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S03.E11: The Illustrious Client


Athena

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Watson begins her new job as an in-house investigator for an insurance firm. However, her attention shifts to a case that is personal for both her and Holmes when they join forces to eliminate an imminent threat to Kitty.

 

"The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" is from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the canon story that features Kitty Winter.

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Dang, that was a great episode! Tons of twists and turns, and I did NOT see that ending coming.

 

I totally, totally thought the shadowy figure behind Watson was the rapist/murderer. Well played that it was Kitty--but how horrifying does Joan's new job see now?

 

This season is so much better than last season.

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Scarface! From Person of Interest - so glad to see you and that you weren't the baddie.

Eta: I was thinking Kitty locked him in the boat and set it on fire, but then figured out she couldn't have.

Edited by DeLurker
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I did suspect Joan's new boss and I really don't know why (have never seen the actor before).  One of the reasons was that there are always a lot of red herrings in this show and the sex trafficking people didn't fit with what happened to Kitty.  And it had to be someone we saw in this episode.  But holy crap!  What an episode!  Can't wait until next week.

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If Del & Simon were "partners" or associates of some kind, that would leave Del vulnerable to all kinds of blackmail from the Albanian mob. Unless Del is running the Albanian mob and hiding in plain sight as a globe trotting executive.

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The boss was played by Stuart Townsend, an actor who I did recognize in the 90s but not in this episode. He looks so different now, wow. If I had known it was played by a known actor, I would not have been surprised with the twist.

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Part of me wondered if Kitty tracked the guy down and locked him on the boat and set it on fire. She was pretty intense in this episode. I especially loved the stare-down she gave the killer's sister at the precinct. Kitty was unmovable.

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I had Stuart Townsend pegged by the first scene.  I doubted he would merely be Joan's employer, so I figured he either was going to be another potential love interest for her, or be the rapist.  The more it went on, the more I believed it; especially since the main suspect was played by a no named actor.

 

I am relieved though, because there was one brief moment where I worried they were going do something lame and have it be that Kitty went insane, and was actually the killer.  That would have been too ridiculous, so thank goodness.  I do wonder what is going to happen, now that she knows the truth.  And, also if Gregson suspending her for beating up the sex trafficker's sister.

 

Interesting stuff with Sherlock and Kitty.  The show had done a good job at making me believe that Sherlock really does care for her in his own way.

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It was a very good episode. I loved that even the hum of the bees couldn't calm/soothe Holmes enough to concentrate.

 

From the ads, I was expecting the ominous leg to be Kitty's rapist. Glad it wasn't.

 

I know this is dumb, but. The emerald ring, which we were shown in picture and in the attic. Is it just a misdirect or could it actually play a part in next week's installment? Nothing was said about finding it as evidence to use against Simon. That could be because the writer(s) knew what Simon had coming or it gets play next week. I just wish something had been said. A line from a cop to Bell or Gregson. Or even just a CSI showing either one the bagged ring and getting a thumbs up while talking on the phone? Anyhoo...

 

Pretty tight episode that moved well. I just wanted to hug Ophelia Lovibond from the hospital scenes with Joan to the end of the episode. Looking forward to next week!

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I know this is dumb, but. The emerald ring, which we were shown in picture and in the attic. Is it just a misdirect or could it actually play a part in next week's installment?

 

Great question! That's what I kept wondering - when is the CSI team going to find the ring and show it to the detectives so that they know the murdered woman was there? I waited and waited for that to be a part of the case, and then it just wasn't and I forgot by the end because of how intensely Kitty was behaving. But I do still wonder what the point of it was. If they showed it on the floor like that and just forgot about it... sloppy writing! I guess we'll find out next week for sure if it's just a misdirect or a missed plot point or what.

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I'm not sure the emerald ring is going to become a huge thing simply because Team Sherlock must realize, even without it, that Joan's boss was in cahoots with the guy they were hunting this episode (Simon?). They found the brands at the house where he was imprisoning all the women, right? I can't believe there would be two identical sets of brands running around NYC, so that leads to the conclusion that Joan's boss must have had some sort of dealings with Simon. So: I think the ring might serve as confirmation of that link, but it's not going to be a/the smoking gun.

 

Man, I really wanted to give Kitty a hug. When she started freaking out at Joan's from hearing Del's voice, I really felt for her. Her uncontrollable shaking just broke my heart.

Me too. :( I thought Lovibond got increasingly stronger and more heartwrenching as tonight's episode went on. I felt so, so bad for her when she broke down outside of the rescued woman's hospital room.

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I'm not sure the emerald ring is going to become a huge thing simply because Team Sherlock must realize, even without it, that Joan's boss was in cahoots with the guy they were hunting this episode (Simon?).

 

I'm fine if it's not a huge thing. I just think they shouldn't have put so much emphasis on it, then. Between the conversations about the ring and how it was missing, and then to have a close-up on it in the foreground with the latest victim in the background, they just made it seem more important than they needed to. It wasn't even really a red herring, so... I guess I'm just wondering, what's the point?

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I started being suspicious of Joan's boss as soon as he kept showing up again & again. No other reason for it. At least we know why they have Joan getting a job at an insurance company & that it won't be permanent.

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Well, the link that really confirms it without any reference to Kitty's memory or casting meta (Which is cheating!) it is that he was the only person who could plausibly have beaten the cops to the traffickers location - Joan told him how to find said trafficker, who then turns up dead before the police can get there, and there was just no very probable way for the albanian mob to track him down that fast without an inside lead. Mr insurance being the bad guy explains it - he could simply wait an hour or two before passing the info along to Joan, contract a hit, and leave a corpse for the police to find, tying his crimes to a dead man. 

 

Nor is it a strange coincidence - because the highly creepy implication is that he hired Joan as part of a larger scheme to get at Kitty. Urgh. 

Edited by Izeinwinter
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Nor is it a strange coincidence - because the highly creepy implication is that he hired Joan as part of a larger scheme to get at Kitty. Urgh.

 

I assumed this too, otherwise it's just too great a coincidence. But I couldn't follow the sequence. Was he already employed by the insurance company in NYC, then discovered Kitty coincidentally also in the city, so recruited Joan? Was he employed by the same company in London, then got himself a transfer when... It seems beyond elaborate. I guess we'll find out.

 

It seemed obvious the whole Albanian thing, and the first two suspects, and all those poor enslaved women, were a sideshow (!), since they were found too quickly. The hiding in a boat may have been from the Boston marathon bombing, they found the perp Tsarnaev hiding in a similar boat, next to a similar house.

 

Also, I know it's a crime show, but still I find the brutalization of the victims unpleasant to watch. What is the horror of the week--oh look, it's repeated branding! How intriguing. The media is awash in sadism, revels in it even. There are whole shows worse than this--Criminal Minds and now Stalker. Ugh. It's not that I want a return to the sanitized likes of Miss Marple, but so many shows have gone to the opposite extreme, dwelling on the horror. I'm the opposite of desensitized, and feel the need to take a shower afterwards.

 

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Not a side-show, precisely. Plot as far as I can follow it: Mr insurance found Kitty, and wanted to play games - because he is a psychotic sadist - so he hires Watson to get the inside info on everything, and then sets up the trafficker to go down for his serial killing. He plants the burner in the bar with the fingerprints, the brand in the house, and contracts a hit on him, then murders that poor girl from the bar so that the resulting investigation would lead directly to a house full of traumatized women, physical evidence and a corpse with a rapsheet a mile long. Neat bow on the entire case, and he can pop out of the virtual grave to really put the boot in on Kitty later. 

 

Only, his hired killer bungles the hit, dies and the trafficker escapes. Thanks to the forward planning of having hired Joan, however, he gets the info on the location first, and the second set of assassins are less useless. 

 

Presumably, he was using the trafficker as a source of victims who would not be missed because not officially in the country, which is how he had the opportunity to set all this up. 

Edited by Izeinwinter
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Agreed with @Izeinwinter on everything.

 

They deduced from the very beginning that Kitty's rapist had found her was making a statement in order to terrorize her. It doesn't make sense that it would be a sex trafficking ring and not the work of a psychotic sadist, and I'm surprised Sherlock didn't realize that. Unless he did, and didn't want to let Kitty in on that fact. 

 

I'm not always keen on this show, since it often turns into Yet Another Procedural Drama, and the Sherlockian detective is really overplayed on TV right now. But they do occasionally spin out complex, interesting plot lines, and they have deftly handled sensitive subjects like rape and addiction with an open yet sensitive attitude that's nice to see on TV.

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I just recently caught up on Elementary by binging the last 7 or 8 episodes. Wasn't crazy about Kitty in the beginning, mostly because I was worried about her being set up against Joan, but I've ended up really liking her. Poor, deadpan, prickly Kitty. 

 

I'm curious to see how Joan is going to react to Kitty's accusation. I think that was the first thing that popped into my head, maybe because recently there have been several high-profile cases in the media about famous people being accused of horrible sex crimes, with their friends and coworkers jumping in and going, "I don't believe it, so-and-so is a great person!" It can be hard to believe the worst of someone when you have that previous relationship. Not like Joan and Del were ever bosom buddies, but still. 

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This is a very small thing, but I really enjoyed the authenticity of Kitty hearing Joan's boss's voice. The reason Joan put her phone on speaker, and the fact that she's a know user of the speaker function (whereas I never, ever use it) felt realistic. I know this is insanely small, but I appreciate it wasn't forced.

 

Only a completely different note, am I the only person who, after all these years, still sings in my head:

"Albania,

Albania,

You border on the Adriatic..."

 

any time I hear anything about Albania?  

Every.Single.Time.

Edited by morgankobi
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I started being suspicious of Joan's boss as soon as he kept showing up again & again. No other reason for it. At least we know why they have Joan getting a job at an insurance company & that it won't be permanent.

Plus: Joan is awesome, but an office with ginormous windows and big enough to practice her backswing? It's a trap!
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Oh, Joan, those company picnics are going to be super awkward now... 

 

The episode had me hooked, but it felt a bit like a tease by the end : Sherlock trying to brace Kitty to accept that her attacker had  probably been caught but she might be in denial. But the trafficker bad-guy was killed off-camera in a fire. Everyone knows you don't kill your main bad-guy off-camera.

 

Does this show avoid action scenes as a rule? I couldn't tell it if was a cost savings measure or if TPTB just don't want this to be an action show. There just seemed to be a lot of after-the-fact scenes with lots of exposition in the dialogue. I know the basis of the show is Sherlock putting clues together and then info-dumping his conclusions  ... but a little action wouldn't hurt. Just my opinion.. 

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I totally did not see the twist at the end coming, so kudos to all of you who did.  I don't really pay attention to the guest star credits and really wouldn't recognize Stuart Townshend without context.  I really thought it would end up being the first guy they brought in for questioning-kind of he went to the bar, signaled Simon to take the young woman, established an independent alibi (drinking with co-workers, like who hasn't used that?), and then went and got her from Simon later.  So, I totally bought into the red herring.  The final scenes were amazing.  I am so looking forward to next week.

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They've really done a great job with Kitty's story.  Her addition had the potential to be a trainwreck on the show, but they've progressed it nicely without overplaying or rushing the story.  And the actress has handled the role, especially the scenes in last night's ep, beautifully.

 

 

Does this show avoid action scenes as a rule? I couldn't tell it if was a cost savings measure or if TPTB just don't want this to be an action show.

Given the propensity for shows to be overtly graphic, I appreciate this. 

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Not a side-show, precisely. Plot as far as I can follow it: Mr insurance found Kitty, and wanted to play games - because he is a psychotic sadist - so he hires Watson to get the inside info on everything, and then sets up the trafficker to go down for his serial killing. He plants the burner in the bar with the fingerprints, the brand in the house, and contracts a hit on him, then murders that poor girl from the bar so that the resulting investigation would lead directly to a house full of traumatized women, physical evidence and a corpse with a rapsheet a mile long. Neat bow on the entire case, and he can pop out of the virtual grave to really put the boot in on Kitty later.

Was Mr. Insurance also the "nice" customer that the Croatian victim asked to call the police on Simon?

 

Does this show avoid action scenes as a rule? I couldn't tell it if was a cost savings measure or if TPTB just don't want this to be an action show.
Given the propensity for shows to be overtly graphic, I appreciate this

In general, I appreciate this two about Elementary.  However, this episode I did not appreciate scene with sadistic Simon and his Croatian victim in the horror house.  I also don't think we got any thing plot-wise from seeing Kitty's back.

 

Interesting stuff with Sherlock and Kitty.  The show had done a good job at making me believe that Sherlock really does care for her in his own way.

I thought he was off his game last night, especially in the morgue when he is discounting Kitty's hunches and tying an all to neat bow on a crime with two entirely different MO's.  Could it be the empathy really does his great deduction brain?

 

I really thought it would end up being the first guy they brought in for questioning-kind of he went to the bar.

I also holding out suspicious it would be Maxine's ex-fiancee...back to the emerald ring on the floor..

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This episode was presumably named after the ACD story "The Illustrious Client," which has a character named Kitty Winter.  I don't see much connection except that in both, the bad guy scarred Kitty.  We haven't heard about an illustrious client in the episode, and the plots are different.  This actually interfered with my viewing of the episode because I was looking for connections and not finding any.

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Oh, Joan, those company picnics are going to be super awkward now... 

 

The episode had me hooked, but it felt a bit like a tease by the end : Sherlock trying to brace Kitty to accept that her attacker had  probably been caught but she might be in denial. But the trafficker bad-guy was killed off-camera in a fire. Everyone knows you don't kill your main bad-guy off-camera.

 

Does this show avoid action scenes as a rule? I couldn't tell it if was a cost savings measure or if TPTB just don't want this to be an action show. There just seemed to be a lot of after-the-fact scenes with lots of exposition in the dialogue. I know the basis of the show is Sherlock putting clues together and then info-dumping his conclusions  ... but a little action wouldn't hurt. Just my opinion.. 

 

Elementary does tend to avoid action scenes as a rule.  It's a little bit Law and Order that way.  This does make "action scenes" involving Sherlock all the more effective when they do occur, IMO.

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This episode was presumably named after the ACD story "The Illustrious Client," which has a character named Kitty Winter.  I don't see much connection except that in both, the bad guy scarred Kitty.  We haven't heard about an illustrious client in the episode, and the plots are different.  This actually interfered with my viewing of the episode because I was looking for connections and not finding any

 

.

 

Many, many of Elementary's episode titles refer to ACD's titles, but have little to nothing to do with the ACD stories. It's just a little homage. They also frequently lift quotes from the originals. Kitty's first lines in this episode, quoting "her friend" were lines that Holmes spoke to Watson from a different story.

 

Overall, I think they handle it well.

 

 

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Was Mr. Insurance also the "nice" customer that the Croatian victim asked to call the police on Simon?

 

In general, I appreciate this two about Elementary.  However, this episode I did not appreciate scene with sadistic Simon and his Croatian victim in the horror house.  I also don't think we got any thing plot-wise from seeing Kitty's back.

 

I thought he was off his game last night, especially in the morgue when he is discounting Kitty's hunches and tying an all to neat bow on a crime with two entirely different MO's.  Could it be the empathy really does his great deduction brain?

 

I also holding out suspicious it would be Maxine's ex-fiancee...back to the emerald ring on the floor..

No, that was just some garden variety asshole who was fine not only fine with patronizing a sex-slaving operation.but also with ratting her out to her pimp. I gotta say, this episode had some really low specimens of humanity passing through it in addition to the main two monsters.  

- I would expect any woman from that house that saw Mr Insurances face to be dead. He's a serial killer, and the police finding those women was something he planned on. They will eventually all be talking to sketch artists, so...

 

The emerald ring was just taken as a trophy. It might have been intended to be planted on the trafficker, or maybe just as a trophy. That's a thing serial killers do. It doesn't actually implicate the fiancee very strongly at all - believing it to be a slam-dunk piece of evidence is just one of the ways that cop was very bad at his job. 

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...The emerald ring was just taken as a trophy. It might have been intended to be planted on the trafficker, or maybe just as a trophy. That's a thing serial killers do. It doesn't actually implicate the fiancee very strongly at all - believing it to be a slam-dunk piece of evidence is just one of the ways that cop was very bad at his job

Color me emerald green confused: The last time we saw the ring was on the floor of the room where one of the female sex slaves was tossed and sees it. Right?

I agree with the poster upthread that it is going to be significant, given the choice of color (easy for the audience to spot and recall in contrast to a plain white diamond) and the camera zooming in on it.

Yes, TV has taught us that serial killers love their trophies, but victims also like to leave breadcrumbs. It seems like this could go either way--or both.

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I must have missed the shot of the ring? Oh well. That case, just another clue planted for the cops. Taken specifically because it was the most recognizable thing she owned. It isn't like an over-abundance of evidence would even be suspicious - the guy he was framing lived in a house full of his kidnap and rape victims.  That's already enough to send him away for a thousand years, so the fact he just has more evidence floating around the place doesn't strain credibility at all. 

Edited by Izeinwinter
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I missed the guest credits. Was that Tammy Blanchard as the sister? She's looking more like Judy Garland the older she gets.

Yes, that was her. And if I hadn't seen the credits I wouldn't have believed it.

 

Great episode. I'm even more worried about how things are going to turn out for Kitty. I get the Captain taking her off the team but I can't see Kitty using the same technique with the cop, I don't believe she got physical with him.

 

I saw Stuart Townsend's name in the credits and still didn't recognize  him until coming here and reading everyone's comments. I did not see that twist coming. But like others have said that entire last scene felt so genuine and not contrived at all. I also really loved the way the actress portrayed Kitty's reaction to hearing his voice, it was so powerful.  I also liked when Sherlock was suggesting that maybe she was wrong and that he understood and her reply that Sherlock had essentially caused all his own problems and that's not what happened to her etc., great scene.

 

I'm going to have to watch again, although some scenes are uncomfortable.

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Everyone has made great comments! Just chiming in to add that I loved that in her upset and scared state, Kitty went to Joan's house and apparently was sleeping/lying down in Joan's room. It was almost a throw-away detail, but it speaks volumes about the trust and security she feels around Joan. 

 

The promo people really did a disservice to the show by making it seem like Joan and Kitty would be 'feuding' over Sherlock this season. I almost didn't watch this season because the promos looked so bad. Glad I did-- I think I may enjoy the Kitty-Joan relationship even more than the Kitty-Sherlock one.

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Kitty went to Joan's house and apparently was sleeping/lying down in Joan's room.

Oh, that reminds me, could anyone please tell me what Kitty's exact words were to Joan? I got: "You said that I could come here if I ever needed [???]. You gave me a key."
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I am so, so, so happy with how they have let Kitty accept and even take comfort in Joan. The easiest way to write her would be to have her at odds with Joan and rebelling against any help.

Thank you, writers!

Edited by morgankobi
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...I'm even more worried about how things are going to turn out for Kitty. I get the Captain taking her off the team but I can't see Kitty using the same technique with the cop, I don't believe she got physical with him....

She was suspended for battering the bad guy's sister, right? Anyway, as someone who watches too many crime shows, I am now dreading that Kitty will be attacked because her suspension means she won't be around the cops.
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I didn't know Joan's boss was the guy, but I suspected because Stuart Townsend is too known for that small a role.

 

I just thought he'd be Joan's new love interest since her old one was a charisma free bore. Towards the end I thought "What if..." but quickly dismissed it especially during that phone convo which was reading, "flirty". Good twist. Though I also think it's rather suspect that the one guy who does what he did to Kitty also hires Joan. 

 

And I'm not worried for Kitty, just because she is suspended doesn't mean she won't have plain clothes please on her trail. 

 

But yeah Kitty's been an excellent addition to the show. Some shows who introduce new characters end up taking away from existing characters(Sleepy Hollow has done that) but Kitty actually adds new layers to Joan and Sherlock as individuals and as a pair, while also being interesting her own right. That's really hard to do for a show with such an established pairing, so bravo to the writers and all three actors.

 

And yeah the promos stunk. Kitty was mistrustful towards Joan and Joan weary of Kitty not because of jealousy but because Kitty is a mistrustful and guarded person  while Joan is worried about "new elements" in Sherlock's life and what it means for his sobriety. She warmed up to Kitty way before she warmed back up to Sherlock. It's a great female friendship/mentorship we rarely see on TV. There is no trying to one up each other or one feeling threatened by the other but two people who respect and care for each other. 

Edited by XtremeOne1
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Not that it's relevant to them trying to find Kitty's torturer but what has happened to Joan boyfriend?

 

Isn't he still in Sweden or Denmark or whatever country he went to for work? (I've forgotten, which bums me because I think Sherlock made a joke about it that I thought was really funny at the time.)

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Only a completely different note, am I the only person who, after all these years, still sings in my head:

"Albania,

Albania,

You border on the Adriatic..."

 

any time I hear anything about Albania?  

Every.Single.Time.

You are not alone. May Coach live on Iin our hearts forever! I'm still hoping to sample the drink he makes where he puts the entire coconut in the blender.

On a more serious note, I went from being annoyed by Kitty cluttering up my show at the beginning of the season to finding her fascinating now. I thought the scene between her and Sherlock where he was comparing his addiction to her ordeal was great. He was trying to be kind and share his feelings in a long speech, so not natural for him, and she firmly tells him, her mentor, in a few sentences how wrong he is to think he can understand her pain. I felt her terror at the end when she heard his voice. I've never seen the actress who plays Kitty before this show, but she so much better than I originally gave her credit for.

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Did anybody else notice the checkmark symbol on the monitor in Del's office? It was blurred in the background but it looks suspiciously like the brand used on Kitty and the other girl.

 

I did, but I also noticed that Joan's shirt at the beginning was covered with similar marks, which I thought was am odd choice, all things considered.

 

Oh, that reminds me, could anyone please tell me what Kitty's exact words were to Joan? I got: "You said that I could come here if I ever needed [???]. You gave me a key."

 

 

 

Minus your brackets and question marks, I think that's exactly what she said.

Edited by basil
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Not that it's relevant to them trying to find Kitty's torturer but what has happened to Joan boyfriend?

Has he entered the witness protection progrsm? Are we going to see his picture on a milk carton soon?

 

Maybe he's gathered what intelligence he needed in the US and is back in Pakistan.

 

What an intense episode. I'm always affected by rape storylines emotionally, and this was hard to watch at times. Poor Kitty. I agree that Lovibond's been getting better throughout the season, she was very authentic in some of her scenes. And I like how they've tied the Joan's new job plot, which originally seemed kinda throwaway, to the ongoing events.

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But that's what I'm saying. She did have police surveillance, but they all believe they've caught the guy, so they've removed it. And selling everyone on tahe good-looking, successful businessman as the real culprit, will be difficult. If anyone won't go along with it being him, it will be Gregson, which means no police detail.

I'm guessing you mean that Kitty's credibility has been seriously diminished in the eyes of Gregson by her actions that got her suspended. Also, he would have to justify the expense of the protection.
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