“Grey Matter” – aired on August 25, 2019
Written by: Michael Rauch
Directed by: Michael Rauch
Grade: 3,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Before I tackle the case of the week, a quick update, via Julian, on their Dylan and his nemesis Pasternack who is apparently alive and kicking, unlike what the two were thinking after having killed him, or so they thought, years ago. Julian has done some digging following the discovery of the Pasternack footage in Maya’s tablet and he now goes by the name of Ken Goodman. Julian speculates that Pasternack wants revenge for what they did to him (it took him two years to begin walking again, we find out later), thus he hired Maya to locate and contact Julian. Maya having accomplished that, she was no longer needed and had to be eliminated.

Ok, now to the case of the week that begins when a severed head is discovered in a pond by two people passing by. Search teams later find three more so the victim count is up to four.

There is also a side story about Lizzie not making use of her vacation days. Dylan does his usual psychoanalyzing of her that Lizzie enjoys oh-so-much, and concludes that she avoids vacation because she thrives on familiarity and routine that work brings to the table. A second side story involves Dylan having sight problems. Not only does he see blurry at times, but he also hallucinates Pasternack (played by the wonderful Campbell Scott) being in his classroom and asking him a pointed question. This whole vision issue is wearing on Dylan and at one point he expresses his genuine fear to Lizzie about not being able to continue doing his job if he cannot see people clearly to observe them. There is also the lingering possibility that he may have been exposed to the same nerve agent that killed Maya in last week’s “Trust Issues,” although it is unlikely because Julian was with him and he is fine.

In the most entertaining scene of the hour that has little impact on the narrative otherwise, Doug the medical examiner asks Lizzie out using a Grease quote, “the power you supply is electrifying.” Whaaaaaat? Lizzie calls him out on the cheesy line and pretends as if she never heard that afterword. It also helps that Dylan joins them right on time, saving her from the prospect of further one-on-one dialogue with Doug with four severed heads between them. Doug informs them that the heads were dropped in the pond at different times during the last six months. Man, will I miss watching Andrew Polk playing Doug or what?

Lizzie and Dylan follow various leads and the trail eventually leads them to the Conklin Institute where Dr. Martin Portman (T. Ryder Smith), whose work Dylan admires deeply, began focusing his energy on finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease mainly because his wife Allyson (Emily Swallow) has recently been diagnosed with it. 

Eventually, with Julian’s help, they understand that the people to whom the severed heads belonged were terminal cancer patients – why did Lizzie and Dylan wait so long to ask Julian’s assistance in identifying the victims, I don’t know. Oh wait, I do, because the case needed to be resolved toward the end of the episode and not at the 15th-minute mark. It turns out that another doctor in the same hospital, Dr. Wells (Jeremy Shamos), was conducting his own covert, unlawful research by studying their brain waves before killing them with a… guillotine! I kid you not! The guy literally had a mammoth guillotine sitting behind a curtain at some corner of his lab! Talk about giving yourself away when the slightest bit of suspicion flows your way.      

Dr. Wells is an unexpected twist, because Michael Rauch (acting as writer and director of this episode on top of his showrunner duties) does a great job of making the Portmans appear as the guilty party for a substantial amount of time. I mean, Dr. Portman was at one time in the past decapitating pigs and using their heads in the name of research, for crying out loud. It’s Julian’s genius-like dexterity with computers that saves the couple from having the murders pinned on them, because he can tell that the evidence about the brain scans of the victims were planted into Allyson’s computer by someone else. There is also an intriguing reference made to the notion of “death wave” which represents the last moment of clarity before one dies, as well as the common “sacrifice of a few to save millions” argument thrown Lizzie and Dylan’s way by Dr. Wells in a last-second attempt to avoid arrest.

In the meantime, the most bizarre scene of the episode takes place when Dylan gets an MRI in hopes of getting his vision problem diagnosed. Somehow Pasternack enters the MRI room and begins to talk to Dylan, which totally freaks him out. It is hard to tell at first if this is taking place in Dylan’s imagination or if Pasternack is really there, because earlier in the episode, Dylan did imagine him in his class.

Yet, as the scene advances, it becomes clear that this is not merely happening in Dylan’s imagination, which begs more than one question. How did Pasternack know that Dylan was getting an MRI? Furthermore, where are the two doctors who are supposed to observe the MRI? How did he enter the room to begin with? Once Pasternack leaves, why is there no follow-up? Wouldn’t Dylan want to know why the doctors let him in there? His MRI was interrupted so he would have to immediately consult with the staff and reschedule anyway, which would surely bring up the question of why this one was interrupted. On another note, should Dylan not have been strapped to the machine with headphones on? Isn’t that how one gets an MRI?

The scene is meant to be a tension-filled scene but due to these discrepancies, it comes across half-baked and misses the mark. The irony is that it’s a key moment of the episode because of what Pasternack says, especially in terms of the long arc which… we’ll never get to see, sigh. Pasternack wants Dylan to convince Julian to help him uncover the forces behind the malware attack at the NYPD. He believes “something big” is about to New York and that the attack was just “the tip of the iceberg.” He also claims innocence in Maya’s death and promises to help Julian find the killer if he will agree to the collaboration. He knows Julian would never listen to him, so he is asking Dylan to speak to Julian on his behalf.

Ryan has not gone back to Nebraska yet. We know this, because he is walking around half-naked early in the morning at the NYPD. What is the deal with Ryan’s hair color by the way? It has almost turned dark brown over the course of the season. He started out as a blonde, did he not?

Anyway, Lizzie arrives unexpectedly and catches a shirtless Ryan in his shorts with “Go Huskies” written on the back. Ryan tells her that he had some vacation time, so he decided to take two weeks off to visit New York and possibly go to a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight in Las Vegas. In order to avoid the exuberant hotel fees in NYC, he slept overnight at the precinct’s locker room. Lizzie says “Go Huskies” to Ryan as he walks away. Yes, she was totally checking out his ass! Lizzie’s budding interest for Ryan gets hinted at again at the end of the episode when she decides, out of nowhere, out of nowhere (because the explanation is lame, frankly), to use her vacation days to take a two-week-long, across-the-country ride on Dylan’s motorcycle with a stop in Las Vegas for… an MMA fight! The episode comes across as preparation for future long arcs anyway – Rauch confirmed that much with a tweet before the episode aired – and the possibility of a romantic connection between Detectives Stock and Needham is definitely one that I would have loved to explore, with hopes that the writing room would have handled it less clumsily than the Julian-Lizzie one that meandered all over the map.

In the same scene at the end, we also learn from off-hand remark Dylan makes to Lizzie that his vision issues have ended. This reminds me of how abruptly, and oddly, the plotline involving the biological dad of Sam’s baby was ended in “Trust Issues.” There were two tense scenes devoted to it, tension gradually building up around the issue, only to have Andy brush the whole thing off with an off-hand sentence or two toward the end. Same thing occurs here. Dylan appears to be going berserk with anxiety as he experiences blurry visions and hallucinates while teaching, but it all gets casually dismissed in the very last scene where he briefly updates Lizzie, with a smile, on his condition with one sentence. He was suffering from acute stress disorder. He’s all good now! Yay! Okay…

The other long arc, never to be explored alas, is the collaboration of Pasternack and Julian, which is set to move forward when the two meet toward the end and Julian resentfully agrees to work with him. It’s another reason to lament Instinct not getting a third season in which they could have used the guest-starring services of quality actor like Campbell in a recurring role.

Nor will we ever get to see Andy and Dylan’s baby. Andy is nowhere to be found in this hour and whether he ventures into the world of law or not will remain a mystery forever. We do end with a treat though, the scene I mentioned above featuring the wonderful synergy between the two leads that I never got tired of labeling as the show’s greatest asset.

Final thought:

– Thus, Instinct closes its curtains. The show will forever hold a special place for me because it was the one with which I launched this blog, Durg’s TV Show Reviews, in March of 2018. I remember being somewhat nervous about possibly having made a bad pick prior to watching “Pilot” (because I don’t review shows retroactively, so it is a bit of a gamble), but once it aired, I felt good about the show’s chances of making it at least until the end of the first season. My reviews will remain on the site for as long as Durg’s TV Show Reviews continues to exist so if you have any friends who decide to watch reruns of Instinct, or binge the series in the future, please point them here for episodic reviews.

Sorry, no “Until the next episode…” this time.

Instead, so long Instinct.

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“Trust Issues” – aired on August 18, 2019
Written by: Carol Flint & Constance M. Burge
Directed by: Lee Rose
Grade: 4,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

A lot happens in one of the better outings of Instinct, and with the Sleeping Beauty case now over, we witness substantial steps forward in the storylines pertaining to the main characters. Let’s start nonetheless with the crime du jour.

Three people are dead following a shooting in a brewery. The initial investigation points toward a murder-suicide, with a young man named Lewis killing his mother Gretchen and brother-in-law Phil, before putting the gun in his own mouth. They all worked at the brewery along with Gretchen’s daughter Angela (Joaquina Kalukango) and Samar the brewmaster (Bhavesh Patel) who were not there at the time of the incident. We learn later that the business was successful, but also that Lewis had prior run-ins with the law and a strained relationship (family-related issues) with his mom who was nonetheless supporting him financially because he could not get a job. He was responsible of hosing down the tanks at night.

Lizzie and Dylan go through the routine of most crime TV episodes by interviewing people who knew the victims, gathering further evidence, and eliminating names from the possible suspects list such as Samar and Tony (Ray Iannicelli), an ex-racketeer who now runs a pizza parlor.

The ballistics expert (Gene Gabriel) provides a key evidence for Lizzie and Dylan, thanks to some advanced military equipment in the division’s possession that can detect nearby sounds. When they listen to the shots fired at the brewery, they note that the close-range, muffled shot that would indicate Lewis’s suicide comes first, followed by six more shots in succession. Add to that the information obtained at the office of Doug the medical examiner, and it becomes quickly apparent that Lewis did not commit suicide, but that he was murdered.

Speaking of Doug the medical examiner…

Lewis supposedly shot himself in the head by through his mouth but Lizzie and Dylan actually have to point out to Doug that a bullet traveling from under the tongue to the palate of the mouth would be an extremely rare occurrence and that it indicates a struggle before the shot rather than the shooter simply committing a suicide. It would qualify it as a homicide. My problem with this sequence is that I just don’t buy how Doug is portrayed here. First of all, would a seasoned medical examiner like Doug not have already noticed how unusual that is? And once he has, wouldn’t the alarm bells ring in his head, prompting him to then rule the death as a homicide? I do not quite understand the purpose of inserting a dialogue into the script just to foreground an unrealistic misstep by a medical examiner. What difference would it have made if Doug noted the rarity down and simply informed Lizzie and Dylan?

It ultimately turns out that the culprit is officer Sean McColl (Quincy Dunn-Baker), the beat cop who knew the family. He was using the brewery at night for the illegal delivery of weapons and running an arms trafficking operation. He was paying Lewis to keep quiet, except that things went haywire when Lewis tried to extort more money out of him through blackmail. Thanks to flashback scene à-la-Columbo, we see the frantic events of that night that took place at the brewery, starting with Sean killing Lewis first, then Gretchen and Phil next because they happened to arrive earlier at the brewery earlier than usual on that morning and saw him standing over Lewis’s dead body.

Just like that, the crime-story part of the episode is over, nearly 10 minutes before it ends. It’s a completely understandable decision by the episode writers (notwithstanding the brilliant and multi-faceted set-up of the murder du jour that could have easily been fleshed out further), because “Trust Issues” is more concerned with character development, notably that of the main cast. The murder(s) that usually play the role of the A story, rather acts as a pleasant distraction from the emotionally taxing scenes featuring Lizzie, Julian, Dylan, and Andy, which, for their part, need time to breath. Credit to writers Carol Flint and Constance M. Burge (both also billed as co-executive producers) for successfully doing just that.

Let’s begin with Andy. He receives an email from the attorney of the biological father of Sam’s child from Germany and he is quite worried although he does not understand a word of German. He first brings it up to Sam while she is at the gynecologist, then he secretly meets with Lizzie at a bar in panic mode because after having it translated, he learns that the father wants money in return for giving up his parental rights to the child they are bound to adopt. It’s a great build up that also includes the tension Andy feels about how he will explain this to Dylan without having him come unglued. Yet, this intriguing subplot comes to an abrupt end when Andy casually brushes it off with a two-sentence update during Dylan’s surprise, informing Lizzie that he called the German dude’s bluff and the matter is resolved. i must admit that I felt shortchanged. I can only speculate that the plotline may have hinted at highlighting how close Lizzie and Andy have grown as friends – Lizzie also helps Andy with a pep talk so that he can deal with the German dude’s lawyer. Even if that were the writers’ intention, the wrap-up of the subplot still lands awkwardly.  

Putting the hick-up with the biological dad aside, it is one of the happiest episodes for the Andy-Dylan household. Not only are Andy’s effort to throw a surprise party for Dylan with his friends from the precinct are rewarded, but Sam, the mother of their future child (seen in two previous episodes) is also there to inform the two of them that they are going to have a boy! As if that were not enough, Andy lets it slip to Lizzie that Dylan will ask her to be their child’s godmother. Lizzie is ecstatic to say the least.

Once we turn the attention from the Andy-Dylan household to Julian and his relationships with Lizzie and Dylan, however, a gloomier picture emerges. Lizzie meets with Julian at a park so that they can return items to each other following their break-up in “Ancient History” – not that the tension between the two has lost any steam by any means. They exchange bags and Lizzie leaves. She notices a minute later from afar that Julian is talking to another woman right where she left him. Her heart is understandably broken, because she feels stupid. In her mind, Julian dumped her for nothing more than the most cliché of reasons, another woman, while she had fooled herself into believing that it was his secretive lifestyle that rendered their relationship impossible. It’s a plausible self-reflection and Novakovic sells it very well. You cannot help but feel for her.

Except that the woman with Julian was actually Maya (from the previous two episodes) and thank heavens Dylan is there to inform Lizzie of that fact. He reassures her that Julian would never lie to either of them. The scene puts on display the great – and always reliable – synergy between the two, especially considering that the dialogue comes on the heels of Dylan having had enough of watching Lizzie mope around and snark at everyone, thus demanding that she explains what is bothering her.

The other side of the coin is that Dylan himself has gotten paranoid around Julian, watching his every move and wondering what he is doing when he is not around. His father casting doubt on his friend at the end of “Manhunt” has obviously had an impact on our genius professor. Julian finally meets with Dylan at the lobby of the hotel where he is staying and clears the air. He is no traitor, as everyone expected. Given the status of Dylan’s father with the CIA, Julian simply could not share all the information with his friend. They go up to his room where Dylan hopes to say hello to Maya, but they find her dead on the floor! They find a tablet in the minibar (Maya sent a text to Julian saying “mb”) in which there is footage of an old nemesis of theirs named Pasternak. Dylan and Julian are dumbfounded because at some point in the past, Dylan apparently shot him and they watched him die, or so they thought!    

It’s a frantic ending to a solid hour that squarely puts the spotlight on our main characters and leaves the audience with a lot to ponder. The obvious problem here is that the timing of the show’s cancellation by CBS, announced two episodes ago, means that the showrunners did not consider these last few episodes as the closing ones of the series. If anything, “Trust Issues” comes across as an episode that launches new storylines that are meant to occupy the narratives of many episodes to come. Next episode, now officially the last episode of Instinct, is unlikely to bring any resolution to them.

Last-minute thoughts:

– When I look back at the list of my preferred episodes of Instinct, I find Flint’s name in the writer credits in most of them, either in collaboration with another writer (like in this outing, with Burge) or as the sole writer. She also penned what I believe to be the best episode of the series, “Finders Keepers,” (Season 2, Episode 3). Main characters greatly benefit her episodes in terms of character growth, and “Trust Issues” is no exception.

– The way Lizzie and Dylan stumble on to Sean McColl’s name during their investigation is very convincing. Not much is contrived here for the sake of rushing the plot along, even though the investigation moves forward at a brisk pace.

– We will never get to see Andy and Dylan’s baby, will we?  

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“Manhunt” – aired on August 18, 2019
Written by: John Cockrell
Directed by: Constantine Makris
Grade: 3,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

“Manhunt” features more action scenes than most others, one of the two reasons why it lives up to the billing of its title. The other one has to do with the fact that it is solely focused on chasing and apprehending Cormac Rego whom we know now to be the Sleeping Beauty killer. It is the most single-plot focused outing of the series, even more so than “Broken Record.” There are no B stories here – Dylan’s talk with his dad in the last 60 seconds does not count as one since it only comes in at the 11th-hour to put forth a twist about another main character. More on that later.

“Manhunt” begins with Cormac riding in a cab from JFK to the city. His mother informs him on the phone that Ryan and Dylan stopped by their house in Garfield, asking about him. This sends red alarm to Cormac and he tells the driver to take the next exit and drop him, except that he also strangles him before leaving. Except that he made a gross miscalculation, the driver is not dead. Ryan and Lizzie will later learn of Cormac’s destination in the city through the driver while he is recovering in the emergency room.

Next, we are in the confines of the 11th precinct where, thank heavens, Jasmine is back to her Lieutenant role (see my review of last week’s “Go Figure”) giving directives to the police force, briefing everyone on the identity of the Sleeping Beauty killer whom we know now to be Cormac Rego. Ryan and Dylan are back from Nebraska, and nobody can locate Julian. He shows up a little later in the episode but where he was during that time remains a mystery to everyone including Dylan and Lizzie.

Andy stops by the precinct on his way to the bar to let his husband know that daddy Reinhart stopped by the house and wants to talk to Dylan in person.

Lizzie, Dylan, and Ryan conclude through some clever deductive reasoning that Cormac must have been staying at the apartment where they currently are because it’s the only one, among many that he acquired, through a cash transaction. He was buying property in New York although his family thought he was going to Mexico because that is where his father wanted him to relocate the business before dying. Our detectives find a ton of evidence in the apartment, including cowboy blankets, a murder weapon, and a wall covered with newspaper clippings of his victims, but not Cormac himself.

The next step is to get Candace (Rebecca Faulkenberry), Cormac’s sister, to come to New York and help them draw Cormac out. Ryan is not too keen on the idea of using her as bait – they used to date and are childhood friends – but he goes along. They believe that Cormac still loves his sister and that she can get through to him. Through Candace’s stories, our detectives also learn that Mr. Rego was sometimes abusive with his son, demanding a lot from him.

The tactic works, Cormac calls Candace and wants to meet with her at the Seaport District. Dylan vehemently opposes the idea of a public location of Cormac’s choosing but he gets overruled by the others, including Jasmine who gives the green light.

While everyone is in place at the location waiting for Cormac, Lizzie notices him on the roof of a building and alerts the others. Ryan blatantly jumps out of the hide-out truck he was in, in plain view of Cormac, which alerts Cormac to run, unsurprisingly! I can only imagine how much actual detectives watching this episode must have cringed at that moment. The good news is that an action scene follows as Ryan chases Cormac in a parking garage and the action scenes are the episode’s strong parts thanks to the dexterity of director Constantine Makris in using limited camera angles to increase the suspense.

Somehow Cormac gets away from Ryan despite getting shot in the arm (where are the others? Don’t ask. Nor did Ryan when he finally ran into them outside the parking garage).

Candace is angry because not only is Cormac not apprehended as promised, but he also got shot. She leaves the precinct in a fury, but Dylan assures Ryan that she is not going far because she left her bag behind. Sure enough, she is sitting outside the precinct when Lizzie finds her and convinces her again (by showing photos of Cormac’s victims) to assist them in finding her brother. There is the underlying theme of the unbreakable bond between siblings at play throughout the episode which gives Dylan plenty of opportunities to psycho-analyze Candace and Cormac. It’s an apt use of the main character’s primary skill through A story, kudos to the episode writer John Cockrell for using one of the show’s central assets in a compelling manner.  

But the moment that steals the spotlight in this sequence is the pep talk that Dylan gives to Ryan who was feeling gloomy for not being able to keep his promise to Candace. Waving his arms and raising his voice, he pumps Ryan up with the following: “Show me some of that… midwestern, steak-eating, cornfield-loving, oh-what-a-beautiful-morning optimism, okay?” Priceless!

Another odd moment in the shuffle: the most insignificant recurring character of Instinct, det. Jimmy Marino (John Mainieri) who probably averages 1,3 seconds per episode of airtime, actually gets to say a full sentence that is relevant to the case at hand. Whoop-de-doo! 

Next in the playbook of our detectives is to have Candace address Cormac via Dennis’s podcast without giving any names and implore his brother to turn himself in. It seems that our detectives have forgotten to check in with Lt. Gooden because her plan differs. She decided to release the killer’s identity and photo to the public, despite Ryan and Dylan’s objections.

In the meantime, Cormac apparently contacted Dennis and offered to talk with him face-to-face. Naturally, Dennis accepted, and naturally, Cormac took Dennis hostage at gun point. We know this because Cormac sent Ryan a clip of him holding Dennis hostage. He wants Ryan to come and attempt a rescue of Dennis so that he can kill the “Golden Boy of Garfield.” Through the clip, our detectives figure out where Cormac is (thanks to a pharmacy bag with a name on it, if you must know) but by the time they arrive at the location Cormac and Dennis are gone. But hey, you don’t get away from the trio of Dylan, Lizzie, and Ryan that easily, right? They determine (please don’t ask how) that he must have taken Dennis to some maritime terminal to hide.

Finally, we get to the final showdown between Ryan and Cormac after another quality sequence of search-and-pursue suspense. During the standoff, Ryan pulls off Dylan-esque psycholo-babble to engage Cormac in a conversation although the latter is pointing a gun at him. Dylan naturally steps in with the tough daddy talk (using the “man up” bark that Mr. Rego regularly threw at Cormac when he was a child, according to Candace) to distract Cormac by jolting his painful childhood memories, which gives Ryan just enough time to jump on Cormac. A short scuffle ensues, Lizzie shoots Cormac, and the Sleeping Beauty killer is at last apprehended. While the long-arc investigation of the case brought an intriguing dimension to the second season of Instinct, I cannot help but feel a bit underwhelmed by the fact that Cormac’s ham-fisted decisions and insecure behavior in “Mahnunt” did not correspond to that which one would expect out of a mastermind who meticulously crafted this series of murders through so many previous episodes.

“Manhunt” has one last trick up its sleeve at the very end. In an unpleasant meeting between Dylan and his dad (who works for the CIA and first appeared in “I Heart New York,” played by the great John Doman), the older Reinhart tells his son that the CIA believes Julian is behind the malware attack. Dylan refuses to believe it, but looks deeply concerned by this revelation as the screen goes dark.

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“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…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“After Hours” – aired on August 11, 2019
Written by: Erica Saleh
Directed by: Joe Collins
Grade: 3 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

The episode picks up from where the previous episode left off, with Dylan’s fears coming to fruition about the Sleeping Beauty killer case turning into a media frenzy and the police losing control of the narrative. Which begs the question, why is Jasmine then holding a press conference smack in the middle of downtown New York next to a busy intersection on a podium? Doesn’t the NYPD have access to an isolated conference room where they can talk to the journalists, in other words, not in public view? Never mind, moving on…

Ryan is questioning Dennis (Drew Gehling carries over his apt portrayal of the dodgy podcaster from the last episode) in an interview room at the precinct. Apparently, he did not talk to the Sleeping Beauty killer as his previous podcast seemed to prove. Instead, the killer left a voice mail for Dennis that he clipped and reassembled to make it sound like he was having a conversation with him. Anything goes as far as this podcaster is concerned, including lying to the police, as long as his ratings shoot through the roof.

A dead woman’s body with a gunshot to the chest is discovered in some back alley. Ryan is wondering if the Sleeping Beauty killer is evolving (the body’s position and the coat covering it seem to fit the pattern, not the gun shot though), but our resident genius Dylan knows after four seconds of visual analysis that the Sleeping Beauty killer could not have committed this one because it “feels like a regression.” It’s too messy. Dylan also decides on the spot that the NYPD should not yet go public with this knowledge, because it may provide them with an opportunity to regain control of the narrative (more on that a bit later).

A card of the Bellmark Hotel is found on the female victim. The establishment caters to the elite international clientele. We know this because our jack-of-all-trades resident-spy Julian knows the establishment, naturally. A load of Lizzie’s bitter energy flows in Julian’s direction because the dialogue reminds her of how little she knows about him. This is nothing new, but it’s still amusing because Novakovic does such a great job of conveying Lizzie’s snark. Nevertheless, this perpetually deferred resolution to the Julian-Lizzie romance will hopefully arrive soon, before the pattern gets old.

Lizzie and Dylan head to the hotel and learn that the dead woman, named Vivian Russo, has a suite at the hotel. They discover a messy suite with a blood trail leading to the bedroom, in which a younger dude named Noah (Ethan Slater) is passed out on the bed. This leads to a mundane false-trail plotline that I will not go into in detail because it is strikingly pedestrian, and thankfully, it does not last long. There is a hilarious snap-moment where it looks almost as if Alan Cumming is aware of how contrived this subplot appears. Dylan summarizes back to Noah the youngster’s recount of the night’s events. Check out Dylan’s expression when Noah confirms his summary with “I told you it was a bad night.” Priceless!

Ryan and Dylan have a brilliant idea for which they need Jasmine’s approval. They intend to not only make it appear as if they believe the Sleeping Beauty killer murdered Vivian, but also go on Dennis’s podcast and talk about it. Their goal is to wound the killer’s pride enough to draw him out. They are counting on the killer to get upset at being associated with a sloppily executed murder. This nicely brings relevance to why Dylan did not want the NYPD to go public with the murder earlier in the episode (an example of good writing). Jasmine listens to the two detectives and approves their plan after a delightful-yet-predictable little dialogue scene in her office.

After unlocking Vivian’s phone, our detectives notice the name Sasha (Myles Clohessy) in her schedule planner on the night of the murder. This leads to a conversation with the hotel concierge Gemma (Molly Griggs) who apprehensively admits to Dylan and Lizzie that she must sometimes accommodate discreet requests made to her by the guests. Vivian apparently asked Gemma to recommend her an erotic lifestyle club and that leads Lizzie and Dylan to suspect that Vivian must have met Sasha at the club.

That brings us to the much-advertised sex-club scene that occupies the middle seven minutes of the episode, where Dylan and Lizzie go to the club as undercover cops. Unfortunately, it turns out to be quite underwhelming, as most kink-fetish-wannabe scenes are on network TV, because strict viewing guidelines do not leave room for a realistic representation of such behavior and/or ambiance. When the most memorable part of the all-week-long, highly advertised, seven-minute sequence amounts to nothing more than hearing Novakovic chitter-chatter in her native accent as “Penny, the Australian sommelier” and Dylan in his Scottish accent as her companion, the writing has failed. Clohessy’s representation of Sasha being wooden does not help either and there are several run-of-the-mill details shoved into these minutes.

Even Cumming is not on top of his game here. Dylan looks out of place and behaves awkwardly, which would be acceptable except that we are led to believe all throughout Instinct’s run that Dylan is a multi-talented, witty genius familiar with anything and everything as a world traveler in his FBI days. At least, Lizzie meets Sasha, but the narrative related to Sasha only advances later, when Lizzie and Dylan question Sasha outside the club after his shift. It’s another false trail, in case you wondered. Sasha had nothing to do with Vivian’s murder, but he does reveal the name of another person who was with Vivian on the night that she visited him, someone named Jack, a “foreign government bigwig.” Another false trail, in case you wondered, again.

Throughout these false-trail narratives (nothing new to procedurals), Dylan and Lizzie develop contradicting opinions. Dylan believes there is some type of an international conspiracy behind Vivian’s murder. Lizzie, for her part, believes that it was the result of a routine mugging gone wrong, resulting in Vivian’s death. According to her, the perpetrator panicked and tried to make it look like the work of the Sleeping Beauty killer as cover. Lizzie is right, Dylan is wrong, for once! Lizzie makes sure Dylan is aware of the distinction too, relishing her victory in glowing fashion.

When she goes back to the crime scene for another look-around earlier that day, she finds magenta-colored nail-polish chips by the dumpster in the back alley. Lizzie remembers Gemma wearing the same color nail polish and when they first met her at the hotel. She noticed Gemma chipping at her nails as they were talking with her. The camera zoom on her nails was so blatant at that time that you knew it would come into play at some point later in the outing. The final nail is in the coffin when Dylan uses his pyscholo-babble talk to get Gemma to confess every detail of her murder and motives behind it, as conveniently as we have seen Dylan do it with other perpetrators in the closing moments of many previous episodes. Has any of them even denied the charges or asked for a lawyer? I doubt it.

In the land of B and C plots, we are introduced to a new character named Maya (Reshma Shetty) who, I presume, will become an important player in the upcoming episodes. Dylan and Julian seemingly know her from before, with hints that she and Julian may have even been intimately involved. Dylan warns Julian to be careful with Maya because he is still “vulnerable,” at which point I ask myself, say what? How old is Julian and what is his lifetime job again?

Andy is indeed considering getting back into law. Thank heavens! It took seven episodes, but we may, after all, see Andy expand beyond the dreamy, domestic husband portrayal to which he has been limited for the most part.

The episode chimes back in on Ryan’s pursuit of the Sleeping Beauty killer one more time. Their plan (approved by Jasmine) works because the killer calls Ryan directly soon after Ryan criticized him on Dennis’s podcast for how sloppy Vivian’s murder was and dared him to get into direct contact with him. The killer is not pleased to have Vivian’s murder put on him and has a few sharp words for Ryan. Dylan quickly analyzes the semantics of what the killer said and figures out that he must be someone Ryan knows. At least, we moved a step further with this long arc. It is moving slowly, excruciatingly slowly at times, but it is nonetheless moving forward.

Julian meets Maya at the hotel. She is an MI-6 agent and they know everything about his life, including the recent break-up with Lizzie, the stranger breaking into his apartment, and the malware attempt at the precinct. Julian is obviously not as discreet as he thought or as we have been led to believe for a season and a half. Frankly, it is a bit of a letdown because it lifts a significant layer off the enigma surrounding the persona of Julian. Maya then proposes to Julian that they work together since they are “both hunting the same person.”

The episode ends on a high note when it brings to the surface in a meaningful way an underlying theme of the hour, pertaining to the idea that Dylan misses the excitement of his days as a CIA spy. He supposedly picks arguments with Andy about mundane topics, such as which color to use as paint in the nursery, just to inject some excitement into his days. Luckily, he does not allow it to get out of control and mentions it to Andy who, for his part, also needs to get something off his chest. It’s probably the strongest scene of the hour where two lovers in a relationship give a clinic on how to openly communicate with one another in order to nip disagreements in the bud before they grow into insurmountable problems.

Last-minute thoughts:

– Convenient, not to say glib, solution to how Dylan knew the password – “Mystik” – to access the private rooms downstairs: he heard someone say it on the way in.

– So, the magenta nail-polish chips visible on the ground by the dumpster were not discovered by the crime-scene investigators who arrived at the scene, but by Lizzie who stopped by the location days later? O-kay…

– Fucci’s latest nickname for Ryan: “Detective Teen Beat.”

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“One-of-a-Kind” – aired on August 4, 2019
Written by: Michael J. Ballin & Thomas Aguilar
Directed by: Janice Cooke
Grade: 3,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

The A story of “One-of-a-kind” has a surprisingly unique concept (three individuals collaborating to create a phantom identity named “Ace” acting as a single artist) but fizzles out behind a nondescript series of events with no attempt at delving into what could really be fascinating, the reasons behind this trio’s modus operandi.

For instance, I can accept to a degree that keeping Ace’s identity a secret – Dylan refers to Ace as a “stealth artist” – may carry an element of mystery that contributes to its marketability. Yet, I am not sure how necessary that is for Ace’s success, let alone how realistic that comes across when there are three people needed to keep the scheme going. One excels in papier-mâché sculptors, the other in painting, and the third in provocative slogans. Consider for a moment the last one’s skill. Could the first two not produce the artwork like they usually do and tag a provocative message to it themselves? Especially considering that they have strict guidelines to follow in order to keep up the ruse, would it not function better with two people at the helm than three? Another question is, which one is executing the stealth operations (breaking into the Louvre, climbing Big Ben undetected, etc.)? Does he/she get a larger share of the financial pie? What are the dynamics at play between the three? Unfortunately, a lot of intriguing avenues are left unexplored although the initial concept oozes potential for quality drama. Instead, the script sticks to the progress of the investigation itself in the most run-of-the-mill way possible.

A body is found in an art installation left overnight in front of the FED building, an unlikely occurrence considering its size and the time it would have taken to place it there without being seen by anyone in front of one of the most important buildings in NY City and the country. According to Amber Williams (Carra Paterson) who sells Ace’s work at an art gallery, the installation carries all the hallmarks of an Ace work. Gustavo, the victim, turns out to be Ace himself, or so think Dylan and Lizzie at first. They soon realize that there is more to this than meets the eye when they find a hidden studio upstairs in Gustavo’s house where they discover love letters from him to a woman named “Syl,” talking about how hard it is to keep their secret safe.

Fucci has apparently been after Ace for a while for other infractions in the past. He says that Ace has a rival named Dexter Davies (Gary Milner) and they are known to sling mud at each other. When Lizzie asks Davies about it, he reveals that the feud was a ruse to increase their exposure. A close friend of Ace named Sylvia “Syl” Mau got in touch with him and helped set it up. She also runs a blog documenting Ace’s work. Dylan and Lizzie never get to talk to her. She is found dead at Amber’s gallery on another art installation. 

When they search her studio, they notice the same sketch on the wall that they saw in Gustavo’s studio, except that this time it’s colored. It dawns on Dylan and Lizzie that Gustavo and Sylvia were parts of the same work, meaning Ace was the two of them together. This is further confirmed when they find a letter from Gustavo saying that their “art is bigger than Ace,” and that they need to “come out.” Except that someone killed both before they had a chance to do so.

While Andy and Dylan are chatting at their house, Andy’s use of the word “message” for an unrelated topic sends Dylan into an epiphany moment where he figures out that Ace includes a third person who is charged with the task of writing the provocative message. That is putting a lottogether with a single word, even by the standards of Dr. Reinhart, our ultra-genius professor-investigator.

The investigation leads to a course that Sylvia and Gustavo took together in art school back in 2007. On the course’s webpage, their worls are featured along with those of other students, including one named Paul Wexford (Bryce Pinkham) who made signs with provocative messages. Dylan suddenly remembers seeing him earlier working at the gallery. Bingo! They rush to his apartment where they find evidence that Paul wanted to take Ace in a new direction and did not want Gustavo and Sylvia to blow the cover.

The arrest scene is clumsy and rushed as Paul grabs Amber and puts a knife to her throat with the police pointing guns at him. Dylan inserts his psycholo-babble, as he always does, and Paul confesses everything, as all of Instinct’s villains always do, before peacefully turning himself over.

In other news, we get an update on Joan the editor, played by Whoopi Goldberg in season 1. She decided to extend her stay in Paris indefinitely and write her memoirs. Harry Kasabian (Eric Bogosian) is the new editor assigned to Dylan and although I doubt that he can fully replace Joan’s on-screen charisma, he is a quite eccentric fellow. He shows up at the precinct to put the heat on Dylan, demanding that the manuscript be finished by the end of the week. Dylan is unable to do so, and later in the episode, he stops by Harry’s office to hand him a check for the amount of the contract. He wants out! To his surprise, Harry refuses the check and tells him to take the time he needs, because they ultimately want the book. The bastard was bluffing!

In the meantime, the drama meter for the Lizzie-Julian affair is skyrocketing. Maybe too much. It is beginning to feel as if they are breaking up once or twice each episode. Early in “One-of-a-Kind,” Julian comes clean to Lizzie (don’t ask, “why now?”). Someone is after him and he spent two weeks in Istanbul tailing a CIA operative who may be involved. Oh, and by the way, dear Lizzie, it’s his last day of work at the precinct. How lovely must it feel for you to hear that on the morning of the day in question! Honestly, I clapped and cheered for Dylan when he walked by them later and said in a snarky tone, “I won’t miss the drama.”

I hope their current status quo of stare-at-each-other-with-puppy-eyes does not last forever and the writing room takes this relationship somewhere, or shelves it for good. Julian and Lizzie were both intriguing characters before the writing room force-jammed them into a relationship in “Live,” so there is no reason why they could thrive as characters without being a couple.

In a useful scene, Dylan updates others (and viewers) on the Sleeping Beauty case, as he goes through the photos of the three victims in the conference room. He underlines that with Jay, the latest one, the killer used his own blanket and pillow, which points to an increasing desire on his part to engage with our detectives. And yes, things are escalating on that front.

A true-crime podcaster named Dennis Walker (Drew Gehling) is caught by Ryan snooping around in his hotel room. He has some knowledge of the case but will not name his sources. The top priority for the NYPD is to control the narrative while investigating this case, so Dylan decides to let him go but wants Ryan to follow him. They promise Dennis exclusive scoops at the appropriate time if he agrees to remain quiet. It’s a flimsy supposition, and sure enough, Dennis soon puts out a new episode with a bombshell guest, the Sleeping Beauty killer himself! Dylan can forget about controlling the narrative.

In another brief-yet-important side story, Julian comes across an attack on the precinct’s server and neutralizes it. He cannot tell where it came from but if the perpetrators try again and succeed, they would gain control of the NYPD’s network and make it inaccessible to the police. It appears that Julian will stay around the precinct a little longer than planned. Expect more lovesick stares between him and Lizzie!

Last-minute thoughts:

– Fucci’s new nickname for Ryan is “Thor.”

– I hope Joan does not stay forever in Paree, and Goldberg makes at least one or two more appearances.

– While on the downstairs floor of Gustavo’s house, Dylan smells the glue sitting on a table upstairs in a locked-away studio, separated from the stairs by a secret wall/fireplace. That’s beyond bear-like sense of smell.

– The backward Captain Ahab reference by Fucci, his response to Dylan correcting him, and the reactions of Lizzie and Dylan to that response —–> Priceless!!

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“Ancient History” – aired on July 28, 2019
Written by: Jill Abbinanti & Constance M. Burge
Directed by: Randy Zisk
Grade: 4 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

If you’ve read the beginning of my review of “Big Splash,” the previous episode, you can understand why I am not surprised that the writing room came up with a solid outing here. Ha!

All jokes and coincidences aside, “Ancient History” is an entertaining hour of Instinct, featuring one of the grisliest murders in the arena of TV crime dramas, certainly the grisliest one in the show’s run to date. The decomposed body of a man named Thomas O’Hare is discovered in the river and it looks atrocious. He was killed via an ancient form of torture named “scaphism” (thank you Professor Reinhart for the weekly encyclopedic entry) in which the victim is stripped and bolted between two boats with only their limbs and head exposed. The immobile victim is then fed milk and honey for days or weeks until diarrhea settles in, which in turn attracts insects that eat the victim’s skin alive over the course of a couple of weeks or three. Splendidly macabre!

Plus, an outrageous murder with a ghastly corpse left behind almost guarantees a copious amount of sarcasm on the part of Doug the Medical Examiner in the weekly scene in his lab, which is never boring to begin with. I only remember Andrew Polk from his recurring role in House of Cards, but I feel as if he was made to play Instinct‘s Doug!

Writers Jill Abbinanti and Constance M. Burge come up with several neat intricacies to keep the viewer’s attention at bay. “Ancient History” is not perfect, mainly due to dominoes falling into place too conveniently (and too exquisitely) at times, but it does showcase a complex plot with a few cleverly executed twists.

O’Hare was apparently a cut-throat divorce lawyer who made a lot of enemies. He was supposed to go on a retreat. He’s been married for 15 years to Margot (Orlagh Cassidy), a professor who wrote her dissertation on Plutarch, but the two have been separated for 14 months, although not divorced. According to her, they were in the process of reconciliation and Tom asked to move back home. Dylan remains suspicious because Plutarch documented scaphism in his writings.

Margot mentions a woman who harassed Tom to the point where he had to get a restraining order against her. Her name is Sara (Kate Reinders) and she is a bit of a nutcase. She tells them that Tom represented her ex-husband who was draining her bank account and he made sure that she lost her townhouse and long-time business that she built from scratch during the divorce. Reinders puts forth a delightful performance in this scene as Sara comes across angry, ditzy, and nutty all at the same time while talking about her ex-husband and Tom.

In the meantime, a man named Lon Vicars (Christopher Brian Loach) has turned himself in for the murder of Tom. He owned a successful jewelry store until Tom represented his wife and ruined his business by making public the fact that he was beating his wife. He strangely commits suicide after confessing his crime to Dylan and Lizzie by swallowing cyanide. Dylan concludes that he could no longer live with so much guilt and shame.

The case appears to be solved, except that it cannot be true, because we are only 15 minutes into the episode at that point.

In the meantime, Ryan continues to work the Sleeping Beauty case. Remember bartender Joe’s photo that Dylan and Ryan found at the end of “Big Splash” last week? Ryan also found Joe’s body, near a castle in Central Park. The blanket covering Joe is tracked to a website and Ryan learns that the killer used Nancy Lee’s credit card, the Sleeping Beauty killer’s first victim from “Stay Gold.” The bad news is that the trail turns into a dead end, but not before Ryan learning that a dozen other similar blankets were purchased a week ago.

He and Lizzie, in an effort to vent out their frustrations, spar with each other for a bit of boxing in the gym in a scene that lasts unnecessarily long and serves only as a plot device so that Lizzie can have her eureka moment when Ryan makes a passing passing comment about being right-handed. It made her think of the location of the bruise in Tom O’Hare’s head and realize that the killer had to be left-handed, which Vicars was not (a brief flashback shows him holding the cup with his right hand shortly before he committed suicide). It’s a bit of a stretch, but hey, let’s roll with it since it’s Lizzie is the one having an epiphany for a change.

Back to the drawing board in the case of the scaphism’d divorce lawyer.

Dylan and Lizzie visit Becca Horner (Lilli Stein), Tom’s paralegal, to obtain names of people who may have threatened him. According to Becca, Tom left to get away from Margot in order to rest before “they went to war,” contradicting what Margot said earlier.

Later, Ryan informs them that the lab called back and that the honey in the body is traced to a local honey stand in Greene County, the only one matching that particular kind – conveniently – within a 500-mile radius. Lizzie and Dylan drive out to meet the owner, fittingly named Bea (Patricia R. Floyd), who is an impressive fountain of information. She says that Lon has been a regular customer in the last two weeks and was usually accompanied by Sara whose parents own a cabin nearby. The wheels begin turning inside Dylan and Lizzie’s heads as they find the cabin. The cabin’s inside resembles the house of horrors and it quickly becomes obvious that Tom was kept and tortured there.

Sara is brought to the precinct, but she is not talking until her lawyer arrives (yet never does, “due to time constraints”). Julian, of course, comes to the rescue and manages to decrypt Sara’s phone where they find a three-way chat discussing the plan to murder Tom. One of the users has intimate knowledge of his schedule and whereabouts, thus temporarily putting the detectives on the wrong trail by making Margot look guilty, especially considering that Sgt. Harris, in a precisely timed interruption acting as a plot device, chimes in to say that Margot took a personal leave of absence three weeks ago, one that lasted two weeks, which fits precisely the time of frame that it took Tom to be kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Oh, by the way, Harris also says that Margot is not telling anyone anything about what she did during her leave of absence. 

How conveniently suspicious of her and how perfectly is everything timed in this whole sequence! The cleverness of the next twist does its best to make up for it.

Lizzie and Dylan press Margot who then admits to getting a face-lift and a tummy tuck during her leave of absence. She says that she is no expert on scaphism other than doing a few lectures about it every year. Dylan and Lizzie ask for her notes, but Becca has them because she transcribes Margot’s lectures for extra cash. Red alarms go off in everyone’s head, especially when Margot adds that Becca had access to Tom’s schedule and alarm codes. After some digging at the precinct, our detectives learn that Becca’s actual name was Rebecca Johnson, and that Horner was her mother’s maiden name that she has been using since her parents divorced a few years ago.

Tom represented Becca’s jerkwad father and made sure that he got custody of Becca’s younger sister. The two got in a boating accident that tragically left her sister dead, but not before suffering for 12 days at the hospital. Her father was over the legal limit when the accident took place. This is a cleverly planned, well-written twist by the writers who also add the bit where Becca was studying abroad when the divorce proceedings and the accident took place, which ensures that Tom could not have recognized the revengeful Becca when he hired her. It also explains the use of scaphism in the murder because Tom suffered for about the same amount of days that Becca’s sister did and he died in a boat like her. Becca, Sara, and Lon, were driven by pure revenge.

Jasmine buys the theory but needs a confession. Dylan and Lizzie (along with det. Zack Clark) concoct a plan that sounds brilliant in theory but skates on such thin ice in practice that when it does finally succeed, it’s almost too perfect to be plausible. Sara and Becca are essentially put in a position where they are tricked into turning on each other. They fall into the trap so easily though that one cannot help but be reminded of the trope of the master-minded murderers turning stupid in the denouement and giving themselves away. Heck, Sara is so mad at Becca at one point that she even offers to turn over to the police the recordings of their previous conversations. The sequence is nonetheless well-paced and enjoyable. I would be interested in hearing from others if they felt the same way I did, or not. Feel free to comment below.

In the last five minutes, we turn our attention to the long arcs concerning our main characters. The Sleeping Beauty killer must have visited Ryan’s hotel room because our Nebraskan friends finds a blanket and a pillow covered with blood on his bed when he arrives in the evening.

The adoption process is finally moving forward. Andy and Dylan have a first meeting with Sam – first seen in “Finders Keepers” – where everything appears to go well until she notices Dylan’s helmet. It brings back morbid memories for her because her uncle died in a motorcycle accident. Apparently, that was enough to break the talks down because the scene cuts to Dylan and Andy arguing after Sam has left. Dylan is not willing to give up his motorcycle and Andy is mad at his husband for being so rigid. Side note: For the record, as much as I love Andy, I am firmly on Dylan’s side on this one!

Their apartment gets even stuffier when Lizzie shows up in the middle of the argument and sees herself to the office to leave them alone where she finds… Julian who is casually working on his computer after two weeks of no news! With the “awkward factor” raised to the 10th degree, Julian explains that he arrived a few hours ago and that he was waiting until the evening to surprise her. Novakovic’s acting is excellent here as her expression switches from one of surprise to relief, dismay, apprehensiveness, and finally, disappointment. To make the moment even dicier, all that Julian says to Lizzie when she notices the bandage on his ribs is, “I can’t talk about it.” Lizzie has had enough. She states, “then we have nothing left to say.” Julian leaves. They meet later in the episode by the docks. Lizzie painfully tells Julian that she cannot go on with all the secrecy and uncertainty and that she prefers to cut her losses. Julian is faced with some tough choices here. Side note: For the record, as much as I love Julian, I am firmly on Lizzie’s side on this one!

At least the Dylan-Andy-Sam storyline has a happy ending. In a second meeting between the three, Dylan informs her that he is selling his motorcycle and Sam asks them to adopt her baby because she genuinely feels that they can provide a happy home for her baby. Dylan’s reaction followed by the group hug is a wonderful payoff moment.

Overall, a satisfying outing of Instinct that packs a lot, maybe too much, but somehow pulls it off despite its brisk pace because there are no cheap shortcuts taken although it’s not devoid of plot devices as noted above. Hoping for another solid episode next time, so that we can break of this odd-even-episode pattern that I alluded to in the beginning. 

Last-minute thoughts:

– It turns out that Tom genuinely wanted to get back with Margot. The so-called retreat was a rehab facility for workaholics.

– I mentioned something in the last review about Dylan wearing a three-piece thick suit in the coffeeshop and not getting hot. Lo and behold, his ability to stay cool while wearing layers of clothing is actually a topic in this episode.

– I understand that there was a point to the classroom being hot, but isn’t every student holding a personal ventilator to their face during lecture a bit of an overkill to get the point across?

– I am hoping that the Lizzie-Julian drama does not go on for the duration of Season 2. Or if it does, it should change registers and not repeatedly skate back and forth along the same theme of Lizzie’s malaise toward Julian’s secrecy. 

– In my review of “Finders Keepers,” I expressed my uncertainty on whether Sam was really moving back to California or not. Apparently, Sam is not sure either.  

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“Big Splash” – aired on July 21, 2019
Written by: Marc Dube
Directed by: John Behring
Grade: 2,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Will this be the new pattern of Season 2? The odd-numbered episodes showcasing the best that Instinct has to offer while taking detours to the land of mediocre-to-average in the even-numbered ones? Probably not, but that is the menu served so far this season.

To be clear, “Big Splash” is on the low end of the mediocre-to-average spectrum. If the last five minutes of an episode is the only segment worth caring about in a procedural drama, the writing room has failed to put forth a compelling A story.

It revolves around the murder of a stepmother named Ella (Betsy Wolfe) who married a rich, older dude who left his wife for her, the consequences of which produced a potentially vindictive ex-wife, a sour-yet-spoiled teenage daughter, a disappointed ex-schoolmate who had big plans with Ella, and a whole lot of other teenager friends of the daughter (including an ex-boyfriend turned cater-waiter with a prior criminal record) who fulfill the quota for the roles of the social-media-addicted youngsters who may or may not have had something to do with her death.

Apart from Kathryn Erbe who plays Caitlyn, the older ex-wife, and Zoë Winters who plays Molly, the disappointed friend from school, the acting is so over-the-top that some of it comes across as phony, especially in the case of the teenagers. It even rubs off on Cumming who is overly dramatic at times when stating the obvious like, “The question is, did Molly choose to sting back?” Furthermore, the concept of the older person, Dylan in this case, with an aversion to social media, and therefore mocked by friends and youngsters, has been done ad nauseam.

Lastly, it’s disappointing to see that Instinct, in this episode at least, jumps on the bandwagon with zillion other TV shows that base their stories around the presumably harmful effects of social media. How about the benefits of social media, people? In fact, unless I am mistaken, social media is a key element in solving the case here. Can we also once in a while – pretty please – acknowledge that social media contributes in positive ways to society, such as making communication easier between separated loved ones or increasing awareness for a topic that needs it, just to name a couple?

You could overlook the excess of all of the above in “Big Splash” if only the plot were intriguing, but unfortunately, it is filled with so many contrivances and so predictable that by the time the denouement comes around, you may find yourself, like I did, looking at the time left in the episode and feeling some relief that there are still five minutes to come, and that you may after all get something out of this episode.

The murder takes place at a night club rented, I presume, by the family to celebrate the 16th birthday of their daughter Alex (Haley Murphy). The rich socialite says to her friends that all she wants “is to make a big splash” when her introduction on stage as the birthday girl takes place a bit later. Lo and behold, Ella happens to fall from the first floor down into the decorative pool on the ground floor, thus making a big splash, exactly as Alex gets introduced by the DJ. Spoiler: it turns out that Ella did, for real, fall by accident into the pool precisely at that moment! She was poisoned, as we learn later, and having trouble walking, but her fall and the announcement of Alex’s introduction being at the same time was indeed a coincidence. No… seriously!

At first, the cater-waiter ex-boyfriend Boyd (Ben Ahlers) is considered a suspect because Ella fired him moments before her death – yes, the ex-boyfriend with a prior criminal record, mind you, of the daughter is actually hired by the family to work at their daughter’s birthday party, please ask no more. Once discovered that Ella may have been poisoned through the skin via make-up laced with poison, Dylan and Lizzie’s attention turns Caitlyn the ex-wife who happens to work in cosmetics and gave some to Alex as a gift during the party. How convenient, right? Later, Alex’s childhood friend Kim (Nadia Alexander) is targeted because she used a morbid GIF of Ella on social media.

In any case, the usual run-down of various suspects found in every other episodic crime show is also present in “Big Splash,” except that in “Big Splash,” it is filled with tropes and pedestrian sequences. Caitlyn the ex-wife saying, “I don’t like the idea of being replaced by a younger version of myself,” or Kim the smart-ass teenager who is well-versed in civil rights asking for a lawyer when Dylan and Lizzie insinuate that she is a suspect, are two among several examples.

Eventually, we get to the expected moment of epiphany in which Dylan and Lizzie figure out the identity of the killer, and it is done in the most hokey way possible. Molly, Ella’s Culinary Arts School ex-classmate and friend, is the next (and last) suspect. The two women had plans to start a business together, but they came to a screeching halt when, as Caitlyn said earlier, Ella “struck gold” by marrying her ex-husband. To add salt to the wound (and to help the script), Molly was hired by Ella as a helper at the party. Molly could not stomach the betrayal and killed her.

Dylan and Lizzie figure it out by looking at a random bowl of apples in the precinct, Lizzie forming a link between fruits having high alkaline content and Ella’s make-up having high alkaline trace, and uttering the question, “Poisoned fruit?” That is all Dylan needs as he grabs an apple from the bowl, holds it up as he passionately comments on a fairy tale relating to a poisoned apple, dramatically announces: “Ella wasn’t the stepmother. She was Cinderella!” as he stares into distance, makes a 180-degree turn toward Lizzie, and punctuates it all with the final declaration, “It was her friend who was evil.”

Can I get a wut?

There is apparently an apple named manchineel, and of course, Dylan would be the one to have knowledge of not only its existence but also of its reputation as being poisonous. He even knows its nickname, “The little apple of death.” By the grace of procedural dramas, Molly had knowledge of the rare fruit because she is a culinary expert, extracted the poison, and added some into Ella’s makeup. And… she made sure that she was clumsy enough to spill some of the poison on her hand, so that when Lizzie and Dylan find her as she happens to be checking out some apples in a basket – I kid you not! – Lizzie can conveniently see the blatantly visible poison marks consistent with those found on Ella’s face. To put the final touches, Molly confesses everything, naturally, and Lizzie handcuffs her. Case over, by the grace of God!

In other and more relevant news, Lizzie gets promoted to Detective Second Grade and gets a personal office to which she cannot get accustomed because she misses being around her colleagues at her old desk. She does get to have one important conversation in her new office before turning it over to Ryan at the end of the episode. Julian informs her that he is going on an assignment in “a region outside New York city,” with a degree of “difficulty assessment” that he cannot reveal, which makes Lizzie concerned for his safety. It’s the only genuine and consequential scene in the episode apart from the last five minutes and it ties to another scene at the end when everyone from the precinct meets at a bar to celebrate Lizzie’s promotion. Julian promised he would do his best to make it there, but he does not show up.

Continuing his investigation of the “Sleeping Beauty” case, Ryan gets in touch with a bartender named Jay (Nat Cassidy) who served the victim the night she was killed. Ryan and Dylan go to a rooftop somewhere in the city to meet with him but when they arrive, they only find his phone and a photo of him dead (is anyone surprised?) and wrapped in a blanket with the caption “It’s ON” underneath. The episode’s closing shot shows someone observing them from a distance.

As for the adoption adventures of Andy and Dylan, they are ecstatic because Sam has called back and agreed to discuss the possibilities of them adopting her baby.

Last-minute thoughts:

– There is a minor (and pointless, in my opinion) storyline about Jasmine noticing the “sparks” between ‘Jules’ and Lizzie at the precinct. I am not even sure if it’s worth mentioning, but I just did.

– The sole purpose of the recurring character of Det. Jimmy Marino (John Mainieri) has been to provide comic-relief in one-second-long appearances in several episodes. He has two such moments in this one. I like the guy, so I thought he deserved a mention, that’s all (that is really “all” that his screen time so far allows me to say).

– Lizzie types messages on her phone faster than anybody I have ever seen.

– How many scenes of Dylan’s entourage making fun of his social-media clip can one take in 40 minutes (not counting the commercials)? Speaking for myself, not as many as this episode spits out.

– It was hinted at in “Stay Gold” that Andy was considering the idea of practicing law. Has that idea been dropped? I hope not.

– The outfit that Dylan is wearing when they are getting coffee, isn’t it a little on the thick side? I presume the air condition was turned to the max in that coffee shop.

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook