This week’s Elsbeth moves some longish-term plot items around on the board and furnishes some very amusing material under the umbrella of “Billionaires: The Actual Worst,†but its primary function is as a delivery system for the series’ oddball humor and character development. Sure, a divorce case from her Chicago days may be coming back to bite Elsbeth on the butt, and the ludicrously entitled ultra-rich behave very, very badly (but some of them eventually face serious consequences), but I’m far more interested in what may unfold between Elsbeth and a cute fire marshal who is extremely taken with her, and in Captain Wagner’s burgeoning mentorship role with Kaya as she continues her journey towards promotion to detective.
Picking up where we left off in the season premiere, Elsbeth climbs into the big SUV with blacked-out windows that approached her as she took Gonzo for a walk. The person inside is Carter Schmidt (Christian Borle), a very shady-seeming lawyer from Elsbeth’s pre-spinoff days on The Good Wife, who says he figured she’d be back in Chicago by now. He’s not there to talk about her itinerary, though, but to give her the heads-up and not-so-subtle warning that their former shared client, Mark Van Ness, is about to divorce for a second time. Some questions about Mark’s first “pretty messy†divorce settlement are likely to arise, and Carter just wants to remind Elsbeth that if she were to break attorney-client privilege for any reason, his firm would “exact retribution,†which seems like a very foolish thing for him to say out loud! I expect this thread from Elsbeth’s pre-NYC life to continue to be woven into at least a few more episodes ahead, as it re-emerges in this episode’s final scene and rattles Elsbeth pretty badly in both instances.
Fortunately, she’s got a murder investigation to take her mind off people traveling 1,500 miles to tell her it’s a pretty nice life she’s got going here in New York, and it would be a real shame if anyone were to hypothetically smash its metaphorical windows! RIP to the murder victim, Gavin Morrissey (Jason Babinsky), a renewable energy baron/sleazy billionaire whose stolen valor as a father figure to his murderer’s actual son results in him being incinerated in a NASA-style centrifuge fire. Grisly! (But then again, ashes are easier to clean up than entrails; relatedly, it’s possible that I watch too many murder mysteries.)
All of the suspects Elsbeth, Kaya, and Wagner contemplate in “The Wrong Stuff†— set in a training facility for would-be astronauts — are sleazy billionaires in one way or another. Trainee and oil man Doug (Terry Serpico) made a $1.2 billion mint on top of his pre-existing mint by selling his fracking water to Gavin so he could extract rare metals from the wastewater. Morgan (the only woman in the group, played by Melanie Chandra) is a social media entrepreneur who very casually mentions (in front of law enforcement!) her intent to do a bit of insider training while in space. Neil Dorsey’s (Rob Riggle) billions come from the successful and profitable paint business he launched decades ago with a small contribution of $4 million from his father; he’s particularly proud of his latest shade, a graphite gray he calls Negative Space. His son Randy (who Neil insists on referring to as Neil, Jr., despite Randy’s clear lack of interest in the name) is the one non-billionaire in the training course, and hero-worshiped the late Gavin.
We’ve already seen Neil surreptitiously fiddle with Gavin’s boot prior to the centrifuge training exercise, and it turns out that his rationale for murder was exceptionally childish and his method, elegantly simple. He loathed the mean-spirited nickname Gavin had given him and that even Randy (Ked Merwin) had adopted; imagine being called Snoozer as a constant reminder of that time you were so boring that you put Angela Merkel to sleep at a G8 summit in Davos!! Instead of saying, “I hate that nickname and never want to hear you say it again,†Neil uses one of his oft-mocked gold-tipped space pens (which are undeniably cool, as easy to use in zero gravity as on Earth) to lever a lithium battery out of Gavin’s hoverboard and nestle it in his boot prior to the centrifuge exercise. The explosion it causes destroys everything within the centrifuge, ensuring that no evidence is left behind. Or so he thinks. More on that in a moment.
Kaya and Wagner are first at the scene, and their warm rapport is charming, even as she’s rightly razzing him about how the money these billionaires are throwing around to participate in their little grown-up space camp ($16 million per person!) could probably be spent more wisely if it were funneled towards affordable housing and universal healthcare. For his part, Wagner is as swept up in the romance of space travel now as he was in childhood. Citing the high expectations of this training cohort’s VIPs, Wagner announces he’ll be leading the investigation. This makes two consecutive murder investigations where Elsbeth and Kaya know they won’t be hassled for doing their jobs. Nice!
We learn from Aaron (Victor Williams), the former astronaut who owns the independent training facility, that despite the financial success of his program, he spends his days being frustrated by his spoiled-rotten, self-infantilizing clientele, who bring items to their whopping two-week training program that have no business being there. They think that their vast wealth insulates them from plebeian concerns such as rules, bringing everything from electric scooters to vape pens to tanning beds. Apparently, one member of the current cohort had a tantrum because they couldn’t have an assistant on-site to flush the toilet for him. Aaron’s legal department seems to need to draw up addenda to their various safety waivers every day, a very cost-efficient and worthwhile way for in-house counsel to spend their time.
When Wagner and Co. are still entertaining the notion that Gavin died as the result of a terrible accident, Neil helpfully notes that Gavin vaped constantly. As a renewable energy guy, he knew not to bring his vape pen into the centrifuge, but is it possible that he forgot that he had it on his person? It seems unlikely, as their flight suits don’t have pockets, and impossible once Elsbeth recognizes Gavin’s vape devices as battery-free smokeless air inhalers. Kaya and Elsbeth take over most of the interviewing responsibilities, using what they glean from conversations with the suspect trainees and Jake (John Behlmann), a very attentive fire marshal, to refine their lines of questioning. Thanks to learning from Aaron that the trainees were constantly texting their assistants back home, Kaya reaches out to Gavin’s assistant to see if there’s anything worth following up in those conversations. Gavin was freaking out about his hoverboard missing a battery, but when Elsbeth checks the hoverboard herself, it has two batteries.
It’s back to square one for Elsbeth and Kaya, who, this time, follow up with Morgan about the rumor that she and Gavin were involved. Absolutely not, Morgan says; she was working him for stock tips, and he wasn’t her type, anyway — he could have been a short king but was so insecure about his height that he wore lifts in his boots to make himself seem taller. That’s one line of inquiry closed while it opens another: most likely, everyone knew that Gavin wore lifts, so what if the killer shaved down one of those lifts and inserted the battery in the little space left behind? That would have ensured that Gavin didn’t notice anything weird in his boot and would have left behind the rubbery black residue that Elsbeth noticed had attached itself to the bottom of one of her totes!
This is a reasonable hypothesis, but it still necessitates a missing battery. Fortunately, Morgan has discovered that her special LED mask is missing a battery (which eagle-eyed viewers will already know because we saw Neil creeping into her quarters and stealing one). It was working fine yesterday, and she wouldn’t even know how to replace a battery; indeed, the last time she changed a battery herself was at age 12, because “I have assistants for that.†Well, here’s a howdy-do: if Morgan were the murderer, she’d hardly be freaking out about a missing battery, as it would draw unwanted attention to her, but Gavin’s hoverboard is not missing a battery. Another closer look at the hoverboard and the tricky removal of one of its batteries also yields the gold tip from one of Neil’s Negative Space space pens, but this time, Captain Wagner recognizes the crucial bit of evidence. He’s in heaven, surrounded by space stuff while getting to do the detective work he still loves so much. He’s going to be such a good mentor to Kaya!
An assist from the legal department provides the perfect moment to make the arrest. Just before the scheduled launch, the trainees must sign a final set of waivers, and Neil’s slightly mangled pen leaks ink all over the paperwork, proving his was used to pry a battery out of Gavin’s hoverboard. Neil believes killing Gavin was justified for a bunch of reasons: he wore lifts, he was into fracking and hypocrisy, and most importantly, he turned Randy against his father. It was a bridge too far, but the only bridge Neil will be crossing now is whatever one stands between him and prison.
With the case resolved, Kaya and Elsbeth are preparing to return to their precinct, but not before Jake, the very cute and attentive fire marshal, who has spent every interaction with Elsbeth totally mesmerized by her, says he guesses he’ll see her again at the next fire scene. That fire scene is going to be their second date; their little montage of testing all of the special space equipment was plainly a first date. It had everything: exercise bikes, a light saber battle, competitive Shirley Temple flavored space smoothie drinking. That’s romance!
Elsbeth doesn’t take the bait, stammering out that he’s right; they’ll have to wait til the next fire because “this whole thing is too hot not to cool down.†Jake, a man of many qualities, but not an aficionado of the Great American Songbook, has no idea what she means, but finds it totally enchanting. Here is my formal plea to bring back Jake several more times this season. His and Elsbeth’s chemistry is a fizzy delight, and we need more on-screen representation of men smitten with brilliant, odd women. They deserve their own little trip to the moon on gossamer wings, by gum!
After the brief news report about the Rhapso Capsule launch, another news segment begins, reporting on the forthcoming divorce between pop star TruRose and her husband of two years, sports franchise owner Mark Van Ness (remember him from Chicago Carter’s menacing SUV chitchat?). As predicted, this will likely be a messy case, involving a challenge to the now-unhappy couples prenuptial agreement, and TruRose’s lawyers would like to speak with Van Ness’s attorneys from his first divorce. Another day, another drama!
In This Week’s Tote Bag
• Kudos to the writer who worked “newfangled claptrap†into the script; Joe Biden-esque turns of phrase are overdue for widespread revival!
• Like so many of the character actors featured in Elsbeth, John Behlmann has one of those faces you just know you’ve seen somewhere before. In this case, one of the places you may have seen them is in an episode of The Good Wife, in the first season episode “Doubt†as Dr. Mann. Is this the first double-dip casting in The Good Wife-iverse?