Episode Report Card 62 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Welcome to Detroit! Try Not to Die.
By Tippi Blevins | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 08.11.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Crooked cop Brendan McCann has his fingers deep in the Detroit drug scene when his partner, Joe Geddes, decides he's had enough. He enlists the aid of fellow homicide detective Frank Agnew, telling him that McCann has killed his girlfriend. Heartbroken and seeking revenge, Frank helps Joe drown McCann and stage the scene to look like a suicide.
The next day, they show up for work and try not to act completely guilty. They're not entirely successful, what with Joe dropping blatant hints that McCann was suicidal before anybody even knows he's dead. Joe is also fond of making dramatic speeches that sound like he's stepping up to the mic at Amateur Beat Poet Night, but maybe he's like that all the time so nobody thinks anything of it. Further complicating matters, someone from Internal Affairs shows up to investigate McCann. The suspicious timing leads Frank to think that Joe knowingly killed McCann ahead of the investigation, in order to cover up his own dirty tracks.
Meanwhile, McCann misses his rendezvous with two low-level thugs at a drug bust. The thugs decide to take care of the bust themselves, and abscond with all the cocaine that McCann was just supposed to share with them. This puts the thugs in the cross hairs of a mobster known as the Old Man, who seems to be in charge of the whole operation of which McCann was only a part.
It's not long before McCann's body is found. While the whole department stands around wondering what happened, Frank occasionally forgets he's trying to look innocent. This draws suspicious looks from fellow detective Dani Khalil, who will probably eventually blow the whole thing wide open. When another body is found with McCann's, Frank expects it to be that of his girlfriend, Katia. It's just some random dude, though, further leading Frank to believe Joe lied to him. Everyone scowls and broods and struggles under the weight of their own despair and corruption. Good times all around! Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A man sits in a shadowy room, staring at nothing in particular, looking so sad that we might wonder if he could well be the unlikely lovechild of Brad Garrett and Eeyore. Jangly, edgy music plays as Eeyore Jr. contemplates the dark hopelessness of existence. Candles burn behind him, as if in a cathedral. A single tear falls from his left eye, gleaming in the faint light. He seems to steel himself, looks right at us, and then rises to his feet. As he leaves his flame-dotted sanctuary, it becomes apparent that he's actually in a restaurant, which, depending on the menu, may be just as worthy a place of worship.
He pushes through a door and into the kitchen, where Morgan Jones from The Walking Dead is waiting for him. Morgan takes a swig of liquor straight from the bottle. Eeyore Jr. does the same with beer. "Are you drunk enough?" Morgan asks. To kill zombies? "I don't think so," says Eeyore Jr., so Morgan hands him his liquor bottle. "Don't get so lit you can't do what needs doin'," Morgan warns him. Whatever they're about to do, Eeyore Jr. isn't quite sure he's up to it. Morgan has to talk him into it, reminding him that whoever's about to be on the receiving end of their doin' is a real bad man. Eeyore Jr. is still not sure, though. "There are lines..." he starts to say. Morgan gets right up in his face, looks up at him with pleading eyes. Are they getting drunk for a round of Gay Chicken? If so, I think Morgan is winning so far. "Folks talk about morality like its black and white," he says. "Or maybe they think they're smarter or they're at a cocktail party, they're actin' all pretentious and then they say it's gray." He oonches up even closer to Eeyore Jr., who's going to start getting drunk off his breath in a minute. "It's a damn strobe," Morgan says, getting on with his morality lesson. "Flashing back and forth and back and forth all the time. So all we can do is try to make it across the dance floor without trippin' over our own damn shoes, wonderin' why grown-ass people are wearin' pacifiers around their necks!"
He totally said the thing about the strobe lights flashing, but it was so evocative that I got lost for a little while after that. My attention, it was flashing back and forth!
"She's really gone?" Eeyore Jr. asks. "Don't keep doing that to yourself," Morgan says. But Eeyore Jr. needs the exposition to get himself ready for whatever it is they're about to do, so Morgan obliges him. He tells him about this big brute of a man named Brendan, charging through a house with beaded curtains in the doorways, because these seedy little places always have beaded curtains in the doorways. Brendan attacks a blond woman in her bed, pulling a gun on her. Morgan tries to stop him, but Brendan backhands him. "He really cut off her head?" Eeyore Jr. asks. "Her hands and feet?" Morgan's not actually 100% sure about that, having only heard it from Brendan after the fact, but he knows there was a lot of blood. Eeyore Jr. is almost convinced, but... "But what if I can't?" he asks. "Well, you tell me, Frank," Morgan says to Eeyore Jr. "Because you already had a second chance and he killed that." That seems to be the final push to get Frank/Eeyore Jr. on board. Morgan turns his attention a tank full of live lobsters. "Not that," Frank says. "Salt water. We can't have that showing up." Morgan is pissed because he spent a lot of time training those lobster assassins and now they're not even going to use them.