S02.E05: Elsbeth Flips the Bird

[chitowngirl]

Elsbeth investigates the death of a devious kitchen staffer after he causes havoc in New York's hottest restaurant and enrages one of America's most revered chefs.

[AnimeMania]

Daniel Orestes as Det. Buzz Fleming

Molly Price as Det. Jackie Donnelly

Micaela Diamond as Detective Edwards

Laura Benanti as Nadine

Pamela Adlon as (Chef Veev / Chef Z) ?

Next New Episode: December 5, 2024  

[EtheltoTillie]

I love Pamela Adlon. This was a fun episode

[Irlandesa]

Jack Davenport was a nice surprise too.  I really like that they bring back previous guest stars, like Laura Benanti's designer, in fun new ways.  Trying to remember where they first appeared keeps me on my toes. 

[shapeshifter]

I loved Elsbeth's wardrobe again.

Does the chef get to cook for the inmates in prison? 
I want to watch that show.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

I hope people know in real life, that deleting a video or photo from the phone of someone who takes them frequently probably only sends it to a trash folder where it will be easily recoverable for 30 - 60 days. TV detectives often don't.

Elsbeth made it sound like some random kitchen took was used in Jordan and Veev.  Even if the meat tenderizer was washed (did Veev also turn on the  dishwasher?), it leaves very distinctive marks which should be easily matched.

I'm having trouble with the timeline. Malcolm starts the duck around midnight? Veev confronts and kills Jordan, batters and throws herself down the stairs, and the timer goes off (after 1.5 hrs?). She gets up to flip the duck, sets the timer for another 1.5 hrs, and passes out. The kitchen staff arrive in the morning and finding Veev, call the police.  The duck is still roasting, and the oven turns off.

The staff did not come in at 3 am. Did Veev let the duck sit for 4 hours and then roast the other side?

Edited November 16 by ItCouldBeWorse

[possibilities]

I think they said the duck was started at 1 am. And they did say that deliveries started arriving at 4:15 am. Plus, I don't think she actually passed out; I think she positioned herself to look that way and CLAIMED she'd been passed out.

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I hope people know in real life, that deleting a video or photo from the phone if someone who takes them frequently probably only sends it to a trash folder where it will be easily recoverable for 30 - 60 days. TV detectives often don't.

On some shows they would have had the homicidal chef delete the video out of the trash folder, and then a tech person with the police would have retrieved it from the cloud. But this show doesn't seem to want to clutter the story with such details.

4 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

Even if the meat tenderizer was washed (did Veev also turn on the  dishwasher?), it leaves very distinctive marks which should be easily matched.

I think she did turn on the dishwasher, but I recall an ME on another show matching such a tool to wounds on a murder victim's corpse — maybe Bones or The Closer or Rizzoli & Isles? But those shows spend more time in the morgue than this show does. I prefer the more Murder She Wrote style of dead body off-camera examination on this show. We did see that the weapon would have obviously left a distinctive pattern but they chose not to show the wounds in graphic detail, or even mention the pattern; on the old Quincy ME reruns he would have described the pattern, but it's never shown.
They didn't even mention the pattern of the tool on this show, did they?

[EtheltoTillie]

I too was surprised about the phone and the lack of attention paid to the marks left by the meat pounder. 

[Shelbie]

I love Nadine and I feel very strongly that she should pop up again in other episodes.

[Mellowyellow]

I squealed when I saw Nadine!!! She’s beautiful and so much fun!

 Loved the poker game with all the detectives.

 Haha Elsbeth and I wear the same colours!

 My favourite show right now!!!

[UsernameFatigue]

I am enjoying this show to a point, as well as Matock. But I would trade either one for a return of So Help Me Todd. 

[seacliffsal]

I really like how they bring back past detectives and others.  Loved the poker game with all of the detectives.  

I would enjoy seeing the restaurant again with some of the same staff without the murder chef.  

[kwnyc]

On 11/15/2024 at 9:01 PM, shapeshifter said:

But this show doesn't seem to want to clutter the story with such details

This is definitely not a "ripped from the headlines" show. And I love it that way.

And for those who are serious detail watchers, the actor who played the French chef in a video was the same one who played the Italian opera singer in a video in an episode earlier this season!

 

Edited November 17 by kwnyc

[Yeah No]

17 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I too was surprised about the phone and the lack of attention paid to the marks left by the meat pounder. 

I'm late to the party but this is all my husband and I could talk about after we watched this. If you delete a photo or movie from your phone it will still be in the cloud for a while but also if you let your photos upload to something like Google Photos and set it to backup, photos don't delete from Google Photos automatically when you delete them from your phone unless you manually go in and delete them.

6 hours ago, seacliffsal said:

I really like how they bring back past detectives and others.  Loved the poker game with all of the detectives.  

I would enjoy seeing the restaurant again with some of the same staff without the murder chef.  

Same here and I love restaurant based shows in both reality TV and fiction. 

This restaurant was like a cross between new and hot and traditional and stodgy. I wonder where they filmed it. I tried to find it on the filming location sites but maybe it's too new to be listed yet.

I also found Elsbeth's attempts at cooking amusing.

3 hours ago, kwnyc said:

And for those who are serious detail watchers, the actor who played the French chef in a video was the same one who played the Italian opera singer in a video in an episode earlier this season!

My husband caught that!

Am I the only person to notice that this thread incorrectly numbered the episode? This is season 2, not season 1.

This is my second favorite episode so far this season. The first episode was my favorite of the season. And I loved seeing Laura Benanti again.

Edited November 17 by Yeah No

[astrohip]

11 hours ago, Yeah No said:

If you delete a photo or movie from your phone it will still be in the cloud for a while

While your point is (mostly) valid, not all of us backup to the cloud. I specifically have my Pixel 9 set to NOT backup photos, cloud or anywhere.

[Yeah No]

On 11/17/2024 at 12:30 PM, astrohip said:

While your point is (mostly) valid, not all of us backup to the cloud. I specifically have my Pixel 9 set to NOT backup photos, cloud or anywhere.

Actually I meant that deleted photos will be in the phone's trash, not the cloud, where they stay for 60 days until they are deleted permanently unless you go in to the trash and manually delete them. That's on Android at least. I don't know about i-Phone.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 11/15/2024 at 7:17 PM, possibilities said:

I think they said the duck was started at 1 am. And they did say that deliveries started arriving at 4:15 am. Plus, I don't think she actually passed out; I think she positioned herself to look that way and CLAIMED she'd been passed out.

1) Malcolm, in his interview, said he started the duck at midnight

2) Veev, in her interview, said she went downstairs around 1 am when she was "ambushed," which fits more or less with her flipping the duck at 1:30

3) She would have set the oven alarm for about 3 am

4) The staff arrived shortly after the police.  It was in the morning, after Kaya and Elsbeth's normal work day had started. Probably not before 8 am.

5) So the duck would have been in the oven (whether cooking or not) for at least 8 hours

6) I think after Veev "flipped the bird" at 1:30, she probably did pass out/fall asleep until the police somehow knew to come.  I'm definitely willing to believe she gave herself a concussion.  But, she might also have been feigning it, waiting for the staff to arrive and find her

7) How did the police even know to come to the restaurant?  (Certainly not because someone tried to make a delivery, entered an unlocked door and found Veev on the floor.) It wasn't the staff, because they arrived after the police were on the scene, and were shocked at the attack. (see #4)

On 11/15/2024 at 9:01 PM, shapeshifter said:

On 11/15/2024 at 3:52 PM, ItCouldBeWorse said:

Even if the meat tenderizer was washed (did Veev also turn on the  dishwasher?), it leaves very distinctive marks which should be easily matched.

I think she did turn on the dishwasher

You're right.  It was a quick movement, but she did. Although she got rid of her fingerprints that way (when she took off her glove to delete the photograph, I knew that her fingerprint on the phone would later be used as evidence against her), but there's no doubt in my mind that the tenderizer would have been matched to the wounds.  The value of that was that the assailant didn't come into the kitchen with a weapon, but grabbed what was there, so possibly a crime of passion (or someone who was both familiar with the kitchen and knew how to run a commercial dishwasher.)

If I were to get more picky: I also think that the gloves that Veev used to strangle Jordan would still be there, with her DNA on the inside and his on the outside, unless she had the presence of mind to stick then in a pocket and then dispose of them once she left the precinct.  There would have been evidence of latex, or whatever the gloves were made of, in Jordan's neck, I would presume, and no fingerprints, so the police would at least look for gloves, examine the kind of glove used in the kitchen, etc.

I was at least impressed that Veev didn't explicitly confess to the crime once she was handcuffed, unlike almost every other arrestee on this show. I was surprised that the detective asked her about the video while putting on the handcuffs (before saying to save it for the trial), because anything Veev had said just then would have likely been inadmissible without having received Miranda warnings.

On 11/17/2024 at 12:30 PM, astrohip said:

While your point is (mostly) valid, not all of us backup to the cloud. I specifically have my Pixel 9 set to NOT backup photos, cloud or anywhere.

I'm curious; what if you lose your phone or it breaks in such a way that you can't transfer anything to a new one?  Do you manually back up just the photos you want every day, or transfer them to a physical memory device?

[Rickster]

The meat tenderizer has a flat side and a pointy side. At least some of the blows were with the flat side. I did think it odd that Elsbeth looked in the dishwasher and saw the tenderizer, but it never came up again in the show. Maybe a plot point they chose to delete?

[astrohip]

10 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I'm curious; what if you lose your phone or it breaks in such a way that you can't transfer anything to a new one?  Do you manually back up just the photos you want every day, or transfer them to a physical memory device?

I have a process where they are manually backed up all the time, but to my own device, not Google's cloud. Then that device is backed up to a cloud account also, for dbl safety.

 

[ItCouldBeWorse]

1 hour ago, astrohip said:

I have a process where they are manually backed up all the time, but to my own device, not Google's cloud. Then that device is backed up to a cloud account also, for dbl safety.

 

So deleting a video from your phone would definitely not delete its existence.  In fact, it would be far safer than my phone, where a person might use my finger to gain access to my Trash and delete it from there.  However, the police might never find your backup device or cloud account, so you really should entrust someone with that information, in case you are throttled by an angry chef.

[AnimeMania]

I biggest problem with the cloud is that everything on it gets backed up, so if you delete a file, you no longer have access to it, but the company that owns the cloud still does. I could be wrong, but I believe that in the Software License Agreement, you allow the cloud company to become co-owners of any files that you save on it.

[astrohip]

20 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

I biggest problem with the cloud is that everything on it gets backed up, so if you delete a file, you no longer have access to it, but the company that owns the cloud still does. I could be wrong, but I believe that in the Software License Agreement, you allow the cloud company to become co-owners of any files that you save on it.

Absolutely not!

For many social media sites, and other sites where you create content, they own that content. EX: Facebook owns what you post. And can use it how they like, with a few limitations. Very few.

But cloud backup is VERY different. I don't know a single one that says they own your files. Here is an excerpt from the Terms & Conditions of Backblaze, who I use. They are clear it is mine, and they can't do anything with it, beyond what's necessary to provide their services:

 

You can back up, host, store, and share your own files on Backblaze. The materials you upload to Backblaze are yours and yours alone. You give us permission to use that material solely to do what's necessary to provide our services, including storing, displaying, reproducing, and distributing those materials. We don't sell the files you store with us to third parties, and we don't use them for advertising purposes. We can disclose your files only in the limited circumstances described in our Privacy Notice.

[LisaM]

Loved the poker game. I noticed that Captain Wagner is now calling Elsbeth by her first name instead of always referring to her as Miss Tascioni. 

It is a great idea to keep bringing back the various detectives. Also great idea to keep Laura Benanti as a recurring guest. 

 

[zapper]

 

 

 

                                      TWO DUCKS LATER

 

 

 

[TV Anonymous]

What high-end restaurant today does not use on-line reservation system and still relies on pen and paper? Particularly if such restaurant always at capacity nightly.

That is not duck confit cassoulet! Where are the beans? It is not a high-end dish, though. I know, it is my favorite dish and I can get it easily in the local grocery stores. It is not a dish one wants to showcase fine dining. For Elsbeth, all it is needed from the duck is the legs and thighs. No need to buy two whole ducks.

Edited Saturday at 03:26 PM by TV Anonymous

[Ceindreadh]

20 hours ago, TV Anonymous said:

What high-end restaurant today does not use on-line reservation system and still relies on pen and paper? Particularly if such restaurant always at capacity nightly.

That is not duck confit cassoulet! Where are the beans? It is not a high-end dish, though. I know, it is my favorite dish and I can get it easily in the local grocery stores. It is not a dish one wants to showcase fine dining. For Elsbeth, all it is needed from the duck is the legs and thighs. No need to buy two whole ducks.

A high end restaurant that wants to ensure that its clientele are also high end will do better with a human taking reservations who can weed out the riff-raff. 
An online reservation system will let in anybody with a valid credit card. 

[TV Anonymous]

On 11/24/2024 at 6:16 AM, Ceindreadh said:

A high end restaurant that wants to ensure that its clientele are also high end will do better with a human taking reservations who can weed out the riff-raff. 

That is why fine dining restaurants these day require non-refundable deposits when making reservation. But seriously, which high-end restaurant today still doing pen and paper reservations?

[Yeah No]

On 11/23/2024 at 9:26 AM, TV Anonymous said:

For Elsbeth, all it is needed from the duck is the legs and thighs. No need to buy two whole ducks.

But didn't she want to reproduce similar conditions to those at the time of the murder? I thought that was the reason she did 2 ducks, because the timing to cook them would have been the same as on that date. And that would not have been the case for just legs and thighs. Or at least that's the way I'm remembering it.