“Bye Bye Birdie” – aired on June 3, 2018
Written by: Constance M. Burge
Directed by: Doug Aarniokoski
Grade: 3 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Dylan and Andy are attempting (and failing) to prepare dinner when the phone rings. It is Joan the editor calling and Dylan does not wish to talk to her. He explains to Andy that he is going through some sort of a writer’s block. Andy contends that Dylan’s problems are related to him allowing his dad to get inside his head, which is fast becoming the writers’ favorite go-to excuse for a number of Dylan’s mental anguishes. The phone rings again and it’s Lizzie calling this time. She informs Dylan that they are assigned to a new case. A woman named Celia Baxter (Sutton Foster) claims to have been attacked by a man wearing a mask. Lo and behold, she also happens to be an author who is also experiencing writer’s block – “also” deliberately used twice.
This sequence is a small example of the larger problem that sabotages the episode. It suffers from pedestrian contrivances and forced coincidences that lead to a considerable amount of ham-fisted scenes. The premise of the central crime is actually interesting but clunky execution and below-average performances by some guest stars (other than Foster) do not allow it to flourish.
There are several minutes unnecessarily going to waste during the episode that could have been used to develop further the A and B stories. For instance, I am not sure about the purpose of the flashback scenes to imaginary crimes. Celia describes the attack that never took place, as we learn later, yet her description is embellished with flashbacks. They appear to have been inserted for the sole purpose of throwing the viewer off, which is an odd and rare practice. It certainly does not add anything to dramatic dynamics.
There are some other miscues and unnecessary moments. The episode spends too much time with the two-dimensional Ben Richfield, underwhelmingly played by Isaach De Bankolé. He is a wealthy, rude, and narcissist writing professor who is guilty of committing the cardinal crime in the arena of literature: plagiarizing. He has repeatedly stolen his students’ works, including the most meaningful piece Celia has ever written according to her, and made a living publishing them under his name. He becomes an immediate suspect because his DNA is found on the knife that Celia’s assailant used. Dylan and Lizzie go to his office to meet him and subject the viewers to the most bizarrely written scene of the hour.
At first, Richfield’s assistant comes out alone, acting as his mouthpiece. The assistant’s first words are, “Sorry to have kept you waiting, but I do have answers to your questions,” as if he were the one that kept them waiting. Dylan, who was getting irritated seconds earlier because Richfield was making them wait, seems to be perfectly fine with this. The assistant begins by informing our protagonists that Richfield knows Celia because she took a class from him. Dylan and Lizzie seem to have forgotten all about Richfield and carry on talking matter-of-factly with the assistant.
They ask him a succession of questions about Richfield, “Has he seen her recently?”; “Does he know that Celia was attacked in her home last night?”; “Where was he last night?” The assistant reads from his notes to answer the questions, and at this point, I am thinking:
Knock knock, Lizzie and Dylan!! Aren’t you going to ask where Richfield is so that he can come out and answer these questions himself? Didn’t y’all go to his office so you can talk to him directly? Helloooo?
Thankfully, Richfield enters the office (certainly not because Dylan and Andy asked for him) and takes over his assistant. If you are wondering what the purpose of the question-answer scene with the assistant was about, join the club.
Dylan’s first question to Richfield is, “Did you try to kill Celia Baxter last night?” Really? Lizzie chimes in next, by beginning her question with “let’s just save us all a lot of time” (which, I thought, Dylan just did with his overkill question), and tells him to roll up his sleeves to check for scratch marks. Richfield says, “not without a warrant,” and just like that, the poorly written (and executed) scene is over. It was almost as if the writing room mysteriously decided to replace Dylan and Lizzie with their low-IQ versions for one scene.
Another woman named Renata Pendell is murdered and evidence now strongly points to Richfield not only because Renata was his student at some point in the past just like Celia was, but also because his DNA is found again at the scene. Richfield is arrested this time, in a lackluster scene in the interrogation room at the precinct. A low-toned “Are you kidding me?” is Richfield’s only reaction.
It eventually turns out that Celia wanted to take revenge on those who hurt her, so she stabbed Renata, who turns out to be her ex-husband’s mistress, 31 times (mind you), staged an attack on herself, and planted Richfield’s DNA in both scenes to make him look like the guilty party. You can hear the superfluous medical technobabble of how she acquired “synthetic blood” to plant the DNA in the episode, if that sort of stuff tickles your fancy.
Dylan quickly figures out that Joan could be Celia’s next victim because he remembers her telling him about the time when she rejected, harshly to say the least, Celia’s request to edit her first book. According to Joan (told in a flashback), the two were walking on the street when Joan waved Celia’s manuscript in her hand and said to her, “Look, I cannot rep you, ok? I hate the beginning, I hate the middle, I hate the end. I have to tell you, this title, I hate it too.” Then, Joan chucked the manuscript to the trash can on the sidewalk and said: “It’s boring Celia.” Wow Joan! Even if Celia were not a murderer, I have no doubt that she may have considered killing her right at that moment.
In any case, Joan arrives at Celia’s house only to have Celia tell her through a small screen next to the door to “come on in,” make herself at home, and serve herself to the iced tea that she made for her. It is not clear if that means Celia is not home and will arrive shortly or if she is upstairs and will come down soon. Joan enters, grabs the tea from the fridge, and pours herself a glass. Dylan and Lizzie arrive in the nick of time for heightened dramatic effect and Dylan shoots the glass right as Joan is about to drink. The acid that spills dissolves on the kitchen island, i.e. Dylan just saved Joan’s life. Joan scolds him: “What the hell? You couldn’t just yell ‘drop the glass’?” Miraculously, not one drop of the acid liquid reached Joan although the glass was shattered by a bullet right as she was putting it her mouth on it.
The whole scene is forced, hardly anything makes sense. We are expected to believe that Celia – who meticulously planned the killing of Renata, staged the attack on her, and skillfully planted Richfield’s DNA in both crime scenes – rested her plan to eliminate Joan on the flimsy speculation that Joan would voluntarily drink the iced tea in the fridge? Apparently, yes.
Dylan finds Celia’s completed work upstairs, named “Bye Bye Birdie,” with a note addressed to him. She is long gone. We learn later that she is Bermuda, enjoying the last few weeks of her life because she has cancer, or so she said to Dylan earlier in the episode. I can’t help but wonder if she was lying. It would be nice to see Celia reappear in a future episode to haunt our protagonists again, although both the character and Sutton the actress could use a better-scripted episode than this one.
Luckily, there is a consequential B story that could (should) pass for the A story. It is also handled with a lot more care than the Celia one although it suffers from a rushed closure.
Lizzie is informed that Charlie, her deceased ex-partner and fiancé, has been chosen to receive an honor and that she should accept it on his behalf. She has mixed emotions about it because she has been suspecting for some time that Charlie may have been dirty himself. Dylan asks Julian to look into the incident that resulted in Charlie’s death, and what Julian uncovers does not bode well for Charlie.
Julian takes it upon himself to come face-to-face with Lizzie for the first time, posing as someone sent by Rodrigo, Charlie’s covert informant at the time of the operation that killed him. Lizzie is devastated to learn that Charlie was playing both sides and that the cartel regularly deposited money in an account set up in his name. Novakovic plays the betrayed lover and colleague extremely well here as you can literally feel Lizzie’s misery as she turns around and tears begin to roll down her face. It is the most terrific scene of the episode.
We find out later, partially thanks to Dylan’s blue-hued epiphany, that the signature on the account does not match Charlie’s because Dylan momentarily saw the real signature at one point in the past on the card that Lizzie kept in the drawer (Carrie Wells of Unforgettable would be proud of Dylan here). In a convoluted scene, it is revealed that Det. Sosa (Alejandro Hernandez) from the precinct is the one who killed Charlie, but nobody in the team knew it, because he acted alone during the operation.
We never get any explanation as to how in the world Dylan and Julian figured all this out in a matter of hours. We are expected to simply accept that they did, because the other choice is to consider the possibility that they are omnipotent beings who can see everyone and everything at any moment. Sosa was also the one collecting the money from the account opened in the Cayman Islands. We know this, because Dylan tells us so: “He set it up so that he could take the money and Charlie would take the fall.” Never mind the how or what.
Lizzie has her rough-Sosa-up moment in the precinct before Internal Affairs and the DEA come to take him away, but the whole sequence, from Dylan revealing the details of Charlie’s innocence to Lizzie, to Sosa getting arrested by the authorities, lasts two minutes, and comes across hasty and under-climactic in relation to its gravity. The fact that Sosa has barely gotten any screen time despite having appeared in six episodes also lessens the dramatic impact of his betrayal. We never got to know him. He was just… there.
Let me finish on a positive note by underlining the one thing that Instinct constantly gets right: the closing scenes of episodes with Dylan and Lizzie. This one also lives up to the standard.
Last-minute thoughts:
– Pete the ex-stalker makes his fourth appearance in a brief-yet-hilarious conversation with Joan, and Zack makes his third as the eager cop who takes care of the info-gathering portion of investigations. It gives me great joy to now officially call them recurring characters.
– Some nit-picking of the highest order here: Lizzie realizes that Charlie was trying to say “It’s Sosa” as he was expiring in her arms, and not “I’m sorry” as she had thought. I don’t blame her though. I watched the scene few times and I swear I am hearing “I’m sor… I’m sor…” and not “It’s So… It’s So…” Would it not have been more plausible to have him simply say “So…”?
– Nit-picking in a positive way: Dylan almost bumps his head into a lamp as he is walking up the stairs in Renata’s apartment building. Zack even says, “be careful” to Dylan. This seemingly trite moment at the time turns out to be important later when Dylan and Lizzie watch the footage of the killer going up the same stairs. Nice attention to detail.
– Reminiscent of “Pilot,” this episode features several instances of the annoying practice of having one of the main characters feed the audience a concise, two-or-three-sentence explanation of what is happening, under the pretense of talking to another character on screen. Hint: there are three of them within the first 15 minutes, two by Lizzie, one by Dylan. I guess I have to accept the fact that shows do this to cater to those with low focus and/or short attention spans. I find it irksome nevertheless.
– Lizzie was astute enough to realize that Julian was Dylan’s “secret friend” and not Rodrigo’s informant as he claimed to be, and scolded Dylan for it. Dylan, in return, scolded Julian for meeting Lizzie without his knowledge. I can’t explain why I do, but I love these scolding moments between the main characters.
– Instinct needs a recurring forensic-lab expert. My vote goes to the one played by Zainab Jah in this episode.
– I learned a new word: trustafarian.
Until next episode…