Elsbeth is in her Righting Past Wrongs era. Reopening and reinvestigating the Merton murder has become a more substantial arc than I originally anticipated; the Orientalist Spa murder hinged on details from a long-ago case, and this week, she’s able to secure the exhumation of a victim from 1998. Her tenacity is remarkable, and while she consistently stays on the right side of the law to get her way, we’d be foolish to assume that she won’t ever slip up or get over-enthusiastic. The way that Judge Crawford keeps popping up as a needle in her side and her ire at his eel-like ability to wriggle out of her mental grasp just might push her too far. After “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant”, we have six episodes left in this season, and I can’t wait to see how the case of the murderous judge rolls to a conclusion (or cliffhanger).
But wait, I must, because we have another historical murder to reinvestigate, courtesy of a cheesy but fun real crime tour of Lower Manhattan. The tour guide is played by Murray Hill, whose performance as Fred Rococo in Somebody Somewhere is one of my favorites of the last few years, and he really hams it up (complimentary) in his recitation of the facts of the tour’s final murder. The tour group is assembled at Pupetta’s Restaurant to hear the gory details of a murder that sparked a 1998 war between the Del Ponte and Nova crime families. The guide regales them with the details of Eddie Nova’s murder of Del Ponte family soldier Goldie Marasco while they’re served the same order Goldie was enjoying until he took a corkscrew and two bullets to the chest.
Ever the attentive and discerning listener, Elsbeth immediately has questions about the story: how could Eddie have gotten the drop on Goldie when Goldie was facing the front door of the restaurant? Why use a corkscrew? Why the need to shoot Goldie with his own gun — wouldn’t a guy sent on a murder errand bring his own weapon? The actual murder sounds much more like a spontaneous crime of passion than the work of a veteran hitman exacting punishment on a guy suspected of being an FBI informant.
She could get answers to these questions if Gene Gianetti (Adam Ferrara), a waiter who was the murder’s sole witness and is now married to the restaurant’s namesake, Pupetta (Alyssa Milano), was available to speak with her at their surreptitiously arranged meet location. Unfortunately, when Elsbeth arrives with Teddy and Roy, they see him on a gurney. Fortunately, the hit-and-run driver who struck Gene only injured his shoulder, so they should be able to speak the following day.
Pupetta shows up at the scene awfully quickly for someone who works ten blocks away. Hm. She’s in full performative grieving widow mode until she learns that Gene will be fine after some corrective surgery. It’s all a bit over the top, but Detective Fleming, who investigated Goldie’s murder way back when, points out that the summer of 1998 was a brutal one for Pupetta. Goldie’s murder led to Eddie’s retaliatory killing, sparking a cycle of violence that took the lives of almost Pupetta’s entire family. The devastation of losing 14 family members in one summer is hard to grasp, so maybe her behavior is just a reflection of her trauma being stirred up. Then again, she’s wearing a quite formal black pillbox hat with a bit of netting on top. It’s not the full hat-and-mantilla worn by Jackie Kennedy at her husband’s funeral, but it’s definitely suggestive of that look. Who grabs such an obvious funeral accessory on their way out the door to rush to a crime scene where her husband might be lying dead in the street? I don’t know; I’m just asking questions!
Back at the station, Fleming brings Elsbeth and Kaya up to speed on the Marasco murder. He was always skeptical of the idea that Eddie Nova killed Goldie. In addition to all of the questions Elsbeth had, he noticed that any evidence pointing away from Eddie was quickly brushed aside. Since Eddie couldn’t deny or corroborate any of it from beyond the grave, and in the absence of a sufficiently compelling alternative theory of the case, the powers that be concluded the investigation and Fleming put his case board and files in storage.
Fleming retrieves all of those materials so that he, Elsbeth, and Kaya can look at them with fresh eyes. He’s felt terrible for Pupetta all of these years but is willing to consider the idea that she might have had a hand in Goldie’s death, especially after Elsbeth points out the many scratches on Goldie’s face and chest. Those hardly seem likely defensive wounds in a double-tap unexpected shooting.
Unfortunately, Gene, who was so eager to meet with Elsbeth prior to his hit-and-run, is now claiming that he has no memory at all from the day before. I’m sure that has nothing whatsoever to do with Pupetta sailing into his hospital room to whisper very innocuous and supportive-seeming sweet nothings into his ear before the arrival of Elsbeth and Fleming. Pupetta’s behavior could be seen as that of a loving spouse triggered by terrible memories of loss, but her behavior is increasingly suspicious. The menacing hovering over Gene’s bedside and her insistence that their son Gene Jr. work at the family restaurant rather than pursue his post-Wharton dream of working on Wall Street are odd enough. Gene Jr.’s description of his family business being one it’s hard to leave and of his mother as a hard woman to refuse is a lot to unpack, something we get a glimpse of when Pupetta shows up at Elsbeth’s building to warn her away from Jr. A real nice son you’ve got there, she says without saying it. It’d sure be a shame if anything bad happened to him!
Elsbeth, Kaya, and Fleming continue to develop their Pupetta hypothesis: She might have been in a rage after learning that he was meeting with the FBI at some motel near the BQE (for viewers not adjacent to NYC, that’s the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) and taken matters into her own hands. She might have ordered the hit or even taken a more direct approach with Goldie, first confronting him herself. She does sport a beautiful French manicure and told Elsbeth that she wore longer, pointier nails in the ‘90s, which could account for the scratches on Goldie’s face and chest. None of this is definitive, but exhuming Goldie’s body to collect and test some tissues could rule out (or rule in) a number of their lines of inquiry.
Guess who gets in the way of the investigation? Please sit down, lest the shocking news that it’s Judge Crawford’s influence over other judges blocking NYPD’s request prove too much for even the most robust constitution to handle. That guy is the worst, but he inadvertently gives Elsbeth what she needs to outwit him. A new confession in the case would require the police to reopen and reinvestigate Goldie’s murder. Well, well!
Although it seems as if there’s no way to get a new confession, Elsbeth grows more confident in her belief that Pupetta was Goldie’s murderer. In a little callback to last season’s episode with perfectionist crooked accountant Ashton Hayes (Keegan-Michael Key), Kaya uncovers his work cooking the books for Pupetta’s Restaurant. Could Pupetta be insisting on Gene Jr. coming aboard to exploit his expertise as a forensic accountant? He’d have to make an in-or-out decision immediately.
Further circumstantial but significant facts, such as Gene Jr. being a full head taller than either of his parents and a dead ringer for Goldie, suggest he’s not Gene Sr.’s biological child. What if Pupetta’s motive wasn’t related to the FBI at all? What if she had been the person meeting clandestinely with Goldie at that motel? What if she killed him in a fit of furious passion after he rejected her and the idea that the baby she was carrying was his?
Gene Sr., only wanting to protect his son and knowing he had no role in Goldie’s murder other than covering for Pupetta, agrees to provide a false confession to trigger the exhumation the NYPD needs. Sure enough, one of Pupetta’s fingernails — sporting her DNA and a decorative element custom-designed for her — is still embedded in Goldie’s chest. DNA testing of Gene Jr. proves that his parents are Pupetta and Goldie, definitively identifying Pupetta as Goldie’s murderer. Gene Jr. is saved from being forced to decide between defying his mother and a life of crime and embraces Gene Sr. as his true dad.
The two B-plotlines in “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” concern Kaya and Teddy’s relationship with Roy. Kaya is still working as a standard patrol officer and is quite rightly annoyed by it. Unbeknownst to her, Lieutenant Connor and Captain Wagner are keeping her in her role as Elsbeth’s minder because they know finding a suitable replacement is a very tall order. How do you catch lightning in a bottle twice? Here’s a thought: don’t bother. Does Elsbeth actually need a babysitter anymore? She and the newly promoted Detective Blanke could stick together, freeing up another detective to work on other cases. This arrangement would reduce the workload across the homicide department, and they’d continue to check in routinely with Captain Wagner to forestall any wild moments of what Lieutenant Connor calls Elsbeth’s habit of “going rogue.”
Elsbeth relishes spending more time with Teddy and Roy, but there’s trouble in paradise. Teddy seems increasingly unsettled by Elsbeth and Roy’s easy rapport and similarities. Neither of the guys really wants to pursue a long-distance relationship, so Teddy thinks it might be time to call it quits. I suggest that before making such a big decision, it might be helpful for Teddy to unpack his reflexive dislike of a partner who resembles his mother. It could also be helpful for him to consider his and Elsbeth’s situation with Gene Jr. and Pupetta’s circumstances. Whatever pain he’s carrying around is serious. It’s also not the result of a hyper-controlling mother pulling off a decades-long deception prompted by her having murdered Gene Jr.’s biological father.
In This Week’s Tote Bag
• Elsbeth has been renewed for a third season, so although it’s likely we’ll get some cliffhanger in the season finale, we’ll only be left hanging for a few months.
• Elsbeth’s maiden name is Gudrunsdottir, which is Icelandic. I take this to mean that producers are in talks to cast Björk and/or Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (another Somebody Somewhere alum and current terrifying high-level lackey in Severance) in guest roles, even shoot an episode or two in Iceland. This could be in Elsbeth’s usual light and fizzy idiom or perhaps a brief foray into Scandi-noir. I’m here for any to all of that!
• It’s so funny that Elsbeth’s suspicion of Pupetta’s nails clicks firmly into place thanks to a deleted scene restored to the five-hour director’s cut of the iconic mafia film City On a Knife Edge, which is definitely not The Godfather.
• I celebrate the return of Elsbeth’s magnificent full-length orange puffer coat. The color, combined with the coat’s deep, fur-lined lapels, furnish a great little moment of whimsical opulence that matches the energy of Pupetta’s bold gold-and-black animal prints.