DearEvette

Fun episode. Matthew Broderick's character reminds me of his character from the movie Election. He does stuffy but sinister well. Also he really must have been a garbage person if his daughter isn't the least bit upset he was arrested for murder. I am so happy the show didn't have him kill the cat. Whew! I continue to love the callbacks on the show, with Elsbeth promising not to make duck at her dinner party. Aww, look at Lt. Connor being part of the team/family and even making jokes you can't even tell are jokes.

I re-watched the scene and there really is very little connective tissue that got them from point A to point B. Kaya is aware that the company is a suspect because of the drug test. The Scottish group knows who the killer just based on his scarf. But they never saw his face because he wore a mask. Elsbeth's phone is already dead when she gets to the perfume company, so she never had time to tell anyone where she was going. When they all burst in in the end, it seems like they KNEW he was the murderer but all Kaya says is Angus called the switchboard. There is no explanation at all of how they connected mysterious man with a scarf to that particular executive at the company. So yeah, it feel like the show felt Angus calling the switchboard was all the explanation we needed.

Ok, the A-team is back. This is the Will Trent I am used to: The crackling writing, the stellar cast chemistry. And yeah, no Betty but that is ok it would have been weird if she were there. I loved the structure of the episode with the compressed time and the time stamps, the thunder, the darkness, the jump scares and the title card wrapped around that poor woman's body on the elevator . And all of that spookiness interspersed with Mariachi puns, Franklin in a conical birthday hat, a creepy cop mannequin and light up mariachi hats. Not killing Marion made no sense since he had no problem offing the other two women and as DA her identification of him would have been unimpeachable, especially since he villain monologued his confession right to her. But I guess they can't kill off another Will love interest so quickly and I suppose his weapon of choice was a knife that got conveniently left. I thought the brother in law was a little too obvious and reserved judgement. So I wasn't too surprised it wasn't him. But I did get a little satisfaction in knowing he'd have to eat crow with John's exoneration and him living with them. I do love how they cold stole his Oxy for Caroline. Poor Caroline. Poor Pete. I am so glad she'll live for both their sakes. I was a little perturbed about everybody standing over her opened up body (in a morgue no less) about the germs etc. But then I imagine that is how field medicine works. I too hope they manage a way to keep Raphael around. Funny how Sunny kinda disappeared. Did they lock her in Amanda's office with her ipad or something? I figured since Raphael was still there she had to be as well. And finally that last shot of the mannequin --- he kinda looked like Ormewood.

Ooh, I know what show you might be talking about and I was gobsmacked how good he was with that twist.

What damaging consequences? What evil? She hasn't in any way, shape or form damaged Matty's crusade. The only thing she has done is groused to Billy, told Maddy that 'Fie upon thee! Thine hath made a sworn enemy of me' and worked with Shae to look into Matty's background because both women suspect her of lying. But in just this single episode that all got scuttled because of Matty's plot armor. As we see in the end, they both backed off and Sarah is crying in Olympia's office. Like I said the only consequence to all of this was Sarah's relationship with Billy. You can't apply real world reality to this. That ship has sailed. In the real world, Matty would have been better vetted and not hired at all. And what is her whole conspiracy board crusade about if not about crushing someone or possibly ruining the business? Seriously? What is her end goal here? Just to find out who did it and walk away? But that isn't what she is doing. She thinks Matty is hiding something. Whether her form of behavioral science is real of hooey, is up for debate, the fact of the matter is, it is what she is hired to do as an expert and Matty believes it enough to plan for it with her own lie detector machine. But beyond that, Shae caught Matty in an actual lie. Matty of course covered it up and then went on the offensive. 'I don't want people in the office knowing all about my business and I am sure you don't want people to knows yours.' Shae hadn't made any sort of threat at all to Matty at the time, she merely questioned, like anyone would, a discrepancy in a story. But Matty racheted that up by implying she'd spread gossip about Shae sleeping with Julian. Where is this conscience? I am asking this sincerely. Because her manipulation of Olympia is foul. This is a woman she made trust her and call her friend, and as we saw Olympia doesn't trust or unbend easily. And she is using Olympia's confidences to poison her divorce proceedings with Julian. She stole Olympia's computer. She's planted a listening device and is allowing Julian to take the fall for it. She manipulated Sarah into confiding something personal and painful, again knowing that is not Sarah's comfort zone, and because she needed to move Billy's attention away from her, she callously told Sarah she was not vulnerable enough. And Matty opened up a false HR complaint about age discrimination against Shae. Also I don't see any evil threats being followed through. Shae did not threaten Matty. On the contrary, Matty is the one who threatened Shae. But Shae herself is doing the due diligence the firm should have done in the first place. She simply asked about Matty's prior firm. And Sarah has done nothing. Not a single act against Matty except look up something on the web. And when Shae met with the (fake) employer, her line of inquiry about Matty's past seemed to pan out so she shut it down with Sarah.

First of all Chris Gorham is aging real nice. Anyway, I can't dislike Sarah. I find the actress has been excellent in crafting the smart, but super socially awkward character with self esteem issues. Absent Shae's influence, Sarah's animosity toward Matty has mostly been played as light comedy. To me it is a acknowledgement that Sarah isn't in Matty's weight class in manipulation. Using Elizabethan argot with super melodramatic emphasis and the light, quirky music in the background says it was mostly all bluster and posturing. Even Olympia, who had noticed it, wasn't taking it too seriously until Matty complained to teacher. And then Shae comes along and seems to validate Sarah and makes it more serious than it previously was. I don't see Sarah as a villain, because minus the main characteritis, Matty is the real villain. Just because she thinks she has a righteous crusade doesn't mean she isn't doing willful harm to people, not just the work in the firm but to the actual people. She is gaslighting Sarah to the point that she's broken down what little self confidence she had. She falsely accused Shae of age discrimination. I don't give a rat's ass about Shae and never actually liked her, but it is really icky that Matty is weaponizing discrimination complaints in such a way since any actions against real discrimination takes a boatload of proof and usually multiple people complaining about the same person. We have to handwave so much for this show already but each time the show clears a path for Matty to sail effortlessly by it gets harder and harder to do. I will say that Sarah's treatment of Billy is on her and I am glad he called her on it and is showing her how much harm she did to him. But that is yet again a place where a character other than Matty is getting the consequences of their shitty behavior. I also really dislike the 'war' Julian and Olympia are waging. It was so refreshing, briefly, how evolved and friendly their divorce was and now they are going scorched earth. I hope something happens that allows them to come to their senses. As much as I enjoy the scenes between Olympia and Matty and love the chemistry between Skye Marshall and Kathy Bates, I can't even really enjoy it for Olympia's sake because it is all a lie.

I blame Outlander. This episode felt like a nudge-nudge wink-wink to romance novels. Set during Valentine's Day and using several romance novel signifiers. Romance has a thing for Scotsmen. Not so much for Welshmen. That too.

My closed captioning tells me it was (You Don't Know How) Glad I am by Nancy Wilson. And I also Shazam'd it. Also, this was a nice Valentine's day theme show. A little different because it was a real whodunnit both for us and Elsbeth. And I loved Elsbeth's blue coat and the hat she wore with it.

Right. I wish that if they wanted to give Will a new love interest than just let him meet some woman at the vet so they could bond over dogs and go from there. Just let her be the love interest. Making Marion the DA who suddenly is everywhere just doesn't work. They force her into work situations to give her something to do. Also, frankly, she doesn't have any personality. Regarding Cricket, I liked SKW's glee with which she played the character. Cricket was a firecracker! I miss 'the what could have been' with her because I would have liked to see how her big personality played against Will's reserve. And bonus they actually had crackling chemistry. Which given how brief her time was, had to be something since I still remember it. But even if she and Will had never had a romance, I still would have liked her character to stick around and pop in with her brand of gung-ho. Just another interesting personality kinda like what we have with Franklin and Pete.

It feels like the C-Team wrote this episode. Where is my crackling dialogue? My little bursts of humor? My character chemistry? Ok, Carver was the only character that made me perk up a little bit. 'Spearminted' indeed. LOL. He was like a more demented version of the cannibal character Tim Meadows played on Brooklyn 99. Even down to lunging at Jake trying to eat his face like Carver did with Angie. LOL. And Yes! I admit that my general dislike of Gina R definitely colors how I see her on this show, but even without it, her character has not been well integrated into the show. Or rather, not organically. She is plopped in for love interest only. So they are shoe-horning her and it just isn't interesting. And that scene in the kitchen was pretty cringey, imo. I was done with Sunny the minute she told Amanda to chill. Nope. I am not here for that level of disrespect no matter how stressed she is. Amanda is right when she said it was a matter of respect.

See, I wasn't even that sympathetic to Matty in the beginning because I thought the whole set up and premise was stupid. But I did like Matty herself. And even as I roll my eyes at her incredible main character plot armor, I went with it because well, you just do. I don't for a minute believe that lawyers aren't ruthless enough to manipulate every loophole they can to get the best outcome for their client. And you could argue that in Matty's head, her dead daughter is her client. But usually when that is happening, the lawyers on the opposing side are on the same playing field and knows what the plays are. But in this the opposing team aren't even aware they are playing. But between her ruthlessly dismissing her old friend who simply wanted her help with his own child going through the same thing her daughter did, to the way she absolutely slammed the door in Sarah's face, to the way she is manipulating the rift between Olympia and Julian. Everything she is doing is just cruel. Not to mention the listening devices and rifling through people's personal spaces. So it makes it hard to really even like her as much. To me the best comeuppance she could have is to realize she was working with faulty intel from the start, i.e. the infamous Reddit post was a piece of hooey or that the suppressed memo wasn't the big smoking gun she thought it was and that her whole mission is built on a foundation of smoke. Now she has to deal with the harm she's caused and has to make reparations. All the while she now has to maintain the false identity which is becoming harder and harder to maintain.

Yeah, I just wonder what the end game is? If you set up a show with any type of secret conceit, it either needs to be self sustaining or it needs to have a satisfying reveal that opens up more story possibilities. Let's say Mattie finds out that someone from the firm did hide documents. Now what? Does she confront them? If she was going to do anything legally shouldn't she have done that in the first place? But now that she has infiltrated their firm using a false identity couldn't anything she finds be suspect? And even then what is her end goal? Did she want to expose the firm? Ok but newsflash, opioids are still on the market and your daughter is still dead. And let's say a single someone does take the fall? Shae or Elijah or Senior (I doubt if the show will sacrifice Skye Marshall or Jason Ritter) are they supposed to turn to her with glad heroic thank you hugs? How does she even stay with the firm? She will have shown herself to have utterly betrayed whatever "friendship" she had with Olympia. Not to mention Billy and Sarah. I figure the writers have some end game in place for the big reveal whenever it happens, but much like the whole premise itself, I think it will riddled with a lot of illogical things we are supposed to handwave away.

I watched Mildred Pierce. And the whole movie I just wanted Mildred to pull a real Joan Crawford on her daughter Veda and go 'no more wire hangers' on her ass.

Yeah but this is tv. People always warn their adversaries "I'm coming after you.' It is the same with villain monologuing. Sure give your adversary time to take counter measures. No if I were coming after someone I definitely wouldn't give them a heads up.

But this might be the path the show is laying for Matty to be discovered. Logically there are a couple of ways for that to happen: Matty to screw up somehow and reveal herself or for someone to become suspicious and start looking into Matty. Now that Sarah has Matty in her cross-hairs it is a logical progression to have her be eagle-eyed on everything Matty does waiting for her to make some sort of procedural mistake that she could bring up to Olympia, but instead it would net her a bigger prize. She does have a girlfriend in IT. Also Matty made a blunder in front to Shae last week with the 'grandfather' bit. Yeah she covered it up, but that also might have gotten Shae's spidey senses tingling.