Motive - General Discussion

[Trey]

I watched this episode in its first Canadian run so didn't watch it again, just through the credits.  I assume the episode was based on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Randal_Smith

 

I found the flashbacks very confusing, more so  than most of the episodes.

[Grammaeryn]

Another Alpha as the prosecutor! I want to see the rest of cast darn it. Ryan Cartwright or Erin Way as the murderer/victim combo could work. I guess I am really slow but this episode confused me. Corbin Bernsen guy lost his grandson and tried to prosecute the family looking after the child. I thought that family was Erica Cerra's for a while. But her family lost their son too and Corbin was on a crusade to screw over perceived abusive families. But wouldn't he also have sympathy for families that lost children? Yeah, this episode kinda made no sense to me since a lot of plot was told not shown. 

 

The crinkling eye thing was really unprofessional so I get why Angie was annoyed. Generally, you don't comment on any physical anything at work and if it's an insight gleaned from a personal relationship, that is a no no. Just switch eye crinkle to knowing that Wednesday is blue pantie day.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Grammaeryn

[IndependentMind]

Brian seems to be into Officer Wendy. Hmmm. I wonder if they go there. He seems to be having marital problems with his wife constant complaints about his hours. 

[Bort]

Another Alpha as the prosecutor! I want to see the rest of cast darn it. Ryan Cartwright or Erin Way as the murderer/victim combo could work.

They were both on Warehouse 13 this season, so there you go...

I saw Laura Mennell's name in the guest credits, waited and waited for her to show up and just when I forgot about her, there she was. I liked her on Alphas so I'm glad it seems like she'll be here on a recurring basis.

I also thought the killer's husband was the subject of the current dead kid case (the meth house) and not a past one. I had a hard time connecting the dots this time around, so good on the show for coming up with what I thought was a decent twist in the episode.

[shapeshifter]

Another Alpha as the prosecutor!

I didn't catch that. I did love that after the Alphas made their exit with his hand on her waist, Vega reminded Angie that he'd remarked earlier about Cross's nice suit(s); Vega's spidey/detective senses had figured Cross was dressed to impress a woman.

So Cross said Angie and Vega had been partners 5 years and that is "an intimate" relationship. I get that Angie might have learned a bitter lesson about being romantically involved with her partner, but it seems Louis Ferreira has been wearing quite a few nice suits himself.

I guess I'm the only one on this Eureka-less board that noticed two weeks in a row the murderers were Eureka alums.

[Xantar]

I really want an epilogue for this one on how her murder trial goes. Angie states that because the doer had repositioned the camera 13 hours before the murder, it is premeditated. But that was after she saw her innocent husband being wheeled away on a prison gurney after being fatally stabbed, right? Or not? If so, could a lawyer get an insanity plea, saying she was in a fugue state?

 

 

I don't know anything about the Canadian legal system, but if it's anything like the American one, then the answer is no. An insanity plea is actually very hard to get away with and has very specific requirements. The killer essentially has to be delusional and have no understanding of what she's doing. This killer clearly knew that the victim was a guy who put her husband in jail, so that right there kills an insanity defense.

 

Of course, in TV-land anything is possible.

 

If this were a real life case, though, what I would find really interesting is what happens with the daughter. Under normal circumstances, she would have a slam dunk case against the city to get damages for wrongful death. However, she's a minor child, so the decision to pursue a lawsuit would have to be made by her guardian. Which her mother no longer is. 

 

The crinkling eye thing was really unprofessional so I get why Angie was annoyed. Generally, you don't comment on any physical anything at work and if it's an insight gleaned from a personal relationship, that is a no no. Just switch eye crinkle to knowing that Wednesday is blue pantie day.

 

Ok, but Vega also said that Angie has a twitch, and they haven't been romantically involved. I get how inappropriate it would be to make a comment based on intimate personal knowledge, but this was something that one could have figured out just from being Angie's partner for a while.

Edited June 13, 2014 by Xantar

[vera charles]

I like how they drop in little hints about backstory every now and then. Vega knew the code to the yacht club gate because his father has a boat docked there. OK, so he grew up rich? Who is his dad? Do they get along or have any kind of relationship? How often do they reset that code? I want to know more!

[SonofaBiscuit]

The killer, Diane, did have a good point that she was just taking the law into her own hands like Stan had been doing.  Murdering someone is definitely not OK, but it's pretty scary to think that Stan could have gone on for years, continuing to destroy innocent people's lives by accusing them of terrible things like child abuse.  Diane certainly never watched any crime shows, did she?  Retrieving the murder weapon and washing it off in her sink with a scrub brush?  Dumb!

 

I'm not sure what they are doing with the rookie cop and Lucas.  She seems to be into him, and now he's bringing her coffee?  I don't think that he's been married long, and he doesn't really seem to be the type to cheat, but it appears that is where this is headed.

 

I'm just saying that I am not opposed to something happening between Vega and Angie.  He is quite sexy, after all.  Angie can annoy the hell out of me, but I find her more tolerable with Vega.

[Neurochick]

But wouldn't he also have sympathy for families that lost children? Yeah, this episode kinda made no sense to me since a lot of plot was told not shown.

 

 

I saw it this way.  The ME was on a crusade.  He took his granddaughter to a play date and when he went to pick her up, she was dead.  She drowned in a swimming pool.  Many people, especially when a child dies look for someone to blame; they can't say, "it was just an accident" though accidents do happen to children.  He, the ME felt that his granddaughter died because of negligence.  

 

The woman who killed him was a victim of his witch hunt.  She said that she and her daughter went out shopping.  Her husband had a beer and fell asleep, their son hit his head on the floor and died.  The ME managed to prove that the child had been abused because the child had bruises on him (no one thought that...um...maybe the kid got bruised because he fell off his bike); so the husband was sent to prison and murdered by inmates.  And it was the ME's fault.  

 

I think this show can work.  In Law & Order:CI the audience basically knew who the killer was, but the fun of that show was watching the police figure out the motive and solve the crime.  

Edited June 15, 2014 by Neurochick

[Bort]

I hope the son's reaction was to punch Dad in the face and tell him to get fucking lost.

[shapeshifter]

Too bad the daughter didn't kill the father.

Was it just me, or did Vega get a few more degrees hotter when Angie said he was smart and not stupid--or however she put it?

[mollybygolly]

I had dvr'd this episode and just watched it tonight.  I am thoroughly confused.  I thought the killer's husband was the guy in jail for killing a kid at a meth house.  But he was the guy whose house the medical examiner's granddaughter died at? So how does the meth guy figure in?  I see others were confused but apparently figured it out, but I haven't gotten that far yet unfortunately.  Can anyone explain this to me?  Thanks.

 

[shapeshifter]

I had dvr'd this episode and just watched it tonight.  I am thoroughly confused.  I thought the killer's husband was the guy in jail for killing a kid at a meth house.

I thought that for most of the episode too, but no... 

But he was the guy whose house the medical examiner's granddaughter died at?

Nope, not him either. He was just a guy who fell asleep babysitting his kid when his kid had a freak and unfortunately lethal accident. The kid also had a few bruises from learning to ride his bike.

So how does the meth guy figure in?

He was one of a number of men about whom the ME gave false testimony against so they would be convicted of murder after the ME's daughter's death was ruled accidental and he went crazy without anyone noticing.

[walnutqueen]

I don't think Vega could get any hotter (I could listen to his voice for hours!).  The scenery in this episode was beautiful, too.  :-)

 

Single white teen went cray cray just like her mommy - wonder how that happened?

[Trey]

Again, my favourite line was from Vega, at the end, when he says if Angie gets started on the paperwork, he'll go pick them up some dinner.  What a great guy!

 

Was the mother suicidal because of her husband's affair with Emily or was she like that already?  You would think a man that age would know enough to use protection but apparently he didn't.

[Xantar]

I was background watching this while doing other household chores. What exactly was the mom's health issue? And during the confrontation with the police, why did the killer keep saying, "Mom nearly died!" as if the victim was somehow to blame for that?

[Bort]

The mom attempted suicide. I don't think the show explicitly said so but implied that it was because she found out about the affair.

[SonofaBiscuit]

When the red-headed killer's brother told her that he had given the police a sample of his DNA, I totally thought that the police would find DNA evidence on the victim and be able to figure out who the killer was due to getting a familial DNA match from the brother.  I didn't expect that they'd use the brother's DNA to figure out who the father of the baby was.

 

The victim looked terrible with red hair!  It may have been the lighting, but there also seemed to be a continuity error with the killer's red hair.  When Angie and Vega showed up at her house to ask if she had been calling the victim, I swear her hair looked red but at that point it should have been brown.

 

Brian, what are you doing?  The awkwardness between him and Officer Sung might be cute if he wasn't, you know, married!  He's totally going to cheat on his wife. 

 

Did Angie seem a little jealous at the end when Cross went off with the Alphas lawyer lady?  She has Vega, so I'm not sure why she's even glancing in his direction, but whatever.  I just really enjoy Vega's personality and humor, like when Angie asked how much a pack of cigarettes goes for these days and he was like, "Don't pretend you don't know" and "there you go."  Are cigarettes really $10 to $12 a pack in Canada?!  I'm not a smoker, but I know that's like double some of the brands here.  Ridiculous.   

[mollybygolly]

Thank you shapeshifter for the explanation.  I think I now understand what the heck was going on!  Will have to play closer attention next time.

[Trey]

Yes, cigarettes really are that much in Canada but a large part of the cost is tax.  Good thing I quit smoking years ago, when a pack cost about 75 cents.

 

I did think Aidan's dna could be used to establish the father of the baby and I was surprised that they didn't see that some of Aidan's markers were in the baby's dna, but apparently they had to do more advanced testing to find that.  When the father was so upset that Aidan had given his dna I figured he was the baby's father.

 

I also thought the red hair on Janine seemed to come and go, even when it was supposed to be brown.

[shapeshifter]

You're welcome. The next episode is easier to follow.

[vera charles]

I guess, in order to have any kind of mystery at all, there has to be a question about how the victim and the killer are connected. Since you know who they are, you can't also know the connection from the beginning. I think this one was one of the most confusing, since the connections they did introduce weren't all that close and the other similar cases were also talked about at length. I had the same problem others had in connecting the dots.

[Xantar]

I did think Aidan's dna could be used to establish the father of the baby and I was surprised that they didn't see that some of Aidan's markers were in the baby's dna, but apparently they had to do more advanced testing to find that. 

 

 

OT alert:

 

I don't know if the writers actually understood the science of what they were saying, but they were actually correct. Your typical paternity test looks for matches at 20 sites. Each of those sites has two values (because DNA comes in pairs). One value comes from the mother and one comes from the father. For this baby, they probably looked at the 20 sites and figured out which of the two values at each site comes from the mother (since they have her DNA available too). At this point, they now have 20 values that can only have come from the father and nowhere else so they must match exactly (sometimes you get only 19 matches due to mutations, but anything less than that is very unlikely).

 

However, it's much harder to establish sibling relationships this way because siblings don't inherit DNA from each other. They inherit DNA from their parents, and they probably inherited different values in those 20 marker sites. It gets even worse when you're trying to establish a half-sibling relationship. If the lab only has the DNA of the two siblings and not the DNA of their common parent, the lab would have to check a few hundred or a few thousand marker sites and then use statistical analysis to figure out the likelihood that the two samples are siblings. 

 

[/biology nerd]

[vera charles]

 

I also thought the red hair on Janine seemed to come and go, even when it was supposed to be brown.

At least once, toward the end of the episode, it was very brown when it should have been red. I think it was when she angrily confronted the victim about being pregnant, so it should have been already dyed red, not yet dyed back to brown.

 

And how did she know exactly what clothes the victim would be wearing to meet the brother, so she could dress like her to confront her on the cliff? That was weird.

[theatremouse]

I didn't think they meant to imply she was dressed like her intentionally? Just that between the hair, looking like a teen, they happened to be dressed similarly enough that the jogger's description would initially make the cops assume the girl he saw was the victim. I don't think the murder at all hinged on them wearing the same outfit.

[GaT]

So both last week and this week the killers were main characters from Eureka.

 

Oh, thank you. I could not remember where I knew her from & it was driving me crazy.

[shapeshifter]

Oh, thank you. I could not remember where I knew her from & it was driving me crazy.

It drove me crazy too for the first 20 minutes! Depending upon the roles they're playing and their hair styles, Erica Cerra, Sarah Shahi, and Emmanuelle Vaugier are sort of interchangeable in my mind. Plus, in Eureka, Erica Cerra mostly wore that frumpy cop uniform and was a tomboy badass. At first I was thinking: Was she Lex Luthor's girlfriend on Smallville? And then it was: No. Wait. Wasn't she on Life? LOL

[yeswedo]

I didn't think they meant to imply she was dressed like her intentionally? Just that between the hair, looking like a teen, they happened to be dressed similarly enough that the jogger's description would initially make the cops assume the girl he saw was the victim. I don't think the murder at all hinged on them wearing the same outfit.

 

That's how I interpreted it too. Also that she didn't go there intending to kill her, just confront her about the pregnancy and find out about the father. When she pushed Emily that seemed 'heat of the moment'. The follow up with the rock displayed much greater intent.

 

I had a bad feeling about the father from the first scene with the toast. It is very common on tv that a father seduces his son's girlfriend. Something about that scene made the dad seem a bit off and I kept thinking he would be involved.

[theatremouse]

I had a bad feeling about the father from the first scene with the toast.

For me the tip off was when the victim said "coke in a wine glass, classy" and then he looked awkward. It was a weirdly familiar thing to say to your boyfriend's parents... and his reaction was definitely shot in such a way to draw attention to the odd look on his face. Although to be fair, when I initially watched that scene I couldn't tell whose parents they were, or what the relationships were exactly. But once it was clear they were her boyfriend's parents, that scene cemented itself as obvious in my mind.

Edited June 22, 2014 by theatremouse

[GaT]

The mom attempted suicide. I don't think the show explicitly said so but implied that it was because she found out about the affair.

This confused me, did the mother just find out the husband had an affair, or did she know the affair was with the victim (can't remember her name)? When the daughter told her that the girlfriend was dead, the mother seemed sympathetic, not like she knew that she had an affair with her husband, but I'm having a hard time understanding why she would try to kill herself because he had an affair, even with their son's girlfriend. The whole thing seemed weird to me.

[Neurochick]

That daughter should go to jail forever. What a horrible, selfish entitled witch.

[shapeshifter]

That daughter should go to jail forever. What a horrible, selfish entitled witch.

--except when they were profiling her--when she was just a person of interest--didn't they say she was suffering from some sort of mental disorder that caused her to be obsessed with the victim? Maybe she needed medication long before the murder. With the mother reacting to her husband's wildly inappropriate infidelity by [trying to] committing suicide, they seemed to imply that there was a hereditary tendency towards mental illness.

Now the father: I don't see him as mentally ill. Just stupid and selfish.

Mileage varies. ;)

[Neurochick]

I don't think they mentioned a mental disorder.  It's one thing to get angry and push someone off a cliff, but to go back and bash her head in is psychotic IMO.  Not everything is caused by an illness.  Some people are just evil.

[vera charles]

I think she was just intended to kill the victim. When she didn't die in the fall, she finished the job.

 

The bit about the mother's attempted suicide wasn't made clear until it was pertinent to the plot. At first, it seemed like she was sick with something else. The fact that it was attempted suicide came up later.

[shapeshifter]

Loved the end:

Angie: Who would you call if you had a dead body?

Vega: The police.

Angie: So. Me.

I liked this episode because for once I didn't feel sorry for the perps getting imprisoned. What a crazy spiral of emotional destruction! Early in the episode when Heather and Jake are falling in love, Gordon reminds Heather of all her previous bad boyfriends, including one who stole all her furniture. I guess Gordon found it more difficult to dispose of a body to prove his devotion to Heather than to dispose of some furniture to prevent someone else from having an opportunity to prove his love for her.

[Mama No Life]

Yeah, I liked the twist of Gordon being the one who tricked Heather b/c I was starting to feel sorry for him. 

 

I liked Vega carefully watching Cross trying to move in on Angie.  No comments or shaming, just watching.

 

I did wonder what prompted Heather to flip out on Jake when she apparently had a lot of experience with bad boyfriends.  She clearly had something in mind unless she just randomly carries a knife around in her pocket.

[shapeshifter]

I did wonder what prompted Heather to flip out on Jake when she apparently had a lot of experience with bad boyfriends. She clearly had something in mind unless she just randomly carries a knife around in her pocket.

That's what I meant by "crazy spiral of emotional destruction." I see the premeditated murder as the culmination of her escalating reactions to years of perhaps dozens of boyfriends who appeared to be faithful and in love with her (and mostly were) suddenly commit random acts (e.g., stealing all her furniture) that torpedoed the relationship. Being a pretty, self-confident girl, she probably just shrugged off the first one that Jake secretly sabotaged. She probably sent hate email to another boyfriend who had inexplicably dissed her, followed by having his emails directed to the junk folder. Maybe the two boyfriends before Jake "just" got the rock in the windshield, and the one before Jake got a rock to the windshield and another to head, which he survived. Edited June 26, 2014 by shapeshifter

[basiltherat]

Yeah, in this case there was no sympathy or mitigating circumstances.  Well, except for the wife, Kim, but she already knew she was the third wheel in that relationship.  Blondie was really out of control even moreso than the redheaded rock girl from last week.  The only twist was that Gordo was the enabler to blondie's rage.

 

I was really anticipating that somehow Flynn/Vega would be literally following that trail of blood to the body -- they even parked over a big old puddle!  Which they didn't notice, unless all that was supposed to be a figurative trail of blood rather than a literal one.  Also, I didn't know that there was an app for how to dispose of a body!

[Trey]

I turned on the show that we get from the east coast at 7 pm but it was a rerun of the first episode.  I figured it would be the same episode at 10 pm so I didn't bother turning it on.  Now I've missed it.  Hope they show it again sometime.

[Grammaeryn]

So glad this wasn't just a poor victimized friend-zoned guy story (the UCSB shooting makes me wary of those IRL and on TV). Cross and Angie had a nice relaxed vibe which gave a glimpse into their partner days. Just a thought now, so Heather had a string of failed relationships how many did Gordon sabotage?

[shapeshifter]

so Heather had a string of failed relationships how many did Gordon sabotage?

I assumed all, but now that you mention it, I could imagine when she was younger and even flightier, she ended them when they got to serious or boring or whatever. Then, when she was at the point of wanting to settle down, Gordon decided he couldn't let that happen. But we won't be getting a spreadsheet of them, heh.

[yeswedo]

 

 

Loved the end:

Angie: Who would you call if you had a dead body?

Vega: The police.

Angie: So. Me.

 

I was on the treadmill and didn't have closed captioning on. I thought they were talking about who was going to pay for drinks and they had blown off Lucas and Cross to go out on their own. The real dialogue is better.

 

That was a brutal murder and coverup. I did have to laugh at all the times Heather was goading Gordon because he didn't know how to dispose of / dismember a body. Man up! You're not done yet?

[shapeshifter]

When my daughter was in high school, a girl cloned her MySpace page, using images of my daughter and my daughter's name. I just talked to her about it, since this show and some other recent crime shows had similar plot contrivances. It turns out that the motive to clone my daughter's MySpace page was to make it look like my daughter was cheating on her boyfriend. The boyfriend got extremely jealous and verbally abusive with my daughter and asked her to take a lie detector test!?!! So she broke up with him. Yay. No rocks or purple knives were involved. My daughter said the cloner girl continued to stalk the girlfriends of this guy. I wonder if any murders resulted.

I was on the treadmill... 

That was a brutal murder and coverup. I did have to laugh at all the times Heather was goading Gordon because he didn't know how to dispose of / dismember a body. Man up! You're not done yet?

He never did dismember the guy. I wondered if his inability to do that would give him a lighter sentence. Edited June 27, 2014 by shapeshifter

[Trey]

CTV has renewed it for a third season.  I don't know if ABC has picked up the third season or not. 

 

It sounds like this was a really good episode - I am so bummed that I missed it.

Edited June 27, 2014 by Trey

[Neurochick]

I liked this episode because for once I didn't feel sorry for the perps getting imprisoned.

 

 

I never feel sorry for the perps because they killed someone and there is always another way, unless the other person is trying to kill you.

 

For such a smart woman Heather was plain stupid.  If you have scores of bad boyfriends, the common denominator is YOU.  Meaning you're the one with the issue.  Also, if Heather was such a computer wiz; how come she couldn't tell the profile was fake?  

Edited June 29, 2014 by Neurochick

[theatremouse]

Because she was a controlling narcissist with a tendency to react violently anyway? Based on what we saw of her personality, I have no trouble believing her first thought was "that cheating asshole" and not "someone hacked someone's phone and created a duplicate profile with photos from said phone."

Edited June 29, 2014 by theatremouse

[Beezella]

Boy was this episode aptly named! Bad Blonde for sure! I should have seen it coming she would try to pin it all on her "friend" but I didn't.

 

I am so glad the guy was unable to saw up the body. Good grief.

[yeswedo]

@Trey if you are able to access Hulu or abc.com it looks like the episodes are free to view one week after they air -so tomorrow by my calculation. Currently it's available for Hulu+ subscribers and on abc.com it's available but you have to be affiliated with a cable provider. 

 

@shapeshifter glad to hear your daughter was ok after dealing with someone who was hopefully not the real life inspiration for Heather!

[Trey]

Thanks, yeswedo, but I'm in Canada and can't get Hulu or abc.com.  It's supposed to be available online at ctv.ca but I can't get it to work.  Guess I'll just have to wait until it's on again. 

 

Looks like a rerun tonight, a repeat of the season opener.

[shapeshifter]

Thanks, yeswedo, but I'm in Canada and can't get Hulu or abc.com. It's supposed to be available online at ctv.ca but I can't get it to work. Guess I'll just have to wait until it's on again.

You might want to ask for advice on The free & legal to view online resource thread: where to see your favorite shows.

Looks like a rerun tonight, a repeat of the season opener.

Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't noticed. Guess I'll give Taxi Brooklyn another try tonight. During the commercials I can switch back to Motive to catch glimpses of Louis Ferreira/Vega. Edited July 3, 2014 by shapeshifter