The Sentinel Season 3 Unnecessarily Detailed Episode Guide (Part 2, 3x12-3x23)
by Zelempa** 3x12 Prisoner X Jim goes undercover in jail.
** 3x13 The Trance The only witness to a murder was being inhabited by a goddess at the time.
*** 3x14 Mirror Image Cassie has uneasy rapport with dangerous madman; Blair briefly feigns antic disposition.
** 3x15 Finkelman's Folly Simon, recovering from a gunshot wound, solves a hospital crime; substitute captain separates Jim and Blair.
**** 3x16 Sweet Science Blair helps out an old boxer "friend."
*** 3x17 Remembrance Jim recovers repressed childhood memories.
*** 3x18 Love Kills Jim's femme fatale girlfriend gives him sensory spikes. Haven't we done this before?
*** 3x19 Crossroads Jim's solo fishing trip is interrupted by Simon, Blair, and a highly contagious epidemic.
*** 3x20 Foreign Exchange Jim and Blair get a new partner.
** 3x21 Neighborhood Watch Undercover as homeowners in a cul-de-sac, Megan, Jim, and Blair pose as a happy family.
***** 3x22 Night Shift During a crazy night at the station, Jim sneaks a peek at Blair's dissertation and almost breaks up with him.
***** 3x23 Sentinel, Too Part 1 Blair finds a second Sentinel, and conceals her existence from Jim; Jim kicks out Blair and also breaks up with him for real; the second Sentinel kills Blair. I'm telling you it's not Blair's week.
Jim is exclaiming over a football game on TV. "It's just a game, Jim," says Blair, who's making coffee in the kitchen. Also he's barefoot and pregnant. Jim, channelling Blair, explains how the football stadium is the modern gladatorial arena, when there's a knock at the door. Blair opens it to a pretty, unfamiliar woman. He looks concerned when she enters and Jim cries "Kelly!" and hugs her. Kelly tells Jim that her brother Matt just died in prison.
At the station, Jim tells Blair that Matt was a friend of his from high school who was arrested for harvesting weed to pay for his gambling debts. Jim and Blair meet with Simon and a woman from Corrections, who agrees with Jim that it's fishy that Matt should have been shot in an escape attempt when he was a model prisoner with just three months to go. She thinks this may be the "tip of the iceberg" in re guard corruption. As usual Jim is ready and raring to go undercover and Simon is against it at first but quickly doormats.
Walking through the bullpen, Blair requests to go in as Jim's backup, but Jim says it's too dangerous. Besides, he is being given backup: some new cop from Detroit is going to teach a creative writing class at the prison which Jim is going to take. Wow, really? That sounds like a role tailor made for Blair. This cop must be a real pansy. Uh, sorry, Blair. Jim tells Blair, "You go anywhere near that place, I'm going to use your head for a football."
Hooray for gruff protectiveness.
Jim goes to prison. It looks unpleasant. He immediately gets picked on by his cellmate who yells at him for choosing the wrong bunk, calling him "punk." "Name's Curtis," Jim volunteers, all pleased with himself for having actually picked out a name other than "Jim Ellison" this time. "You get a name when I give you one," says his cellmate. It's interesting seeing the usually in-control Jim in this situation: you can see he's struggling to maintain his pride and dignity, qualities which, in him, were already immense to the point of structual instability.
Lying in his bunk at night, Jim uses his hearing. A prisoner is dragged, yelling, from his cell.
In the weightroom, Jim gets in trouble with a working-out prisoner for staring. Of course he does. That night his cellmate tells him to "watch his back." I'm not sure I like where this is going. (But I'm not sure I don't.)
Jim tries to question some prisoners, but they keep getting suspicious and asking him why he wants to know. He does find evidence of some corruption in the form of the guards selling things made by the prisoners for profit, and he uses his sight to see the access code of some storeroom. He also finds out that the mean guy who yelled at him for staring has it in for a little guy with glasses, for whom Jim seems to feel a natural protectiveness.
Cut to--Blair! Hooray. "Good morning, gentlemen," he says, making his way to the front of a classroom with his little leather satchel. Jim looks up from his notebook, surprised and concerned. Blair says that writers tell stories and asks someone to tell him a story, and when nobody volunteers, he calls on Jim. Don't put him in this position, Blair. Jim says, "I was born, I killed a cop, I went to prison. The end." The other prisoners clap and cheer and Blair gives a nonplussed smile.
I would have liked to see the rest of the class, but next thing we know the prisoners are filing out. Jim hangs back and Blair quietly explains that the guy from Detroit had an emergency appendectomy, Blair volunteered, Banks said no, Corrections lady talked him into it. Jim wisely opts to use his precious time on the case instead of getting bent out of shape; he tells Blair, "Look for the laundry bag from cell block B marked 'Curtis.'" Blair nods his acknowledgement. A guard comes in and they both look up guiltily. "Thanks for the tip," says Jim. "No problem," says Blair, looking disappointed, as Jim exits. The guard fixes Blair with a suspicious look.
There goes my hero.
Jim writes his love letter and sticks it in his laundry bag. Meanwhile, Blair asks the prison doctor out for coffee: "You could, show me the ropes?" Dr. Wilder catches sight of a guard watching them and declines abruptly.
Blair finds Jim's letter in the laundry and calls Simon from his car to report Jim's findings about the guard's sideline businesses. He offers to check up on the delivery routes, but Simon tells him no--he's not a detective. As soon as he hangs up Blair follows the truck anyway. At the endpoint, he watches the product and money change hands, and catches sight of Dr. Wilder passing by.
Blair follows Dr. Wilder into a restaurant and pretends to bump into her by chance. "Sandburg, right?" "Yeah! I prefer Blair, though," says Blair, and that's adorable, but so sad, because Jim usually says "Sandburg." Dr. Wilder quickly moves from friendly to anxious as Blair sits with her and makes conversation. She apologizes for being "jumpy." "Sounds like you need someone to talk to," Blair sensitive-guys. The doctor confides that she treats some suspicious injuries. Blair asks if she keeps records, and she twigs, asking, "Who are you?" "A friend. Someone you can talk to," says Blair mysteriously, and like that, the doctor is on his side. Outside, she IDs the truck driver as a prison guard and mentions some other suspicious stuff she's seen. Blair gives her his cell number. I love Blair acting as a badass detective type in his own right.
In prison, the big mean guy somehow gets a knife and goes after the little bespectacled guy. Jim goes to rescue him, but gets sidetracked in a fight with a henchman and arrives too late. Sad music as Jim sees the little guy lying there, glasses fallen to his neck. "You don't wanna be part of this," an inmate whispers to Jim as he checks the dead guy's pulse. "I know who you are. Cop." Commercial!
Turns out this new guy secretly witnessed Jim busting his brother (anyone actually busted by Jim has been transferred in prep for his coming). He'll tell everyone Jim's identity unless Jim promises to help lift his charges. Meanwhile, Blair meets with Dr. Wilder, who gives him some files and reports others missing. Blair calls Simon with Wilder's info.
Incidentally, I have to ask: is Blair aging backwards?
At night, Jim successfully zooms his sight into the window of a room across the courtyard, and there we see a big crowd waving money around a chain-linked arena containing battling inmates. Gladiators! This has turned into an episode about gladiators!
Jim's writing in his creative writing notebook when the Guy Who Knows Jim is a Cop brings up the laundry cart. Jim stuffs the letter into his laundry bag and GWKJIAC tells Jim, "You got till tomorrow." Down in the laundry room, GWKJIAC retrieves and reads the note: "BEEN ID'D. PULL ME ASAP." When Blair sneaks down to get the note, it's been switched: "MAKING PROGRESS. STAY TUNED. P.S. THE FOOD SUCKS HERE." Blair chuckles a little. Pathos! It's both adorable and inexplicable that GWKJIAC knew to sneak in a little joke for versimilitude. Why doesn't Blair know Jim's handwriting?
Prison courtyard. Jim talks to his cellmate, who says he's willing to answer questions--but only if Jim is really a cop, and has the power to put in a good word for him with the parole board. Jim, figuring he's going to get pulled anyway, admits it.
Simon and Blair meet. Blair shows him the note, but he's concerned because today's creative writing class has been cancelled. Not having visual contact makes both Blair and Simon nervous. Blair suggests that if Dr. Wilder can get the files they need for evidence, maybe they can just pull Jim. Simon decides to give Jim another 24 hours since he said he was okay.
Meanwhile Jim is getting antsy and wondering why he hasn't been pulled. Zoom in on Jim's left ear--complete with earring hole--as he hears the big murderous prisoner and the GWKJIAC talking: "He doesn't leave the yard alive." Jim begins to walk away and the bad guys follow him. Just as a confrontation becomes necessary, Jim is surrounded by friends of his cellmate who walk him inside. The cellmate gives him some info, including helping him figure out how to escape. ESCAPE. Seems like kind of a bad idea. It will involve getting past the access code door to a series of tunnels which, for some reason, exist.
As Jim is leaving GWKJIAC catches him and threatens to rat him out unless Jim takes him along. So Jim ends up with a partner (albeit an untrustworthy, non-Blair one). All too soon, though, the pair is caught by some corrupt guards hanging out in the tunnels. It looks like they will let GWKJIAC go, but as he's running off, they shoot him in the back.
Jim's locked in the Hole or something and his cellmate is thrown in with him. The cellmate tells Jim they're next in the gladiator fights. Oh, rock.
Blair and Simon meet. Blair's class has been cancelled permanently--he thinks they figured out about his scheming with the doctor, because she's gone missing. Simon calls the Corrections lady to start the process of pulling Jim, but she's unreachable. "No, tomorrow will not do. A policeman's life is at stake!"
Sure enough, Jim is fighting in the gladiator arena.
It's pretty awesome.
He gets pretty well beat up by the big mean guy, but a well-timed high-kick gets him back in the game. Then Mean Guy fights dirty and sprays something in his eyes which momentarily blinds him. But Jim uses his other senses and realizes he's about to be kicked in the face. He dodges and comes back, knocking the surprised mean guy to the ground. He punches him while he's down, and the guards, who are in cahoots with Mean Guy, pull out the downed fighter before Jim can seal the deal on the whole fight to the death thing. (Would he have? He seems pretty mad.) Next they bring in Jim's cellmate and arm them both with knives. The cellmate starts circling and swinging, but Jim says, "I'm not going to fight you," and tosses away his knife. The cellmate raises his knife menacingly, but throws it away at the last moment.
The guards don't like that, but Simon arrives in the nick of time with a search warrant and a SWAT team. Jim and Cellmate do a close manful handshake thing. Episode ends with Jim wondering at himself for unleashing his hatred on the mean guy, and telling Simon he's going to go take a walk, "somewhere out in the open... anyplace without walls." So much love for messed-up Jim.
Would have liked to see: More than one session of the creative writing class. More Jim and Blair together, even (especially?) in restricted, tense, fleeting contact. This situation had the potential to be interesting for their relationship, but as usual the writers were more interested in the damn gladiatorial arena.
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3x13 The Trance
We open a purportedly Cuban dancing ritual in a warehouse full of Buffy candles while on the roof, two guys argue about some kind of illegal deal from which one of them wants out. The eviller guy pushes the less evil guy through the plate-glass skylight and the dancers below disperse. Less evil guy is injured but not dead, so eviller guy comes and, apologetically, shoots him. The main dancer (Corinna) emerges and seems to cause the evil guy's gun to jam by telekinesis. Evil guy and dancer both run away in different directions.Later, cops milling around. Jim and Blair inspect the crime scene. Blair: "Looks like it was a santeria ceremony. Whoever put together this altar really knew what they were doing." Hey, Blair is useful! The victim was a cop. Simon thinks the murder might be payback for Mendola, a Cuban law student who accused the police of corruption and then was killed, presumably by a cop.
Outside, Blair talks about a santeria ceremony he saw in New York, and Jim smells something. They follow the scent and find a gold cloth we saw Corinna wearing earlier. Cut to Corinna going to a friend and saying she witnessed the crime. Her friend doesn't want her to go to the police. "What will you tell them? That you were practicing some ancient religion and fell into a trance and now a man is dead? All you will do is jeopardize everything you have worked for." And that is the dialogue on this show.
In the car, Blair explains that whoever wore the gold shawl was probably a priestess of Oshun, "the African goddess of love and beauty, sort of like Venus." Blair rhapsodized about priestesses of Oshun, saying they are beautiful women who have "this way of moving--ah--it's sort of like a--sort of like sensual rhythm, y'know?" He demonstrates with a little wiggly dance move in his seat, and Jim makes a face like, Fair enough! "This is an academic discussion only," Blair qualifies, "I was strictly an observer," which I guess is supposed to mean that he didn't sleep with any of the priestesses. Except he's currently strictly observing Jim, so that doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
What happens next is great. Jim says "Do that move again," and Blair does his little dance for Jim again, and Jim grins all broadly and laughs, "Yeah-heah-heah! You got all the moves, babe." BABE HE SAYS. I AM PRETTY SURE. They're both laughing. These guys have such great chemistry.
Yes Blair, you're very cute, HOWEVER, if you don't stop dancing for Jim, he is going to drive you both into a tree.
Jim and Blair are heading to the store where Blair happens to know the priestess shawl originated, and at which Corinna's friend works. (Got that?) Friend hides Corinna in the back room when Jim and Blair arrive. For those of you keeping track at home, Jim introduces Blair as "Mr. Sandburg" this time. Corinna's friend claims not to know anything. Blair makes anthropologetic conversation about the ceremony. Corinna says the murder could not have taken place at the ceremony because weapons aren't allowed. Jim says, "I never said the murder happened at the ceremony."
Station. Jim is sure the shopkeeper is sitting on information, but Simon wants to ease off in the interest of PR. Jim decides to question the dead cop's partner, Murphy. He and Blair ("Blair Sandburg" this time) find Murphy at the shooting range. Murphy seconds Simon's opinion that this is about Mendola. Blair pipes up, "You were the arresting officers on that case, right?" Hey, Blair knows things! Murphy explains that they arrested Mendola on legitimate drug charges. Blair says, "From what I know about that case, none of that can be proved yet," and Murphy flips out on him, questioning the legitimacy of his consultant status, and telling him he doesn't know what he's talking about. "I lost a partner!" "We understand," Jim smooths things over. He promises they'll catch the killer, and Murphy says, "If you don't, I will."
In the car, Blair apologizes for messing things up with Murphy.
BLAIR: I should have realized I was trading upon sacred ground and that the department has its own social structure and its own taboos--
JIM (long-suffering): Whoa, whoa, Chief. Don't think this into a term paper. Do me that favor, all right?
BLAIR: I'm not. I'm just letting you know. I understand.
JIM: I don't think you do understand.
Blair's mouth forms a perfect "o" of shock.
BLAIR (snapping): I may not be a cop, but I know what it's like to lose somebody, all right?
How dare he imply my knowledge of the partnership bond is less thorough and intense than his! Well, I never!
Jim apologizes: "I know you do." Wait, are they talking about someone specific here? Who has Blair lost? Nobody in his family--his mother's alive, he never knew his father's identity, and he's an only child. Someone during the run of the show? Has a girl of the week died on him? Have we seen this? I'm pretty sure the greatest depth of emotion we've seen from him is when Maya left the country and again when she was subsequently deported, but that's not at all the same thing as losing a partner.
We cut to Murphy talking to some guy called Cortez who was the subject of conversation on the roof when--OH. Murphy killed his own partner. I think I was supposed to know this already, but honestly, I wasn't paying that close attention to the teaser. I still don't know what Cortez has to do with all of this. He seems to be Murphy's boss in some way. He tells Murphy to get rid of the witness.
Jim goes to Cortez's club/restaurant/thing to question Cortez, who--because he only wants to talk to Jim? I guess?--has his cook make Blair lunch. Jim's questions don't get him anywhere, so he sort of threatens Cortez vaguely. Jim and Blair are leaving the restaurant in their typical fashion (squeezing together so they can both fit through the door at once), Jim making fun of Blair for taking the food, when Jim gets a call. Forensics ID'd the murder gun.
Jim and Blair find the kid who owned the gun, and he tells them that he hasn't seen it in weeks--not since he was picked up for possession and it was confiscated. By--duh duh duh--the dead cop! (Well, he wasn't dead at the time. That would have been a real twist.)
Simon's office. Jim reports that the kid's story checks out; the killer must have gotten the gun out of the evidence locker. All signs point to "cop." Simon tells Jim and Blair in confidence that IA released a list of cops suspected of being "in Cortez's pocket," and the victim was one of them. Also, Cortez has filed charges of police harrassment against Jim. Blair's incensed, and Jim has to wave him down. The upshot is they have to work with the community liaison. It's Corinna! Jim recognizes her priestess scent.
After a meeting in which JimandBlair and Corinna agree to disagree on this issue of Cortez: Pure Evil or Good for the Community?, Jim questions Corinna about her priestess shawl, but doesn't get anything from her. That night, while Jim is asking Simon for permission to put the old pressure on her, Blair calls to report that he's taken the liberty of following the storekeeper to a cafe, and that she's meeting with Corinna right now. Moments later, Murphy drives by and shoots up the place with a machine gun. Blair watches, horrified, then runs into the cafe and finds Corinna weeping over her friend's body.
EVERYBODY ON THIS SHOW HAS A PARTNER.
When Jim arrives, Corinna finally tells everything she knows: first she was mid-ceremony, then she was standing over the detective's dead body. She doesn't remember anything in between because she was in a trance. Blair backs her up on the existence of trances.
JIM: Why didn't you tell me all this before?
CORINNA: I work for the mayor and I practice an African religion where a god inhabits your body. I live in two worlds.
JIM: A lot of us walk in different worlds, Corinna.
Nice interweaving of the Sentinel mysticism, here. Often it seems like they've forgotten about it. I'm glad Jim immediately accepts the story; he really has no grounds to be skeptical, and it's good he's not a hypocrite about it. It also shows his trust in Blair's knowledge. Jim tells Corinna that whoever's after her thinks she's a witness and doesn't know she was in a trance.
Jim tells Simon that he's got Corinna staying with Blair in the loft under guard, and that he suspects Murphy. Simon agrees it fits and hopes he's wrong. Meanwhile, Blair asks Corinna to go into another trance and channel Oshun--the real witness of the murder. Oh, this is going to be good.
At the ceremonial-things shop, Blair helps Corinna prepare the altar. Meanwhile, Jim ambushes Cortez's main henchman--at his club? I think?--and holds him at gunpoint in a men's bathroom. Jim's kind of a real bastard about it, but it's effective; he gets confirmation that Murphy did the crime under Cortez's orders. On the phone to Simon, Jim says he can't reach Sandburg. Blair meanwhile is watching Corinna dance, while we see that outside, Cortez and Murphy have stormed up and shot the uniformed guards. Suspense!
Corinna turns into Oshun and puts her gold shawl sensuously around Blair. Blair swallows. Then he sees bad guys storming into the next room, and he pulls Corinna out the back way. They run out into a crazy parade that's going on. As they try to blend into the crowd, Jim finds the dead guards.
Blair loses Corinna in the crowd. So we have Blair, Corinna/Oshun, Cortez and Murphy, and Simon and Jim all wandering around looking for each other. We see the bad guys looking menacing. We see Blair trying to hide. Then a hand claps on Blair's shoulder, and he looks around in fear--and sighs, "Man, am I glad to see you!" He looks like he's going to hug Jim, but he doesn't. Blair instructs Jim to locate Corinna by scent, but Jim says he can't with all these people. Blair thinks he can and I tend to agree. It's established that Corinna has a distinctive scent, and Jim has already found someone (1) in an airport, by their chewing gum and (2) in a sewer, by no particular unusual smell.
It's moot: Jim locates Corinna by sight after Murphy and Cortez cause a ruckus by pulling their guns on her. When Jim and Simon pull their guns, Murphy relinquishes his weapon, but Cortez runs. Jim goes after him. Cortez takes a hostage in the parade and Jim drops his weapon. But then he smiles. "Go ahead, kill her. Kill me. They'll still know what you're all about." Cortez looks like a cornered animal, realizing Jim's right--he's outed himself as a bad guy. He makes a last-ditch effort to accuse Jim of Mendola's murder, hoping the crowd will turn on him, but Jim is all, I am rubber, you are glue, and in a sort of horrifying moment, Cortez is set upon by the mob. Yikes.
I guess it wasn't a bloodthirsty mob, only a justicethirsty mob, because next thing we know we're at the station and Simon's telling Jim that Cortez confessed and is going to jail. So they won't need Oshun's testimony after all. So... that plot point was entirely inconsequential, then. Blair walks up with Corinna, leaving her with Jim. They have this exchange, which, while admittedly not the Jim and Blair Moment o' Fun you typically want in your tag, nonetheless hurts so good:
JIM: I don't see it serving any purpose to expose your personal life and hold your beliefs up to scrutiny.
CORINNA: You seem to understand a lot.
JIM (glancing back in the general direction in which Blair just exited): Well, let's... Let's just say I know a few things about secrets.
Best Moments: Blair's "sensual" dance for Jim--he knows all the right moves!; the certainty that must exist in Corinna's mind about what kind of "secrets" Jim and his sweet-faced little partner are hiding.
She's imagining it riiiiight now.
What I would have liked to see more of: The actual, you know, TRANCE PLOT. Negotiating the logistics of presenting mystically-obtained evidence for public consumption would have been cool, particularly when you consider the special interest it must hold for Jim and Blair, but even without going there, it would have been neat to see more of Corinna as Oshun. I mean: imagine Blair interacting with an African love goddess! Imagine Jim interacting with an African love goddess! Imagine Jim watching Blair interact with an African love goddess! Who's with me?
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3x14 Mirror Image
Guy is shot, la la la.
Crime scene. Dan Wolf investigates the body as Jim, Blair and Cassie look on. Whoa, this episode is going to have secondary characters! Dan explains that the victim was both strangled to death and shot, and Cassie's all, "Uh, gotta go!"
Cassie goes through security at a prison. Whoa, this episode is going to have secondary characters in scenes without Jim and/or Blair! I'm not sure if I like this development. She's led into a room where a prisoner sits on the other side of a glass divider. He's all "Hello, Clarice," I mean, "Cassie." He starts to make creepy small talk, but she comes right to the point: someone is killing using his signature. "How do you think I'm doing it?" Cassie's like, no, duh, you're in jail, it's a copycat. Not!Hannibal tells her some details about the murder which he couldn't possibly know, and tells her to be worried about 9:00 tonight.
Jim and Blair are working side-by-side behind the same desk, because they're afuckingdorable. Jim's pissed because Cassie's missing, but then she shows up, all, "I know who killed [name of unimportant victim guy]!"
They used to be even more space-efficient, but then Simon issued the departmentwide "one butt per chair" rule.
We cut into Simon's office where Cassie relates the conversation we just saw her have. Oh. For some reason I thought she would try to hide the source of her information in order to conceal her creepy-close association with a serial murderer. But she very candidly explains who he is (Warren Chapel, a killer known as the "avenging angel" because he ritually tortured, then shot, criminals who had gotten off on technicalities), and adds, "Oh yeah. I worked on the case." Oh. That's... nice and simple, then. Simon doubts that Chapel could have gotten out of a maximum-security mental institution to kill someone, but Jim would rather be safe than sorry. He has identified a likely victim. Blair hands Jim the file, and Jim says, "Thanks, very much." So polite! Simon agrees to let Jim and Blair do a stakeout.
Car, night. Blair: "I hate stakeouts." Jim, drily: "You're not having fun?" We get some banal Jim and Blair conversation ("Think of it as meditation!") voiceovered over shots of a ninja-like assassin crawling into position, unnoticed, which is kind of cool. Then Blair says Simon's probably right--"You don't just walk out of Conover." Jim: "And how do you know that?" He looks so serious and suspicious--of Blair!--that I don't blame Blair for saying, quite deadpan, "Well, I got some history there." Then he breaks the ruse by grinning and waggling his eyebrows. Jim smiles, "I'm sure you do," all relieved, and Blair laughs, "It's not what you think." Jim looks at him expectantly, but before he can tell the story the phone rings.
It's Simon. The guy they're surveilling--the one who, like all Chapel's victims, walked on a technicality, remember?--has served them with a cease and desist, feeling his privacy is being violated. Makes sense. It's nearly 9, but Simon has to pull the plug on the operation. "I got a bad feeling about this," says Blair as they drive away. "Yeah, well tell your rabbi," says Jim, inexplicably.
Jim and Blair stop the car and get out when they see Cassie's Mystery Machine (she is, as usual, snooping illicitly), and Jim hears goings-on in the house. He runs in, gun drawn, only to find the guy they were supposed to protect dead on the ground. Blair and then Cassie follow and both look suitable horrified.
Cassie pays Chapel another visit, wearing a short skirt and tall boots and taking off her jacket like a stripper, while Jim and Blair watch the conversation on closed-circuit TV. Cassie asks, "Will there be more?" and Chapel says there will, and Jim and Blair look at each other all excited and possibly clutch each other's knees below camera. "Who?" Of course Chapel won't tell. Cassie says he will eventually because he likes these conversations, and he should send for her when he's ready to talk. Before she leaves, Chapel tells Cassie he blames her for his arrest and they'll have to settle that score someday.
I forgot to mention that Cassie's been having these flashbacks of memory where she sees herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Anyway, she has another one now, and she comes into the office clearly upset. Jim super-listens to Cassie's totally audible wheezing for no discernable reason. Cassie apologizes for not being able to get more out of Chapel. Jim says they need to get someone close to him. Slow closeup on a nervously swallowing Blair, who says: "I could do it."
In his office Simon says "No way", and this time Blair calls him on it: "Why is that always your first reaction?" Jim talks Simon into at least hearing Blair's proposal, and Simon gives him "one shot," even though once he's that far, you know he's doomed to cave. Blair prefaces his proposal with a cutely nervous fasttalk explanation about how, as an undergraduate, he studied institutional social hierarchies and pecking orders. Jim rolls his eyes, but when Simon looks at him like, What the hell is this?, Jim holds out his hand, like, I know, but give him a chance. Kind of love Jim. The upshot of Blair's speech is that he worked for a semester at Conover for research and he knows the place inside and out, and now he wants to go undercover--as a patient. Oh, lovely: Prisoner X Blair-style--now, with Madness!
Chapel's accomplice, an institution guard, lets him out of his room. Cut to Cassie working in her lab. This time we actually see a masked man enter the lab and point a gun at her, the most realistic gun flashback yet. But we snap back to reality, and it turns out just to be Jim coming in. He found out that Chapel once tried to kill Cassie, and he's pissed. Serious as hell, he says, "Sandburg is risking his life here. I need to know these things." Oh, you do not want to mess with Jim when Blair is in danger. I wouldn't even want to mess with Jim when Blair is on an airplane or at a party with drinking or five minutes late coming home for supper. There's another odd but kind of effective directorial choice as we focus on Cassie's hands making coffee while she tells the story of how she found herself facing down Chapel and took a bullet in the shoulder. Her wrap-up about how she was rescued by the rest of the team is weak and she seems to still be holding something back. But Jim doesn't call her on it, and instead responds surprisingly sweetly: "Know what I think? I think we're pretty damn lucky to have you."
Chapel sneaks into a room and messes with some phone-related tech and makes a call. "How did it feel? I want every last detail... Mmm." He's very creepy.
Psychologist introduces "the new member of our group, Blair Sandburg." Now, why not make up a fake name for this assignment? At first it seems like Blair's pretending to be OCD, as he chatters a bit about germs. Then he does this kind of delightful bit where he responds to questions by talking about his "higher power," the goddess with whom he has "a convenant," as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. His madness persona mostly involves speaking quickly in a deeper voice than normal, and fondling his own lips. It's kind of yummy.
Huh, those are some short institution-jumpsuit sleeves. You know, Blair is really not that unmuscular.
Another patient flips out, refusing to accept Blair's chosen-one status, but Chapel declares that what Blair says is probably true, because (meaningful look) "Why would he lie?" Blair strokes his lip nervously.
Another crime scene. Cassie, panicked, tells Jim to pull Blair immediately. At first Jim seems happy enough to agree no questions asked, but he can hardly let Cassie's current level of freaking out go unnoticed. She admits she's seeing her nightmare every time she turns around. Jim tells her not to let fear control her, but Cassie is beyond reason. I think she should be in Conover.
A buff woman lifts weights and talks on the phone about how gratifying it was for her to kill some criminal, to give him release from his pain, etc etc creepy. Over at Conover, Blair creeps up and witnesses Chapel's half of this conversation. He runs to a pay phone, desperately beseeching the operator to make an emergency collect call, but a hand comes up and presses the cradle. Chapel shoves Blair into a wall. "Who sent you?" "Nobody." "Who were you calling?" "My higher power," Blair declares. "That's how we communicate. She let's me call collect!" Oh, that Blair is a cute one, all right, and none the less when Chapel presses him to the wall with a hand around his throat and he gags terrifiedly. Blair manages to grab the phone reciever and brain Chapel with it, and there's a chase through the halls of the institution. Blair tears round a corner and--
Runs into Jim! "Oh Jim! Jim! Oh my God!" Blair grabs hold of Jim's jacket in his tight little fists and yanks him toward himself against the wall. Jim holds him by the arms, all, "What? What?" Blair pantingly explains that he's being chased, and he and Jim creep forward, repeatedly reaching for each other's hands. Blair finally sends his hero forth to look around the door, but Jim doesn't see or hear any sign of Chapel.
Yup.
Finally Blair asks what Jim's doing here. Jim says "Consensus was you're in over your head," and Blair says, "I am down with that majority. Oh, God, get me out of here," which pathos makes Jim take Blair again by the arms comfortingly, as it would any right-thinking person. Blair relates the phone conversation he overheard, sounding pretty legitimately crazy as he does so, but Jim believes him. "Come on," says Blair, and they run down the hall together, Jim clapping Blair encouragingly on the shoulder.
Jim pays Chapel a little visit in his cell, telling him there are witnesses to his temporary escapes. When Chapel asks if he means Sandburg, Jim pretends (somewhat ineffectively) not to know who that is.
Loft. Jim brings a coffee to Blair, who's sitting on the couch with his laptop and a stack of files on the Conover guards. Knock at the door. Jim opens it to Cassie. She asks Blair how he is, and when Blair sort of punches the air in a "fine" gesture, Cassie catches and strokes it gently. So Jim's not the only one. Blair is uninterested in her sympathy and goes back to his research. Suddenly Cassie recognizes one of the pictures in the files. It's Janine Carpenter, the sister of one of Chapel's victims. Later, Jim briefs Simon that Carpenter was discharged from the Army for psychological problems, but not before she learned communications techniques like tapping into phone lines.
Chapel's guard accomplice corners him on the way to group therapy. He found out Chapel's been killing and he's upset that he's an accessory to murder. Chapel convinces the guard to help him further.
Just as Jim is leading a SWAT team in a raid on Carpenter's house, Simon gets a call from Chapel's doctor warning him that Chapel has escaped. The team trips a bunch of landmines around the house and a car comes tearing through the door of the garage. A well-timed gunshot from Jim sets off an explosion which sends the car spinning. Then the car erupts in flames, for good measure.
In his office, Simon gives Jim an impossibly tiny cup of coffee, and Jim explains that although there was definitely a man and woman in the car, the explosion damage made a positive ID on the bodies nearly impossible. Jim invites Simon for some "late night chow" with him, Blair, and Cassie, but Simon has work to do.
Possibly plotting more ways to make Jim feel like a giant.
Before heading out to dinner, Jim goes to the lab to check out some metal fragments from the explosion. He smells metal (titanium has a distinctive scent?) and calls the Conover doctor. The doctor reports that Chapel didn't have any titanium surgical pins, but his guard did; and what's more, the guard is missing.
Loft. Cassie and Blair are waiting for Jim to pick them up, both dressed up to the nines.
I'm not sure Jim realizes it's that kind of date.
Cassie's getting antsy, so Blair tries to call Jim, but the phone is dead. Then the power cuts off briefly. Cassie: "You have to cut the power to disarm the security system!" Also, the call is coming from inside the house!
A black-clad figure emerges from the shadows with gun drawn. "Hello, Cassie," he honestly says.
In the truck, Jim--nervously after a failed attempt to call home--hurtles loftward and radios for backup.
Chapel has wasted no time in getting Cassie and Blair tied to chairs. Chapel accuses Cassie of killing "someone I cared about; she was an extension of me, and you tore her away." Captenter? The one that died in the explosion? Because Jim killed her, right? Cut to sad-faced-looking Blair. Oh yeah, he lost someone, right? "Your friend killed herself," says Blair. Okay, canonical use of "friend" to mean "lover". Just keep that in mind for the next five seconds, as Chapel says to Blair, "I was right about you--you are Cassie's little 'friend,'" and Blair says to Chapel, "You remember my 'friend,' don't you? He's coming here."
Here comes Jim to justify Blair's faith in his white knight. He climbs on top of his truck and up the fire escape so he can enter secretly through the upstairs bedroom. Cassie buys some time by chatting up Chapel.
Meanwhile, Blair makes unnecessary and dangerous eye contact with Jim. Hello, Friend!
Jim catches sight of Chapel in the tea kettle and realizes Chapel has his gun raised to the ceiling. He ducks back into the bedroom, dropping his gun down the stairs like a big butterfingers as he does so, and shots ring up through the floor, his bed pillows bearing the brunt of the attack (feathers everywhere!). Jim cowers in a corner. Chapel creeps up the stairs. Blair looks freaking terrified.
As soon as Chapel reaches the top of the stairs, Jim shoves a bureau into him and leaps into a flying attack, like a big awesome bat. Chapel's disarmed and the two grapple. Some shelves are wiped out, lamps crash to the floor, and even the apples on the coffee table go flying. I think this is the most destruction of the loft we've ever seen. Jim's room got ransacked once, but that was off camera. Unbelievably, Jim, who just won in a GLADIATOR FIGHT two weeks ago, doesn't just destroy Chapel! Chapel picks up a gun and is about to shoot him when Cassie throws herself back in her chair and knocks him off balance. Jim knocks him out and goes to untie Cassie. I repeat! Of two people who are tied up, one of whom is Blair, Jim unties the other one first! This has never happened. I guess Cassie earned the right by saving the day when Blair was just sitting there uselessly.
Wrap-up. Chapel is led away. Simon promises he won't get out again, but Cassie isn't so sure. Jim asks if the department will pick up the tab on the damage done to the loft, and Simon says, "You're joking, right?" Cassie says she knows a great interior designer, and Blair volunteers that he took interior design classes as an undergraduate. Beautiful. (Also, for all the classes and internships and independent studies Blair's done, he must have been taking 40-credit courseloads every semester.) Cassie says, "So did I!" Jim bitches, "Well, good. Why don't you two start up a business. This'll be your first job." This is all in fun, however, as I know, and you know, and Blair knows, and Jim knows, that Jim is a complete control freak when it comes to way things look in his apartment and he totally arranged it all himself in the first place.
Best Moments: Jim's rescue of Blair at Conover--they're all over each other. And the Chapel/Cassie dynamic, while unnecessarily derivative (and not particularly explained), was reasonably well done for this show.
Would have liked to see more of: Blair's stay at Conover, the most interesting gimmick of this episode, was actually really quite short and incidental to the plot. I know I whined and moaned when Jim was in prison because we didn't see enough of him and Blair together, but I actually don't mind the enforced separation thing as long as we see the effect it's having on both of them and the relief of the reunion (which we saw here, albeit in the form of "Thank god you're here so you can RESCUE ME").
It also would have been nice to see a reason why this episode was called "Mirror Image." My suspicion is that the episode, in an earlier draft, focused more on comparing Chapel with Cassie. All the elements were there: Chapel was "the Avenging Angel", only punishing criminals; Cassie is a cop, and therefore interested in punishing criminals; Cassie has an established rapport with Chapel; Cassie is reticent about describing her past experience with Chapel; Chapel is known for forming close relationships with psychologically imbalanced women whom he trains to kill for him; Cassie has a minor freak-out in which she believes herself to be insane.
This cap.
But somehow the whole never came together. The implication that Cassie was once a lover/protogee of Chapel's is left as subtext. (Subtext which is hurt somewhat by the fact that Chapel is neither attractive nor appealing. For my reading to work, he should really be creepily sexy, like Dexter or Mr. Rochester or John Sheppard.) We never see if Cassie ever came close to believing in Chapel's take-the-law-into-your-own-hands ethos. It would be interesting if Cassie's gun flashbacks turned out to be related to an episode where she herself held a gun on a technicality-cleared criminal. At the very least, she could have had one of those moments Jim always has where she had the chance to kill Chapel but didn't, because she's not like him. Any number of things could have complicated and unified the elements introduced here, but the episode just didn't go with any of them. Perhaps things had to be cut for time or to make sure Cassie didn't become too interesting of a character, even in her last episode. Yep, folks, that's it for Cassie. But, honestly, this being the Jim and Blair show, I'm kind of amazed she made it into a third episode at all.
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3x15 Finkelman's Folly
Simon is at the bank trying to get a mortgage from a condescending milquetoast account manager, running into divorce- and debt-related problems, when the bank is robbed. Simon gets shot in the side trying to rescue a security guard.
Station. Joel and Rafe (who has more lines here than ever and turns out to be Australian--who knew?) complain about the substitute captain, who's issuing all kinds of new rules, including making the detectives wear jackets and ties. We zoom in on Jim and his look of, No! But What About My Leather Jacket? If I were Jim I'd be more worried about my fake partner.
Jim and Blair confer at Jim's desk. Jim leans back with his feet on the desk and bounces a tennis ball off the wall; man, the merest mention of an authority figure he might clash with and he's in hotshot from Vice mode. "I wonder if she's gonna be giving out spankings," quips Jim. "Oh, yeah," purrs Blair. "This is gonna be fun." It is honestly unclear whether or not he is being sarcastic. So this is where spanking!fic inspiration is born.
I mean, look at the look on his face when he talks about it.
The captain calls in Jim and he brings Blair. Once in the office, Jim starts sneezing because of the captain's flowers. She likes flowers! We must hate her! The captain introduces herself as Sarah Finkelman, and Jim introduces himself and Blair. Finkelman: "Blair Sandburg. I've heard a lot of good things about you." (to Jim) "I'm pulling his ridealong authorization effective immediately." And there it is.
Finkelman wants Jim to partner up with Taggart, who's recently rejoined the ranks, and reacquaint him. "He can ride along with the both of us!" Nice try, Jim. "Jim and I, we kind of have this partnership." Nice try, Blair. "Normally a ridealong authorization is good for 90 days. Yours has been outdated for at least 19 months," Finkelman informs Blair. HA. Ha ha. It's about time someone called him on that. With liberal claps on the shoulder and loving "Chief"s, Jim sends Blair out the door. Alone with Finkelman, Jim argues that anyone in the division she cares to talk to would agree that Blair is "an asset," but Finkelman says he has been here two years (the implication being, I suppose, that he should be done with whatever it is he's doing, which--yeah), and she needs Jim with Taggart now. Jim challenges, "If I say no?" Oh, no, Jim. Your career? Really? You can still see Blair at home. Finkelman says she'll have no problem suspending Jim.
A pretty nurse called Amy checks on a delirious Simon, who confuses her for his ex-wife and snaps at her, then grabs her hand before she leaves. "We should've tried," he says wistfully. Aw, poor freaking Simon. That night, while dozing fitfully, he accidentally turns on an intercom to the nurse's station. He semi-consciously overhears a doctor and nurse whispering frantically, plotting to kill some powerful person who is blackmailing them. Suddenly the doctor sees the intercom light.
Joel is sitting in the passenger seat of Jim's truck; Jim is driving, and Blair is squeezed in between them, wearing a grey knit beanie which I guess symbolizes the illegality of his presence on whatever mission they're on now. Joel protests that none of this was his idea and he never wanted to replace Blair. "We know, Joel," Jim and Blair chorus. Jim's phone rings. Cut to Simon, letting the phone drop to his chest. Jim hears only a heartbeat. "Hello?... That's weird."
Blair's Beanie of Exile; "We know, Joel!"
The doctor creeps into Simon's room and tries to take the phone reciever away from him. He snaps awake and mumbles, "No! Gotta... tell Jim..." "Tell him what?" "There's gonna be a murder," Simon slurs. "He doesn't know about it yet?" "No, no... call my office, Cascade PD..." Amy comes in, and the doctor leaves and grabs her accomplice nurse by the arm. "We have a big problem." Maybe... if they don't commit murder... that will solve all their problems.
Bullpen. Jim is conscientiously checking some fingerprint records, dressed in a jacket and tie. When Finkelman passes, Jim stands and asks politely, "May I have a private word with you?" "If it's about Blair Sandburg, the answer's still no." Man, she reads him like a book.
Jim's Tie of Obedience
As Finkelman walks into her office to make a phone call, Jim petulantly throws away his clip-on tie, dons his baseball cap, puts his hands on his hips, and glares. That's when his super-hearing picks up her end of the conversation: "Tonight? When? Five thousand cash. Right." Jim is Suspicious.
Amy fixes Simon's IV meds. As she's walking out the room, she examines his chart more carefully. She turns and runs back into the room: Simon is seizing. After the break, Simon's cute young doctor has stabilized him, and Amy chews him out for writing a bad medication order. The doctor says he didn't do it; it must have been another doctor writing in the wrong chart. Amy is Suspicious.
Jim and Blair sit in the truck in the dark, staking out a meatpacking plant where they've apparently followed Finkelman. Blair's still wearing the Grey Beanie of Exile. Blair thinks there must be some logical explanation for all this. Jim shushes him and zooms in on Finkelman meeting with two thugs (whom we later learn are the Brock brothers) who give her an envelope full of cash. Jim reports what we just saw him see to Blair and they exchange a Meaningful Look.
Jim and Blair trace Finkelman to a house where he super-witnesses her dealing with some new thugs. The head thug (whom we later learn is Sabin) refuses to do business with a woman and when she sasses, he has a henchman hold her immobile. Jim goes in to save her, posing as Joe Brock, the man she claimed was her boss, and helps her complete the deal.
After driving a slight distance from the scene, JimandBlair and Finkelman get out of their cars and start yelling at each other. Finkelman: "You barge in on an undercover operation without authorization, and you bring him along to enjoy the show!" Blair flips out, ignoring Jim's entreaty to "Let me handle this, Chief": "This is his personal car. It's his personal time." We all wait on tentertooks to see how Blair finishes the statement "I'm his personal _______", but he opts instead for, "We're friends. If he invites me along, guess what, lady, I'm going!" Yeah! I still find Jim and Blair's emotional investment in their professional relationship a little worrying, and I can't say I'd take a different stance on it if I were their boss. However, that's not really the issue here, and Jim brings it back round to the point: off-the-books undercover operations with no backup? Pretty illegal.
Cut to the station. Finkelman confesses she had the opportunity to involve herself in this--some kind of cartel, I don't know; they're dealing in black market freon--kind of drop into her lap: the real Joe Brock took a liking to her. She decided to go ahead with the deal alone as a way of proving herself to the macho department. I... okay. But presumably she's not like, a rookie cop, right? I mean... she's legitimately a captain, so she's done her fair share of... oh, whatever. Blair says some anthropologist stuff about social structures and respect. Jim offers to help Finkelman bring down Sabin, but only if Blair can keep riding along. Jim has got a bit of a one-track mind. Anyway, Finkelman agrees.
Jim and Blair are in Finkelman's office the next day when Joel reports that Simon is missing from the hospital.
And now they're both in ties. I like to imagine that Blair tied Jim's for him.
At the hospital, Jim sends Blair and Joel to look in one wing while he looks in the other. He super-hears Simon babbling and follows the noise to an OR, where Simon is being anaesthetized. Jim bangs on the window and shows his badge, and the surgeon emerges. She reports Simon is getting a brain tumor removed. Jim insists she has the wrong man. Eventually the surgeon goes and checks just to appease him, and is alarmed to discover he's right.
Simon wakes up to see Blair, Jim, and Joel by his bed. They're moving him to a different hospital. Good idea. Simon starts to tell Jim about the murder plot, but Jim gets a phone call from Finkelman. She's arranged to meet up with her contacts and they are insisting that Joe Brock be there. Jim motions Blair over: "We gotta go." Does Blair really need to go? I guess now that Jim's won his presence he'll look silly if he doesn't use it. And, I guess, the ostensible in-show reason for Blair to be anywhere Jim is--in case his senses start acting up--still applies, although we haven't seen anything of that nature in awhile.
The real Joe Brock gets a phone call from Sabin's guys: it was nice meeting him last night, they say, and they want to make sure he'll be at the sale today. Joe Brock is Suspicious.
Simon, feeling much more alert, gets out of Joel and Amy that someone is trying to kill him, and he figures it has to be the people he semi-overheard. He refuses to be moved until he can solve the case. Dude... you may want to move to a different hospital and send some healthy officers to take care of the case. Just a thought.
Jim, Blair, and Finkelman go down to the... airport?... or whatever... where the deal is going down.
And now they're both in beanies! I like to imagine that Jim knit Blair's for him.
Jim and Finkelman see the Brock brothers. She sends Jim to make contact with Sabin while she and Blair talk to the Brocks. Her: "I hope you learned something in those two years with Ellison." Oh, Blair learned lots of things... most of which will, I hope, be of no consequence here. Blair says he hopes Finkelman has a plan, and she says she does: "We improvise." "Great Plan," Blair and I chorus.
Blair and Finkelman meet the Brock brothers. Finkelman introduces Blair as Sabin. Blair nods, draws himself to his full 5'7", and starts speaking in a slightly ridiculous faux-slang: "It's about time you two showed up. I was getting ready to tell your girl here to go fish. Now, come on." He leads them off down the hall... to... somewhere? He hopes?
Jim meets with Sabin: "Where's the freon?" "Where's the cash?" Touche. Jim says the cash is downstairs, safe, and he'd like to see the freon first. Sabin asks Jim to give him a moment, and Jim sing-songs a delightfully cheerful "Sure!" He super-listens to Sabin whispering to his thug to find Trudy (Finkelman) and the cash. Then he leads Jim off to... wherever the freon is? Jim hopes?
Simon remembers the killers discussing some kind of board. Amy says the medical review board meets today. Simon sends Joel to get a list of attendees.
Sabin shows Jim the freon. Jim tries to call Finkelman to get the money, but the call doesn't go through. Sabin is Suspicious. He has his thug hold Jim at gunpoint while he himself goes to find Finkelman. As soon as Sabin is gone Jim beats up the thug and handcuffs him to the freon truck.
Man, this recap is long. That's what comes from having two (2!) plotlines. The bad doctor and nurse meet with the surgeon who was about to operate on Simon. "If that man Banks had died, you could have blamed every unnecessary surgery that you've performed on my inaccurate pathology reports!" Oh. I guess I'm wrong and the doctor and nurse are both surgeons and the surgeon is a pathologist. Anyway, wouldn't she have noticed the problem when she opened Simon's skull and found no tumor? I mean, yeah, it's good that Jim stopped the unnecessary skull-opening, but you'd think... well, what do I know about medicine. Anyway, this surgeon, or pathologist, or whatever, Quint, is the person the bad docs wanted to murder, and that's all I know.
Jim calls Blair to tell him where he (and the freon) is. Blair, still trying to maintain his charade for the Brocks: "You've got some explaining to do, pal. You want to work for Arthur Sabin, you've got to quit screwing around!" Jim: "Listen, Bogie. Are you doing okay up there?" Blair, angrily: "Fine! We'll be right there!" Heh.
Amy and Simon flirt a bit as Amy loads Simon into a wheelchair. Joel enters; he's somehow dug up the names of the three principle actors in the hospital drama. The surgeons (bad guys) were unable to be reached because in surgery, but our heroic trio heads to lab to question Dr. Quint. They find her lying on the floor of her office, a syringe nearby. Amy has Joel summon a crash cart.
Simon wheels up to the bad surgeons as they're leaving for the board? thingy? (they're in civvies, anyway) and holds up his badge. Arrested!
Blair strides up with Finkelman and the Brocks in tow and has some fun treating Jim like his henchman, ordering him to open the truck, and to hold the money suitcase for him when Brock hands it over.
Blair will be paying for this later.
Just as they're completing the deal, the real Sabin shows up. Some embarrasing mistaken identity antics ensue. Jim, who has jumped behind the truck, emerges armed just as Sabin's drawing a gun on Blair; he announces he's a cop and orders Sabin to put the gun down. Sabin does and runs off. Finkelman: "Go get him, detective. Sandburg and I are fine." This shows Personal Growth because before she was intent on collaring Sabin herself and also because she is acknowledging the God-given right of the fake detective to do his fake detective work. Jim gives Blair a gun (eeee!) and runs after Sabin. He catches him on a boat (so I guess they're at a boat... port?) and holds fire hose on him, knocking him over the side. So... case closed, I guess.
Wrap-up is Simon's triumphant return to the station. Finkelman is getting a promotion even though she seems to be pretty bad at her job: I mean, she implicated Jim and Blair in a ridiculous train wreck of an I don't even know what kind of deal, and they just had to do their best at damage control. She is gracious enough to say "I wouldn't have gotten it without Ellison... and Sandburg. They make a great team." "Don't I know it," Simon groans, long-suffering. Simon receives a bouquet of flowers from Amy and Jim sneezes. Finkelman comments that it really is flowers Jim is allergic to, and not her. "It's captains in general," says Jim, clapping Simon on the back. Simon looks truly hurt. The end!
Would have liked to see more of: Erm. I guess the hospital plot was the better of the two, in my opinion--I like the idea of having to solve a case from a hospital bed, using mainly your BRAIN!, and recovering fuzzy info etc.--but the "Simon has to save himself from people trying to kill him, and also he is wounded" plot is a little too Reunion for me. Meanwhile, Jim and Blair did exactly the right amount of whinging about being separated, I thought: any more and they would have crossed irretrievably into annoyingly whiny instead of endearingly attached to one another. Still, I didn't really like the episode much, probably because I found both intrigue plots boring and unnecessarily complex.
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3x16 Sweet Science
Oh, great, boxing is happening. Jim and Blair are in the audience. After the match, Blair brings Jim backstage (?) to see the winner, Sweet Roy Williams. Jim's all smiles and charm meeting him, and he asks, oh-so-innocently, "How'd you two hook up?" Sweet Roy surprises him by saying, "Street fight." Blair grins. Roy explains that he was getting beat up by a bunch of guys, until Blair came up and tried to talk everyone down. When it didn't go so well, Blair threw a brick through a store window in order to set off the alarm and summon the cops. Jim looks impressed hearing the story ("Pretty creative, Chief"), even when Roy and Blair admit they got their asses kicked waiting for the cops. (Throwing in a beat-up Blair improves any story, in my experience.) When Blair reminisces that the store owner was cool and didn't press charges, but did charge him $400 for the store window, Roy says "That reminds me" and gives Blair two cool hundred dollar bills for his half. "I really appreciate you being there for me when I needed you, man." Aw, Sweet Roy is aptly named! Gratuitously touching Jim's shoulder, Sweet Roy invites them both to a party. He hugs Blair goodbye and Jim takes over to guide Blair out the door.
You may be the one he hooked up with, Sweet, but Jim's the one he's goin' home with.
Party. After greeting our newly-arrived heroes, Roy goes off to mingle, telling Blair, "If I don't get back with you tonight, don't let it be two damn years before I see you again!" Blair says it won't, repeating "I promise!" about four times. Alone, Jim and Blair bask in Roy's palpable pheromone trail.
JIM: Good guy, man.
BLAIR: He's a great guy.
JIM: Who'd figure you with him?
BLAIR: I know.
Blair asks Jim what he wants to do next, and they look at each other and chorus, "Buffet."
For some reason they split up and take different routes to the buffet table, giving Blair the opportunity, on the way, to awkwardly impose himself on a private, tension-filled conversation between Roy's brother Jamie and Jamie's girlfriend Shairta. Sharita politely excuses herself, and Blair, oblivious to Jamie's bad mood, is all, "Hey man, remember me?!" Jamie: "Yeah, I remember you. You're that rich white dude that came around slumming on my brother back in the day." (Becky's transcript has "with" but-- dude-- I am pretty sure "on" is the preposition he uses. ON. ON.) Blair's all, Yikes! Meanwhile at the buffet table, Jim eats strawberries and watches Roy argue with a boxing manager who once wronged him.
Station. Jim's at his desk when Blair comes in and does a playful fake-boxing move with a passing cop who smiles nervously and hopes to get away soon. "Whoa, yeah, yeah, yeah," Jim encourages. "'Sup, Tiger?" YES! I thought last week Jim called Blair "tiger" but upon closer inspection he was just calling Taggart "Taggart" but now the moment has finally arrived! JIM IS M.J.! Oh god, more dialogue I just have to transcribe verbatim, because, seriously.
BLAIR: That fight last night must have touched something primal in me. I had this dream last night I was a boxer.
JIM (apparently desperate to work in the episode title): You, involved in the sweet science? I have a hard time picturing that. I mean, the flowing silk robes and the goofy shorts I can see, but I thought you were a lover, not a fighter.
BLAIR: Yeah, you're right. It was fun for a little while, though, you know. Although, the Maoris staged hand-to-hand fights to purify themselves for sexual encounters.
JIM (perhaps feeling that this conversation has gone far enough in the gay department): Got a particular female in mind?
BLAIR (perhaps feeling that it has not gone far enough): No. Not at all. But it's always good to be prepared, you know.
Jim gets a call, and Blair pretends to punch his head while he answers. Then it's "Let's go, Chief" time before Blair even gets off his coat.
Our heroes head to a culvert where a body has been found, yet to be ID'd. Jim turns over the corpse and says, "Oh no." Turning to Blair: "Chief, I'm... sorry." Blair looks. It's Roy. Holy crap! I didn't see that coming. I guess Sweet Roy was just too sweet for this world.
Jim and Blair talk to brother Jamie, who's angry and weepy, and who suggests Atlas, the guy Roy was arguing with last night, as suspect. Blair seems okay and businesslike here, but when Jim and Blair stop in Simon's office to report, Blair's all swallowy and near-tears. SAD BLAIR!
SO SAD!
Jim reports that Roy was killed with a blunt object which left an ivory fragment, and Blair points out that Atlas has an ivory cane and they should go pick him up right now. He gets mad when Jim and Simon want to review Roy's juvenile offenses. "We're just trying to cover all the angles, here, Chief," says Jim. "Well those angles suck, Jim!" Simon kicks Blair out and asks Jim "What's wrong with the kid? I've never seen him so cranked up." You know, those references to Blair losing someone close to him would have worked better after this episode. Jim promises to keep Blair in line.
At his desk, Jim questions Atlas while Blair watches. Atlas points out he has no motive (he wanted to make money off Roy, not kill him) and he has an alibi. He obnoxiously casts suspicion on Jamie and then Sharita: "The way I hear it, the Williams brothers shared a lot more than their... name." Blair flips out, yells at Atlas, and storms off. Jim excuses himself and follows. Blair backs away yelling, "There is no way there was anything going on between Roy and Sharita!" Taking that particular accusation a little personally, Blair? Jim calmly contradicts that last night he caught "eyeplay" between them. I guess Jim is the expert.
From the first five minutes of this episode alone:
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Blair backs into the elevator and Jim enters with him and pushes the convenient "Hold the doors shut and go nowhere so I can have a private moment in an enclosed space with my partner" button. "I'm just so damn mad, you know?" Blair shouts, and punches the wall. "I mean, all that time we're growing up he's got in all these fights and nobody's believing in him and things start to happen for him and then this." Jim watches solemnly and then tells Blair to calm down. "You let your anger run away with you, you got no business being on the case." Blair nods unconvincingly.
Jim and Blair find Jamie working out at a boxing training thingy and ask him about Sharita. He says that whatever Roy wanted, he got: "I saw the way they acted around each other, all right?" Jim gazes at Blair as Jamie continues, "The looks, the whispers. I'm not stupid."
Jim checks out Jamie's car. Blair thinks he's wasting his time: "They were brothers!" "Cain and Abel ring a bell?" Interesting that this is coming from the one of them who actually has a brother. Jim super-finds a bit of dried blood in the trunk.
Loft. Blair is sitting on the floor, back against the couch, meditating before semi-circle of candles, when Jim comes in. He sits down on the couch behind Blair and gently breaks it to him that the blood in Jamie's car checks out as Roy's. Blair says he needs to get out for some air. Jim offers to take him out to eat, but Blair wants to be alone.
So, is there a protocol for this kind of thing, or...?
Cut to later that night. Jim's asleep on the couch in front of the glow of TV snow when the phone rings. It's Blair. "Chief, it's two o'clock in the morning. What's going on?" Aw! Jim tried to wait up! Blair apologetically asks to be picked up. He's being detained at the federal building.
Simon's office. Federal Guy is dropping the charges of counterfeit against Blair because Simon can vouch for him (hero perks!), but he explains that they're especially interested in these bills because they're printed on a kind of paper that only the U.S. Government is supposed to be able to get ahold of. Simon suggests a next step in the investigation, but Federal Guy says this is a U.S. Federal Government issue. Yeah, right. The way he says "I'm sorry, but we prefer to work alone" is the most Canadian thing ever. He asks Blair where he got the bill, and Blair says Chinatown, or maybe the marina. Jim's face remains impassive, but as soon as Federal Guy leaves, Jim says "Nice bit of footwork, there, Chief." He tells Simon that's the bill Blair got from Roy.
Jim and Blair go to Jamie's gym. Jamie doesn't know anything about Roy's possible involvement in counterfeit, so they decide to talk to Rock, Roy's manager, who, along with a totally fake English guy called Collins, is creepily trying to pressure some boxer into taking a not-great contract. Jim asks to talk to Rock alone, but Rock says, "Me and Collins got no secrets. We're partners." EVERYONE ON THIS SHOW. "All right," says Jim, instantly accepting because he knows how it is. He asks about the counterfeit thing, and Rock says, "Give me a break. Roy was straight as an arrow." Blair: wibble! Jim tells Rock to keep his eyes open.
Jim and Blair get hot dogs from a vendor and discuss the case. Blair thinks the blood may have gotten in Jamie's car from a towel or equipment or something; they were boxers and sparring partners. Blair asks Jim to keep an open mind. Jim asks Blair to keep an open mind. Touche. They get a call from Simon: there was an explosion behind the gym.
Jim finds counterfeit money residue at the explosion. Later at the station, Jim and Blair tell Simon what else they've uncovered: Rock had IRS debts and money-printing ink. Simon: "Bring the bozo in."
Heading to the gym, Blair wonders why Rock would kill a guy who would in all likelihood have made him more money. Jim suggests he might have had plans to sign with someone else, but Blair insists, "Loyalty was really important to Roy." They enter the gym and it's dark and empty. Jim hears a heartbeat and panting, and suddenly Jamie tears past them and escapes through a back way. Jim smells blood and they find Rock's dead body.
Simon's office. Simon and Jim discuss the evidence against Jamie in both cases, and Blair argues passionately (yells) in Jamie's favor. Simon tells Jim to pick Jamie up before any more bodies show up, and Blair cries, "Why the hell doesn't anybody listen to me?" Simon sends Jim a Look, then asks Blair to stay and shut the door. Uh-oh. Simon asks Blair what's going on. Blair complains that he's helped a lot but all he ever hears is, "Hey Sandburg, get out of the way. Hey Sandburg, you're not a cop." Simon points out that Blair isn't a cop, and Blair argues a bit more but seems defeated. Before he leaves, though, Simon stops him and says, "If for any reason I have given you the impression that I do not appreciate and value the contribution that you give to this department--I apologize." Blair, looking up with big, blue, blue eyes: "You mean that?" Simon does. Blair: "Well, thank you. That means a lot to me." Awwwww. I love nice moments between Blair and Simon. Simon: "Now get out of here. He needs you." He. Needs you.
"You mean that?"
Blair meets Jim, who has just gotten a call from Rafe, who's tailing Sharita. She withdrew a bunch of money and may be going to meet Jamie. They head out.
Sharita meets up with Jamie and gives him the money. She tells him not to run, because it will make him look guilty, and suggests he call Roy's friend Sandburg, but Jamie doesn't trust him--he's with the cops. Jamie accuses Sharita of sleeping with Roy, and Sharita tearfully explains that all the sneaking off and secrets between them were because they were planning a birthday surprise for Jamie! Seriously. Seriously, that is what it is. Roy wanted to buy Jamie a house for his birthday. I guess this is a cautionary tale about how you shouldn't use circumstantial loving-look-and-whisper evidence to draw the conclusion that two people are in a sexual relationship. FAIR ENOUGH WRITERS. Jamie apologizes and hugs Sharita and mid-embrace, Jim and Blair arrive. Jamie immediately pulls a gun on them.
Jim and Blair put up their hands and try to talk Jamie down. The place is surrounded, they say, Jamie has no chance, no chance at all; give up his guns or die. They promise to help him if he's innocent, but Jamie isn't buying it. Blair steps forward: "You got to trust me, all right? I'll go out with you. If I go out with you, they'll have to shoot me, too, all right?"
Well, someone may shoot you if you go out with him.
As Jim reaches to pull Blair back from the armed man, Jamie makes a break for it. Sounds of gunshot. Sharita runs after him and cradles Jamie's body.
Hospital. Jamie is recovering from his gunshot wounds; Sharita is feeding him soup. Het H/C! Jim and Blair come in, and Jamie's still uncooperative until Jim reminds him that Blair was ready to lay his life on the line for him. Jamie confesses that he was helping Rock with the counterfeit operation, but he was feeling guilty about it and told Roy the night of the party. Roy confronted Rock and wound up dead. Jamie said nothing because Rock threatened to bring him down for counterfeiting and to go after Sharita. Jamie doesn't know who killed Rock.
Jim and Blair must have had a late-night research party because next thing we know they're presenting Simon with stuff they dug up on Collins, Rock's partner, and his connections to the company that makes cotton paper for the U.S. Government. They theorize that Collins killed Rock to keep him from talking.
Squad cars containing Jim/Blair and Rafe/some hot driver coordinate to surround Collins. But Collins and his guys tractor right through the roadblock, shooting at the police with automatic rifles, and Rafe radios Jim to go after them. A car chase with lots of shooting and ordering of Blair to get down ensues. The truck gets riddled with holes, rammed into the side of the tractor, and splashed through a lake. Destruction to Jim and Blair's property is in these days! The truck stalls near a cliffside, and the tractor positions itself to ram them. "Come on, Jim," Blair urges, and Jim coaxes the truck, calling it "sweetheart." At the last moment it clears the tractor's path and the tractor goes sailing over the edge of the cliff. Jim and Blair get out and gaze at the carnage.
Jim comes into Simon's office and they do a little plotline wrap-up. Simon put in a good word for Jamie and he's getting probation. Ooh, a 30 Seconds with Blair! We haven't seen one of those in awhile. As Jim and Blair get their coats and head for the elevator, Blair reminds Jim of his promise to buy him dinner. Jim pretends not to remember. They enter the elevator and get into playful boxing stance. "This one's for Roy," says Blair, and the elevator doors close just as the first punch is thrown.
And as they reached for each other...
Non J/B Pairing of the Week: So when do you think Blair and Roy's relationship was? Roy says he hasn't seen Blair for two years, so we know it was before he met Jim. Blair talks about "growing up" together, so it's possible they had a fairly long-term thing in their youth. On the other hand, in the story about how they met, Roy said he was in the neighborhood to buy a car, so he must have been late teens at least. So, assuming he and Blair are about the same age, it can't have been before Blair was an undergraduate, since he started university at age 16.
I like to imagine Blair was a fresh-faced undergraduate--maybe around junior year or so--when he had his resucing-Roy adventure, and the two became fast friends. Blair liked Roy and found his world interesting because he's interested in different social classes and structures, and because likes to imagine himself a champion of the working classes, even though he himself, while not exactly rich with his single-mom/commune upbringing, is pretty firmly grounded in middle-class liberal intellectualism. He also probably admired Roy's maturity and dadlikeness, as an orphan bringing up his brother by himself. Blair does like a good mentor/father figure. At the same time, Roy was his age and sexy and not as book-learned, so Blair felt like he had something to teach him, found him equalish and attainable and attractive. Blair spent as much time with Roy as he could get away from his studies and projects. They became close best friends and then lovers. They were down-low about it, but Jamie saw the way they acted around each other-- the looks, the whispers. He's not stupid. And he's never trusted Blair since.
Whoops! Did I just write some slash?
Best Moments: Jim and Blair companionably hero-worshiping Sweet Roy. Jim's ability to picture Blair in a silk robe and shorts. Sad!Blair lolling his head near Jim's lap.
Jim: *ulp!*
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3x17 Remembrance
The music sounds like a techno remix of the X-Files theme music as we see a field from the point of view of someone running through it. Flash to a creepy overexposed shot of a child's eyes, which will be used as a scene transition several more times.
Jim and Blair arrive at a crime scene at Rainier. Blair knows the victim, a psych professor, although not well. Blair is getting a lot better at looking at bodies. He still looks disturbed and vaguely queasy, but he's not walking away. Dan Wolf reports that the victim was strangled with piano wire and then shot post-mortem. Dude, so like, the killer is Chapel, right? Because that was totally his super-unique signature, right?
Oh, there was a wallet placed on the wound. That makes things totally different. The wallet was empty except for a snapshot of a little boy. Simon asks if the victim had a son, Blair says no, and Jim, looking at the photo, says, "This is me." Legitimate whoa!
Kid Jim runs through the forest.
From a young age, he had the old Ellison Frown.
Present day, Simon's office. Jim has no idea why this guy he's never met would have a photo of him as a kid. Blair enters with some info he dug up at the university on the victim's research: he was studying serial killers, particularly the "Country Club Strangler" who ritually strangled and then shot well-to-do businessmen. An arrest was made, but the suspect killed himself before it went to trial. After that, there were no more murders, so the case was closed. Simon: "So what am I missing here?" Blair glances at Jim, who says grimly, "Tell him the rest." It was Jim who found the body of the last victim.
Simon asks Jim why didn't he say, and Jim says he didn't remember until Blair mentioned the Strangler. "I was ten years old. It was a long time ago." Wait. Simon said that the Country Club Strangler had "a three-year spree in the early 70s," so assuming he started in 1970 at the earliest, Jim found his last victim in or near '73. That would put Jim's birth date around '63, but we know from 3x09 Red Ice that Jim's date of birth is 1957. So either Jim was actually about 16 when he found the body (clearly wrong, as he's certainly no more than 12 in the flashbacks), or Simon's wrong and the killings happened in the mid-60s (but Jim later describes the event as "twenty-five years ago", which would seem to confirm the 70s dates from the point of view of a 1997 show), or this show has continuity issues. No de-aging Jim, guys! He lost 5 years in 8 episodes! Is this to soften the age difference between him and Blair? Because I liked that. (For these thoughts and more: Jim's timeline.)
Jim believes this is not a copycat but the real, original killer, since, come to think of it, he smelled a scent at the crime scene which reminds him of the night he found the body of the last victim. Blair's super excited because this indicates that Jim had his Sentinel abilities as a kid. Simon's all, Uh, so not interested in that right now.
Jim talks to Dan Wolf in the morgue. He's surprised when Dan mentions the angle of the shot was left-to-right, so the killer must have been left-handed. While Dan's chattering cheerily about how the clothing was stained with the victim's blood, Jim has another brief Kid Flashback: he's running through the forest, clutching a football, when he trips and Finds Something Horrible (off-camera).
Loft. Jim's standing at the window, watching the rain come down, clutching a football and looking melancholy.
It's so emo, you guys.
Blair comes in, and seeing the football, grins, "Nice! Want me to go long?" Jim just turns away. Blair jokes, "I feel like I'm interrupting a romantic interlude here between you and your football." Ha ha. That's so what it looks like, too; I think it must be the mood lighting and the fire crackling in the background. Blair asks Jim what's wrong a couple of times, but Jim insists he's fine. Blair suggests that this case might be "bringing some stuff up," and Jim responds uncomfortably that "it's nothing [he] can't handle." (Oh wow, that came across as less dirty in context.) "Of course," says Blair, sounding like he's heard it all before. He ribs Jim about the football a little more, and when no soul-bearing is forthcoming, he declares firmly, "Jim, I'm a friend. All right? Friends help each other. That's what we do."
Okay, that does the trick: Jim lets him in, saying he's frustrated because he's a cop working on a case that involves him (hey, why is that, anyway? shouldn't he--not?) and he can't remember his own past. Hey, what time is it? Must be Guide o'Clock, because Blair's telling Jim to relax; focus on the smell.
Looks like it worked, cause we go to Kid Jim flashback. He's tossing around a football with a grown-up man. They discuss the game Jim's going to be in on Sunday, and Jim says his dad won't be able to make it because of business, so I guess this isn't his dad. (We could have assumed that anyway since we know from 2x23 His Brother's Keeper that Jim didn't exactly have a tossin'-round-the-old-pigskin relationship with his dad.) Jim calls him "Bud" and Bud calls him "Jimmy" and, sometimes, "Chief." Waugh! Creepy. Jim asks if he might be good enough to play football professionally someday. Bud says he can do anything he wants to do, "but, uh..." "But what?" "Sometimes you hold back. It's as though you're afraid to trust yourself." You know... I don't know what that is supposed to mean... but it's not exactly helping my growing sense of unease with this whole situation, with the repressed trauma memories and the random men having Jim's childhood photograph. Yikes.
We get a Sentinel focus on Child Jim's ear as he hears his brother Stephen leave the house. He impresses Bud by knowing that Stephen is coming (he doesn't know how, he just knows, he says, which is kind of cool--that he had the senses, but they were working on an unconscious level). Bud asks if he knows what he's having for dinner, and Jim sniffs the air and says roast beef. Bud laughs, thinking he's joking. "Trust your instincts," Bud bids him farewell. Weird.
"That's it, I'm pretty tapped out," Jim tells Blair. Blair asks who Bud is, and Jim says he was a businessman who lived down the street. "A--friend," says Jim, now that he has learned this human concept from Blair. "Kind of like my mentor." Blair knows how that is. He asks if Jim has a photo, and Jim says he wouldn't have anything like that here, and Blair asks, "What about at your old man's house?" Jim: "I don't want to deal with my old man." Blair presses, and Jim doesn't want to hear it.
Kid Jim flashback of Jim standing outside his house, super-watching through the window as his father fights with his mother on the phone. Little Stephen asks Jim what he's looking at, and Jim distracts him by asking who would win, Spiderman or the Hulk. I say Hulk! Wait, in a physical fight, or a verbal argument? Present-day Jim wakes up, his hair a ridiculous mess.
Aiiiieeeee!
Morning, Simon's office. There's a front-page story about the case in the paper, much to Simon's dismay. A call comes through for Jim, and it's a creepy voice saying "I saw you in the paper, Jimmy." "Who is this?" "I think you know. Take a trip to the Cascade Dump and don't forget to check the pockets." Everyone has a serial killer friend except me!
Of course there's a body at the dump. This morning's paper headline ("Strangler's Back!") is in his pocket, which means (since Dan puts the time of death last night) the killer must have returned this morning to leave the note. Simon asks why he would do that, and Jim says expressionlessly that the killer's "trying to make it personal" and "mess with [his] head." He excuses himself and walks off, and Blair follows, pestering him about the scent. Jim confirms it's there, but he doesn't remember anything else. Blair thinks they have to go back to Jim's old house to dredge up more memories. Oh, whatever, Blair's just angling to meet the folks already. Blair: "Look, this isn't just about the case anymore--it's about you and whatever baggage you're dragging around." Opposite argument might have worked better for this audience, I'm thinking. Jim pauses, at a loss for words for a moment, and then says, sarcastically, "I'm warm and tingly with tenderness here, Chief." "Oh, yeah, that's good," says Blair, exasperated.
Whee, another classic Jim/Blair argument episode.
Jim walks off, pushing through reporters all "No comment" until one gets up in his face and he gets angry (you wouldn't like Jim when he's angry). He shoves the guy away, yelling at him, and pushes to his car. Simon takes over to deal with the reporters, and Blair trails after Jim, asking what his problem is. Jim's not in the mood and tells Blair to ride back with Simon. Oh, hell no! He did not just revoke Blair's shotgun rights! Not after the passenger seat has undoubtedly shaped itself to the exact dimensions of Blair's ass. "That's good, Jim. Keep running. Sooner or later this is going to catch up with you!" shouts Blair. Jim leans his head on the side mirror and sighs. "Chief, I'm going to see my father right now. Are you satisfied?" "Yes," says Blair quietly. Awwww.
Jim arrives at the old mansion and we get a flashback of Jim, Stephen and Jim's dad eating breakfast the morning of the big game. The dad's new wife or the housekeeper or somebody (her name is Sally) comes in and reminds Jim that winning isn't everything, and Jim's dad says, "It's the only thing." Yikes. Present-day Jim knocks on the door. His dad is surprised to see him but lets him in.
The house is big and still and museum-like, full of Oriental rugs and heavy, dark furniture and random Ming vases on Grecian columns. "Place hasn't changed much," says Jim. Wow, his childhood must have been full of rooms he wasn't allowed to go in. Awkward pause. Jim asks about Sally, and Dad says she's fine. Awkward pause. Jim says he's working on a case, and the dad says he read about the Strangler in the paper. "I thought you only read the business section," Jim snits. Looooong awkward pause. Jim finally asks his dad if he has any stuff--pictures, clippings, whatever--from the original Strangler case.
Upstairs Jim and his dad go through some old boxes. "We had some good times," says the dad fondly, looking at souvenirs. "Did we? It seems to me that Stephen and I don't remember it that way." Low, Jim. The dad makes some flustered excuses about work and Jim looks at a picture of kid football players labelled "1973 CHAMPIONSHIP" and gets a flashback of the day the picture was taken. Some kid from the other team calls him "rich kid" and is obnoxious to him. Then the longhair hippie photographer tells the winners to gather round and encourages the proud fathers to stand next to their sons: close up on Jim standing alone. Present-day Jim hands off the photo to his dad and says "What's wrong with this picture?" We get it, Jim. Cat's in the cradle with the silver spoon.
At Major Crimes, Simon bitches out Jim for shoving a member of the press. Jim protests it was just a little shove, and then mutters "I'll practice self-restraint, sir," but Simon won't let him off that easy: he's finally got the idea that maybe he should pull Jim off this case. Blair points out that the killer is contacting Jim, and he's involved whether they like it or not. Simon relents and gives them a new lead, some video store owner who was dubbing videos for the victim.
When they get there the sign says "closed" but the bolts are gone from the door. "Stay behind me," Jim murmurs as they head inside. I should just have a macro for that. The store's empty and the victim's tape has been erased. Jim sniffs the air, tells Blair, "Call for backup; stay alert," and runs out. Maybe I need two macros. Jim runs out to a train track where he suddenly gets a memory of running after his football, looking up, finding the body: it's Bud.
While he's semi-zoning, a train approaches, and Jim is suddenly attacked by a masked man who says, "The score needs to be settled. It's payback time," and then chooses to knee Jim in the stomach repeatedly even though he has a knife. Jim's zoning and being beaten and the train is rushing closer; you know, this is exactly the kind of situation Jim needs Blair actually with him for. Just in the nick of time, the grapplers break and roll off the tracks in opposite directions.
Loft. Comfort!Blair gets a bag of frozen vegetables for Jim's sore shoulder and says "You're lucky that guy didn't kill you." Jim says he didn't want to kill him; he wanted to mess with him. I guess Jim has already opened up about his latest memory, because Blair talks about how, with the trauma of finding his father figure dead, it's no wonder he repressed it. "I wonder what the hell else I'm repressing," Jim grumbles. We all do, Jim.
Jim's still thinking aloud about the killer--how he acted like they knew each other--when he gets a flash of memory. He's facing off against the boy who called him "rich boy," Aaron. Jim makes the gamewinning tackle, throwing Aaron to the ground. After the game, Aaron snatches the winning football from Stephen and kicks it deep into the woods.
Major Crimes. Simon tells Jim and Blair that they got a fingerprint from the knife, and it belongs to some Army guy called Jeffries who went AWOL thirty years ago--disappeared along with his five-year-old son. A fax of Jeffries' photo arrives and, upon seeing it, Jim gets a memory: just after he found the body, he zoomed in across the woods and saw a man with a knife getting away.
At Jim's dad's house, Jim asks for any memories his dad may have about the other parents in the league. After insisting he doesn't know anything, he didn't get involved with those parents, the dad does remember one thing--a phone call from one Mick Foster, a dad who wanted his help forming a new league, and who yelled at him when he said he didn't have time. Before Jim leaves, his dad apologizes for not being there for him like the other dads. Jim's still kind of a dick about it. "I'm not the man I was," says the dad. Jim gets a memory: he's standing with his dad, telling the cops what he saw. The cops are skeptical that he could have seen someone 75 yards away. The dad brings Jim to the car and then goes back to the cops and quietly (but not quietly enough for Jim) apologizes for his son's overactive imagination. The cops recommend that Jim get counseling. Oh, that child actor has Jim's eyebrow-raise-and-frown down pat.
Though I think you would need eyebrow video to truly appreciate it.
We cut to later that day, with Jim's dad yelling at him for telling lies: "Now you got to stop pretending or people are going to think you're a freak! Is that what you want? For people to think there's something wrong with you?!" "No," says Jimmy tearfully. Oh, eh! It's kind of awesome that they're finally explaining all those years of dormant senses. And it allll goes back to daddy issues. "I was telling the truth!" modern-day Jim realizes. He speechifies:
"I held back; I didn't follow my instincts. But all I ever got from you was that there was something wrong with me. I stuffed who I was--who I am--down inside of me. See, I have a gift, Dad. Now, it can be a burden sometimes, but it's a gift. It's just who I am."
Jim's dad surprises him by revealing that he knew, all along, that he was telling the truth; but he encouraged Jim to repress his abilities because he didn't want him to get hurt for being different. "You--you knew?" Jim stutters, betrayed. OH MY GOD JIM'S FATHER ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER LITTLE BOYS BUT MADE HIM MAN UP AND REPRESS HIS SENSITIVE NATURE AND JIM HAD TO GO THROUGH THE PAINFUL PROCESS OF LEARNING ABOUT HIMSELF ANEW WHEN IN HIS LATE THIRTIES SHORTLY AFTER A FAILED MARRIAGE HE MET A STRANGE AND WONDERFUL YOUNGER MAN WHO SHOWED HIM THE WAY.
THIS SHOW IS AMAZING STOP.
Hath not a Sentinel eyes? Hath not a Sentinel hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Well, obviously, yes on the senses. BUT YOU TAKE MY MEANING. DAD. DAD. LET ME BE WHO I AM, DAD.
Jim's dad goes to get a glass of water, while Jim looks at a photo album about himself, including recent clippings of his commendations and his wedding. Then he calls Simon and tells him to check up on Mick Foster and his son Aaron. His dad returns as he's leaving and remarks that it's ironic: "Now you're the one with the business to take care of." Jim's like, Yup. Pause. Jim heads out. "It's good to see you, Jimmy." "You too," says Jim, already out the door. Jim's dad stands there sadly for a long moment.
"CASCADE PD!" A SWAT team is storming into a house. Simon finds a body and Jim IDs Mick Foster / Jeffries / Bud's killer. As the coroners gurney out the body, Blair looks at a file: Aaron Foster was an abused child, in and out of social services, eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic. "He never had a chance." The trio talk a bit about father issues generally and then the victim's phone rings. Jim answers, "Hello, Aaron." Jim tries to get him to talk and when Aaron says "What do you want to talk about? Your medals? Your wedding? Love the bride, too bad it didn't work out," Jim gets an idea, and dials up his dad on his cell phone. Aaron: "Hold on, I'm getting another call. Oh, hi, Jimmy." "You hurt my father, I swear to God, I'll kill you." Suspense!
Truck. Jim speeds around corners so fast Blair hits his head on the window. The whole SWAT team arrives at the house, and Jim makes Blair wait outside while he and Simon search the house with guns drawn. Jim hears something in the kitchen and finds Sally crying in the closet. He hugs her until she calms down and it's still not clear if she's his stepmother or his housekeeper. In a study, Jim finds photos arranged in the message "TOO LATE" and "14, 13," which, as Jim explains to Simon, is a football score.
Blair shows up all "What's goin' on?" Jim runs out and Blair runs after him, "Wait up!" Oh, Blair. Running down the front walk, Blair says "I'm coming!" and Jim says "All right, stay close!" Yay, Jim's letting him come! But it's all for naught, because as soon as they get to the football field, Jim realizes the killer actually wants him in the woods, where he found the body, and he tells Blair to stay put while he runs off. Intercut scenes of Little and Big Jim running through the woods. Sure enough, where Bud's body was, now is Jim's father lying facedown--but when Jim turns him over, he comes to. "Thank God," murmurs Jim. Aaron comes up behind them with a knife and whines, "You had everything! I had nothing!" That's about the size of it, yep. They fight hand-to-hand and then Aaron runs away. Blair pops up just as Jim's leaving once again, but this time he gets an assignment, to take care of Jim's dad. Okay, finally, each has met the other's parent! I wonder if Blair will get to look at those photo albums later.
Intercut scenes of Big and Little Jims running across the field after Big and Little Aarons. Jim tackles Aaron to the ground, and, in the present day, handcuffs him. Cops gather round. "Where's my father?" Being led out of the woods on Blair's arm. Blair brings Dad to Jim, cuffs Jim on the arm manfully, and walks off to give them a private moment. Jim and his dad stand wordlessly for a moment, then hug. They walk off arm in arm. We exit on a shot of Blair trying to walk off with his arm around Simon's shoulder: "Isn't that beautiful?" Simon shrugs him off. "Come on, a little brotherly love!" Blair wheedles. "Do I look like your brother?" Simon snaps. "From a different mother," Blair suggests. Fade out on Blair still trying to get his arm around Simon.
LOVE ME
Best Moments: Jim comes out to his dad. There's also a sort of baseline Blair-concern that's very evident throughout the episode.
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3x18 Love Kills
Lots of things happen in this first scene in Cascade's Chinatown. Two Buddhist monks get out of a car and walk away; from a distance, Dr. Beckett from Stargate: Atlantis, looking all Daniel Jackson in glasses, watches, intrigued. A truck passes between the monks and their car and when it clears and they look back, a third monk still in the car is slumped down. They run back and find he is dead, a puncture wound on his neck. Vampires! Day vampires! The scene catches the eye of some police officers, and when they jog over to check it out, the two monks run away.
Next we see Jim and Blair coming out of a restaurant. "You will love and be loved by many," Blair reads his fortune. "Mine's right; how about yours?" "Your partner puts the 'dim' in 'dim sum,'" says Jim. Blair laughs and starts to tell a story about a friend of his who always made decisions based on fortunes, but before he gets through it, Jim bumps into a dark-haired woman. "Lila!" he cries. "I'm sorry, I think you've got me confused with someone else," she says, and rushes off to get a taxi. Jim zooms in on the license number. Then they see the crime scene and go over to check it out. Blair's confused and dismayed to learn that the Buddhist monks ran from the Law.
Bullpen. Jim's on the phone making inquiries about the taxi when he becomes aware of Blair hovering. "What do you need, Chief?" "Nothing. I'm not saying anything," says Blair. "You don't need to say anything," says Jim, with what I can only describe as an expression halfway between an exasperated grimace and a fond smile. Blair makes a series of adorable facial expressions, insisting, "I'm good," and I'm not really sure what's going on here until Jim sighs and says "Her name was Lila Hobson. I met her in Bali after they pulled me out of Peru." Ohhhh, Blair wanted the ex story.
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| Adorable facial expressions all round, let's face it. | ||
"I was on R&R, we stayed at the same hotel, we got involved, end of story," says Jim. "How involved? Not end of story," says Blair. I love that he (and Jim) just assumes he has a right to know all the details. Jim says they had a week together, and then she disappeared. His phone correspondent comes back from hold and tells him the name of Lila's hotel. Jim hangs up and stands to leave. "You need some moral support?" Blair asks, but Jim just takes off. "Guess that's a no," says Blair, taking a sip of coffee.
Hotel lobby. Jim sees Lila. She isn't Seven of Nine, but she kinda looks like her. Foreshadowing? "Lila," he says, and this time she says, "Hello Jim."
Hotel bar. Lila says she pretended not to know Jim because she "wasn't prepared to see him." Weak, writers. Weak. She apologizes for disappearing all those years ago, saying it wasn't about Jim, but not explaining what it was about, then. Jim's too distracted to ask the natural question as the picture and sound goes all funny for a moment--he's having some kind of sensory spike. He tries to get back on track, offering to show her around while she's here. She admits she's meeting her fiance here in town. "Congratulations," says Jim, trying to cover up his disappointment with a fake smile. He gets another spike and starts getting distracted by loud background noises, like ice in cups and someone striking a match. Lila asks what's wrong, and he mutters that he has a migraine and gets up to leave. See, this is why he should always take Blair everywhere.
I mean more so.
Jim tells Blair about his sensory spike as they walk through the bullpen. Jim pauses to ask Henri for a florist recommendation, and Henri kids around with him, asking if anyone died, and laughing incredulously, "Jimmy has a date?" Jim says it's "an apology thing": "The girl must have thought I was nuts." Blair is for once not interested in hearing about Jim's love life--there's sensory stuff to think about! "Now, you're sure that's all?" Jim gets wistful and says "Ever have one of those times where--with a woman, you know--if things had turned out differently, she could have been the one?" "Not really," says Blair. "But it sounds special." Ha!
Simon comes up to tell them the monks were spotted in Chinatown, so they head off to try and track them down. In the truck, Blair admits of the sensory spike, "I hope for your sake it doesn't happen again, but for me, I'd like to study it, I wouldn't mind having it again." "All for the sake of science," Jim mutters, and spots the monk sitting on a park bunch through some trees. They head over to him, and he's dead. Same puncture wound. There's a key in his hand labelled "1714." Well, that's handy. Are they playing on easy mode? Blair points out a string of beads on the ground: "Sandalwood beads. This guy was a Tibetan lama." Jim examines the beads and sniffs a strange dark one. "Chief, you know what this is?" he says, then sways and faints. "Jim, oh my god! Jim!" cries Blair, rushing to his side.
Jim wakes up in a hospital bed. Blair's at his side, wearing glasses and writing in a notebook.
So boyfriends.
After putting on a Look of Concern as he watches Jim blink awake, Blair smiles, "Welcome back to the land of the living," and informs Jim that the bead he sniffed was pure opium paste. He theorizes that with Jim's senses in a heightened state from the spikes, "sniffing that stuff was like mainlining." Simon enters and exposits that the Buddhist monk clothes were just disguises for drug smugglers. He orders Jim to go home and rest: "The doctor wants you off your feet for 24 hours." Is it sad that I wouldn't mind watching an episode about 24 hours of trouble-free non-adventure?
Lila comes into her hotel and the desk guy gives her a flower box with a note: "Sorry I left so suddenly. Can we have dinner? Jim 555-4167." I have two thoughts about this. (1) Jim, asking out a girl who's engaged? Really? (2) Jim's handwriting is mega-girly. The picture quality on my AVIs is not really good enough to tell for sure, but I can't guarantee that "i" in "Jim" is not dotted with a heart. Lila looks charmed and takes her flowers into the elevator. A man slips in after her; he seems to be her boss in the illegal dealings she's undoubtedly doing. He looks askance at her flowers and starts saying vaguely threatening things.
Jim and Blair walk down the hall to their apartment. Blair's hand hovers behind Jim's back protectively as he apologizes for having a date with Sam tonight. Sam, still? Or a different Sam? (Don't get too excited; he uses a female pronoun.) Jim finds a box by the door: "These are the flowers I sent Lila." He hands the box over to Blair, who suggests that he and Sam just come back and watch a movie at the loft tonight, but Jim tells him to go out and have fun and give Sam the flowers.
Jim's asleep when there's a knock at the door. He answers it in his robe: Lila. Great. Where the hell is Dr. Beckett already? Lila asks him why he came after her, protesting, "I'm engaged!" and Jim points out, "You're here." Point. Jim says he can't get their tryst out of his head, and she says "We barely know each other; what if you don't like what you find?" and Jim says "I'll take that chance," and takes her coat off. She walks to the window. "My parents died when I was ten..." Oh, jeez. I don't think that's the kind of "getting to know each other" Jim had in mind. Lila describes her Troubled Street Kid Past. She's done Things She's Not Proud Of. Jim says he doesn't care and leans in to kiss her, but gets a sensory spike. What, does she reek of opium?
Cut to maybe ten minutes later, after Jim has had a nice cup of tea. This time when Lila kisses him, he's okay. But he stops her: "What about your engagement?" She just kisses him again. Artsy pan up, shots of them presumably naked under blankets and making out in bed, then cuddled up together in the morning. So, no plausible deniability, then.
Lila wakes up and checks the clock and rushes out. Jim follows her, hopping into his pants, offering a ride, and that's when Blair walks in. "Hi, Chief," says Jim. "Morning," Blair responds casually. Jim tries to introduce Blair, but Lila's not interested, and she rushes out the door. Blair closes it after her and turns to Jim with a big grin. "So I guess the orchids worked!" "Yeah. For you?" "Oh, yeah." I think when you're each scoring sex with the same bouquet of flowers, you may be too close.
Jim mentions he had another sensory spike last night, and Blair suggests it's linked to Lila: "Maybe you're in love." Jim is not amused. Blair asks, "Were your senses still heightened when... y'know..." He pumps his fist slightly. Jim glares. "No, I'm serious! Give me details and be specific," urges Blair. "It's for my book!" Oh, Blair's active in fandom? "Photos?" suggests Jim. Blair gets all wide-eyed and hopeful. "You took pictures?" PEOPLE. THIS IS OUR CANON.
You know.
Jim, Blair and Simon search through luggage found in the room that goes with the "monk key", as Simon designates it (to nobody's amusement). Simon finds a condom ("Didn't anybody tell these guys that monks are supposed to be celibate?") and Jim finds a computer game called "Useless Information." Blair says he's played it and it's cool, and he gives a mini-bio of the local programmer who designed it. Jim brings said designer into the station and it's Dr. Beckett! Oh my god, it's so weird to hear him speak in an American accent. He sounds so nasal and... unScottish. He denies having seen either of the dead non-monks, but he's clearly nervous and exits as soon as possible. Jim tells Blair he exuded a chemical odor.
Jim goes to meet Lila at her hotel, but she evades him. He follows her to a stairwell, and gets disoriented by a sensory spike just as Lila's boss guy from before comes up behind him and starts beating him up. Lila saves him by yelling at boss-guy in Chinese. They have a conversation and walk off together, leaving Jim rubbing his head on the stairwell floor.
Simon and the boys do a little irrelevant briefing in his office and when Jim, whose face is a little messed up, leaves, Simon makes Blair stay behind and tell him "What's going on with Jim?" Blair admits he's having sense problems and seeing a new woman and maybe they're related. Out in the hall, Lila calls Jim and arranges to meet him at a Chinese garden.
Chinese garden. Lila tells Jim that her bodyguard attacked him, thinking he was a kidnapper, because her fiance is very wealthy. Jim says, look, she's engaged, maybe they should just not do this. First sensible thing he's said all episode. (Actually, the look he gave Blair when Blair asked for photos was pretty sensible, too.) He leaves, and Lila looks heartbroken.
Outside an interrogration room, Simon tells Jim and Blair that the third not-monk has turned himself in, looking for protection. He says three of them defected to start their own business and their syndicate has been killing them. Jim enters and has the interpreter ask if Beckett is the distributor, and the not-monk says yes. Later, after they've done a bust of Beckett's operation and he wasn't there, Jim reports a forger friend has tipped him off that someone's meeting him in an alley tonight to pick up fake papers to leave the country. That forger is not going to stay in business long.
Jim and Blair sit in the alley dressed as hoboes. Blair thinks there's something moving in his pants (as usual) and Jim says drily, "It'll help you get into character." "My character dresses better," says Blair, probably because he's dressed pretty much as he normally does anyway--shabby jacket, grey knit hat, fingerless gloves--and Jim's wearing a ridiculous motheaten fedora straight out of a Depression-era talkie.
Heelots, the lot of 'em!
They see Beckett arrive. Jim looks up to a balcony and gets a sensory spike. The figure in the balcony jumps down and stabs Beckett in the neck and runs away before Jim can get it together. Jim runs, still dizzy, down the alley after the assailant, while Blair stays with Beckett and calls for an ambulance.
Jim's desk. Blair gives him some aspirin, and Jim, in post-spike hangover mode, complains that the rattling is too noisy. I don't know how Blair puts up with him sometimes. Henri comes over all cheery with the good news that he got fingerprints off the jacket Jim was wearing when he was attacked at the hotel; he keeps making Jim high-five him, and Jim's all serious about it, and Blair just watches, chuckling to himself. Henri reports that the guy that beat Jim up was Lo Minh, part of the syndicate that's killing the not-monks. Jim informs Simon that Lila and Lo Minh are connected somehow, and Simon suggests she's a "high-priced mistress," making Blair and Jim both wince.
The plan is to draw out the syndicate by leaking the time and route that they're using to take the third not-monk to lockup, thereby giving the assassins a chance at him. But we see that Minh is listening in on their walkies, and then they're stopped by a truck roadblocking their way. Jim gets out to investigate and is attacked by a Mysterious Figure in Black who gives Jim a sensory spike. Also, the Mysterious Figure is woman-shaped, but nobody seems to notice that, since next seen Jim and Simon are wondering if it was Minh and if so, why didn't he kill Jim.
Minh threateningly holds Lila by the neck and yells at her for not killing Jim. He says she now must kill him to prove her loyalty.
At the loft, Blair provides Jim and Simon with some info he dug up on the special kind of triangular dagger which caused the puncture wounds in all the victims. He shows a picture, and the picture causes Jim a sensory spike. Blair talks Jim through his relax-and-breathe.
Oh Blair; in front of Simon?
Of course Jim recovers some memories, because, at latest conservative estimate, about 50% of his memories were repressed. Jim recalls fooling around with Lila in Bali, and Blair of course has him continue the exercise, because he hasn't got to the good bit yet. Then Jim remembers finding a triangular knife in her stuff. She joked that it was for protecting her "from men like you" and he forgot about it.
Blair's current working explanation for the sensory spikes is that they're a "warning signal" and that, knowing that a triangular-knifed killer was out there and linking the knife with Lila, his mind/senses/subconscious/whatever started sending off warning flares whenever she was around. I have several issues with that. (1) I'm pretty sure that would require more sophisticated reasoning than the subconscious is capable of without accessing the conscious. (2) If it's based on sight and recognition and memory and logic, and not like smell or pheromones or something, why, oh why, did Jim get a spike from the Mysterious Figure whom he did not know was Lila? I ask you.
Phone. It's Lila. Jim urges her to give herself up to the police, promising she'll be safe. "All right. But I'll only turn myself into you," she says. Oh, sorry, that was "I'll only turn myself in to you." She gives a time and place for Jim to meet her, Alone. Simon wants Jim to bring backup anyway, but Jim says it will scare her off. "What about those spikes? You'll be completely helpless," says Simon. "Not necessarily," says Blair. Yes, Blair! This is exactly what you're here for! "We're talking about your senses here. They're to protect you and the tribe, and you can dial them back," says Blair, bringing us up to a total of 2 mentions of "dialing" in canon to approximately eight gajillion in fanon. "And I can help." YES BLAIR, DO.
Blair drives Jim to the meeting location. It's a nice touch that Blair always wears his glasses when he's driving. Looks like Jim brought backup after all; Simon, Henri and two other cops are waiting out of sight for his signal. Jim puts in an earpiece so Blair can communicate with him from afar. That probably comes in pretty useful for grocery shopping. But if Blair only needs to talk to him and not vice versa, why not just have him speak at normal volume? Jim's the one with super hearing. Oh well. Jim goes to meet Lila, and Blair joins Simon and the others in watching with binoculars. Lila goes on for a bit about her Terrible Upbringing, and Jim gets a sensory spike when he sees the triangular knife in her waistband. While he's rubbing his head, she pulls out the knife, and Blair cries, "Dial it back! Dial it back!" Such a good thing you're here, Blair. Jim manages it just as Lila throws the knife away, declaring, "I can't." Jim starts to handcuff her when he hears Minh cocking a gun at them from a ways away. Sniping! Jim pulls Lila behind a column and tries to shoot around at Minh, but he can't get a decent line of sight. Lila kisses Jim and then runs out into the open. "Lila!" Jim gets a shot off and hits Minh, but it's too late: Lila's been shot.
The bodies fall. Jim runs to Lila and cradles her body, rocking it gently, as he is wont to do. Slow pan up and fade out just as the other police arrive and Blair starts running to Jim. Well, that was a downer of an ending.
Best Moments: Blair at Jim's side in the hospital; Blair pesters Jim for specific and detailed ex stories and sex stories, and, if possible, pictures.
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3x19 Crossroads
Blair is helping Simon with his computer when Jim comes in and quips, "Lounging around in the adult chat room, boys?" Blair's immediate smile at Jim's presence is kind of heartbreaking, considering what happens next. Jim's come to request a week off. Blair turns to gape, and Simon's just like, Okay, okay, whatev--whaaa? Jim explains he's accumulated a lot of time off and he has a great little peaceful fishing spot in mind. Blair and Simon start chattering excitedly about their new tackles and flies, and Jim complains, "This is not a group activity!" "What are you talking about--you want to be alone?" asks Poor Sad Blair. They're starting to argue about it when Simon's computer BSODs and Jim takes advantage of the distraction to escape.
POOR SAD BLAIR.
Jim drives to a cover of "Crossroads." He arrives at a tiny town--a junction, really (a crossroads?!). The gas station attendant admonishes him for bringing his own water to a natural spring; the inn is renovating, so he agrees to crash on the lobby couch; and the diner is closing for the night as he reaches it, so he eats jerky out of a bag. So far, this is a great vacation.
A tech support guy leaves Simon's office, making "tsk, tsk" noises at Blair as he goes. Simon asks Blair what's up with Jim. He thinks Jim is holding out on them, fishing-spot-wise, and he suggests they go down there. Blair's eyes light up. Oh, no, boys, as much as I want you in the episode, I think if Jim says he wants to be alone, he wants to be alone. "But what if he does want to be alone?" asks Blair. Thank you! Simon shrugs, "We'll fish on the other side of the lake."
Next morning Simon and Blair peep through the door window into Jim's living-bedroom. Jim gets off the couch and lets them in, grudgingly: "What the hell are you guys doing here? How did you even find me?" Guys, I told you! Abort! Abort! Simon's like, duh, detective work. "We wanted to surprise you," Poor Sweet Blair explains tentatively. "You're not mad, are you?" Jim: "There was a time I lived alone. Worked on my own, too." Wow, it's taken actually a surprisingly long time for the honeymoon to end and for Jim to realize he's an introvert. Blair asks if Jim wants him to move out. That's not what Jim means at all, of course: "You've made this Sentinel thing work and I appreciate that. I wouldn't change a minute of it, but--you're always there, in my face, observing." Simon hits Blair with his hat. Jim: "Simon, this is no different from being your full-time pit bull." Blair hits Simon with his hat. Jim assures Simon he does want the tough assignments, but he needed a break. Fair enough. Blair and Simon seem to agree, because they both turn to go, but Jim grabs them by the arms and tells them, in a voice so manly it borders on a New York accent, "I love you. I don't want you to go away mad." Awwwww.
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| The manful shrug of "I love you" | ||
Jim continues, "Let's just have a bite to eat, talk about it, and then..." And then what, Jim?
While Jim goes to change (into something more comfortable?), we're treated to a little comedic bit where Blair makes fun of what he thinks will be the "country cooking" at the diner: "What are we gonna eat, possum on a stick or something?" Simon, dead serious: "My mother made possum." Blair, without missing a beat: "I got no problem with that. I could eat." As well-delivered as this bit is, isn't it a bit out of character for Blair to make fun of what other people eat?
Diner. Blair sits down, Simon sits across from him, and Jim slides in next to Blair. All is right with the world. The waitress is sort of charming in a down-to-earth-girl way; Jim orders coffee for the table. Simon leans over. "Could you be a little more obvious?" What, we're going there already? Oh, he thinks Blair was flirting with the waitress. I guess Blair smiled at her, but they all did, and Jim was the only one who talked. Jim explains in his best anthropologist voice, "He's just observing the indigenous customs before he launches into his own mating cha-cha." He briefly demonstrates what appears to be the "sensual rhythm" dance from 3x13 The Trance, and Blair laughs.
"Mating cha-cha"
Another brief Simon and Blair Comedy Duo moment as Blair crunches on ice annoyingly and Simon tells him to cut it out. "I'm hungry!" Does Jim have to turn this diner around?
Just as the waitress is setting down the coffeepot, she stops short, drops her empty tray, and slumps to the ground, clutching her stomach. Jim kneels to help her, and a man at the bar suddenly gets the same symptoms. Simon goes over to help him. A curly-haired woman conveniently pulls out a stethoscope and checks them out, but then says, "These people have to get to a doctor." She's just the veterinarian. The nearest hospital's an hour away, they're out of cell range, and Blair can't even get a dial tone on the diner phone. Jim: "What the hell is going on here?" Good question.
The boys are driving the diner patients to the hospital when they round a corner and find themselves bumper-to-bumper with military humvees. Oh, great, they're in a plague quarantine or possibly Truman Show type scenario. Oh, the head army guy is confirming it's a "hot zone" and that "You are all under military control." Well, this should come as nothing new to Jim, given his army experience, or Blair, given his rich fantasy life.
The town, such as it is, is now crawling with guys in fatigues and gas masks, and it's all very Restoration. The colonel doesn't really want to deal with the know-it-all cops, but he does explain finally that the outbreak started with a runaway monkey, as usual. Blair starts rambling conspiracy theories until Simon shushes him. They talk to a CDC doctor who says they're working on an anti-serum but it'll take time. Jim asks for a worst-case scenario, so the doctor tells him "The virus could kill everything in its path." Great! Piano of Emotion as we pan in on Jim's impassive face. It's so impassive that I don't know whether to read into it "After all our adventures, this is what brings us down: a virus" or "I'm glad my friends came after all so we can face this together" or "If only my damn friends hadn't come they would be safe" or "Fuck 'preserving our friendship', I'm so getting laid."
Simon talks to the vet, who explains that even though there's not much call for her practice around here, it's her home and she doesn't want to move. Jim and Blair creep around from behind a truck. Wow, that didn't take long.
The walk of shame
Jim says some important businesslike cop things about communciations and law and order, and Blair hangs back until the vet asks, "You all right? You look a little flushed." Well, yeah, he's just had a bit of an experience, here. He rambles some distracted conspiracy theories.
The innkeeper comes up and tells them he thinks he has a short-wave radio stashed away somewhere, so Jim and Blair go to help him find it. While they're poking through the boxes the innkeeper quips, "The human race began with apes, now it ends with one," and Blair corrects him that humans and apes are descended from a common simian ancestor. "Go easy on the seminar," says Jim. "Sorry, I'm an anthropologist," Blair explains. "I'm just attached to the police department." To part of it, anyway. They find the radio. Blair looks inside, and all the tubes are gone. Oh, great, now they're going to have to all around town picking up tubes and solving puzzles. Weird film effect for a second as Blair leans dizzily on a shelf, all pale and sweaty. Well, we saw this coming. Jim supports Blair and walks him outside.
Next thing we know Blair's being gurneyed into a tent. Jim pesters the army guys for info, saying, "This has become very personal to me." I like how it wasn't before, back when possibly he and everyone else in the world was going to die.
POOR SAD JIM
Simon and Jim walk off, talking about how worried they are about Blair, until Jim pauses to zoom in on a soldier on break. He's smoking, not wearing a gas mask. Another soldier comes up and snipes at him. Jim tells Simon, "A private just gave orders to a lieutenant. That's not the army I know." They begin to suspect this is an elaborate hoax. Oh no! First stage of the illness is paranoia! Next they'll be lecturing about evolution and it's all downhill from there!
Meanwhile, in the tent, Blair looks fairly okay, and the doctor's giving him a cup of medicine. When the doctor is called away, Blair pours it back into the bottle.
Outside the tent, Jim, Simon and the vet gather. Nobody's heard anything about Blair's condition. Jim asks if either of them has drunk the local water; Jim, Simon and Blair have been drinking bottled water, and the vet has her own well. The vet runs tests on a local spring water sample in her lab until the not-army guys bust in. Jim is no longer folding under their moral authority, but they still have giant guns, so Jim and Simon have to give up their weapons.
Confined to the inn, Jim and Simon theorize more. They figure out Blair was affected by the drugged water because he was chewing on ice at breakfast. Wow, nice call, guys; I didn't remember that. But they still don't know why any of this is going on in the first place. Jim's priority is, of course, rescuing Blair. The innkeeper offers to show Jim and Simon a way out through the cellar, and the three of them head up to creep around outside. Jim spots a spare hazmat suit and puts it on to sneak into the tent, where he leans over Blair's stretcher as tenderly as a hazmat suit will allow and helps him up.
I've come to rescue you.
Blair's a little dizzy and stumbly, but seems overall better. Blair overheard something about a train shipment, and the innkeeper volunteers there's a disused track north through the woods. He wants to come on the train-spyin' mission, but Jim says firmly that they've got it covered.
Train job. Not-army guys use their big guns to overpower the skeleton crew and stop the train. They blow up the doors and begin unloading the boxes--ohhh, I see, they're from the treasury. Okay, big payoff, but still: most elaborate caper EVER. Any plan that involves putting together a fake army and putting a town under martial law possibly needs to be brought back to the drawing board. Jim, Blair and Simon appear over the ridge and see what's going on, and then of course the innkeeper shows up and double-crosses them.
Back at the town, the innkeeper (who turns out to be the ringleader) explains the whole evil plan and then puts Jim, Blair, Simon and the vet in a big freezer, latching the door with a screwdriver. Before it becomes necessary to huddle for warmth, though, Jim masterminds a solution. For some reason he knows there's a powerful magnet in the fan in the air vent. Jim uses Simon's coat to jam the fan ("Why can't we use your coat?"), then takes it apart and pulls out the magnet. He holds the magnet up to the door behind the screwdriver, looking through the window at the reflection of the latch in the toaster or something across the room so he can see what he's doing, and after a false start or two, lifts it out. That was easy. I think it would have been more realistic with a few minutes of Jim walking randomly into different corners and saying "I can't use those two things together".
They emerge to find that the bad guys are all pretty much fled out of the town. Simon announces he's going to look for comm gear to warn the feds. Jim agrees and tells the vet to stay and tend to the doped-up townsfolk. "Chief, you're with me." Surprise surprise. Simon asks, "What are you going to do?" "Head 'em off at the crossroads."
Jim and Blair board the stopped train and Jim starts fiddling with the controls. Blair: "Have you ever driven a train before?" Jim: "Sure. I had a Lionel set when I was ten." Blair: "Oh, god."
What's the matter, Blair, didn't you drive a train cross-country when you were in high school?
"Crossroads" comes back on as the little engine that could catches up with a cash-laden humvee. Innkeeper shoots at them, but they're a train. We get to the actual crossroads, and the truck tries to cross the tracks, but Jim keeps the engine hurtling along and it knocks the Jeep off course, because it's a train. The Jeep explodes, because why not.
Wrap-up. Exposition amounting to "everything will be all right." Jim still wants to go fishing. The vet's in! Simon prefers the "mayhem of the city." After a moment of consideration, Blair, still looking a little green around the gills, heads off with Simon. Jim, wonderingly, to the vet: "I finally shook 'em!" And all it took was an Ebola scare, a hostage situation, a drugging, captivity in a meat locker, and an explosive amateur train chase.
Best Moments: The scene in which we finally explore Jim's independence-vs-togetherness tension--it's been a long time in coming since we're told over and over that Jim was so self-sufficient, even cold, until now, and yet he's always, always, always with Blair. Jim's Blair Mating Ritual dance. The ease with which I was able to construct an "apocalypse sex" scenario.
What I would have liked to see more of: Honest reactions of Jim, Blair and the others when they believe they're staring death in the face (I mean, besides what I made up). Some kind of relationship between the emotional and action arcs. A metaphorical crossroads! Anybody? Yes?
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3x20 Foreign Exchange
Outside the airport, Jim teases Simon about his new car, pretending to see a ding. Blair emerges and reports, "I told them to tell her that there were three handsome guys waiting by a silver car." "I only see two," says Simon, and Jim, grinning, agrees. I guess this is supposed to be a Burn on Blair, but it's hampered by the fact that (1) nobody ever specifies which two; Blair could be among them and (2) in any group of three men, each individual man will only ever see two. We learn that they're waiting for a new officer from the foreign exchange program (wonder who they exchanged? Cassie?). Jim is ethnocentricking, "The last thing I need are tips from some female Crocodile Dundee out to bust beer-soaked kangaroos," when the new officer comes up behind him in this fabulous pink fur coat and skewers his witticism: "The only crocs I've seen are at the Sydney Zoo, and the 'roos I know prefer vodka." I know, I know, you're imagining that said in the classic "G'day, mate" accent, but really, I would describe her manner of speaking as "recieved pronunciation with mild Australian twinge."
Introductions all around. The new officer is Megan Connor. To Blair she says, "You must work narcotics." Yawn, people have said that before. Blair says he's a consultant to the department. Megan: "On what?" HA! Nobody has ever asked that before! Blair just freezes up. Long pause. Ha ha ha. "I suppose we'll find out," Megan rescues him lamely.
Action! Jim sees a car heist in progress and speeds off after the thieves in Simon's car. Citing a police emergency, Megan commandeers a taxicab. "Come on, Sandy!" Megan drives like freakin' maniac, even after Blair points out that they drive on the right side of the road here. There's a lengthy chase the upshots of which are (1) Jim messes up Simon's car and (2) Megan finally roadblocks the bad guys, saving the day.
Also she cuffs her bad guy faster than Jim cuffs his. Just sayin'.
Simon's office. For some reason Simon isn't happy with what he describes as Megan's "stunt" and he assigns her for the time being to observer status (armed, though, because she's trained. Not that Blair's lack of training has ever stopped Jim from handing him all kinds of guns.) He assigns Jim to supervise her. But he's already got a Blair! Jim's not so much a cop as a field trip chaperone at this point.
Megan goes to an Indian restaurant and asks in an American Southern accent if they've seen this man (shows photograph). She's a Terminator!
Jim and Blair wait for Megan by a hot dog stand. Jim complains that she's late. Blair: "I was thinking, if we're going to be working so closely with her, we're going to have to really be conscious of keeping your Sentinel abilities quiet." Aaaand we're back to the Sentinel-as-invisible-minority thing. Jim touches his arm and says "I'll leave that up to you, Sandy." Blair objects to the name. He wants "Chief" from you, Jim! "Let's go, Chief" is like, your "As you wish"! Megan arrives and greets, "G'day!" She can say that all she wants, but she's still not going to have a Paul Hogan accent. Ordering from the stand, Jim and Blair do a little old-married-couple bickering about food. Jim tells Megan he opened the fridge one time and found a jar of locusts. Blair: "I like to experiment in pan-cultural cuisine, all right?" Instead of being like, So--you guys--live together, too? Huh, Megan asks Blair if he's ever tried some Australian bug delicacy, and they bond a bit over it. Jim is not amused.
Jim suddenly sees a guy whom he busted, but who got off. He's telling Megan and Blair about it, and Blair is making No! Nyet! motions with his hands, and Megan asks, "How can you recognize him from here?" They run off after him. Later, in Simon's office, Jim explains that they followed the criminal to his hotel and found him meeting with a bunch of other criminals. Jim shows photos. "Who took these?" Simon asks appreciatively. "I did!" Blair declares with massive pride. "With a disposable camera from the hotel shop. Pretty good, huh?" How did he turn off the flash? Simon authorizes them to put the whole group under surveillance.
Squeezed into the front of the truck, Jim, Megan and Blair tail one of the criminals to the Indian restaurant. Blair snaps photos of the meeting, this time with an actual camera with a long-distance lens. Jim starts listening in (one of them has a noticeable [perhaps put-on] Australian accent) and Megan's like, uh, shouldn't one of us go in? Jim says it's too dangerous. Megan gets out, claiming she's going to "the ladies' at the petrol station," but instead she goes across and enters the restaurant. The boys, because they have eyes and they are looking, see her, and run to back her up. Australian Guy immediately starts shooting when he sees Megan, and there's a lengthy shoot-out in the restaurant.
Later, Simon pulls up in a hot pink car (it was the only one left in the motor pool; Blair thinks it's great) to find Jim yelling at Megan for moving in--and breaking out the artillery--without his authorization. Simon orders them to take it up in his office, and he and Megan leave. Jim dials information for the international area code for Australia. Blair: "What are you going to do, call her mom?" Jim: "That's not a bad idea."
Megan and Simon are in the office when Jim and Blair arrive. Simon reports Megan's side of the story--that the criminals realized they were being tailed and recognized her, and that's why they started shooting--but Jim and Blair have more info they've gotten from Megan's police department. The Australian criminal is Scott Brunell, whom she once investigated for a theft (with collateral damage death), and who subsequently sent her death threats and made attempts on her life. He got off, and she never let it go. She admits she volunteered for the exchange program so that she could follow him. Simon takes her off the case. OMG HE HAS NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE. I'd make more points, but Blair makes them for me after Megan leaves: "So she made it personal. So what? Jim, how many times have you done that?" Thank you. Blair points out she knows the most about this guy. "I'm not a cop or anything, but if you ask me, she's our best bet to catch him." "The kid's got a point," Jim concedes. Simon appears to be thinking it over and tells them to take her to her hotel and tell her to wait for his call.
Jim, Blair and Megan get out of the truck at the hotel. Megan puts a hand on Blair's shoulder, making Blair look at the hand nervously and Jim raise his eyebrows, and thanks Blair for standing up for her, and calling him "Sandy." Blair asks her not to do that: "Nobody calls me 'Sandy.'" "As you like it, Chief," she says. Blair shoots Jim a desperate look, and Megan strides inside.
Cop touching me gratuitously and calling me "Chief" not Jim! WHAT DO I DO
Trucks pulls up on the other side of the hotel. "What are we doing?" Blair asks. "Just playing the odds," says Jim, and sure enough, Megan comes out and calls for a taxi. Jim sees Brunell in a car with an automatic weapon a little ways away, and he gets out and shouts "CONNOR! LOOK OUT!" Megan ducks behind a tree as Brunell passes, shooting. Jim and Blair run across the street to Megan, and there's this brief moment where it looks like Blair was hanging onto Jim's belt or his hip or something. Megan thanks Jim, genuinely. It looks like Megan is finally seeing the value in Jim: he's an obnoxious jerk to strangers (especially women), but he's a useful ally if you're going to be doing action heroics.
Simon has decided to give Megan full credentials. (It must have been based on introspection, because the only thing that happened since he was undecided is that she disobeyed him.) He presents her with her badge and her cell phone. Rafe comes in and gives Simon a pile of files on Brunell and his men, and I still think he's Australian. Blair complains that it's an awful lot to pick through, and isn't he the grad student? You'd think he'd be the most at home (and the most useful) in the research aspect of detection.
Poring over the files, Jim, Blair, and Megan compare notes about the large scale and audacity of the crimes committed by their targets. Blair suggests a break for food, as he seems to do about every five minutes in research mode (yep, he's a student). Megan volunteers to treat them if they don't talk about work and let her pick the restaurant. She chooses a fancy place, the kind with cloth napkins and candles. Oh, great, is this going to be another threesome date a la Cassie? Jim and Blair talk about how you never see the tourist spots when you live in a place. "Although on our first case we did go to the Cascade Panoramic Tower," Blair reminds Jim. Is it coincidence that "case" sounds an awful lot like "date"? "This was a great idea, Megan. Thank you very much. It's very nice," says Jim in his quiet, earnest nice-guy voice. Megan just stares. She's never seen the softer side of Jim! Blair looks at Jim, too, and Jim's like, What? Megan recovers and thanks him for his thanks. Blair: "Wow, that was... really special." Nervous chuckle. "You two are gettin' along." Oh Blair.
I should probably mention that we've been seeing scenes of Brunell and his men breaking into a big power station--killing the guard, replacing him with one of their own, doing various other tasks. I only mention it now because while Megan is talking about her background (her father was a professional bookie--legal in Australia--and she "can't imagine not being a cop anymore, can you?" to which Jim just sort of shrugs), the power goes out. Through the high tourist-friendly window, they can see it's a 10x18 block grid. What could he want to steal from that grid? Blair mentions banks and jewelry stores. Megan say it'll be something bigger to black out half the city. Jim: "The mint!" There's a mint? And you didn't think of that first?
The trio reach the mint after abandoning the truck in the middle of gridlock. First they question the getaway driver and cuff him to the van. Next they creep around the door inside, Jim saying, "Stay behind me," but Megan intercepts him, "Stay behind me." Girl power? They find a knocked-out body, one of the actual guards. Jim has Blair stay behind and--keep him company? I don't know--while Jim and Megan proceed (Jim gets in front after all) and creep up on the vault where two bad guys are loading money by the light of a generator. Just at the wrong moment, Megan's cell phone rings. Their hand forced, Jim yells "CASCADE POLICE DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" The bad guys turn off the generator and put on their night-vision goggles, but Jim also has night vision, and he gets off a solid round, incapacitating both criminals. Megan's like, Whoa.
The power is restored as Megan and Jim enter and question the men about Brunell's whereabouts. Jim gets a call from Simon and orders and ambulance; Blair comes up with the guard. Oh, I guess he was reviving him? But how? The guard says Brunell might have been after the money-printing plates. His cohorts thought they were after cash. Bastard!
Our heroic trio leaves the guard in charge of the wounded men and walks off trying to figure out where Brunell might have gone. Jim suddenly says "He's up on the roof." "He says that like he actually knows!" says Megan as they enter the elevator. "He... gets really good hunches," Blair explains. On the roof, Jim and Megan draw their guns and Blair hangs back. Jim spots Brunell running for the edge of the roof. Jim gives chase. Then Brunell jumps! He... he has a hang glider. Ridiculous.
Outside Jim sends Megan to uncuff the driver so they can take the getaway van while he and Blair secretly confer. Jim doesn't see the glider so Blair tells him to listen. He concentrates and hears Brunell, somewhere above them, talking into his walkie-talkie, arranging to meet a co-conspirator at Chandler's Point. Jim runs to the van, calling to Blair to arrange for backup at said Point. "Another hunch?" cries Megan.
At Chandler's Point Jim gets involved in a shoot-out with some guys in boats while Megan goes after Brunell and has a fairly awesome hand-to-hand battle with him. As she smashes his face against the van, knocking him out, we see Jim standing there. "Nice moves!" Backup arrives, as it always does, just in time to deal with the boring aftermath. Megan's looking a little shaky, and Jim puts a hand on her back and leads her away.
Cute but brave curly-haired sidekick type making me proud in action situation not Blair! WHAT DO I DO
Jim and Blair enter what I guess must be the police department gym and find Megan exercise-biking. Jim ribs her gently because he likes her now, and Blair gives her a letter--due to her awesomeness in the recent case, the officer exchange program is extended, and she's been invited to stay on for longer. Everybody just kind of takes it as a given that she's going to accept, including her. What's so great about palling around with Jim and Blair? Blair's talking about Simon's newest car now: "Simon really doesn't look too good in radioactive--" Blair and Jim look at each other and chorus, "Lime." THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND IN UNISON SAID A NON-BASIC COLOUR WORD. I mean--okay, yes, I would stay to watch that. But Megan doesn't strike me particularly as a shipper.
End-of-show joking. Megan tells Jim to do 20 a day (20 what?) on the bike to "help head off that middle-age spread." Blair laughs delightedly and pats Jim's stomach. "And it wouldn't hurt you to keep him company, Sandburg," says Megan, and Jim pats Blair's stomach. Maybe I was wrong about Megan. She goes off doing kicking and punching moves, and Jim says, "Okay, here's what we do. Scour the zoos to find a demented kangaroo." Blair: "Good." Jim: "Teach him to box." Blair: "Good." Jim: "Toss the two in a ring together." They congratulate themselves on what a good plan this is until Blair asks, "Isn't that cruelty to animals, though?" Jim concedes that point, and Blair crows, "WHICH ONE!!!" and they both laugh.
Nerds.
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3x21 Neighborhood Watch
In the truck, Blair reads aloud to Jim from a letter from Naomi, in which she describes learning to levitate from a swami in India. Jim notices a tail and drives in a roundabout route to a secluded pier. Sure enough, the other car follows, and Jim gets out with gun drawn. The other driver emerges with his hands up, and Jim recognizes him as a marshall friend who once saved his life. The marshall says he's uncovered corruption and needs Jim's help. He goes to his trunk to get his evidence. Jim sees a bomb and yells to warn him, but it's too late. The marshall is blown away as Jim holds Blair to the hood of the truck.
You know I'm a sucker for these kinds of shots.
Crime scene. Simon brings Megan, who wanders off to investigate. Jim asks if she's Simon's partner now. Simon: "Somebody has to show her the ropes, since I can't trust you." Weren't they working together pretty well at the end of last episode?
At the station, the boys complain that they don't have any evidence since it all blew up and/or was taken by the Feds because, technically, the murder of a U.S. Marshall falls under their jurisdiction. Maybe you should, um, let them handle it, then? Okay, okay! It was just a suggestion! Megan reveals that she took something from the crime scene: keys. "They were outside the taped-off area!" Jim takes the baggie, sniffs it, and declares evidence of C4. Megan: "How does he do that?" Jim and Megan start yelling at each other about whose case this is, and Simon ushers them into the office. He invites Blair in, but Blair declines, saying, "I'll hear about it later." All right then. In the office, Simon tells Megan to work on other files while Jim continues on this case, and scolds them, "No more public displays in the bullpen." Possibly not the first time he's had to give Jim that lecture.
At a table, Jim feels the tag on the key and reads off tiny letters while Blair gives suggestions. Megan comes up, observes them for a moment, and then asks to work on the case. Jim goody-two-shoeses that Simon instructed them otherwise. Trying a different tack, Megan asks Jim to show her "that thing you do." "What thing is this?" Jim asks innocently. Megan lists amazing things Jim has done and asks if he's "some kind of psychic." Jim and Blair glance at each other, shrug, and go with it, telling her not to tell anyone. Wait. What exactly is the point of this charade? Sure, she still technically doesn't know the truth and so the secret is still technically between Jim, Blair, and Simon. And Jim's dad, maybe. And that guy from Rogue. But the whole ostensible point of keeping the Sentinel thing quiet was so that the bad guys wouldn't know Jim had an edge. So what is the advantage of leading Megan to believe he has a different edge?
In the truck on the way to the address on the key, Jim and Blair laugh a little about Megan's misconception. Blair says to be careful, because the psychic thing can't explain everything Jim does. Actually, I think it can. Jim's actual abilities are less powerful than ESP. So not only is the psychic thing for that reason relatively difficult to fake, but it more than completely defeats the purpose of lying in the first place! If Megan keeps this fake secret, they may as well have told her the real one, and if she proves herself unworthy by leaking it, Jim is in more trouble than if the actual truth got out! I think Jim and Blair just like to keep secrets. Explains a lot about them, really.
In the house, Jim and Blair find surveillance photos of all the neighbours. They surmise that the marshall must have known that the witness to the corruption was living in this cul-de-sac, but didn't know which neighbour it was. Jim hears a noise downstairs and goes to check it out. He finds a prowler... Megan! He's just scolding her when he hears a gun being cocked, zooms in on a sniper across the street, and pulls her out of the way. Leaving Megan, Jim and Blair go find the sniper. Jim flashes his badge, but the armed gentleman doubts his credentials; sarcastically, "Oh, yeah, I guess your little hippie friend here is your partner, right?" Megan, appearing behind him with gun drawn: "One of them."
Station. Jim snaps at Megan, "We are not now, nor do I forsee us being, partners!" Jim's a monopartnerist, I guess. The trio books the would-be sniper. His name is Bud and he was just trying to protect the neighbourhood from burglars. In the office, Jim and Blair show Simon the photographs and fill him in on their thinking, and Simon calls in Megan and tells them his plan, straight out of fanfic: Jim and Megan have to move into the housing development masquerading as a couple.
JIM (glancing at Blair): A couple of what?
SIMON (narrowing his eyes): Newlyweds!
JIM: (turns away with an "oh, boy" look)
MEGAN: You have a problem with intimacy, Detective?
JIM: I'm familiar with the concept.
Simon says Blair's in too and he asks "What do I get to be, their son?" Simon: "You expect me to think of everything? You come up with a cover." Uh... but... when you said he was in, we all thought... Also, maybe Jim and Blair would have liked it if you had said all three of them were going before you assigned who was married to who. Jim suggests nephew, because he likes to go for roles of authority. Blair says he's too old, because he's maybe not so into that. "You think anybody would buy us as brothers?" asks Jim. Blair puts on an Australian accent and says he'll go as Megan's brother. Megan has two problems with that: (1) Blair's accent sucks (but she says she'll put on an American one, so that doesn't really matter), and (2) he's not tall enough. She does tower over him. The only remaining issue is that Bud knows they're cops, but Simon figures but he won't mind them being there if he's so interested in keeping law and order that he's resorted to vigilanteism. So the awful plan is on!
The trio arrives at the cul-de-sac and Bud introduces his friend Tom to "my buddy Jim, his lovely wife Megan, and Jim's nephew Blair." So they went with the nephew thing. Creepy. Why would a newlywed couple be living with the thirty-year-old nephew anyway? Though I can't actually think of any relationship which would adequately explain two men and a woman of approximately the same age setting up household together, other than "polyamorous life partners." (Author remembers that she herself spent a year living with a couple.) Or "roommates."
Bud invites Jim and Blair to hang out with the guys over at his place, apologizing to Megan that "it's kind of a stag." Maybe Jim and Blair should have pretended to be the couple. Megan says it's fine, kisses Jim's closed mouth, and flounces inside to "do some woman things." Ha. I love that Megan is just as hilariously clueless as Jim and Blair undoubtedly are about what women do. And I love that Blair goes with her.
If I don't... move... she can't... hurt me.
Jim stays outside to try to get out of his social engagement, because that's what he does. They see a pair of neighbors of which the wife is hot, and Bud passes on the rumour that they're swingers.
Inside the Connor-Ellison-Sandburg Household Official Semi-finished Attic of Neighbourhood Surveillance, Megan asks Jim how long they've been married. Jim: "Long enough for me to get the seven-year itch, dear." She accuses him of not liking her kiss, and he says "It was good for me," like it was medicine or something. We get Blair's watching-with-interest reaction shot as Jim drily expounds, "A symphony played. The earth moved." "It's just a job," says Megan. He asks how far they're going to take it--share a bed?--and she says "Whatever it takes, honey." He informs her, "We won't even be sharing a room." I wonder what point they're going for with Jim's resistance here--I mean, what point they're going for. He doesn't like her? But she dislikes him just as much and she's willing to go for it. He's honorable? But he's acting like a whiny ass, not like an uptight paladin. (Yes, there is a difference!) I also wonder what are the actual sleeping arrangements.
Crossing to the stag party, Blair wonders, "Should we bring cookies?" A woman with a young daughter drives by the gathering, sees the men playing with firearms, and gets out to yell and Jim and Blair, "Tell your friends if they start waving their guns around again, I'm calling the cops!" Jim calmly introduces himself ("I'm Jim Ellison, this is my nephew, Blair Sandburg"--WHY DO THEY NEVER PICK FAKE NAMES) and says they just moved in. The woman, Katie, apologizes and says she's afraid to let her daughter play outside with all the guns. Jim goes over to talk to the men and Blair stays behind, calling, "You know how I feel about guns." "You're his... 'nephew'?" Katie clarifies when Jim's gone, and Blair says, "By a second marriage," so, what does that clarify, that it's okay for them to sleep together? Blair is charming to Katie and to her daughter Rachel, and gets invited inside for iced tea. He's so in.
Morning in the Bungalow of Love. Blair makes an algae shake for breakfast! Megan: "How do you get used to the smell?" Jim: "You don't." Jim and Blair calmly sit at the table together in their bathrobes and eat breakfast and read the paper as one must imagine they do every morning.
And it's adorable.
Megan tries to find something to eat, but the steak is Jim's and the whole pineapple is Blair's lunch. (Blair, you're a man after my own heart.) When they ask why she doesn't buy her own food she complains that she spent all her allowance on floor wax and nine-millimeter shells.
The swingers come by with a fruit basket, and Jim introduces the family. Of Blair, Mrs. Swinger says, "He's adorable! I'd like to have one at our house!" "We rent him out on weekends," says Jim. Every time he says that, a dozen rentboy fics get their wings. Blair looks extremely uncomfortable and when they leave, with Mr. Swinger giving the wink-and-gun, he says, "I feel violated." Angsty rentboy fics.
If I don't... move...
Blair watches Katie wash her car through the window. "Maybe I should go over there and find out some more stuff about her," Blair suggests. They give each other affectionate hits as each tries to convince the other not to go, and then Blair says plaintively "She makes me feel good," melting everyone's heart. Jim finally flips a coin and says Blair won. I wonder if he's telling the truth.
Surveillance attic. Nice moment between Megan and Jim as Megan asks what it was like being married for real. "Great, for the most part," says Jim. "I'll probably never get married," says Megan. "I couldn't stand it if things went wrong." Jim tells her there's always problems, but that he wouldn't trade in any of the good times. That's sweet, that he loved being married, and very much explains his relationship with Blair. No, I mean, really. Even if they're just friends (okay, but just supposing), he encourages a marriagelike status quo between them, what with their constant togetherness and extreme domesticity. Blair does it, too, I think more because he's never really had the stable family thing. But that's just my psychoanalysis of them. As far as Megan is concerned, I think her statement gives us a lot to work with, but I'll hold off on any lengthy discussion until we know her better.
We do learn now that Megan's open to psychics because her father believes in ESP and the paranormal, and Jim suggests getting him together with Blair's mom.
Megan sees Jim in the window at Katie's, playing with Rachel, of course, because Blair is good with kids, and scolds Jim for letting him go over there alone--what if she's the witness? what if he slips up? Jim's like, nag, nag. We go over to Katie's where Blair tells her how much he admires her single motherhood, and says it reminds him of his own mother, which, creepy, if you think about it, but he manages it pretty smoothly. He does want a family, doesn't he?
Some important-looking man examines a picture of Rachel and says something about giving her a new life. So she's the witness?
Surveillance attic. Blair's going on about how much he likes Katie, and he actually sounds pretty down to earth about it: he knows his history with women "is what it is," but he likes her, and he likes the kid, and he's okay with not being #1 in her affections because of said kid. Too bad about witness protection!
Simon calls Jim to tell the marshalls have informed him they are on top of things, they're about to move the witness (who it is is classified), and Jim, Megan and Blair are out of there. At the same time, Blair, listening on the equipment, hears Katie gets a phone call from a marshall, informing her that she and Rachel are being moved. As the trio move out of their house, the Swingers come up and flash U.S. Marshall badges, saying the case is in good hands.
Station. Simon can't get ahold of the marshall he talked to this morning, and Jim points out the Feds claimed to have moved out of the neighborhood months ago. Megan comes up and reports they got fingerprints off the fruit basket--the Swingers are known hitmen! So Bud's doubt about the veracity of Jim's badge was foreshadowing. Nicely done. Blair can't get ahold of Katie.
Mr. Swinger gets a call from his boss and we find out the real story: Katie's the witness, the guy who wants her dead is her ex-husband, and Rachel's "new life" is going to be with him.
The gun club is playing with some new guns, including a black market AK-47 Bud has gotten his hands on, while next door the Swingers turn bad and hold Katie and Rachel at gunpoint and Mr. Katie's Evil Husband arrives. Just at a tense moment, a careless gun club member accidentally sprays bullets through the window. The gun club comes out to apologize and ends up in shoot-out with Mr. Evil's bodyguard and the Swingers. Jim and co. arrive in time to see Mr. Evil drive through the garage door (drink!) and, I don't know, maybe Jim shoots the tire or something, because the car ends up crashed into a fire hydrant. The Swingers run away and Megan goes after them while Jim arrests Mr. Evil and Blair takes care of Rachel and Katie.
Wrap-up. Katie asks Blair if he still wants to go out with her after all this. Blair: "........uhhhh... Sure... if I can track you down!" Katie says now that her husband is in jail they are done with running. Blair: Oh. No. "I guess I'll be seeing you soon, then!" Yeah, that'll go about as well Jim's relationship with the young mom who was vaguely in witness protection. Megan and Jim officially request a divorce, and Simon asks Blair, "Is it my imagination, or are those two still not getting along?" They maybe bicker a bit, but do they work together effectively, so I don't know why Simon wants any more than that. "I put you here to keep an eye on them!" Simon scolds Blair. "Wro-ong!" Blair valley-girls. "You put me here so they wouldn't kill each other." Same thing, isn't it? Blair says he's not a therapist and Simon tells him to go to night school, then. It's kind of weird.
Best Moments: Blair, Jim, and Megan breakfast scene. Megan asks Jim about marriage.
Would have liked to see more of: Since they went to the trouble of setting up the fanfic-style you-must-pretend-you're-married, it would have been nice if they did more with it--not in the sense necessarily of forcing romance or sexual tension between Jim and Megan, because Lord knows I don't want to go there, but with more of the kinds of scenes mentioned above--quiet, domestic or conversational moments within the trio. Or if we saw a painful emotional toll being taken on Blair and/or Jim because of the strain the ruse put on their intimacy, I WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL WITH THAT TOO.
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3x21 Night Shift
This is the episode that I claim is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rope, because it takes place all in one night, and I claim that anything that preserves the unity of time is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rope. It actually doesn't have much in common with Rope except that somebody gets garrotted at the beginning. Oh, and that it's really, really gay.
So the garrotting, which appears to be a mob hit, is witnessed by two people: a homeless man, whom the killers don't notice, and a teenager in a red car who comes tearing through the scene, whom they do. They give chase and the teenager, Johnny, ends up crashing head-on into the ground floor of the Cascade Police Department.
Completely disorienting spinny-wipe to Major Crimes, complete with wacky music. The hell? Jim hauls in Johnny and an annoying speed user. Major Crimes is hectic, because office services is on strike along with a number of other city departments. At Jim's desk, Blair is working away, his mind elsewhere.
Why does this not happen every episode?
Simon comes up and sends Jim out to help Megan on her first homicide. Blair must have selective hearing for "Let's go, Chief" because he gathers up his Necronomicon Trapper-Keeper and follows.
In the truck, Blair continues to work, occasionally chuckling. Jim tries to sneak a look at his papers, but it's just a full page of double-spaced type covered in pencil notes and he can't read it while he's driving. Jim tells Blair to take a break or he'll drain the battery, but Blair says he's on deadline: "If I don't get this introductory chapter in to my dissertation committee tomorrow, I could lose all my grants!" Eleventh-hour writing does lend an air of authenticity to whole grad student storyline, doesn't it? Also: AWESOME. It's been awhile since we had anything to do with Blair's diss, and since it's a major arc through the whole of the series (and since it never fails to bring up Feelings Best Left Unsaid), I love to see it. Jim says he thought he got to see the ms before Blair published, but Blair assures him he's not publishing yet--just peer-reviewing the intro. Jim asks to read the intro, then, and Blair says, "Jim, you're the subject of an ongoing study. If you were to read this before we finished, it would invalidate all our research." Some of it, he says, is actually funny. He wishes he could tell Jim about it, but he can't.
Crime scene. Megan thinks it's a mugging. Jim thinks it's a mob hit. Jim sees some paint on the Dumpster where a red car hit it.
Jim and Blair go to leave, but Jim's car won't start. Jim blames Blair for killing the battery. Blair says "I'll check it out," and Jim and I chorus "What are you going to do?" as Blair raises the hood. He's startled by a homeless guy who comes up behind him rambling about being an angel. Jim wisecracks, "Your wings are looking a little ragged." Angel Gabe quotes Biblical passages and says, "I come to bear witness." Blair figures this may mean he witnessed the crime. Then Gabe totally heals the battery. LAME. (Get it?)
Things are even more chaotic at Major Crimes when they arrive, because social services has walked, and there's homeless and needy people everywhere. In another in a long list of department rules Simon never thought he'd have to actually specify, he tells one guy, "No foraging!" In Simon's office, Jim and Megan describe the murder, and Jim mentions Blair has a witness. Simon agrees with Jim that the murder sounds like a hit, and puts him in charge. When Megan objects, he tells her her last few cases have been too "improvised." The hell? She's hardly worse than Jim. But I guess you have to earn the right to improvise. Megan describes Simon's rules as "Rafferty's rules," an Australianism which is nicely untranslated, and huffs out.
Looking for Blair's witness, Megan runs into Brown and Rafe who are unloading a truck. Full of stolen goods, I guess. Brown freaks out when he finds--a live alligator! Wacky music abounds. While Brown, Rafe, and Megan are panicking, it escapes into the ducts.
Jim and Simon are looking over Johnny's file when Megan comes up to report on the alligator situation, which Simon puts her in charge of after she admits she used to go croc spotting with her brother and uncle. I thought the only crocs she'd ever seen were in the Sydney Zoo? Maybe they were just highly unsuccessful.
Jim talks to Johnny in an interrogation room. He's a remarkably gentle questioner, nothing at all like the RayK I'm used to. Johnny wants to call his mother, whom he says works in the hospital, and Jim warns him that if his mother's sick he'll have to get social services involved. Johnny is against that.
Blair tells Simon some food is being donated for the refugees, and Simon puts him in charge of setting it up. Blair also gives Simon the witness report the Angel Gabe wrote up. It's in Aramaic.
Out in the bullpen, Jim sneaks a look inside Blair's Trapper Keeper and finds a report in a black cardboard cover labelled "The Sentinel: Genetics, Mythology, and Ontology of our Tribal Protectors by Blair Sandburg." Jim slips the report under his coat and sneaks it into the men's bathroom with it.
What? This? Oh, it's nothing. Just something Blair wrote about me. Excuse me for ten to forty minutes, will you?
Blair goes nuts looking for his missing diss.
A news team demands to report on the alligator. Simon relents.
Jim emerges from the bathroom, his face an inscrutable mask. He throws the dissertation into a drawer and gets to work at his desk.
The news team films as Megan tries to track the alligator through the vents with a bomb squad robot. The alligator eats it.
The owner of the car Johnny was driving arrives. It's Charles Kaplan, a successful defense attorney whom Jim hates. In fact, he's representing Johnny! Simon thinks that's a little weird. Kaplan talks to Johnny, promising to get him off and to pay him $75,000 if he doesn't testify about the murder.
Kaplan meets with the murderer and arranges to have Johnny killed while he's in the police department, which the murderer thinks is a bit of a challenging prospect, until he sees the news, in which the reporter announces that Animal Control will be called in to take care of the alligator.
Okay, here we come up to the Scene of the Episode. Jim and Blair are examining Kaplan's car in the garage. Blair tries to make light conversation but Jim ignores him. Blair: "Is something bugging you?" Jim: "Should something be bugging me, Chief?" Oh, he such a bitchy boyfriend. Blair honestly has no idea what's wrong. Jim notices the paint on the car matches the paint on the dumpster at the crime scene, and Blair's all interested, but Jim goes back to ignoring him as he sends off a paint sample and a bullet from the car. When he turns around, he walks right into Blair. He snaps, "Come on, Chief, can I get a little space here!" And here's where I start transcribing verbatim.
BLAIR: Jim, what's the matter with you?
JIM: I don't know, maybe I'm feeling a little, how did you say it: "territorially threatened to the point of paranoia"? I mean, what the hell is that?
BLAIR: You read my dissertation. Jim, I don't believe you. I asked you not to do that!
JIM: After I let you stay at my place, I get you a job at the department! I mean, and you don't have enough data, you gotta go digging into my ex-wife's life?
BLAIR: The only reason that I talked to Carolyn is 'cause she's the only one that knows you better than I do.
JIM: What has my sex life got to do with your--project?
BLAIR: Sex life? What are you talk-- She said you had a fear of intimacy, Jim. Intimacy and sex are two different issues!
JIM: Maybe to you they are, Chief, but my personal life and those that are involved is intimate to me!
BLAIR: Look, we have three years of our lives invested in this thing and I'm not going to start shading any of it because you're starting to feel a little threatened!
JIM: Threatened by you? I don't think so, Chief.
BLAIR: Well, what else do you call it?
JIM: I call it a violation of friendship and trust!
Eeee! There's so much to unpack in this argument, I don't even know where to begin. Oh, what the hell. We don't get a chance to do this too often; let's go through it line-by-line!
| 1 | JIM
Maybe I'm feeling a little, how did you say it: "territorially threatened to the point of paranoia"? I mean, what the hell is that? |
Later in the conversation, Jim's main argument is that Blair dug up and exposed things about him which he'd prefer to remain private, but it's telling that this is the line he first quotes. Blair is not spilling his secrets here, but criticizing him. Jim's initial feelings of betrayal happened upon discovering that Blair, whom he thought admired him, has really been noting (and presumably judging) his faults.
Jim is also alarmed by the emotional distance with which Blair treats him in this line, an in the document as a whole. It's not clear how he expected to be written about in a scientific context, but he seems to feel that the language Blair uses is unnecessarily cold. Forced to see himself purely as Blair's subject, he has to wonder if Blair sees him as anything else. Perhaps Jim changes tack to the privacy thing feeling it's a point he's better equipped to articulate and defend. One final point here, and that's: Blair, what? I don't think Jim is territorially threatened to the point of paranoia. I mean, every time we've seen him feel threatened, he really was being threatened. But I guess on this show they focus on the action and they don't show us times when Jim shushes Blair mid-sentence, crawls stealthily onto the roof, and finds nothing but a couple of pigeons. |
| 2 | BLAIR
You read my dissertation. Jim, I don't believe you. I asked you not to do that! |
The betrayal in Blair's voice, particularly on the first statement (after which there is a pause to let it sink in), is evident here. Each participant in this argument is now on the defensive. |
| 3 | JIM
After I let you stay at my place, I get you a job at the department! |
It's a low blow playing the ingrate card when Jim never complained about doing these things (okay, he grumbled, but it was good-natured grumbling) and in fact fought for them. This shows just how deeply Jim now feels he's been duped, that this friendship has been a sham all along (see comments for line 1).
I suspect also that Jim is falling back on pointing out the things he's done for Blair, the ways he's acted as a benefactor or father-figure, because he's incensed by the authoritative condescension inherent in Blair's experimenter/author voice. |
| 4 | JIM
I mean, and you don't have enough data, you gotta go digging into my ex-wife's life? |
It seems from the way Blair discusses it that Carolyn spoke to him willingly. That probably just makes it worse. |
| 5 | BLAIR
The only reason that I talked to Carolyn is 'cause she's the only one that knows you better than I do. |
Do I detect some pain in this admission from Blair?
And I know, I know, these guys are, canonically, supposed to be very good friends and roommates, but how gay is it that it's just factual and accepted by both of them Blair knows Jim almost as well as a spouse. |
| 6 | JIM
What has my sex life got to do with your--project? |
I think we can all come up with a few reasons for Jim to be particularly uncomfortable with Blair's exploration of his sexuality. If you believe that Jim and Blair have a sexual relationship at this point, this is an obvious violation of boyfriend trust. If Jim likes Blair and Blair doesn't know, this is dangerous territory indeed.
Jim's general feelings of that his privacy has been violated become especially evident here, but I think he is also bothered by the aforementioned air of condescension. It comes across like Blair is looking down his nose at Jim when he writes about his relationship issues. Whether Blair is his lover or a girlfriend-a-day Energizer Bunny boy who lives at his house (or both), it's easy to see how this could make Jim feel insecure and angry. |
| 7 | BLAIR
Sex life? What are you talk-- She said you had a fear of intimacy, Jim. |
For the moment I'll limit myself to asking, When did the subject of Jim's fear of intimacy according to Carolyn come up in the introduction? You'd think he'd save that for the chapter on Sentinel relationships. Maybe it was just a passing mention, like "...problems including a 'fear of intimacy' according to his ex-wife (see chapter 4)3." |
| 8 | BLAIR
Intimacy and sex are two different issues! |
Blair is slipping into lecture mode here, yet more reason for Jim to feel that Blair is obnoxiously declaring himself the World's Foremost Expert on Everything (Especially Sex).
Note also that this is a particularly poignant point for Blair to be making if he and Jim are not having sex--especially if at least one of them wants to. Is Blair bitter about the intimacy/sex separation in his relationship with Jim? Is he in favor of it (the one enforcing it)? Vocal inflection seems to favor the latter reading. |
| 9 | JIM
Maybe to you they are, Chief, |
Seems to support the reading the Blair is the one keeping intimacy separate from sex in their case, which is an interesting idea. It's easy to see Jim as the one who maintains the status quo (he clearly dislikes change and it is not a stretch to see him as somewhat homophobic or at least repressed; hell, we KNOW he's repressed) but of course Blair has his own reasons for not wanting to become involved. Particularly salient to this discussion, Jim is his test subject. Could this be another reason Jim dislikes having that role emphasized? |
| 10 | JIM
but my personal life and those that are involved is intimate to me! |
Besides the surface meaning, Jim may be subconsciously reminding Blair here that their shared intimacy (even if nonsexual) holds him to certain responsibilities. |
| 11 | BLAIR
Look, we have three years of our lives invested in this thing |
Interesting, considering the rest of his statement (see lines 12 & 13), that Blair says "we" here and not "I". His later reference to "this thing" as "it" confirms he's talking about the dissertation, but at this point it could equally refer to the project or the relationship. |
| 12 | BLAIR
and I'm not going to start shading any of it |
Blair's assertion here that any change to his work to suit Jim's needs would reduce its truthfulness or legitimacy is an overreaction; surely he could change the wording, for example, or leave out certain topics which Jim felt uncomfortable sharing. Indeed, this was his original agreement with Jim. My feeling is that Blair has known all along that some of what we wrote would come across to Jim as offensive or overly personal, and he has already gone through the work of convincing himself that he is justified in leaving it in for the sake of Science. |
| 13 | BLAIR
because you're starting to feel a little threatened! |
Blair's choice to describe Jim's concerns about privacy as "feeling threatened" recalls his quoted description of Jim as territorial, animalistic. Casting Jim as the dumb Sentinel-creature is Blair's way of trying to gain the upper hand in the argument; but considering that this is what upset Jim in the first place, it's a detrimental strategy in the long run. |
| 14 | JIM
Threatened by you? I don't think so, Chief. |
Jim responds to Blair's belittling with some of his own, reminding him of his comparative physical weakness. |
| 15 | BLAIR
Well, what else do you call it? JIM I call it a violation of friendship and trust! |
Jim's statement nicely sums up his feelings. I find it interesting that it is the very closeness which Jim now feels is being denied that permitted Blair to feel justified in exploring so deeply, and describing so comprehensively, Jim's private life. Surely Blair knows that subjects of case studies have rights, but he feels that his friendship with Jim gives him more leeway to examine his secrets; whereas Jim feels it gives him less. A fascinating emotional conundrum! I love this show! |
Uhhhhhh ANYWAY. The murderer knocks out the Animal Control guy, steals his uniform, and strolls into Major Crimes.
Blair must have run upstairs as soon as Jim stormed off, because he positions himself by the elevator just to snap off a new parting shot at Jim exits into the bullpen: "You also got a fear of courtesy!" Jim doesn't dignify that with an answer. Simon comes up to Blair as Jim walks off and gives him the ID on Angel Gabe: an ancient history professor, which explains the Aramaic. He went missing two years ago.
Jim enters Johnny's interrogation room. Is Jim going to go all RayK on his ass because he's upset about Blair? I can only hope! But Jim starts out quite businesslike, saying brusquely he can place Johnny's car at the scene of a murder. But he's getting colder and darker by the second, and it's not hot impassioned violence, it's like serial-murderer EVILNESS. Johnny says "You don't scare me," and Jim says in an obviously fake kind voice, "I hope I don't scare you! Do I look like I could scare you?" He goes over to stand by Johnny and murmurs, "I'll tell you what I would think would scare a very nice-looking kid like you: being the new fresh meat on the cell block." Yikes! He slams Johnny down suddenly on the table and holds him there as he hisses emotionally manipulative stuff about his probably dying mom. I've never seen Jim be so entirely awful to anybody, AND IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF BLAIR. This makes me happy.
Worse than RayK!
Blair sits with Gabe eating donated sandwiches. Gabe does some Bible quotes about food while angelic music plays in the background.
Simon and Jim bring Kaplan into the office, cuffed, and as far as I can tell their only evidence against him the bullet in his headlight, but wasn't Johnny driving the car? I guess the fact that Johnny is his client is enough to make it look weird. Simon sends him away after he leers at Jim, "Just what exactly is your relationship with my client?" and tells Simon, "I hope you haven't been letting them spend too much time alone together." Jim's having such a gay day!
Out in the hall, Jim catches sight through an office window of Blair looking sweet and virtuous as he passes out sandwiches. He enters the office. Tense! Blair advises Jim on what sandwich to take. Jim follows his advice and then, hesitantly: "I, uh... Chief... I... maybe I overreacted." Blair, bitchily: "Maybe?" Oh, shut up, Blair.
Awkward!
Jim apologizes for reading the diss, but adds, softly: "But I'm... you know... I thought we were friends." Wibble! The diss "doesn't read that way." Blair tries to convince Jim that what he said wasn't that bad. For example, he said that Jim's choices were "fear-based," which Jim read as Blair calling him a coward, but Blair says it can be a good thing: "Fear can be one of your greatest allies." Whatever, Blair.
He continues, "You can choose to bottle it up inside, or we can work on it." Jim: "Wh--After this?" Blair asks if he wants to "call it quits." Waugh! The break-up talk! Jim shrugs. Blair, with a sort of dull, exasperated resignation: "Maybe you're right. Maybe I've lost my objectivity." I think Jim's argument is that you've lost your subjectivity (or that he's afraid you never had it), but whatever. Blair, with a catch in his voice: "I'll tell you what, I'd rather just be friends. So why don't I go destroy my notes? How about that?" He exits, angry.
BLAIR WOULD RATHER BE FRIENDS! This is such an amazing about-face--I mean, this whole argument, Blair has come off as kind of unsympathetic because he's so married to the dissertation and the particular way that he wrote it that he refuses to budge for the sake of friendship. But now he says he's willing to completely give up the whole thing just to keep being Jim's friend! That would convince me if I were Jim.
Gabe comes up behind Jim and, with angelic background music, says, "You didn't answer him." (I think? Actually it sounds more like "You didn't ask him," which raises the exciting question: ASK HIM WHAT?!) Then Gabe utters the following:
OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SHOW. Jim's like, "What?" and Gabe advises him, "You should listen to the hearts of others," and then starts chanting in Aramaic.
Jim brings Johnny a sandwich, determined, I guess, to be a Nicer Gentler Jim. He tells Johnny he's found out his mother is a patient in the AIDS wing. Johnny says he's got the money to take care of her, and the Nicer Gentler Jim says she doesn't need money as much as she needs him. He asks point-blank if Johnny is the murderer, and Johnny says no. Jim listens to his heartbeat. It's steady.
Jim brings Johnny into Simon's office where Kaplan is waiting. Johnny IDs him as one of the murderers and adds that he offered to pay Johnny to keep quiet. Jim drags off a protesting Kaplan. "You did good, kid," Awesome Simon tells Johnny, who smiles.
Megan brings Simon and Jim a fax of the file for a known associate of Kaplan's. Jim recognizes the animal control guy.
Blair tries to get Gabe to say something coherent when shown a photo of Kaplan. I guess he doesn't know they already got a witness. Gabe just keeps muttering about fire and darkness across the land.
Explosion in a shaft somewhere! Jim smells it. Simon sends him to protect Johnny.
Murderer finds Johnny. Brief scuffle with folding chair, and Johnny runs. Murderer runs after him with gun.
Confusion as Rafe tries to evacuate the refugees. Blair looks for Gabe.
Jim arrives with gun drawn as Gabe leaps in front of the murderer, taking a bullet for Johnny. Blair jumps on the murderer, making him drop his gun, but the murderer grabs Blair with an arm around his neck, one hand behind his head, and tells Jim, "Don't shoot or I'll snap!" Oh noes, hostage!Blair! Jim holds up his hands in surrender, and the murderer drags Blair to the doorway, then drops him and runs off. Jim leans over Gabe, and Blair runs, slip-sliding his shoes, over to them. "He's still got a pulse but he needs medical attention, fast!" Jim tells Blair, and runs off after the murderer.
Okay, I know Jim has just got his hand on Blair's back here to push past him so he can go after the bad guy, but my question is this: what is Blair doing with his elbow?
Gabe: "Do you know the hard part of a miracle?" Blair: "No. What's that, Gabe?" Gabe: "Making it look like an accident." That's pretty apt for the Sentinel. Gabe falls unconscious, and Blair calls out for an ambulance, looking like he's about to cry.
Jim chases the murderer onto the roof and they scuffle and run away and scuffle and run away a bit, and then the alligator shows up and bites the murderer on the butt. All right.
Wrap-up outside the station, sunrise. The news reports on the heroic alligator. Jim asks Blair if he can still get his intro in on time. "Aside from the stuff about me, I...I thought, I thought it was pretty good. Really good." Blair: "Jim... it's all about you." It's all about Jim all right. Megan shows up and reports that Gabe made it alive to the ER, but when the orderly turned his back, he'd just gone. Vanished into thin air. She also found out that Harold Blake, the professor whom Gabe was ID'd as, died last year! Simon marvels that Johnny was saved by a dead man. As they all walk inside and we pan up, Jim says, "It's like that Jimmy Stewart movie, It's A Wonderful Life." It's not really that much like that. It's kind of more like that ghost story where she's been dead for thirty years! You know the one. In the background we hear a church bell ringing as Blair says "Whenever a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."
Best Moments: Academic!Blair! So many relationship discussions!! Feelings, nothing more than feelings...
Things I feel I should have an opinion about but, strangely, don't: The alligator.
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3x23 Sentinel, Too Part 1
Here we have an absolute classic episode for Sentinel mythos; Jim/Blair conflict, tension, and devotion; and surprisingly awesome dramatics. Hold on to your goggles, everybody.
We open on action! Some crazy criminal is holding a woman at gunpoint in a convenience store, and Jim is trying to talk him down from the next aisle. Outside by the truck, Blair calls for backup. Jim hears animal growling, creeps forward, and opens a door. In a back office, a spotted jaguar is standing on a desk. Jim backs out again. So that was weird.
Jim finds the criminal and his hostage, and they exchange shots. The criminal goes sailing through the plate-glass window. Blair runs inside, looks around--no Jim! Finally, rounding down an aisle, Blair finds Jim sitting on the floor, bleeding from the arm. Blair runs to kneel by his side and pulls out his phone.
Hospital. Simon, Blair, and Megan stand around Jim's bed. It's just a flesh wound and he'll be back to work in a week. Jim asks Megan to handle his cases and then asks for a private moment with Simon and Blair. In other words, everyone but you, Megan! Jim tells them about the jaguar, and Blair gets excited, asking him questions, until Simon reminds him Jim needs his rest. Simon and Blair leave, Blair patting Jim's foot through the blankets as he goes.
Blair does schoolwork at the bullpen. He tells Henri his office at the university is being fumigated and he can't work at home with Jim snapping at him: "I swear, it's like living with an evil stepfather. 'Turn down that music!' 'Get your feet off the couch!'" So don't want to go there. Blair notices that Megan is questioning Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager, who kind of gives Blair the eye. He asks Henri about her, and Henri says she was picked up after a car accident: "The girl was like yelling and screaming that the lights were killing her eyes and then she started bugging out about how the noise was getting to her." Blair approaches the desk and hears Seven--okay, her name is Alex here--telling Megan that the only reason she took her clothes off was because her skin hurt. Megan double-checks that she's drug-free and tells her to see a doctor. Blair intercepts Alex on her way out and tells her he thinks he knows what's happening to her. He gives her his card. At least he didn't pull any Shakespeare stuff this time.
Jim's cooking dinner, his arm in a sling, when he hears a noise and pulls a gun out of the kitchen drawer. Holding it out, he opens the door to--just Blair!
Who is understandably a little freaked.
Blair starts to tell Jim, "I met this woman," but Jim snaps, "Look, Chief, why don't you spare me the details?" Blair mumbles that he'll tell him later, then.
In his now-presumably-vermin-free office, Blair shows Alex the Burton book. Alex tells Blair that she was recently lost in the woods for a week, and Blair says her senses came online as a survival response. I'm a little unclear as to why Alex's senses would also be dormant prior to her isolation experience since we just established that Jim's would have been available all along had he not specifically repressed them, but maybe Alex also had an overbearing parent, who knows.
Blair walks through the quad, talking not-that-quietly into a tape recorder about the Sentinel project. He tells the recorder that, unsure what would happen if two Sentinels met, he wants to control Jim and Alex's first meeting, and until then, he will not tell them about each other. Oh, Blair, have you learned nothing? Even should--as is highly unlikely--the "controlled meeting" come off as you plan, do you know how betrayed that is going to make Jim feel? What happened to "It's about friendship"? I ask you.
A Mysterious Figure in Black sneaks into some kind of compound. The security guys notice the intruder and set off the alarm, making the Mysterious Figure fall to the ground, clutching her ears. Yes, we now know it's got to be Alex, although I have to give them props (this time) for dressing the Mysterious Figure in a parka and ski mask instead of a skintight catsuit or something so there's at least a moment of reasonable doubt as to the gender. Alex-in-Black gets back her composure and manages to get away after shooting a security guard.
Sci-Fi cut out the totally awesome (and totally plot-relevant, jeez) dream sequence here in which Jungle Jim kills a wolf, and the wolf morphs into Blair. OMG Symbolism!
Blair visits Alex's apartment and is amazed by her Sentinel-symbolism-rife artwork. (These... are for you!) Alex thanks Blair for all his help and kisses him on the cheek. Blair seems taken aback and uncomfortable.
It feels like a betrayal, somehow...
Blair gets down to business, asking Alex to tell him about the accident again. She runs through it, and says she gets headaches every time she uses her senses. Blair assures her they'll work that out: "It's nothing to worry about. It's all good!" Oh, Blair, this is why all of your Sentinels love you.
Jim returns to work. Simon asks "Where's your shadow?" Jim: "He begged off. He's working on some big project at the university. I haven't seen him all week really." Jim, Simon and Megan go over the security tapes of the break-in. When Alex collapses, Megan remarks, "That must be one hell of a loud alarm," and Jim looks Thoughtful.
In her apartment Alex has a conversation with her crime partner (EVERYONE ON THIS SHOW). He knows about her abilities (in fact, it's her senses that have made her such an effective thief), and scolds that her headaches are making her careless. Alex says she met someone who can help. Partner is concerned to learn that she told someone else about her senses, but Alex promises ominously, "After I get what I want, I will deal with him." Alex kisses her partner like a good Sentinel should.
Blair's office. Alex tells Blair about a Peruvian temple dream. Then Blair goes to take care of some unrelated grad-student business, and Alex, left alone, snoops through his things. Jim approaches from the hallway and sees Alex through the elaborately-decorated window. He has a vision of Alex morphing into a spotted jaguar and attacking him. Alex comes to the door and the two Sentinels make brief eye contact. Then Jim turns and walks away.
Blair comes home to find Jim throwing his stuff into boxes. "It's just getting a little too claustrophobic around here for me, Chief. I'm sorry." Blair: "Are you kicking me out?" Jim: "I just can't have anybody here right now." It's not you, it's me. Blair asks to talk. Strangely heartbreaking pan to Blair's powerless outstretched hand as Jim says "I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to analyze it, I just want you gone by the time I get back." Jim exits and we get a long shot of Lonely Blair standing in the middle of the loft surrounded by boxes.
You may commence wibbling.
Quick poll, friends: was Jim going to Blair's office to ask him to move out (perhaps discuss it calmly before dumping it on him in that panicky fashion)? Or was he going because he missed him, and the feelings of claustrophobia (and perhaps betrayal, a wrong-ness associated with Blair) only struck him after he encountered Alex?
Next day Blair meets up with Alex by the fountain at the university. He yawns and apologizes, "My roommate freaked last night and kicked me out. I spent the night in a motel. It's no biggie, though." He turns the focus to Alex and sensory tests, his very favorite thing. He tries to talk her through her headaches, but his "Concentrate, focus" routine doesn't work the way it always does (immediately!) with Jim. Still, he leads her away with a hand on the back, because that always works with Jim.
Jim walks into the bullpen to find Megan talking on his phone. She hangs up and reports that the ex-employees of the broken-into facility checked out clean. Instead of following up on the case discussion as Megan expects, Jim flips out on her about sitting at his desk. Then Jim yells at Henri for leaving papers on top of his computer, and makes a general announcement: "Everybody, that is my desk! I do not want you to put anything on it or take anything from it!" And Blair was writing about his territorial paranoia last week? Simon calls Jim into his office.
Megan meets with Blair at the university and tells him about Jim's weird behavior. Suddenly she asks, "Sandy, how did an anthropologist get hooked up with a detective?" Nice choice of verb. Blair's evasive and Megan says she'll "coerce a confession" someday. That'll be fun. She asks Blair to talk to Jim with her.
Megan and Blair arrive at the loft to find it dark and completely empty, by which I don't just mean that Jim isn't there, but that none of his furniture or anything is there, either. "What do you want?" Jim calls from the balcony, where he's staring out over the city like Batman. "Where is everything, man?" Blair asks cautiously. Jim says he put it in the basement because there were "too many distractions": "Something's going on out there. Something very wrong. I've never felt anything like this before." It must be, for you to abandon your kicky style sense! Blair gently asks Jim to come inside. Jim murmurs "Sirens," and dashes to the door. Okay! Jim's officially gone off the deep end!
Jim drives to an alleyway where Alex-in-Black is escaping after a theft. He has just spotted her when Megan and Blair arrive in pursuit of Jim. Blair shines a flashlight and Jim loses sight for a moment, giving Alex the chance to get away. Jim snaps, "Sandburg! Idiot!" I weep quietly into an embroidered handkerchief.
Jim's in the conference room watching the security tape again when Blair enters. Jim told Brown he wanted to see him. "I hope this has something to do with why you kicked me out," says Blair. "Uh. Probably," says Jim. He's still acting a little nuts as he explains excitedly about the evidence he's put together: "There's another one out there like me!" He starts describing a dream, and Blair says, "You're having the same dreams." Not aloud, Sandburg! Idiot. "The same dreams as who?" Blair admits there's another Sentinel. "Why didn't you tell me this?" Jim demands angrily, and Blair burbles about trying to set up a controlled environment. "What the hell did you do," Jim mutters.
You silly, stupid fool, you've killed us all!
Blair brings Jim to Alex's apartment. Jim starts to question Alex about the thefts, but she denies knowing anything. He presses, and she gets angry and kicks them both out. "I know exactly what you are," Jim tells her at the door. "I know what you are, too," says Alex. "Welcome to the jungle." I--what am I sitting on, it's--OH, it's the edge of my seat! I am not accustomed to this.
Station. Blair explains why Jim has been freaking out: "You probably sensed another Sentinel which threatened your territorial imperative." You're only just figuring this out? Henri brings them the file on Alex: she's a wanted ex-con. "Looks like she played you pretty good, man," Jim tells Blair.
Jim and Blair examine the alley for clues.
BLAIR: Hey, Jim, look, I know you're still mad at me about not telling you about Alex, but--
JIM: Let's just drop that, okay? I'm trying to get by it.
All in all it's probably good Jim stopped him there, as I suspect that Blair was going to try to defend his behavior instead of manning up with an apology. Jim wonders, "What are the chances of two Sentinels appearing in Cascade, right, at this time, and falling in with you?" Jim, did you miss a word? Blair goes off an increasingly excited tangent about fate and the space-time continuum. Jim's not listening. He's looking: he finds one of Alex's hairs.
Jim, Blair, and Megan arrive at Alex's apartment. Jim knocks, but immediately knows she's not there. He's ready to go look elsewhere, but Megan wants to at least check the place out since they've got a warrant. She fiddles with the door and prepares to kick it in when Jim smells plastique and grabs her out of the way just as it explodes.
Consulting at the explosion site with Simon and Jim, Blair theorizes that this was a Sentinel-to-Sentinel challenge. Megan finds a disk in the apartment.
The disk contains plans for Rainier's now-super-secure top-secret dangerous-disease vault. Alex stole a deadly disease. A second incident of an insane terrorist threatening mankind with biological weapons stolen from Rainier? The department head is going to have some explaining to do. At the station, Simon gets word that Alex boarded a plane to Bogota. He's arranged to have the feds meet her when she lands. Case closed?
Megan asks Jim and Blair out for food, but Blair says he and Jim have things to "go over." Megan leaves, and I break out the Fritos and turn up the volume, 'cause it's time for some good solid emotions! Let's save time and cut right to the annotated version, shall we?
| BLAIR: Look, Jim... I just wanted you to know I realize I was wrong for not telling you about Alex. I was only thinking about myself, about my work, and somewhere along the line, I lost track of my friend. | Beautiful. This is the apology Blair should have been giving last week. Yes, Jim is somewhat enslaved to primal Sentinel forces at the moment, but it's really the events of Night Shift that set the stage for his reaction. | |
|
JIM: Well, Chief, I don't know what you want me to say.
Blair nods. JIM: I don't know if I can get past this. Blair looks at him, thunderstuck. JIM: To me, it was a real breach of trust. And (puts hand over his heart) that struck really deep with me. |
Kind of amazing to see Jim being so emotionally straightforward. | |
|
BLAIR: Give me a break here. How was I supposed to know she was a criminal?
JIM: Chief, this isn't about her being a criminal. Simon emerges from his office and observes. JIM: I've got to have a partner I can trust. Have you ever stopped to think what good all this research is doing anyway? |
It certainly must seem to Jim at the moment that the project has done nothing but drive a wedge between them (cf. the annotated conversation in Night Shift). | |
| BLAIR: Yeah, Jim, I think about it every day. For one thing, it's helped you figure out who you are.
JIM: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. I know who I am, okay? I don't need you or anybody else to help me define that. Is that clear? Pause. |
I'm reminded of Jim's Who I Am speech to his father. He said then that the Sentinel abilities were a part of who he was; is he denying that now, or just denying that he needs any help? Slash reading presents another reason why Jim might resent Blair for causing him to change his self-identity. | |
| JIM: Maybe it's just better if you finish your dissertation or doctorate writing about somebody else. I don't know.
BLAIR: That's crazy! I know I made a mistake, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get past this, but if you'd rather hang onto it... You know where to find me. |
A new musical theme, the Piano of Jim and Blair's Relationship, starts up here. If you ever see this episode a second time, you'll notice you start shivering uncontrollably about now. That is normal. |
You hurt me. Right here.
Blair leaves, and Jim watches, over continuing heavy Piano of J/B. Simon asks Jim if he wasn't a little harsh. Jim just holds up a hand and rubs his eyes, a little verklempt. Simon, gently but pointedly: "Do you think you could handle this Sentinel thing on your own?"
Loft kitchen. Jim seems to have gotten at least some of his stuff back. Phone rings; it's Alex. She's all, Join me, and we can rule the galaxy as Sentinel and other Sentinel! She tells him to come and find her and leaves the phone out. Cut to Jim driving. Simon calls his cell--the woman who got off the plane wasn't Alex. Jim tells Simon where the real Alex is (some factory). Simon asks if he wants backup and Jim just hangs up.
Jim tracks Alex through the factory. A random swinging grate knocks him down an elevator shaft. He's dazed, incapacitated, and has an elevator slowly descending toward him. Alex approaches. Could this be the end for our hero? Just then, Megan arrives! Shoot-out. Alex evades her briefly, but they end up facing off in hand-to-hand and Alex has no particular advantage there. Megan knocks her out and then runs to help Jim out of his jam. Wow, she totally freaking just saved the day. Way to go, Megan.
Megan leads Jim back to where she left Alex, but she's gone. Jim gets a sudden flashback memory of his dream: dying, whimpering wolf morphing into Blair. "We gotta find Sandburg. Come on!"
Alex comes into Blair's office and pulls a gun. She informs him that her real sense-triggering experience was solitary confinement in prison. Blair calls her pro-evil use of the senses "a waste." She cocks her gun.
Truck tears onto campus. Piano of J/B starts up strong here and continues through till the end of the episode. Jim, Megan, Simon, Henri and Rafe run up to a building, but just before they reach the door, Jim turns and sees a body lying facedown in the fountain. "Oh, my God!" Jim runs over, followed closely by Henri, who helps him haul Blair out of the water. He's unconscious and vaguely blue. Sweetly, Simon is freaking out. "I don't hear a heartbeat! Do you? Do you hear a heartbeat? Jim! JIM!" Jim doesn't. "Get his airway open. Here we go." Okay, now look close, because this is as lip-locky as Jim and Blair will ever get.
Granted it is not unlip-locky.
We see one clear shot, and henceforth it's always kind of off-camera. Is it wrong that I have started thinking of footage of one man performing emergency mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on another as the "money shot"?
Is it further wrong that I spent some time trying to find the prettiest shot of Dead Blair?
Simon and Jim perform round after round of CPR, with Jim occasionally uttering such encouragements as "Come on, Chief!" and "Breathe, dammit!" Megan and Rafe exchange these heartbroken looks, like they know Simon and Jim are fooling themselves.
Ambulance arrives. As the EMTs kneel over Blair, Jim stands back and repeats, "This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be happening." The EMTs intubate Blair and pump that inflatey thing into him, and Jim encourages, "Come on, Sandburg! Come on!" and, more softly, "Come on, Chief." Waaaugh. Finally the EMT removes the equipment and says, "I'm sorry, guys." Megan and Simon look sad; Jim just looks angry. "What do you mean, 'sorry'?!" He kneels to perform more desperate CPR.
"Come on, come on, come on, Sandburg! Come on, dammit!"
Simon: "Jim, he's gone. Let him go." Everyone pulls Jim off Blair. Jim struggles against them, shouting, "No! No! He's alive!" This has got to be the most heartrending scene of anything ever. I am impressed. "Let it go, let it go," the others tell Jim, as we fade to green and TO BE CONTINUED. Blink.
Best Moments: whimper
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