she’s put together. It has clips from everyone at the lab and it really is a great video and it really shows Megan that Lacey gets who she is and what she does.
‘We’re trying to understand how this man died based on the parts we can see and it’s getting us nowhere. Has it ever occurred to you that Lacey is trying to understand you but all she can see are the parts that you’re willing to show her?”
- Ethan
Unlike the last couple episodes, we begin not with the murder itself but with a homeless man finding what appears to be a dead body while he’s out collecting bottles. We cut to Megan dropping Lacey off at the library which is kind of a nice bonding moment. Then again, Megan’s ex called her last minute to be a parental taxi. Still, Megan doesn’t seem to mind. Until Lacey asks if she can film Megan at work for a school project. Megan tries to say that her job isn’t really conducive to filming (or likely a safe place for a twelve-year-old) but Lacey assumes it is a yes. At the crime scene, we find Sam working the case solo because Bud is off at court. In short order Megan discovers that the hand and foot they found aren’t actually connected. Their victim has been dismembered.
Megan gets the body parts back to lab and is rather surprised to see Kate in scrubs. I have to say I was quite happy to see Jeri getting her hands dirty. We get a little montage of the two of them examining the hand and foot and then our team has a little pow wow to share what they’ve discovered. The hand and foot belong to the same person, a man likely in his 50s who was a welder. Megan also points out that he likely had sunglasses because the UV radiation from welding causes sensitivity to light. They also find a stamp from a casino on the hand. And lucky for them, Kate’s got an in with the casino general manager (she plays a mean game of Texas hold ‘em).
At the casino, the manager identifies their victim as Cal. He didn’t play a lot of big games until the week before when he won big ($25,000). And the surveillance show he was with a woman named Wendy who tries to separate the winners from their earnings. Though according to Wendy when she talked to Sam at the station, she wasn’t successful in getting him to spend much. She saw him get into a dark sports car with some mystery guy. At the lab Ethan finds some sort of stuff under Cal’s big toe which Peter identifies as cilantro. So the two of them and Megan head out to search near the crime scene and end up finding two more body parts as Megan panics about not being at the lab when Lacey arrives.
Ethan discovers that the knee had a replacement in it and gave Peter the serial number to track down. Megan sends Ethan back to the dump to try and find more body parts. Just as Megan’s heading back to her office, Lacey shows up. Megan gives her all the rules (including no filming of bodies) and a schedule and list of questions to ask all of Megan’s co-workers, starting with Kate. Meanwhile, Peter’s gotten the serial number results back and they have a positive ID on their victim. He’s got a daughter and son-in-law and things don’t really go well at the notification. I still don’t get how Megan can get away with going on next of kin notifications but whatever. His daughter loved him but her husband was not a fan. He felt his father-in-law was too needy and always asking for money and he’s really pissed to find out that Cal won big at the casino.
Back at the lab, Lacey is interviewing Kate and while Kate tries to stick to the script, Lacey’s more interested in seeing dead bodies and finding out that her mom is the boss even though she’s not technically the boss. It’s an interesting scene to get Kate’s take on Megan. Sam and Peter head to Cal’s apartment to look around. At first they don’t find anything but back at the lab Megan realizes that Cal’s body was frozen. So she calls Peter and he and Sam find the rest of Cal packaged in little green plastic bags in the freezer. Yeah, because that’s not creepy at all.
Megan shows up at the scene to find out that Cal’s head is still missing. Would be too easy if the head was with the rest of the remains. And it looks like the bathtub was the dismemberment point. CSU sets to cleaning out the drains to see what they can find. Back at the lab, Ethan gets back from the dump and finds Lacey waiting for him. He tries to be cool but it kind of doesn’t work. He mentions Megan’s questions but Lacey has a point. They’re kind of lame and they don’t really show her what her mom does. Still, she can’t see the dead body of the week.
Megan has Curtis run a tissue sample to see what kind of arthritis medication Cal was on while she and Kate determine that the killer was right handed and find a smudge above the wrist (hopefully transfer from the casino mystery man). Back at Cal’s apartment they discover that $25,000 is also missing and CSU finds a blue contact lens in the sink drain. The photo in Cal’s apartment of his daughter shows she has brown eyes but during the notification she had blue eyes. So, Sam and Peter head back to the daughter’s house and find her and her husband arguing over (quite literally) a giant pile of money.
Peter and Sam are interviewing the daughter and husband and it’s still a crap shoot about who to believe. The daughter says her dad gave her the money so she could get out of her marriage and follow her dream of going to art school. The husband was just surprised to find out Cal was getting social security money in the amount of $500 every other week. Megan gets back to the lab and Lacey immediately asks about the dismembered body. She says that Ethan told and Megan is pissed. She tells Ethan (in private) that she doesn’t want Lacey to see things in the wrong content and that seeing one’s first dead body is traumatic. But Ethan makes the point that maybe Lacey is trying to get to know and understand her mom but she can’t because Megan will only let her see certain aspects. As they finish talking, Ethan finds something in one of Cal’s arteries.
Meanwhile, Lacey is supposed to be talking to Curtis but she doesn’t see the point since her mom is just controlling everything. So Curtis says to hell with Megan’s list of questions and shows Lacey a slide under the microscope. The smudges on the wrist were cigarette ash. And one would need to be a pretty heavy smoker to have that much buildup on your fingertips. Megan catches Curtis showing Lacey the slide and tells him to call Sam with the information and find out what brand Cal’s neighbor smokes. Sam confronts him and finds out that he went out for a guy’s night and saw Cal at the casino and helped him home. He didn’t mention it during the canvas because he knew his wife would get pissed off. Apparently she hated Cal for blaring his music so loud that they had to soundproof their whole apartment so their baby could sleep. Sam says she can’t believe staying home all day with the baby is that hard with a full time nanny. The neighbor is shocked to even hear the word.
At the lab, Megan sits down with Lacey and talks to her about what she does in a very matter of fact but relatable way. She talks to Lacey about what her hand tells about her life and then shows her the photo of Cal’s hand and what it says about him. She tries to impart in her daughter that the victims they see aren’t just dead bodies but it is the story of the life they lived and how they died. She even shows Lacey the tissue Ethan found in Cal’s artery. And it turns out Lacey may help lead to a breakthrough in the case.
We hop over to a status pow wow trying to figure out what they know. They still can’t decide on who the killer is or even how it happened. Enter Megan and Lacey. Megan says it was blunt force trauma to the head. When Ethan remarks that they still don’t’ have the head, Megan says that they don’t need the head either. Cal was struck so hard on the head that some of his brain tissue travelled into his heart. Right then, Curtis comes back with the arthritis medication Cal was taking. It had to be by injection and given how weak his hands were, he had to have someone do it for him. Ah, the pieces are falling into place. Megan gets a call from her ex-husband that he’s there to pick up Lacey but she doesn’t one leave. She wants to see how the case turns out.
Just then Sam shows up with her own news. Megan tasks Peter with getting Lacey down to her dad while she fills Sam in on what she found out. They’ve got the same person. The woman who claimed she was the nanny for Cal’s neighbor. The name she gave isn’t real. Sam finds out her real name and brings her in for questioning. Sam’s attempt to get her to talk fails miserably. So Megan gives it a try. And she’s much more successful. According to the woman, she liked Cal. He paid her under the table and he was going to help her bring her son to the States. But the day he died, she found him in the bathtub. It looked like he’d fallen and his hit head (blunt force trauma and the blood pattern in the tub). She cut him up because if he was found dead, her attempts at finalizing immigration status would be off. Megan says she believes her but that she needs the head for proof. So they head back to the dumpsters and they find his head in a green bag. But there was a second wound in his head. It turns out it was the landlord. He wanted Cal out because he was the last rent controlled tenant.
Cal’s daughter comes by the morgue to pick up her father’s remains to have them cremated. She’s leaving her husband and going back to art school. Her dad would be so proud. Later that night, Peter stops by to find Megan still in her office working. She swears she’s wrapping it up. Peter says the DA is deporting Cal’s caretaker instead of filing charges against her. As Peter leaves for the night, Megan gets an email from Lacey with the video she’s put together. It has clips from everyone at the lab and it really is a great video and it really shows Megan that Lacey gets who she is and what she does.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Body of Proof - "Helping Hand"
Body of Proof 1.03: “Helping Hand”
“It’s not that hard, you know. To connect with people. Just take an interest.”
- Kate
Much like “Letting Go” we begin with the murder of the episode. A young Hispanic woman is shot and dies. Next thing we know, Megan is arriving on scene. She was supposed to have a day off but someone’s wife had a baby and so she got called in. Detective Morris is in a rather unpleasant mood as Megan examines the scene. The victim is Elena Rosas. She looks very out of place in the dingy motel room in a nice business suit. Morris is still cranky when Megan says she can’t give him a cause of death because there’s a distinct lack of blood around the body (even though she was shot). Outside, Sam and Peter share a look and Megan’s left wondering what she’s missing. She doesn’t really know much about the people she works with. That’s kind of the theme of the episode.
At autopsy, Megan finds Ethan rearranging her surgical instruments because someone put them out of order. Megan is a little disturbed that Ethan knows the order she likes her instruments but she dismisses it quickly. She does however ask Peter what was up at the crime scene. He tells her that Bud is having issues with his wife. Megan is clueless to his situation obviously because she thought he was already divorced. They discover that Elena did die from a gunshot wound to her arm because it passed through her arm and into her torso and caused massive internal bleeding. While going over the other x-rays, Megan notices surgical clips on Elena’s skull and like a true neurosurgeon, has to investigate. In short order she discovers to her extreme surprise that Elena was one of her patients.
Megan’s in her office brooding over the fact that she didn’t remember Elena was her patient when Peter walks in. He wants to know what tipped her off in the first place and Megan explains that surgeons have certain techniques they use, like a signature and Megan recognized her own. She requested Elena’s file from Northeast General, which Kate delivers and Megan remembers Elena (after reading the file). Megan’s pissed at herself for not remembering Elena as a person but as a surgical procedure and is determined to find her killer.
Down in the lab, Ethan tells Curtis that the crusty stain on Elena’s blouse was breast milk but not from her baby because she’d never been pregnant. The plot thickens. Meanwhile, Megan is meeting with Elena’s father. He’s surprised to see her there. He tells Megan that Elena was inspired by her and became a social worker with Child Protective Services in order to help people. Sam, Peter and Megan head over to CPS (Bud is taking a long lunch) and meet with Elena’s boss, Jeremy. He confirms that she was dedicated and that morning had 5 home visits. Unlike a lot of the staff, Elena continued following up on cases until she was satisfied the child was in a safe environment. They head out and discover that Holly Bennett was the only visit Elena got to. And she’s got a baby. She confirms that Holly was good to her and helped convince her to throw her cocaine addicted boyfriend out. That morning, Elena got a call that freaked her out and she left in a hurry.
Megan is examining the bullet fragment from Elena’s chest when Kate stops by. She asks how things are going and Megan says that she’s examining the bullet while Sam goes through Elena’s case files. Kate says that it isn’t hard to connect with people. She just needs to take an interest and again, Megan is kind of clueless. Kate changes the subject back to the bullet and Megan reveals that the bullet hit someone else before hitting Elena.
The gang is having a case status pow wow and Megan’s still hung up on why Elena was in the dingy motel room to begin with. Morris posits she’s a prostitute and that just gets Megan annoyed. She smacks him in the arm and notices his suit jacket has a big hole in the seam (pus he just generally looks like crap). They head over to talk to Elena’s father again to see if maybe she was seeing someone her father didn’t know about. Megan and Morris are looking around Elena’s room and Megan asks how Morris is doing. He ends up spilling his guts to her but she’s distracted by a photo of Elena and herself after Elena’s brain surgery. They discover by fluke a card that came with flowers, signed by Elena’s boss.
They bring him in for questioning and Jeremy explains that he was interested in Elena but she didn’t really return the affections. She didn’t want to date her boss. It turns out while he was trying to get Elena to reconsider, she had a seizure. He tried to help her and that’s where the bruises on her arms and the abrasions on her lips came from. She bit him during the seizure and once she was recovered, he left.
Megan is examining Elena’s brain to see if she really did have a seizure when Curtis feeds her some info on Ethan (after she asks Curtis how he’s doing). It ends up being a pretty funny result later on. Kate shows up with the results on the foreign tissue from the bullet. It belongs to Sean Wilcox, a kid who just got out of juvenile detention for weapons possession. The cops find him with Elena’s car and they tackle him at a junk yard. They take him to the hospital because the bullet grazed his neck and it’s now infected. Sean appears to be suspect #1. He got busted for having a gun by Elena when he was still in foster care so it would seem he had motive. But he explained that Elena visited him every week while he was locked up to show that she wasn’t going to give up on him. She got the hotel room for him while he looked for a job. He fell asleep and when he woke up she was back and then someone shot them. It also turns out he’d called the same number six times that day. And meet suspect #2, Vincent Stone. He owns the junkyard where the cops cornered Sean. Vincent claims to be a father figure to Sean but it turns out he was really using Sean to do his dirty work. Elena confronted him and she used pepper spray (colored with dye now to mark the attacker). He was responsible for the call that got Elena back to the hotel.
Megan’s examining the swabs from Sean’s neck to get her own results. Ethan helps out and in short order Megan figures out Curtis was messing with her about Ethan’s interests. Ethan seems pretty confused by the whole thing but I think it was an interesting comic relief. They do however bond over their love of science. Right at the end of their conversation, Megan discovers that Sean had an infection that only results from pigeon droppings. Megan calls Morris to fill him in and they figure out that the shot that killed Elena went through the motel room window. The shooter was standing outside. Morris gets Peter and Sam to line up so they can figure out how far away the shooter was standing. They find a shell casing.
Peter heads over to the hospital to get Sean to help them get back on to Vincent’s property to search for guns. Peter reveals that he too was a foster kid and he was one of the lucky kids to get adopted by a great family. But he can empathize with Sean about feeling like any hand that reaches out to help should be taken. Sean ends up telling them where the guns are, giving them probable cause. The cops find a trunk full of guns. Lots of ballistics to test!
Megan walks in on Kate prepping for an early dinner date and is quite impressed. So was I. Great color dress on Jeri (kind of a pinkish orange). Then again she could wear a potato sack and I’d think she was gorgeous. Anyway, Kate congratulates Megan on the fungal infection finding. Kate’s bemoaning the fact that they didn’t have any prints or DNA to help match the gun. All they found was rice flour. And Megan knows who the killer is. Rice flour is used in baby cereal. Megan, in short order, explains that she ran a toxicological panel on the dried breast milk. There was evidence of cocaine in the results. Elena found out that Holly was using again and was going to take her daughter away. And now she’s lost both a woman who cared about her and her daughter.
Megan wants to be the one to deliver the news to Elena’s father. He’s still devastated that it was her work that got her killed. He was proud of his daughter but he worried about her every time she left the house. That night, Megan finds Bud about to sleep in his car (his trunk is full of clothes and such). She offers to fix his suit jacket for him and they have a brief discussion about how you can miss the signs right in front of you that things aren’t working anymore. It’s unclear if Bud is going to get a divorce but they really connected.
“It’s not that hard, you know. To connect with people. Just take an interest.”
- Kate
Much like “Letting Go” we begin with the murder of the episode. A young Hispanic woman is shot and dies. Next thing we know, Megan is arriving on scene. She was supposed to have a day off but someone’s wife had a baby and so she got called in. Detective Morris is in a rather unpleasant mood as Megan examines the scene. The victim is Elena Rosas. She looks very out of place in the dingy motel room in a nice business suit. Morris is still cranky when Megan says she can’t give him a cause of death because there’s a distinct lack of blood around the body (even though she was shot). Outside, Sam and Peter share a look and Megan’s left wondering what she’s missing. She doesn’t really know much about the people she works with. That’s kind of the theme of the episode.
At autopsy, Megan finds Ethan rearranging her surgical instruments because someone put them out of order. Megan is a little disturbed that Ethan knows the order she likes her instruments but she dismisses it quickly. She does however ask Peter what was up at the crime scene. He tells her that Bud is having issues with his wife. Megan is clueless to his situation obviously because she thought he was already divorced. They discover that Elena did die from a gunshot wound to her arm because it passed through her arm and into her torso and caused massive internal bleeding. While going over the other x-rays, Megan notices surgical clips on Elena’s skull and like a true neurosurgeon, has to investigate. In short order she discovers to her extreme surprise that Elena was one of her patients.
Megan’s in her office brooding over the fact that she didn’t remember Elena was her patient when Peter walks in. He wants to know what tipped her off in the first place and Megan explains that surgeons have certain techniques they use, like a signature and Megan recognized her own. She requested Elena’s file from Northeast General, which Kate delivers and Megan remembers Elena (after reading the file). Megan’s pissed at herself for not remembering Elena as a person but as a surgical procedure and is determined to find her killer.
Down in the lab, Ethan tells Curtis that the crusty stain on Elena’s blouse was breast milk but not from her baby because she’d never been pregnant. The plot thickens. Meanwhile, Megan is meeting with Elena’s father. He’s surprised to see her there. He tells Megan that Elena was inspired by her and became a social worker with Child Protective Services in order to help people. Sam, Peter and Megan head over to CPS (Bud is taking a long lunch) and meet with Elena’s boss, Jeremy. He confirms that she was dedicated and that morning had 5 home visits. Unlike a lot of the staff, Elena continued following up on cases until she was satisfied the child was in a safe environment. They head out and discover that Holly Bennett was the only visit Elena got to. And she’s got a baby. She confirms that Holly was good to her and helped convince her to throw her cocaine addicted boyfriend out. That morning, Elena got a call that freaked her out and she left in a hurry.
Megan is examining the bullet fragment from Elena’s chest when Kate stops by. She asks how things are going and Megan says that she’s examining the bullet while Sam goes through Elena’s case files. Kate says that it isn’t hard to connect with people. She just needs to take an interest and again, Megan is kind of clueless. Kate changes the subject back to the bullet and Megan reveals that the bullet hit someone else before hitting Elena.
The gang is having a case status pow wow and Megan’s still hung up on why Elena was in the dingy motel room to begin with. Morris posits she’s a prostitute and that just gets Megan annoyed. She smacks him in the arm and notices his suit jacket has a big hole in the seam (pus he just generally looks like crap). They head over to talk to Elena’s father again to see if maybe she was seeing someone her father didn’t know about. Megan and Morris are looking around Elena’s room and Megan asks how Morris is doing. He ends up spilling his guts to her but she’s distracted by a photo of Elena and herself after Elena’s brain surgery. They discover by fluke a card that came with flowers, signed by Elena’s boss.
They bring him in for questioning and Jeremy explains that he was interested in Elena but she didn’t really return the affections. She didn’t want to date her boss. It turns out while he was trying to get Elena to reconsider, she had a seizure. He tried to help her and that’s where the bruises on her arms and the abrasions on her lips came from. She bit him during the seizure and once she was recovered, he left.
Megan is examining Elena’s brain to see if she really did have a seizure when Curtis feeds her some info on Ethan (after she asks Curtis how he’s doing). It ends up being a pretty funny result later on. Kate shows up with the results on the foreign tissue from the bullet. It belongs to Sean Wilcox, a kid who just got out of juvenile detention for weapons possession. The cops find him with Elena’s car and they tackle him at a junk yard. They take him to the hospital because the bullet grazed his neck and it’s now infected. Sean appears to be suspect #1. He got busted for having a gun by Elena when he was still in foster care so it would seem he had motive. But he explained that Elena visited him every week while he was locked up to show that she wasn’t going to give up on him. She got the hotel room for him while he looked for a job. He fell asleep and when he woke up she was back and then someone shot them. It also turns out he’d called the same number six times that day. And meet suspect #2, Vincent Stone. He owns the junkyard where the cops cornered Sean. Vincent claims to be a father figure to Sean but it turns out he was really using Sean to do his dirty work. Elena confronted him and she used pepper spray (colored with dye now to mark the attacker). He was responsible for the call that got Elena back to the hotel.
Megan’s examining the swabs from Sean’s neck to get her own results. Ethan helps out and in short order Megan figures out Curtis was messing with her about Ethan’s interests. Ethan seems pretty confused by the whole thing but I think it was an interesting comic relief. They do however bond over their love of science. Right at the end of their conversation, Megan discovers that Sean had an infection that only results from pigeon droppings. Megan calls Morris to fill him in and they figure out that the shot that killed Elena went through the motel room window. The shooter was standing outside. Morris gets Peter and Sam to line up so they can figure out how far away the shooter was standing. They find a shell casing.
Peter heads over to the hospital to get Sean to help them get back on to Vincent’s property to search for guns. Peter reveals that he too was a foster kid and he was one of the lucky kids to get adopted by a great family. But he can empathize with Sean about feeling like any hand that reaches out to help should be taken. Sean ends up telling them where the guns are, giving them probable cause. The cops find a trunk full of guns. Lots of ballistics to test!
Megan walks in on Kate prepping for an early dinner date and is quite impressed. So was I. Great color dress on Jeri (kind of a pinkish orange). Then again she could wear a potato sack and I’d think she was gorgeous. Anyway, Kate congratulates Megan on the fungal infection finding. Kate’s bemoaning the fact that they didn’t have any prints or DNA to help match the gun. All they found was rice flour. And Megan knows who the killer is. Rice flour is used in baby cereal. Megan, in short order, explains that she ran a toxicological panel on the dried breast milk. There was evidence of cocaine in the results. Elena found out that Holly was using again and was going to take her daughter away. And now she’s lost both a woman who cared about her and her daughter.
Megan wants to be the one to deliver the news to Elena’s father. He’s still devastated that it was her work that got her killed. He was proud of his daughter but he worried about her every time she left the house. That night, Megan finds Bud about to sleep in his car (his trunk is full of clothes and such). She offers to fix his suit jacket for him and they have a brief discussion about how you can miss the signs right in front of you that things aren’t working anymore. It’s unclear if Bud is going to get a divorce but they really connected.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Body of Proof - "Letting Go"
Body of Proof 1.02: “Letting Go”
“I care about the dead because they can’t speak for themselves. The living are on their own.”
- Megan
We begin at night and the camera pans over a car until there is a loud gunshot. Night melds into day and Megan shows up and is greeted by Peter. She’s surprised to see Detective Morris and Baker again. She wasn’t expecting to work a second case with them so soon. The victims for the episode are an interracial couple; Dave and Linda. It appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder –suicide but Megan quickly dispels the theory. She points out that Dave was left handed (based on calluses and bruises on his left hand and the fact that his wallet was in his left back pocket) and since the gun was in his right hand, he couldn’t have done it.
As they leave the scene, Megan calls Lacey to see if she wanted to spend time together and they end up deciding on lunch the next day (Lacey doesn’t sound too thrilled). It doesn’t help that it seems Megan’s hands are acting up again. Megan fills Peter in on the birthday present and cake from the episode before and that she’s trying to get a life (despite Peter telling her to take it slow). Back at the lab, Kate tells Megan to bring Ethan and Curtis on for the case. Peter points out it probably wasn’t a coincidence that Baker and Morris were assigned to them. Kate figured it would be easier to keep Megan contained if she was only knocking heads with two detectives instead of the whole department. I have to say, it was probably a smart move on Kate’s part.
During autopsy, Morris is his usual impatient self. He wants the bullets so he can close the case (he’s still rooting for murder-suicide). Too bad Megan’s in no hurry. It turns out Dave and Linda were an unlikely pair. One came from a rich family and went to a prestigious college while the other came from an immigrant family and joined the navy. Megan and company determine that Linda had a previous spinal injury that .left scarring and had hair extensions that left permanent damage to her scalp. Dave wasn’t without his own story to tell. There was a rough patch on his arm. And then there’s the matter of two bullets in Dave’s head. It’s pretty impossible to shoot yourself in the head twice. They’re definitely dealing with a double homicide.
After a little digging the team finds out that Linda suffered a tragic car accident several years earlier that broke her neck in three places. And Ethan discovered signs of potential alcoholism or bulimia. Dave had been complaining about breathing issues shortly before his death. Megan dispenses Curtis and Ethan to figure out what was causing Dave’s lung issues and Peter gets Morris and Baker to figure out where the couple’s last meal (burgers and green fries) came from. It seems our charming detectives may be on to something when Morris remembers there’s a place nearby that on weekends is crazy and servers burgers, fries and water ice.
Back at the lab, Kate is meeting with Linda’s parents. Megan joins them and after hearing that Linda’s parents blame Dave, explains that it was a double homicide. She tries to get as much info out of them as she can and she gets a name; Brian. He was Linda’s most recent boyfriend (even though she ended it three months earlier). He did own a restaurant that he owns that Linda worked at. After Linda’s parents leave, Megan fills Kate in on what the police are doing and upon Kate’s direction, she and Peter go to check out Brian. He’s a total jerk. He says that he hasn’t seen Linda in months and he never met Dave. Peter tries to keep Brian occupied while Megan talks to the newest hostess, Nina. It’s pretty obvious Nina is scared of Brian. But before Megan can get much information, Brian kicks them out.
Meanwhile, Morris and Baker are following up on a lead of their own. A guy named Eric Singleton was seen arguing with Dave. It turns out Eric didn’t like that Dave was with a black girl (oh white supremacist bullshit). Eric’s mouth gets him in trouble with Sam. She doesn’t take kindly to him trash talking African American women and shoves him up against a wall and searches him (presumably a Terry frisk since it is unlikely at this point they have probable cause). She ends up finding a giant bruise on Eric’s ribs. Looks like they did more than talk. Dave landed a pretty good blow.
Peter and Megan stop off at Lacey’s riding lesson so Megan can say hi. Peter warns her that it’s not a good idea to push Lacey. After all, she’s only just starting to open up after five years of blaming her mom for the divorce. Things go horribly. Lacey is pissed that her mom showed up and rides off before Megan say anything. Family drama will have to take a back seat, unfortunately. Curtis confirms that Linda had bulimia but only for a short time (likely after she started working for Brian). And Megan proves Dave was the restaurant the night he and Linda die. He had residue from the materials Brian used to clean his bar on his arm.
Megan, Peter, Kate, Morris and Baker have a little pow wow to catch up on the case and after Megan fills them in on Linda’s condition and the fact that Dave was at Brian’s restaurant the night of the murder, they head over to have another chat. It doesn’t really go well. They leave with a shaky alibi for Brian. He was with Nina (or so she says). Morris is still insisting their skinhead Eric is the perp but Megan is free to continue pursuing Brian if she wants. And she will. She plans on using Peter to get Nina away from Brian.
Meanwhile, Ethan’s figured out that Dave was suffering from asbestos in his lungs. He drags Curtis to Dave’s latest construction job and they scoop up some soil samples to test back at the lab and barely make it out of there before two burly construction workers come chasing after them.
Megan gets her lunch with Lacey but it goes about as well as showing up at the riding lesson. Lacey isn’t ready to bond with her mom and leaves. She’s kind of moody for a twelve-year-old. It seems that Peter has a way with things regarding Lacey. He was right about what Megan should get her for her birthday and he was right about not pushing things. He’s a smart guy that medical legal investigator! As Megan sits there and wipes at her eyes, she smudges her makeup. Breakthrough! She discovers the killer closed Linda’s eyes, leaving behind gunshot residue and DNA.
Megan’s plan to get Nina away from Brian is in motion and she needs Kate’s help to pull it off. Meanwhile, Morris and Baker have Lonnie (an associate of Eric’s) in for questioning and they learn that shortly before they arrived the previous day, Eric had ditched his jacket with blood on it. Now that’s what you call probable cause. They find the jacket in a dumpster and match the blood to Linda. Peter calls Brian’s restaurant and tells Nina that Brian’s house is on fire. It works. He convinces Linda to go with him to the morgue. And Megan and Kate introduce her to Linda. They convince Nina to leave Brian and go to a shelter to get away from Brian. But the truth is, he was with her at the time of the murders. I have to say I was pleased with the increased amount of Jeri Ryan in this episode. It almost made up for the lack of Sherlock-ness on Megan’s part.
Curtis and Ethan confirm that the asbestos in Dave’s lungs came from the job site. So Megan sends Ethan and Peter to investigate while she sits in with Kate and Linda’s mom. Megan explains that they know Linda was bulimic and had hair extensions. The main thrust of the conversation revealed that Linda’s mom knew they were wrong about Dave. He showed up at their house and asked to marry Linda. They said no.
Peter confronts the foreman at the construction site and says the EPA is on their way to handle the violation. Peter discovers that Dave asked his boss for an advance to buy an engagement ring. A ring that the cops find at Eric’s apartment. He admits he followed them to the murder scene but Linda and Dave were already dead. Peter asks how lunch went (and mentioned that her hand problems are probably psychosomatic). Megan isn’t pleased and gets defensive. And then she kind of breaks down when she demands to know when she gave up the right to be involved in her daughter’s life. Curtis interrupts the moment saying that the DNA results from Linda’s eyelids came back. Now they just need someone to compare it to.
While watching Eric’s interrogation, Megan has a revelation. Tears could have made the makeup smudge. Kate tells Linda’s parents they can come pick up their daughter and in short order, Megan explains that it was Linda’s dad who killed her. He didn’t mean to but he got scared and the gun went off. Then he killed Dave and then shot him a second time to make it look like a murder-suicide. I don’t know whether to laugh or not that the show has a formula already (two red herrings followed by the reveal at the end by Megan).
That night after the case is closed; Megan calls Lacey and leaves her a message. She got what Lacey was saying and will give her time and space and will wait for Lacey to be ready to spend time together. Lacey hears it and it looks like Megan may have begun to rebuild the bridge with her daughter.
“I care about the dead because they can’t speak for themselves. The living are on their own.”
- Megan
We begin at night and the camera pans over a car until there is a loud gunshot. Night melds into day and Megan shows up and is greeted by Peter. She’s surprised to see Detective Morris and Baker again. She wasn’t expecting to work a second case with them so soon. The victims for the episode are an interracial couple; Dave and Linda. It appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder –suicide but Megan quickly dispels the theory. She points out that Dave was left handed (based on calluses and bruises on his left hand and the fact that his wallet was in his left back pocket) and since the gun was in his right hand, he couldn’t have done it.
As they leave the scene, Megan calls Lacey to see if she wanted to spend time together and they end up deciding on lunch the next day (Lacey doesn’t sound too thrilled). It doesn’t help that it seems Megan’s hands are acting up again. Megan fills Peter in on the birthday present and cake from the episode before and that she’s trying to get a life (despite Peter telling her to take it slow). Back at the lab, Kate tells Megan to bring Ethan and Curtis on for the case. Peter points out it probably wasn’t a coincidence that Baker and Morris were assigned to them. Kate figured it would be easier to keep Megan contained if she was only knocking heads with two detectives instead of the whole department. I have to say, it was probably a smart move on Kate’s part.
During autopsy, Morris is his usual impatient self. He wants the bullets so he can close the case (he’s still rooting for murder-suicide). Too bad Megan’s in no hurry. It turns out Dave and Linda were an unlikely pair. One came from a rich family and went to a prestigious college while the other came from an immigrant family and joined the navy. Megan and company determine that Linda had a previous spinal injury that .left scarring and had hair extensions that left permanent damage to her scalp. Dave wasn’t without his own story to tell. There was a rough patch on his arm. And then there’s the matter of two bullets in Dave’s head. It’s pretty impossible to shoot yourself in the head twice. They’re definitely dealing with a double homicide.
After a little digging the team finds out that Linda suffered a tragic car accident several years earlier that broke her neck in three places. And Ethan discovered signs of potential alcoholism or bulimia. Dave had been complaining about breathing issues shortly before his death. Megan dispenses Curtis and Ethan to figure out what was causing Dave’s lung issues and Peter gets Morris and Baker to figure out where the couple’s last meal (burgers and green fries) came from. It seems our charming detectives may be on to something when Morris remembers there’s a place nearby that on weekends is crazy and servers burgers, fries and water ice.
Back at the lab, Kate is meeting with Linda’s parents. Megan joins them and after hearing that Linda’s parents blame Dave, explains that it was a double homicide. She tries to get as much info out of them as she can and she gets a name; Brian. He was Linda’s most recent boyfriend (even though she ended it three months earlier). He did own a restaurant that he owns that Linda worked at. After Linda’s parents leave, Megan fills Kate in on what the police are doing and upon Kate’s direction, she and Peter go to check out Brian. He’s a total jerk. He says that he hasn’t seen Linda in months and he never met Dave. Peter tries to keep Brian occupied while Megan talks to the newest hostess, Nina. It’s pretty obvious Nina is scared of Brian. But before Megan can get much information, Brian kicks them out.
Meanwhile, Morris and Baker are following up on a lead of their own. A guy named Eric Singleton was seen arguing with Dave. It turns out Eric didn’t like that Dave was with a black girl (oh white supremacist bullshit). Eric’s mouth gets him in trouble with Sam. She doesn’t take kindly to him trash talking African American women and shoves him up against a wall and searches him (presumably a Terry frisk since it is unlikely at this point they have probable cause). She ends up finding a giant bruise on Eric’s ribs. Looks like they did more than talk. Dave landed a pretty good blow.
Peter and Megan stop off at Lacey’s riding lesson so Megan can say hi. Peter warns her that it’s not a good idea to push Lacey. After all, she’s only just starting to open up after five years of blaming her mom for the divorce. Things go horribly. Lacey is pissed that her mom showed up and rides off before Megan say anything. Family drama will have to take a back seat, unfortunately. Curtis confirms that Linda had bulimia but only for a short time (likely after she started working for Brian). And Megan proves Dave was the restaurant the night he and Linda die. He had residue from the materials Brian used to clean his bar on his arm.
Megan, Peter, Kate, Morris and Baker have a little pow wow to catch up on the case and after Megan fills them in on Linda’s condition and the fact that Dave was at Brian’s restaurant the night of the murder, they head over to have another chat. It doesn’t really go well. They leave with a shaky alibi for Brian. He was with Nina (or so she says). Morris is still insisting their skinhead Eric is the perp but Megan is free to continue pursuing Brian if she wants. And she will. She plans on using Peter to get Nina away from Brian.
Meanwhile, Ethan’s figured out that Dave was suffering from asbestos in his lungs. He drags Curtis to Dave’s latest construction job and they scoop up some soil samples to test back at the lab and barely make it out of there before two burly construction workers come chasing after them.
Megan gets her lunch with Lacey but it goes about as well as showing up at the riding lesson. Lacey isn’t ready to bond with her mom and leaves. She’s kind of moody for a twelve-year-old. It seems that Peter has a way with things regarding Lacey. He was right about what Megan should get her for her birthday and he was right about not pushing things. He’s a smart guy that medical legal investigator! As Megan sits there and wipes at her eyes, she smudges her makeup. Breakthrough! She discovers the killer closed Linda’s eyes, leaving behind gunshot residue and DNA.
Megan’s plan to get Nina away from Brian is in motion and she needs Kate’s help to pull it off. Meanwhile, Morris and Baker have Lonnie (an associate of Eric’s) in for questioning and they learn that shortly before they arrived the previous day, Eric had ditched his jacket with blood on it. Now that’s what you call probable cause. They find the jacket in a dumpster and match the blood to Linda. Peter calls Brian’s restaurant and tells Nina that Brian’s house is on fire. It works. He convinces Linda to go with him to the morgue. And Megan and Kate introduce her to Linda. They convince Nina to leave Brian and go to a shelter to get away from Brian. But the truth is, he was with her at the time of the murders. I have to say I was pleased with the increased amount of Jeri Ryan in this episode. It almost made up for the lack of Sherlock-ness on Megan’s part.
Curtis and Ethan confirm that the asbestos in Dave’s lungs came from the job site. So Megan sends Ethan and Peter to investigate while she sits in with Kate and Linda’s mom. Megan explains that they know Linda was bulimic and had hair extensions. The main thrust of the conversation revealed that Linda’s mom knew they were wrong about Dave. He showed up at their house and asked to marry Linda. They said no.
Peter confronts the foreman at the construction site and says the EPA is on their way to handle the violation. Peter discovers that Dave asked his boss for an advance to buy an engagement ring. A ring that the cops find at Eric’s apartment. He admits he followed them to the murder scene but Linda and Dave were already dead. Peter asks how lunch went (and mentioned that her hand problems are probably psychosomatic). Megan isn’t pleased and gets defensive. And then she kind of breaks down when she demands to know when she gave up the right to be involved in her daughter’s life. Curtis interrupts the moment saying that the DNA results from Linda’s eyelids came back. Now they just need someone to compare it to.
While watching Eric’s interrogation, Megan has a revelation. Tears could have made the makeup smudge. Kate tells Linda’s parents they can come pick up their daughter and in short order, Megan explains that it was Linda’s dad who killed her. He didn’t mean to but he got scared and the gun went off. Then he killed Dave and then shot him a second time to make it look like a murder-suicide. I don’t know whether to laugh or not that the show has a formula already (two red herrings followed by the reveal at the end by Megan).
That night after the case is closed; Megan calls Lacey and leaves her a message. She got what Lacey was saying and will give her time and space and will wait for Lacey to be ready to spend time together. Lacey hears it and it looks like Megan may have begun to rebuild the bridge with her daughter.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Body of Proof - "PIlot"
Body of Proof 1.01: “Pilot”
“But maybe that car accident was your own fall down the stairs and you’re just too scared to let the benefits kick in.”
- Peter
So I’ve been waiting for “Body of Proof” to come on since last summer. It was originally supposed to air starting in September but ABC decided to save it to do more advertising I guess. So, after much waiting, I bring you the first episode!
We meet Dr. Megan Hunt getting what apparently is the zillionth brain scan with no conclusive results. She’s fine according to every doctor she talks to. Except according to her own diagnosis. Her hands still go numb as a result of a car accident she suffered a few years earlier. But before she can berate the doctor she’s talking to any more (especially since he’s telling her to be happy she even has a job now), she gets called away.
She is now a medical examiner with probably the best taste in fashion sense I’ve ever seen. Hell, I’d want Dana Delaney to be my ME. She’s been called to the scene of Angela Swanson, a female jogger with head trauma. She quickly ascertains that the vic had to have gone in to the river on the west side of the river since she died two hours earlier and the east side would have been in shadow. I couldn’t tell if she was deducing all of this to show off to the cops or just piss them off. I’m pretty sure he succeeded in the latter.
Back at the office, Megan dispenses a few bits of medical advice as if she’s the go to for people’s problems. It’s going to get her in trouble some day, I’m sure. Too bad Megan’s personal life isn’t going as well as her new career. She tries calling her daughter’s cell phone but her ex-husband picks up. She begs him to let her go to their daughter’s birthday party but he outright refuses. It seems he’s cutting Megan out of their daughter’s life. I already dislike him.
At autopsy, Megan discovers a few key pieces of evidence that will later be extremely important, a scar on her scalp and healed bite marks on her arm. She also had a bit of an ideological argument with the lead detective. He wants fast answers; what killed her. Megan is more interested in what the body can tell her about the life the person lived. It’s almost cheesy when she says that the body is the proof but I guess the writers had to work it in somehow. She does give the detective a likely murder weapon and then her coffee order just to piss him off some more.
Megan’s in her office trying to find a good birthday gift for her daughter (which apparently means a super expensive purse) when Peter pops by to give her the latest on Angela. He’s held her stomach content and sent a tissue sample from the weird lump on her neck and the diaphragm she was wearing to the lab to be tested. We learned some interesting intel about diaphragms which need not be repeated and then Megan decides it’s a good idea to do a brain dissection while they want on calls back from Angela’s doctors to determine why she had a scar on her head. On their way, they run into Curtis (Deputy Chief Medical Examiner) who yells at Megan for ordering an A&A panel (autoimmune test) on a suicide victim. I can understand his concern since it is a $1,000 test. She makes the snarky remark that now they both know that the victim didn’t blow his brains out because of his immune system. Frankly, Megan I’d have to side with Curtis on this one.
Megan’s dissection of Angela’s brain (people’s brains really do look grey after death…ew) reveals she’s suffered head trauma in the past. While she mutters to herself about what that area of brain controls, Peter gets a call from one of Angela’s doctors. Apparently two years earlier Angela was pushed down a flight of stairs by her then boyfriend and fell into a coma. Lucky for Megan (or unlucky for the detectives), she and Peter get to tag along for the interrogation. Megan thinks she’s a cop too apparently because after explaining that Angela couldn’t have told anyone her boyfriend, Tom, didn’t push her down the stairs because of short term memory loss, proceeds to question Tom herself. Detective Morris puts a stop to it and drags her outside to ream her out. He tells her that she’s supposed to tell the cops what she knows and then let the real officers of the law do their job. Morris does have a point. Megan kind of thinks she can whatever she wants. But she doe tell him that even if it was an accident, Tom would have wanted Angela to see him if he’d killed her.
Megan and Peter make a stop at Angela’s parents’ house to try and get some information. It turns out that Angela didn’t have many friends. She was a workaholic and while in school she’d been very driven about her grades. As a teenager she’d been distant from her parents but after the coma she was more loving and involved. It’s like the coma knocked feelings into her. She was also sick with Strep A.
Megan and Peter stop by the store so she can pick up the bag she was looking at getting her daughter for her birthday. Until Peter tells her that a bag isn’t going to make Lacey happy. And it costs $1,100. Megan tells Peter rather heatedly that he doesn’t know anything about her daughter. It seems she gets touchy when her personal life is involved. She goes on a rant about how she and her husband divorced and he uses everything she does to try and convince their daughter that she’s the bad guy. Apparently a guy can work crazy hours and be called a good provider but a woman who works the same hours is an absentee mother. I can see Megan’s frustration. It seems very sexist to me. Megan cuts the conversation short by telling Peter they should just pretend like it never happened. That’s one way to deal with your issues I suppose.
Back at the lab, Megan tells Peter to get a rush on the diaphragm results and she continues an examination of Angela’s body. She discovers finger impression and torn hair near her neck. It turns out Angela was sleeping with a married man. She’s out to lunch with an old friend who happens to be the most noteworthy “ball cutter” in Philly. After a little arm twisting, Megan get him to reveal a name; Bradford Paige. Who just happens to be Angela’s boss. Megan immediately starts in on the boss and could end up blowing the case for the detectives. Megan leaves upon Detective Morris’s order and as she’s trying to cool off outside, she flashes back to her accident. She was arguing with her ex-husband while driving and she gets hit by a truck. Morris blows Megan’s theory that Angela was blackmailing Paige to make partner when he tells her that Angela already did. She won a big case a few weeks earlier and the partner committee made their decision. It sounds good but she was defending a wealthy family whose dog mauled a young boy. Megan goes a little Sherlock (BBC series) on Morris by stating that he was kicked out of his house because he has an impression on his left ring finger, a cut on his chin from a disposable razor and rather unpleasant aftershave. This part of Megan, I like. A lot.
Logically, the next step is to go see the boy and his family to see if there are any clues. They find the dad to be kind of hostile towards Angela and later to the police when they accuse him of killing Angela. Megan gets him to open up though and they discover Angela gave him documents withheld by her firm at trial that shows the dog that attacked his son was a trained attack dog. Guess spontaneous feelings makes you do a lot of things. So the cops have another reason to look into Paige.
Megan heads back to the lab and is accosted by her boss, Chief Kate Murphy (played by ever lovely Jeri Ryan). Ethan told Curtis that he ran an A&A on his heatstroke victim at Megan’s suggestion. Megan doesn’t see the problem but Kate is annoyed at how fast and loose Megan is being with the lab budget. Megan challenges Kate to fire her if she doesn’t like the way she does things. In short order, Megan deduces for them all that the heatstroke victim wasn’t in fact a heatstroke victim. She had lupus.
Megan’s at the lab late looking at the tissue sample from Angela’s neck when Peter walks in. She’s confused about the results she’s found but Peter distracts her from work for a few brief moments when he compares to her Angela. She too is a workaholic with few friends. And he makes a really important statement that I think wakes Megan up a little. She’s still letting the accident control her life instead of moving on and living life, including building the relationship she wants with her daughter. Unfortunately, it is back to work when they get a call that the cops arrested Tom for Angela’s murder. He admits he was in the park the morning she died but that he didn’t kill her. He wanted to talk to her and find out why she accused him of pushing her down the stairs.
Megan’s pissed that Detective Morris arrested the wrong guy and when he tells her to go back to doing whatever it was she did before she became an ME, she says she can’t because she killed someone. She explains to Peter that before her accident, she never really cared to get to know her patients. And that she learned so much from the body of the woman she killed that she never would have known just by talking to her. There’s some sort of party when they get back to the lab and in short order Megan realizes they need to test the stomach contents for prescription drugs in case of an allergy (Peter declined cake because a nut allergy).
And since that’s going to take a while, she’s going to go to Lacey’s party, whether her ex likes it or not. Megan gets a few minutes with her daughter. Enough time to give her daughter a key to her apartment and the offer that its open to Lacey whenever she wants it. Guess she did listen to Peter after all and gave her something from the heart. Upon return to the lab, Peter hands her the test results from the stomach. She had amoxicillin in her stomach. But Angela was allergic to it. They (along with the detectives) head back to the Paige house and Megan (in somewhat typical Sherlock style) explains that it was the wife who killed Angela when she discovered she was having an affair with her husband.
Megan is saying her last goodbyes to Angela since the case is finished (minus trial of course) when Kate stops by. She tells that she got lots of phone calls before hiring Megan that she was driven and while abrasive got the job done. And it was all underselling her. But Megan needs to be careful because the moment she slips up, the knives are coming out and even Kate won’t be able to protect her. And Megan should get some friends. Megan gets home to her big empty apartment to find a piece of birthday cake sitting on the counter. Looks like Lacey’s already found some solace in the place after all.
“But maybe that car accident was your own fall down the stairs and you’re just too scared to let the benefits kick in.”
- Peter
So I’ve been waiting for “Body of Proof” to come on since last summer. It was originally supposed to air starting in September but ABC decided to save it to do more advertising I guess. So, after much waiting, I bring you the first episode!
We meet Dr. Megan Hunt getting what apparently is the zillionth brain scan with no conclusive results. She’s fine according to every doctor she talks to. Except according to her own diagnosis. Her hands still go numb as a result of a car accident she suffered a few years earlier. But before she can berate the doctor she’s talking to any more (especially since he’s telling her to be happy she even has a job now), she gets called away.
She is now a medical examiner with probably the best taste in fashion sense I’ve ever seen. Hell, I’d want Dana Delaney to be my ME. She’s been called to the scene of Angela Swanson, a female jogger with head trauma. She quickly ascertains that the vic had to have gone in to the river on the west side of the river since she died two hours earlier and the east side would have been in shadow. I couldn’t tell if she was deducing all of this to show off to the cops or just piss them off. I’m pretty sure he succeeded in the latter.
Back at the office, Megan dispenses a few bits of medical advice as if she’s the go to for people’s problems. It’s going to get her in trouble some day, I’m sure. Too bad Megan’s personal life isn’t going as well as her new career. She tries calling her daughter’s cell phone but her ex-husband picks up. She begs him to let her go to their daughter’s birthday party but he outright refuses. It seems he’s cutting Megan out of their daughter’s life. I already dislike him.
At autopsy, Megan discovers a few key pieces of evidence that will later be extremely important, a scar on her scalp and healed bite marks on her arm. She also had a bit of an ideological argument with the lead detective. He wants fast answers; what killed her. Megan is more interested in what the body can tell her about the life the person lived. It’s almost cheesy when she says that the body is the proof but I guess the writers had to work it in somehow. She does give the detective a likely murder weapon and then her coffee order just to piss him off some more.
Megan’s in her office trying to find a good birthday gift for her daughter (which apparently means a super expensive purse) when Peter pops by to give her the latest on Angela. He’s held her stomach content and sent a tissue sample from the weird lump on her neck and the diaphragm she was wearing to the lab to be tested. We learned some interesting intel about diaphragms which need not be repeated and then Megan decides it’s a good idea to do a brain dissection while they want on calls back from Angela’s doctors to determine why she had a scar on her head. On their way, they run into Curtis (Deputy Chief Medical Examiner) who yells at Megan for ordering an A&A panel (autoimmune test) on a suicide victim. I can understand his concern since it is a $1,000 test. She makes the snarky remark that now they both know that the victim didn’t blow his brains out because of his immune system. Frankly, Megan I’d have to side with Curtis on this one.
Megan’s dissection of Angela’s brain (people’s brains really do look grey after death…ew) reveals she’s suffered head trauma in the past. While she mutters to herself about what that area of brain controls, Peter gets a call from one of Angela’s doctors. Apparently two years earlier Angela was pushed down a flight of stairs by her then boyfriend and fell into a coma. Lucky for Megan (or unlucky for the detectives), she and Peter get to tag along for the interrogation. Megan thinks she’s a cop too apparently because after explaining that Angela couldn’t have told anyone her boyfriend, Tom, didn’t push her down the stairs because of short term memory loss, proceeds to question Tom herself. Detective Morris puts a stop to it and drags her outside to ream her out. He tells her that she’s supposed to tell the cops what she knows and then let the real officers of the law do their job. Morris does have a point. Megan kind of thinks she can whatever she wants. But she doe tell him that even if it was an accident, Tom would have wanted Angela to see him if he’d killed her.
Megan and Peter make a stop at Angela’s parents’ house to try and get some information. It turns out that Angela didn’t have many friends. She was a workaholic and while in school she’d been very driven about her grades. As a teenager she’d been distant from her parents but after the coma she was more loving and involved. It’s like the coma knocked feelings into her. She was also sick with Strep A.
Megan and Peter stop by the store so she can pick up the bag she was looking at getting her daughter for her birthday. Until Peter tells her that a bag isn’t going to make Lacey happy. And it costs $1,100. Megan tells Peter rather heatedly that he doesn’t know anything about her daughter. It seems she gets touchy when her personal life is involved. She goes on a rant about how she and her husband divorced and he uses everything she does to try and convince their daughter that she’s the bad guy. Apparently a guy can work crazy hours and be called a good provider but a woman who works the same hours is an absentee mother. I can see Megan’s frustration. It seems very sexist to me. Megan cuts the conversation short by telling Peter they should just pretend like it never happened. That’s one way to deal with your issues I suppose.
Back at the lab, Megan tells Peter to get a rush on the diaphragm results and she continues an examination of Angela’s body. She discovers finger impression and torn hair near her neck. It turns out Angela was sleeping with a married man. She’s out to lunch with an old friend who happens to be the most noteworthy “ball cutter” in Philly. After a little arm twisting, Megan get him to reveal a name; Bradford Paige. Who just happens to be Angela’s boss. Megan immediately starts in on the boss and could end up blowing the case for the detectives. Megan leaves upon Detective Morris’s order and as she’s trying to cool off outside, she flashes back to her accident. She was arguing with her ex-husband while driving and she gets hit by a truck. Morris blows Megan’s theory that Angela was blackmailing Paige to make partner when he tells her that Angela already did. She won a big case a few weeks earlier and the partner committee made their decision. It sounds good but she was defending a wealthy family whose dog mauled a young boy. Megan goes a little Sherlock (BBC series) on Morris by stating that he was kicked out of his house because he has an impression on his left ring finger, a cut on his chin from a disposable razor and rather unpleasant aftershave. This part of Megan, I like. A lot.
Logically, the next step is to go see the boy and his family to see if there are any clues. They find the dad to be kind of hostile towards Angela and later to the police when they accuse him of killing Angela. Megan gets him to open up though and they discover Angela gave him documents withheld by her firm at trial that shows the dog that attacked his son was a trained attack dog. Guess spontaneous feelings makes you do a lot of things. So the cops have another reason to look into Paige.
Megan heads back to the lab and is accosted by her boss, Chief Kate Murphy (played by ever lovely Jeri Ryan). Ethan told Curtis that he ran an A&A on his heatstroke victim at Megan’s suggestion. Megan doesn’t see the problem but Kate is annoyed at how fast and loose Megan is being with the lab budget. Megan challenges Kate to fire her if she doesn’t like the way she does things. In short order, Megan deduces for them all that the heatstroke victim wasn’t in fact a heatstroke victim. She had lupus.
Megan’s at the lab late looking at the tissue sample from Angela’s neck when Peter walks in. She’s confused about the results she’s found but Peter distracts her from work for a few brief moments when he compares to her Angela. She too is a workaholic with few friends. And he makes a really important statement that I think wakes Megan up a little. She’s still letting the accident control her life instead of moving on and living life, including building the relationship she wants with her daughter. Unfortunately, it is back to work when they get a call that the cops arrested Tom for Angela’s murder. He admits he was in the park the morning she died but that he didn’t kill her. He wanted to talk to her and find out why she accused him of pushing her down the stairs.
Megan’s pissed that Detective Morris arrested the wrong guy and when he tells her to go back to doing whatever it was she did before she became an ME, she says she can’t because she killed someone. She explains to Peter that before her accident, she never really cared to get to know her patients. And that she learned so much from the body of the woman she killed that she never would have known just by talking to her. There’s some sort of party when they get back to the lab and in short order Megan realizes they need to test the stomach contents for prescription drugs in case of an allergy (Peter declined cake because a nut allergy).
And since that’s going to take a while, she’s going to go to Lacey’s party, whether her ex likes it or not. Megan gets a few minutes with her daughter. Enough time to give her daughter a key to her apartment and the offer that its open to Lacey whenever she wants it. Guess she did listen to Peter after all and gave her something from the heart. Upon return to the lab, Peter hands her the test results from the stomach. She had amoxicillin in her stomach. But Angela was allergic to it. They (along with the detectives) head back to the Paige house and Megan (in somewhat typical Sherlock style) explains that it was the wife who killed Angela when she discovered she was having an affair with her husband.
Megan is saying her last goodbyes to Angela since the case is finished (minus trial of course) when Kate stops by. She tells that she got lots of phone calls before hiring Megan that she was driven and while abrasive got the job done. And it was all underselling her. But Megan needs to be careful because the moment she slips up, the knives are coming out and even Kate won’t be able to protect her. And Megan should get some friends. Megan gets home to her big empty apartment to find a piece of birthday cake sitting on the counter. Looks like Lacey’s already found some solace in the place after all.
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