“Go Figure” – aired on August 11, 2019
Written by: Anthony Johnston
Directed by: Cherie Nowlan
Grade: 4 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Coherent episode that provides character development and background to two members of the main cast, Lt. Jasmine Gooden and Det. Ryan Stock. The former benefits from a well-constructed but all-too-familiar A story, while the Sleeping Beauty case picks up steam and takes Ryan back to his small “hick” town in Nebraska, accompanied by Dylan the “behavioral specialist.” What could go wrong, hein?
Dylan, having listened repeatedly to the killer’s call from last week’s “After Hours,” concludes that the killer regards himself as being more professional now than when he committed his first murder back in Garfield, Nebraska. Thus, he wants to see the report on that case and search for clues that they may have missed before. This brings up the name of Ryan’s ex-partner, Deputy Darren Hill (Michael Mulheren). Ryan gets defensive, feeling like Dylan and the others are trying to pin the blame on Hill’s loosely made report. Seeing that Deputy Hill’s first reaction will be similar to Ryan’s when, later in the episode, he welcomes Ryan back to Garfield and meets Dylan, can we safely assume that Garfield’s inhabitants are suffering from judgment paranoia? Okay, maybe not, but they are collectively suffering from “restorative nostalgia” indeed (Dylan’s diagnosis, not mine). More on that later.
The A story’s victim is Emily Macabee, a promising ice skater who, with her partner Mario (Rowan Vickers) just dethroned the five-time defending champions Stephanie Park (Nicole Kang) and Reese Watkins (Justiin Davis, yes two “i”s) at the nationals. Lizzie and Dylan meet with each individual, including Emily’s coach Brent Underhill (Danny Burstein) who was at his girlfriend’s place at the time of the murder. They also observe Daniel (Bubba Weiler) the Zamboni driver, the vehicle used to restore ice, having a short argument with Stephanie. I just used “Zamboni” as if I had known of it for a long time but trust me, I completely felt Julian’s pain when he asked Dylan, “what in God’s name is a Zamboni?”
Daniel, apart from driving a Zamboni, is your emblematic social reject (in the incel sub-category, look it up) who harbors anger toward women who will not give him the time of the day. Dylan asks Julian to snoop into Daniel’s online activity which reveals some disturbing quotes made online by the loser about Emily and other women.
In the meantime, Maya and Julian meet again and she instructs Julian not to say anything to Dylan due to daddy Reinhart occupying an important position within the CIA. Julian understands that he must carry a secret around Dylan, should he decide to fully collaborate with Maya. Who is Julian kidding though? Dylan can tell in a heartbeat that he is hiding something and Julian comes clean about his meetings with Maja but not about what they discussed.
Back to the A story, footage on Emily’s computer reveals that Mario and Reese were in a gay relationship, one that Emily supported. It’s a promising subplot that, for one reason or another, gets quickly dropped. In a more consequential development, Mario tells Lizzie and Dylan that Emily wanted to share something important with him but died before she got the chance. Dylan’s dramatic affirmation, “Emily lived with a secret and died with it,” will turn out to be true, as we will find out later. They do a more thorough search of Emily’s apartment and notice that she recently changed her locks and acquired a baseball bat. She was evidently fearing for her life.
In a fairly amusing scene at the Lieutenant’s office at the precinct, Jasmine instructs Ryan and Dylan to travel to Nebraska to investigate the original case files in Garfield in hopes of finding a lead on the Sleeping Beauty case. We get brief glances of her getting pressured from the Mayor to solve the case. Lizzie comes to the rescue at the right time with a solution for Jasmine to blow off some steam. In Dylan’s absence, she should accompany her on the streets. It begins with Lizzie showing Daniel’s online activity report to Jasmine who glances at it for about less than a second, I kid you not, before confirming that there is “more than enough for a warrant here.” I guess when you have 42 minutes into which you have to fit an episode as packed as this one, you need to clip a few seconds here and there to make it work.
This is when Lizzie proposes to Jasmine to accompany her. The frustrated Lieutenant does not need much convincing and the two form an impressive bad-ass duo for the rest of the episode where Lizzie plays the role of the brains (usually Dylan’s responsibility) and Jasmine provides the muscle. They break into Daniel’s apartment and drag him to the precinct where they question him hard. The sequence does not have the desired effect because, while Leal and Novakovic are on top of their game, it is obvious at halfway into the episode that Daniel is not Emily’s killer, and Weiler’s overly dramatic representation of the ‘awkward loser’ is cringeworthy to watch at times.
In yet another inspection of Emily’s apartment – Lizzie’s third I believe – she and Jasmine discover a memory card hidden in the smoke detector on the ceiling. It contains a recording of Emily yelling at her coach Brent to go away while he is outside her door trying to force himself in. Bingo!
By the time Lizzie and Jasmine arrive at the ice rink to arrest Coach Brent, they have already stopped by his girlfriend and gotten her to confess that he was not at her place during the time of Emily’s murder like she had earlier claimed. Normally, the denouement scene of the A story and the subsequent arrest would include Dylan’s pyscholo-babble ‘hypnotizing’ the perpetrator into giving a detailed confession, but he is not in New York. Therefore, we settle for the next most convenient resolution which involves the perpetrator taking off at the last moment in a desperate attempt to run away. Jasmine and Lizzie catch up with him of course and he gets handcuffed after getting firmly roughed up by Jasmine who appears to take great pleasure in doing so.
The episode really goes out of its way in the second half to put Jasmine in the thick of the action and champion the Lizzie-Jasmine sisterhood in its full glory. It works during the episode, but by the end, I must admit that I found myself missing the cool-headed leadership of the precinct’s Lt. Gooden. Thankfully, Jasmine also felt the same way. “I couldn’t take it on a daily basis,” she says with regard to being on the streets, “I’d go Rambo.”
As for the B story with Ryan and Dylan in Nebraska, most scenes are geared toward familiarizing Garfield’s inhabitants, including the Rego family members and Ryan’s mom, with the audience (andwith Dylan who struts around town with a three-piece suit and probably appears more foreign to the locals than a shashmaqam band’s lead singer from Uzbekistan would). These scenes have no bearing on the A storyline until the very end of the episode when Dylan has one of his epiphany moments.
It dawns on him that Cormac Rego (Michael Rady), the late Mr. Rego’s son, is the only resident of Garfield who appears to have put the past behind him and moved on since his father’s death, while everyone else is still suffering from restorative nostalgia. Simultaneously, Ryan has his own version of epiphany when he comes across a picture of him and Cormac in the family album when they were kids and it shows the two of them covered in the same type of cowboy blanket that the Sleeping Beauty killer used to cover his victims. Our enlightened protagonists rush to the Regos’ house to catch Cormac but alas, he just left for New York (his family thinks he went to Mexico on a business-related trip).
The episode closes as Ryan and Dylan hurry to the car in order to head to the airport. “Go Figure” is a solid outing overall and if memory serves, the first one to end in a pure cliffhanger.
Only one thought to add, and it is hardly a last-minute one:
– It was revealed this week that Instinct would not be renewed for a third season and the remaining three episodes would be the show’s last hurray. I am not sure how to take it. I understand that networks observe bottom-line numbers and have to make tough decisions. I will always feel a certain connection to Instinct since it was the first show that I began reviewing on this site. I will of course review each of the remaining episodes, but I must confess that my motivation has somewhat diminished after this news. If I am late in reviewing them, I apologize in advance.
Until the next episode…
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