In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
After a widely disliked man has his throat slit at a charity auction, Molly Parker and the Texas Rangers suspect the work of a hitman. Using her much-lauded powers of deduction, Molly becomes suspicious of the wife, Nan, who was forced to have plastic surgery on her husband's whim. As the episode's mystery develops, Molly makes time to have sex and connect with Dan, whose terrible wig-like hair defies reason.
In an effort to pinpoint the money trail, Molly spots an imitation Comanche vase at Nan's house. She makes a visit to the interior decorator, Jennifer Jennings, to inquire about its authenticity. Molly learns that the real vase was sold at an auction for approximately the amount one would need to hire a professional assassin. She follows Nan to a park, where an amateurish money drop is made. Molly pursues the guy who picked up the bag of cash, but he's shot dead right in the back before she can apprehend him. This leads us all to wonder is it the worst idea to go digging through public park garbage cans to see if there's bundles of cash in any of those bags?
After Bag Guy gets shot in the back and Nan is caught in photographs making the drop, there's no hiding the deal. Nan confesses to being approached by Bag Guy with an offer to make her husband disappear whenever she's decided she's had enough. One day, Mr. Reed threw away his wife's Girl Scout cookies, which is totally a punishable offense, and she snapped. Again, it never hurts to go through the garbage in a wealthy Texas neighborhood. Apparently the only things in there are Thin Mints and bags of cash.
Molly heads to the obnoxiously named coffee shop (and middle-aged singles club?) The Texas Grind, where Nan met Bag Guy to pull the trigger on her husband's murder. Molly learns from an obnoxious featured extra that Bag Guy's multiple clients were all middle-aged and desperate women. He offers the number of one of them, whose husband died mysteriously in some kind of heart attack/boat accident combo.
Molly questions the second known client of Bag Guy, who is airheaded and cagey, but that doesn't matter because A) Molly is going to comb the river for this bitch's late husband's body and B) she finds out all the women have the same interior decorator: Jennifer Jennings.
Molly's confrontation of Jennifer Jennings goes absolutely nowhere, each of them getting off on being a frosty bitch to the other. The entire episode, Molly has been telling Jake to "sign the damn divorce papers" and he has refused. The night after a disappointing time in court, Molly gets a text from Jake saying he decided to sign the papers. She realizes as she calls Jake on the way over that he didn't send the text, but she's almost too late as Jennifer Jennings has already picked up a lot of complex information about everyone's lives and is ready to frame Molly for Jake's murder.
Molly stops Jennifer with a good old-fashioned girl fight in Jake's house and even after that, Jake still won't sign the damn papers. You win some, you still don't get the divorce papers signed, am I right?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!If you missed the first episode, all you need to know is that Molly Parker is a lady Texas Ranger and not an American Girl doll like we all thought. Also, she's doing it with this guy Dan from the DEA. And what do people do when they're doing it? They shower in their giant, Texas-sized showers together and shave each other's faces and make out before the shaving cream is rinsed off and get so wrapped up in it that they wear their watches in the shower. Yes, both of them are wearing watches, which prompts Molly to realize that they're running late, not that they wore their watches in the shower. God, love makes us do crazy things.
So they towel off and zip each other up, then head to another charity auction. They are so caught up in each other, dancing at this charity auction, that they fail to see the switchblade out in the middle of the dance floor. I'm caught up in this, too. Was Dan's hair always so fucking awful or did they decide he didn't look enough like a gross Jeremy Renner after the first episode? The dancing is interrupted by Jake, Molly's senator soon-to-be-ex-husband. He's there to donate to charity, one would assume, and to tell Molly he'll see her in court.
Jake makes a quick exit, and there is a scream as a man clutches his bloody throat and drops to the dance floor. A waiter is seen running out, and Dan and Molly pursue. But the waiter has run into the Twilight Zone, or some room where like, over 100 waiters are just milling around, holding trays. You know, that room that all banquet halls have? It's set up just like the castle in Neverending Story 2? Anyway, that's where they lost him … or was it her?! (It was a her. This show is called Killer Women.)
Molly quickly discovers that the ad for waiter decoys went out on Craigslist, and, interesting but unrelated detail, the waiters had to supply their own uniforms and trays. What kind of gig is that where you have to bring your own tray? A flash mob gone wrong. Molly's boss relates a story about a college kid who robbed a bank and disappeared into a flash mob of sanitation workers. The moral of this episode? People will do anything to participate in a "flash mob."
We've got another know-it-all male lieutenant on the scene, who doesn't mind the Rangers helping out since they were there on the scene. The dead guy (I guess he bled out, in the end), owns some crappy water parks. Witnesses saw "a waiter" but no one can tell the gender. They don't know this show is about Killer Women. Dan finds a fancy switchblade and probably does some medical examiner work on the side because he was quickly able to diagnose the cause of death and how precise the knife work was. I hate Dan and his stupid charity auction hair.
The victim's wife is to be questioned , who was at home that night recovering from "elective surgery." The wife, it turns out, is played by Melora Hardin, who can only get cast as characters who haven't gotten boob jobs like, 50% of the time. Molly questions her, looking amazing in a big cowboy hat. The wife, whose name may as well be Jan from The Office, acts as though she regrets having the implants and wanted to be by her husband's side. She can't think of any enemies her husband might have. Her name isn't Jan, it's Nan. Jesus.
The other person of interest is Reed's ex-business partner who went broke after they split up the water park business. The bad news is that the state legislature investigated and Jake led the investigation. Molly's boss assigns her to it even though they're getting divorced in three days. Maybe it would go differently if he knew Jake beat Molly, but maybe not. Oh man, I hope the final killer woman of this series is Molly when she kills Jake, and Dan while she's at it.
Molly walks in to some Gentlemen's Club lounge, looking like some Yeehaw Texas Barbie. She's wearing bootcut jeans, a studded leather belt, a studded leather gun holster, a white button up under a leather vest, and a ten gallon hat. Jake's reaction of "wow" is apt. She looks preposterous. Jake tells her she has a nasty way about her and Molly keeps being like, "we're gettin' divorced in three days."
Jake tells Molly that Reed, the guy who was murdered at the party (which Jake is shockingly unaffected by, having been in the same room), was a bad man and a bully. The business deal was to split the water parks half and half at six parks each. Reed went under investigation because he was trying to bribe the water commission during a drought. This is currently somewhere between a math workbook story problem and a murder mystery dinner theater. Reed's parks got water and his partner's parks didn't. Water parks don't work without water, not in Texas.
The step is to find the business partner, who is of course a water-park-owning nutcase pretending to ride a bull in celebration atop a water slide. He pees into the slide, then slides down in his own pee, bottle of cheap champagne in hand. He is my favorite character.
Denby, the partner, says sweet justice was served. He is not sad at all that Reed died and I'd definitely trust a man rocking that mustache and pee-soaked Hawaiian shirt combo. Denby tells them that even Reed's wife, who is "stitched up like Frankenstein," might have wanted to kill him. The surgeries were not her election, but Reed's. Basically the man is a complete shithead.
Molly thinks Mrs. Reed (Nan) is worth a second look. Why? Here come those classic Molly Parker intuitions and keen powers of observation. Mrs. Reed wasn't wearing her wedding ring, and asked to be called Nan instead of Mrs. Reed. She also asked for the details of how he died. Basically, Molly relates to this killer woman also, because women can't leave abusive relationships if they blame themselves. Show me a woman Molly Parker can't empathize with into a confession and I'll show you this show's cancellation paperwork.
To humanize Molly, we see her interacting with her brother and nieces. The little glasses one is still precocious and the teenager is still a typical teenager we know nothing else about. Molly catches her sister-in-law very obviously sniffing her husband's clothes. It doesn't take a Texas Ranger to figure out that she's suspicious of an affair. We already know Molly is observant and a human lie detector, but now we know that her brother's wife is a bad actor.
At Reed's funeral, Molly observes pictures of Nan all tarted up on his arm. Nan asks if any arrests have been made, and insists that the middle of the memorial is as good a time as any to talk. Molly confronts Nan about what Kirk Denby said about her relationship with her husband and Nan turns it back on Denby. But Denby can barely afford a Hawaiian shirt that isn't soaked in urine, let alone a professional assassin. Molly would also be a great sales associate at Victoria's Secret because she noticed that Nan's cup size changed from the photos to now. She had the implants removed the day her husband was murdered. All signs point to Jan-Nan being this week's killer woman.
Under the big Texas night sky, Molly and Dan fix up an old plane together as Molly shares her theories about Nan being the murderer. Molly just can't figure out where the money came from, so she's hoping to find the money and follow it to the hitman (OR WOMAN). Dan's hair is still awful, even under that hat, and Molly rides away on a motorcycle.
The day, Molly is back at the Reed residence. It looks like Nan is moving, with all her stuff packed in boxes. Molly uses her Dr. Lightman (two seasons of Lie to Me) training to read Nan's body language and get her to confess to lying about loving her husband. Molly Parker has real talk for days. She observes the Reed collection of Native American artifacts and gets the name of the interior designer, Jennifer Jennings.
Molly visits Jennifer Jennings to ask about one of the vases in the Reed house. Molly drove all this way to tell the interior designer that this vase is a fake. Sometimes I don't know whether we're watching a new show, or a rerun of Monk. Using her powers of observation and knowledge of Comanche pottery, Molly is able to determine that the one currently in the Reed home is fake. Jennings insists it's real and she bought it from a dealer in Dallas for $35,000, which is almost exactly the going rate of professional assassins in Texas. Jennings pulls the paperwork and certificate of authenticity. We've got ourselves a money trail.
The real vase, it turns out, was sold by an anonymous seller at an auction weeks ago for $31,000. Molly wants to tap Nan's phone but her boss says she doesn't have probable cause. Uh, I don't know if he's seen this show or not but Molly Parker doesn't exactly play by the rules. Molly promises to get them both and her boss is like, "after you get me a slice of pie!" which I guess could be permission?
Molly tails Nan and takes pictures of her making a very obvious money drop in a garbage can. Only moments later into this Outback Stakeout, a man picks up the bag. Molly goes to apprehend him but the man is shot from elsewhere in the park. Poor guy, how could he resist such an obvious money drop?
So Molly didn't get the hitman, but she has Nan in an interrogation room. Nan tries to maintain her innocent housewife story but Molly is too goddamn observant and able to detect lies. Sure enough, she gets a confession from Mrs. Reed. She says she didn't decide to hire a hitman, but "the devil" found her and told her he could put an end to all her suffering. He knew lots of details about her life and abuse and $30,000 is all it would take to answer her prayers. So, one day she snapped at pulled the trigger on the hit because her husband threw away her girl scout cookies. I'm telling you, those things are dangerous.
After searching the dead man's wallet, the police came across a frequent customer card at The Texas Grind, the coffee shop Nan spoke of. It's stamped nine times, so either this guy just really likes the relaxing atmosphere of a local coffee shop, or he has other clients. Or … both.
Molly shows a picture of the bag man to a barista. A sexist barista. The sexist barista (barrister?) says all the middle-aged women this man met with looked the same to him: defeated and desperate. Everyone in Texas is very detail-oriented. He remembers one of the clients, who had bigger boobs than Nan. He offers this woman's number, which is on a post-it on the wall of the fucking coffee shop, to Molly saying something about how he's taken until something better comes along. I can't even get into the logistics of getting one's phone number onto a post-it note on a support beam in a coffee shop because I'm still mad about the watches in the shower.
Molly visits the home of Mrs. Bigger Tits, whose name is actually Maggie Tanner. She is in the backyard of her giant house with her new husband/yoga teacher? Maggie says her husband was old and rich. His heart stopped, she guesses, while he was on his fishing boat, and they never found the body. Weird! Oh well! She claims not to know the deceased bag man and while she's not good with the names of men, she does remember the name of her house's interior designer: Jennifer Jennings.
Call me Molly Parker because I saw this one coming from a mile away. Molly meets with Jennifer Jennings, who is wearing an exquisite ivory suit. Turns out her husband was murdered long ago, "mugged in an alley and stabbed in the heart with a hunting knife." He was murdered in the alley outside the hotel where he was sleeping with other women. God, Jennifer Jennings is such an ice queen, I wish she would get together with Kirk Denby, who I'm afraid we'll never see again.
Molly and Jennifer talk really hard and icily at each other for a long time, hedging around the whole murder for hire thing. Finally, Molly lists off all the dead shithead husbands and Jennifer coolly raises her eyebrows. The other guys died through seeming accidents: heart attack on a boat, mugging, seizure, etc. So where Jennifer fucked up is with the public throat slashing. Furthermore, the way she reacts to these accusations doesn't exactly absolve her.
"Women talk to their decorators!" Molly drawls at Dan over a Texas-sized glass of wine. Dan is like, "tell me about your backstory," and Molly refuses, probably because his hair is so reprehensible. I don't have the energy or enthusiasm for this time-suck of a scene. Bottom line: they do it.
The day, Molly shows up in court for her divorce. The judge is a friend of Jake's, because Jake is a senator. Jake is there to contest the divorce, not sign the papers. Evidently Molly's episode one threat to tell everyone that Jake beat her didn't stick. The judge is like, "it takes two to be irreconcilable," and "it ain't over ‘til I say it's over." He puts the petition on hold until Jake and Molly can go to a marriage counselor.
Molly confronts Jake outside of the courthouse and he tells her their marriage is worth fighting for. He says if she really wanted out, she would have already told the world "what you think happened." Molly walks away, scorned. She should probably hire Jennifer at this point, although she's really lost her touch for subtlety.
While Molly decompresses at her brother's house, it seems like there's trouble in their marriage and he's probably cheating on his wife. Fuckin' Glasses rolls in like, "why don't you want to swim, daddy?" and she's already wearing her goddamn goggles like they're prescription or some shit. It's a bit much. Can you blame Daddy for wanting to escape his cumbersome and mundane life?
Molly gets a text from Jake that he signed the divorce papers so she heads toward him, making a frantic phone call from her SUV. Jake says of course he didn't sign the divorce papers, very aware that he's the bad guy of this series. Then who sent the text? Molly figures it out quickly because she's a woman and tells Jake to get out of there just as he looks up to see the business end of a shotgun Jennifer Jennings is holding. She smashes him in the face, looking like Emily on Revenge.
It turns out Molly Parker is not the only super-observant woman in this town. Jennifer could tell that Molly hates Jake, so she took the liberty of offering this service a la carte. Jennifer sexy-talks at Jake, who she has tied up in a chair. She loads the shotgun, revealing her very clear and concise plan to frame Molly for Jake's murder. She says the episode's titular line, "some men just need killing," and Molly busts in the door for the big final action sequence. Girl fight! It ends in a busted skylight and a disappointing arrest. Molly has Jake cornered again, asking him to sign the damn papers. He refuses. Molly calls Dan for some post-action sequence plane flying and sex. And maybe love? No, not with that hair.