Cut to the n*de dudes
Most likely the problem was representation: the show -- about genius cleaning lady Megan (Kaitlin Olson), a "flashy girl from Flushing" hired to help the staid, stick-in-the-mud cops solve murders -- was skittish about identifying gay characters, with only "no expressed heterosexual interest" to go on.
So I'm trying another, Episode 1.13, "Let's Play." It has an open, out gay character -- an interior decorator, yet -- played by Broadway actor Adam Kantor, who is queer in real life, bulged on the cover of Next, and showed us his backside, although I can't find a c ock.
Scene 1: Obligatory "home life" scene, with Megan's ex-husband (Taran Killan) teaching her daughter to drive. She almost runs over the whole family. Don't you take driver's ed in high school?
Cut to the police station, where Megan is asking the homicide detectives to pull over her daughter, because when she was a teenager, she got in a lot of trouble while driving, har har.
In other news, everyone is required to attend the big, important Police Gala, so the higher-ups can see that they're all team players.
Time for the case of the week: They got an email saying "Spencer Wallace wouldn't play with me, will you?" And a photo of the scared, tied-up Spencer. "Two hours to make your move."
They look up Spencer: 37 years old, unmarried. Gay. Interior designer. Gay stereotype.
The cops insist that it's just a joke or a weirdo bondage scene that got out of hand, but Megan thinks that they should at least contact Spencer to see if he's ok.
Scene 2: Spencer's apartment. It's daytime. Wouldn't he be at work? They find a black box with a jigsaw puzzle and a note: "Let's play."
Back at the station, Megan completes the puzzle in a few seconds (she's got all types of intelligence, apparently). It's a map of Mulholland Trail, with a piece missing. That's where they have to go for the next clue.
Scene 3: Megan and Detective Karadec hike to the spot, and find a lot of Loco Ocho (Crazy Eights) cards hanging from a tree, with a note: "Pick a card, and then you'll go down a path and through the shade, before dear Spencer starts to fade." The cops at the station call to reveal that Spencer is diabetic, and needs insulin by the end of the two hours, or he'll die.
Megan and Detective Karadec play the Loco Ocho game. The last card is two, so they have to take the second path. Wait -- wouldn't that vary, depending on the starting card?
They find a hopscotch game with numbers. Megan plays and adds them up to -10 and 240, the coordinates they have to check with the viewers: it looks directly down onto Valley Days Storage. Spencer is in a storage locker! This is ridiculous. Who would set up a series of games like this? There's one chance in a thousand that the cops will figure it out.
Scene 4: The cops banging on storage locker doors and yelling for Spencer. Then they get the bright idea of asking the manager: Spencer rents Unit L-4. Yep, he's in there. And they brought insulin from his apartment to administer. He'll be fine. Wait -- we're done? That was a short episode.
Scene 5: In the hospital, Spencer tells the cops that he doesn't know who kidnapped him. They grabbed him, took him to a dark room, and tried to get him to play board games, but he was too scared. Then they got frustrated and started the game with the cops. Description: wearing a white anime mask, rosy cheeks, big eyes.
Megan: "Why was your storage locker empty?"
Spencer: "I rented it with James. He was my partner for nine years. He died in an auto accident four years ago" Gay identity established at Minute 8, except for the interior designer stereotype. They were going to fill the storage locker with their stuff while they traveled to Europe, and now he can't bring himself to get rid of it.
With that revelation, Stuart leaves the show. But we still have two victims left.
Scene 6: At the station, the cops figure that Spencer was a random victim; the Kidnapper was actually targeting them. So who has a grudge against the LAPD?
Megan isn't so sure. The Kidnapper wanted to play kids' games with Spencer. Maybe a childhood friend, or someone who wanted to be a friend and was rejected?
Cut to evening, with Megan picking up the to-go dinner orders for her family. But a guy has already paid for them: Domeneck Lombardozzi (left) playing the gruff, abrasive private detective who is looking for Megan's missing husband. More of that ongoing plot arc, then some home stuff, and an invitation to the Police Gala from a cute guy.
Scene 7: Detective Oz (Deniz Akdeniz) comes in early to stare at the suspect board. They have a lead at the Marina Park Hotel, coincidentally where the Police Gala will be held: a carriage full of scary dolls, and "The fun has just begun" written in Scrabble letters.
At the station, Detective Oz, reveals his connection to the case: He lost his Dad last year, so he's been going to a grief group. He doesn't go all the time, so he didn't recognize Spencer at first, but he's a member, too. And he told them all the story of the empty storage locker. Somebody in that group is the Kidnapper!
Scene 8: Detectives Oz and Daphne go to the grief group and interview the members.
I predict that the Kidnapper will be group leader Chris, played by Maurice Hall (the one with the bulge, not the chest).
Back to the grief group: one woman says that she had a crush on Spencer, before "I realized I was not his type." Just say gay.
In other news, Group Leader Chris is worried because member Sierra, an ASL interpreter, never misses a meeting, usually comes early, and she's not there.
The group member suggest David as a lead. He hasn't been there for several months, but he used to be a regular. His family played board games all the time, until his sister died, and then they stopped. He was more and more upset about it every week.
Megan is skeptical: dude tries to reclaim his childhood innocence by forcing Spencer to play board games? Doesn't make sense.
Well, just before he left the group, he invited everyone to trivia night at a bar. No one showed up. Well, they're grief-stricken. What did he expect? So maybe he's hurt, and forcing them to play?
Megan is still skeptical: why would he force the police into the games?
More after the break
Scene 9: They visit the apartment of Sierra, the ASL interpreter who didn't come to the meeting. Megan notices that the bookcase is out of place. Move it, and a message: "You can't tell in the dark." Deaf people can't talk in the dark!
Back to the creepy dolls. Each is signing a letter in ASL. Interpreted, they say Pico X-1. Come on, no one could figure that out.
Detective Daphne remembers that there's an abandoned art gallery on Pico and First. Um...Pico and 1st do not intersect, either in downtown Los Angeles or Santa Monica. And how
Scene 10: Inside the art gallery. Sierra is locked in a safe, she's running out of oxygen, and the SWAT team won't be there for 45 minutes. So, call a locksmith?
Megan figures out that a painting of a pig's knuckle reveals the next game: jacks, called "knuckebones" You play with one ball. In Chin, they used 10 bones, in South Asia, five stones, and in Japan seven beanbags. How on Earth could the Kidnapper expect anyone to know the order of invention?
But that's the combination: 1-10-5-7. They release Sierra.
Scene 11: Back at the station, the Boss has assigned an officer to guard each member of the grief group, but the detectives have to go to the Police Gala tonight.
Cut to some home-and-family stuff.
Night: Ronnie (Jocko Sims), Detective Karadec's date to the Police Gala, arrives and complements his apartment. Karadec is gay? I thought he had a "will they or won't they" thing with Megan. Psych! They're former police partners who continue to snipe at each other. He just stopped by with intel about Megan's missing husband.
Scene 12: The Gala. A lot of people clicking glasses. I thought I saw a same-sex couple, but the dancing is all boy-girl. The Detectives discuss the case, and wonder where Detective Oz is.
We see him getting into his car. The airbag deploys, and he's knocked out. A person in a white anime mask looms over him.
Meanwhile, Detective Karadec gawks in absurdly effusive hetero-horny longing at the entering Megan. Well, she is wearing pink, while everyone else is wearing muted grays and blues.
She agrees to a dance, but then her date arrives, so Karadec is out of luck. Until the next episode. "Will they or won't they?"
Left: I think her date is played by JD Pardo.
Scene 13: Oz still isn't at the Gala, and he's not answering his phone. Try texting him. Or is the intended audience of people who still watch network tv unfamiliar with texting?
He lives nearby; his friend Detective Daphne goes to check on him. In his open car, she finds a necktie, an hourglass, and the word "Marco!"
At the station, Megan cogitates. Marco! Polo! is a kids' game played in a swimming pool. Oz's tie is made of silk; Marco Polo traveled the Silk Road to China. And all of the notes are written in a different font! Look up the fonts, and their first letters spell Rhoka, the name of a famous architect. Wait -- what about the silk necktie?
Now look up the houses Rhoka has designed, with pools, in the area. Just one, in Encino.
Cut to the pool, with Detective Oz trapped in a wetsuit, chained to concrete bricks. So the Kidnapper knows that the house was designed by Rhoka, wrote notes in fonts that spell out his name, and...oy vey.
They rush to the house, and Detective Karasec jumps in and releases Oz, but Detective Daphne is the one who performs mouth-to-mouth, darn it.
Cut to Oz sitting in the back of the ambulance. It's morning. But it couldn't have been later than 9 pm when they left the party. He talks about his grief over the loss of his Dad some more.
Scene 15: The house belongs to a straight couple who are on vacation in the Virgin Islands. They have an estranged son, David Peck, age 38, whose twin sister died when he was ten. Probably the one at the grief group.
But David has been in lockdown in a rehab facility for four months. He can't be the Kidnapper.
Left: Although he appears only in a photograph, the actor gets a credit: David Giuntoli, Nick on Grimm and Eddie on A Million Little Things
Cut to Megan and her kids shopping. Her son appreciates the thought of the video game, but he's too old for it. Wait -- she didn't put a video game in their shopping basket. And it has a note: "You're the one, Megan. We shall play again."
Ulp. the real culprit is: someone from Megan's past, probably someone mentioned in the scenes I skipped over. The end.
Beefcake: Some cute cops.
Heterosexism: Maybe a little in Karadec's apparently unrequited interest in Megan. Will they or won't they?
Gay Tease: Ronnie at the door.
Gay Character: Stuart, but he vanishes after Scene 5, and they never say "gay." I guess the network censors are queasy about the word. At least his relationship was normalized.
Plot Holes: The clues really stretched my suspension of disbelief. No one, not even a super-genius, could figure out all that. I liked how David turned out to be a red herring, but it's sort of cheating that Megan didn't figure it out.
My Grade: C.
Bonus: If you google "Maurice Hall" and "n ude," you get James Wilby as Maurice Hall in Maurice (1987), the adaption of the E.M. Forster novel about gay love in Edwardian England
See also: Ghosts, Episode 3.10: A gay wedding, a gay stripper, a vengeful Puritan and a naked Viking. Deniz Akdeniz, Oz, plays the stripper.
High Potential, Episode 1.11: The cleaning lady figures out whodunit in a rich family with gay sons
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia": Mac gets fat, Charlie refuses sex, and Michael O'Hearn flexes. With Kaitlin Olson.
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