Linden and Holder ask Gwen to help them get a federal warrant for the Casino, since everything is so hard for them all the time, and she does help them, by threatening Senator Dad with telling people about that time she didn't get raped or anything. Over at the Casino, Linden pretends she didn't find the keycard, but she totally did! Which causes Chief Nicole to torture Roberta in a physical way -- which was pretty horrible but also kinda great -- and also call a mysterious person to say, "Sarah Linden secretly has your inadmissible keycard!"
Darren's viral video with the poor black youth has him behind by only two points, so Ben Abani sets off to go bother that ex of Jamie's who works at the DA's office. This gives the Mayor ammo for his third mean visit to Darren in as many days, because now he knows the truth: Darren tried to murder himself, crab-style, rather than sleep with Gwen at a B&B. Gwen and Jamie are split as usual as far as what he should do about this latest thing, and as usual Darren abruptly stops caring about this thing he's cared about for two entire seasons and just tells Seattle about how he nearly killed himself, which probably secures him the election, because this is and has always been the dumbest thing to be worried about.
Stan gets a buyer for his house right around the time Mitch finally comes home, so that's a horrible ending to the day. But what happens in the middle is that he gets a visit from Janek and Alexi, who threaten him if he doesn't kill Joseph Nowack -- last seen getting arrested at the waterfront property back in October -- so he tells Terry to start taking money for her prostitution instead of just fine crystal diningware, just in case she has to be their mom now, because he's off to commit murder. ("Remember, Tommy likes torturing animals but does not like getting punched by adults. You'll be fine.") In the end, because Nowack has a baby, he just sends him out of town. Which pisses off Janek just enough that Alexei overhears about how Stan's murder of his dad was Janek's deal all along, and thus the Ogi Jun thing comes full circle and Alexei finally murders Janek.
The Mayor yells about what we presume to be the key-card linking him back to the murder, and offers poor old Carlson a promotion to arrest Linden. They run a red light, and also Linden's phone is easily traceable through science, so once again you have Holder and Linden attempting to be very secretive by barging into people lives and running lights and whatnot. Ultimately Carlson lets them into City Hall without abuse because they are righteous, but then the keycard doesn't work on any of the Mayor's stuff, it just works on the Richmond HQ, so who knows. The funniest thing would be if it turned out Darren Richmond actually did murder Rosie Larsen. How great would that be?
Week: Part One of what they're calling the Two-Part Season Finale.
PREVIOUSLY
Darren Richmond was all worried that a silly little thing like a suicide attempt would upset his constituents more than murdering this one girl everybody keeps talking about. Linden broke through one of an infinite number of psychological barriers in order to produce a keycard, then was freed by her ex-fiancé who is also, somehow, her damned psychiatrist. Gwen was once unraped by the Mayor, which non-event was known to her panderer of a father. Joseph Nowack -- one of Janek's multitudes of identical sleazeballs -- broke into the Mayor's waterfront project to bury desecrated bones (!), and Ames the developer chose not to press charges, which somehow means Carlson is finally fighting on the side of the angels.
THIS MORNING
Linden wakes up in a car to the sound of Mayor Adams's PA van going past, dropping dog whistles -- "Re-elect Mayor Lesley Adams, a name you can trust!" -- but for once she's not living in the car and it's not her car. By the time Holder makes it back with donuts, she is of course gone.
Holder: "Linden, what the hell? Why are you sitting in the rain looking drowned?"
Linden: "I did not feel homeless enough, Former Partner."
Holder: "Hey, eat this donut like a dog ravaging a corpse and then say something crazy."
Linden: "Done."
He sighs, because she hasn't been awake post-loonybin more than ten minutes and she's right back on the whole thing about how Rosie saw the meeting between Ames and Chief Nicole regarding Operation Bonethuggs.
Linden: "I shall require that keycard in this episode, just as in the two episodes ."
Holder: "Maybe you should take a nap or a shower or just lie down or something."
Linden: "Now you have joined the ranks of the enemy."
Holden: "Don't give me that shit. You know I support you being insane. I have your back, crazy-wise."
Linden: "Then do not question me. A Federal warrant. Now."
Holden: "Cool. What other characters are there on this show?"
DAY TWENTY-FOUR
Gwen: "We are only down two points!"
HQ: "Yay!"
Gwen: "No yay."
Jamie: "Hoyay."
This Show: "We don't understand YouTube any more than we understand any other kind of technology. Therefore, if two percent of the people who watched that pathetic video ["Candidate Plays Hoops Shows Spirit!!!," TM and sic] come to the polls, we will win the election. Meaning, one supposes, that the total number of views is equal to the total number of voters in the district, and nowhere else in the world, which is patently illogical."
MAYOR HQ
Richmond: "[Platitudes.]"
Mayor: "This darn video! It warps space and time and mathematics!"
Richmond: "[Platitudes.]"
Ben Abani: "Jamie apparently has an ex-girlfriend at the DA helping him in some way the recapper barely remembers."
Richmond: "[Platitudes.]"
Mayor: "You should have already done horrible things to her."
Ben Abani: "I know, but like this show moves really fast while also moving really slow. It's like when you first get on a treadmill and you're like whoa, whoa."
RICHMOND HQ
Linden: "We require a federal warrant for that casino that keeps trying to kill us."
Gwen: "I have a campaign to run, you weirdos. Why do you keep showing up here?"
Linden: "Because the Mayor has figuratively kissed us all in the kitchen at some point."
Holder: "Because justice."
Gwen: "Well, okay. I will go talk to my dad. I hope he doesn't pimp me out, though."
Linden: "For what it is worth, I hope this also."
LARSEN
Terry: "Halloween can still be fun, even when you're not allowed to trick-or-treat because your Dad keeps asking the Mob to murder all of us."
Denny: "Are you sure about that?"
Tommy: "When I take the throne of this earthly plane, every day will be Halloween."
Otis the Dog: "Every minute I remain alive is a gift from God."
Tommy: "There is no God. I will show you the life of the mind."
Ring-ring.
Terry: "Hello? No, I am not the lady of the house. I am not a lady at all! You can talk to Stan, though."
Stan: "What's that? You said you would buy my house? Which house is that? I have several. They are all secret. You know what's not a secret? My daughter is dead!"
Terry: "I will go replace the paper in the facsimile machine. It might take a while, though, since that means walking all the way back to 2002."
Stan: "Okay. Please don't notice my murder implements surrounding the facsimile machine. Or the pictures of my horribly dead daughter. Those are just for fun pranks. Or for eBay if things get rough financially."
SENATOR PROCURERSEN
Caleb Nichol: "I hope you're here to apologize for that time I taunted you about whoring you out as a child, causing you to leave a high-powered K Street job after about one minute."
SENATOR PROCURERSEN
Caleb Nichol: "I hope you're here to apologize for that time I taunted you about whoring you out as a child, causing you to leave a high-powered K Street job after about one minute."
Gwen: "I am here on a related matter, actually. I need a federal warrant for a crazy homeless person that is not even a cop or anything. If you don't give it to me, I will write a tell-all about this one time a person kissed me."
Charles Widmore: "I don't know if you know this, but like everybody else on this whole planet I am scared to shit of Chief Nicole Jackson. That bitch don't play."
Gwen: "Neither does this one, asshole."
This whole scene is delivered by Gwen in a bizarrely staccato rhythm. Not sure where to place that factoid, but it's super weird.
LINDEN
Jack: "Thanks for calling me back after I called you a million times."
Linden: "Progeny, I was doped up in the vast white space of my own internal static."
Jack: "Okay, bye."
Holder: "Tell him hi!"
Linden: "Whatever. Did you get the federal warrant."
Holder: "Yeah, buddy."
Linden: "For the record, this is what my face looks like when I am legitimately happy."
The Feds! Move out! I am also legitimately happy!
Roberta: "We going to do this again? String you up or commit you, I mean."
Holder: "No! It is going to be much awesomer."
RICHMOND
Gwen & Jamie: "The Youth Vote! Bring them spelt muffins and Birkenstocks because it is 1997 sometimes! Dave Matthews Band also! Kucinich!"
HQ: "We are so good at this!"
Enter the Mayor and his whole face situation he's got going on.
Mayor: "Don't get up. Heh."
Darren: "Good one. That was a good burn, Lesley."
Mayor: "Anyway, I just found out where you were the night I faked you killed that girl, and it is delicious."
Darren: "You are the worst!"
Mayor: "Don't make me kiss you in the kitchen."
Darren: "Then I guess we are playing hardball, Lesley. I will ball you so hard."
Jamie: "...Diiiiid somebody call my name?"
It's a draw, I think. They both have business to do on each other's lives, and they are both kind of right that it will work, I guess, except Darren barely ever does anything wrong -- not even with Jamie and Gwen trying their hardest to be evil and constantly failing to be evil -- while the Mayor can't so much as knock over a flowerpot without it killing civil rights or due process or somebody's dad somewhere.
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Mayor/Richmond: "You better drop out!"
Richmond/Mayor: "No, you better drop out!"
Mayor/Richmond: "You better drop out infinity no takebacks!"
JANEK
Otis the Psychic or Racist Dog: "I smell mean Eastern European guys!"
Janek: "This dog is a metaphor for Joseph Nowack, who connected me to the Mayor and Ames and Operation Red Herringbones and things. We're going to take your dog on a 'walk' and in turn you are going to take our dog on a 'walk.'"
Alexi: "My Ogi Jun tattoo! Is burning! I had better loiter and lurk."
Stan: "Okay but I killed Piotr for you and that kind of means I don't kill people for you anymore."
Alexi: "If only I had known that! Then I wouldn't have done the sum total of nothing that I did to Stan Larsen! How ironic that my tattoo is coming true!"
Janek: "See, but I am not asking you to do this because you are a mobster, I am asking you to do this so that I don't murder Otis and Mitch and Terry and Tommy and Denny."
Stan: "...How about just Tommy? I'm scared of that one. Or even just Terry."
Janek: "Nope, everybody. No deal."
CASINO 10TH FL
Our guys -- and a strangely compassionate FBI hottie that may or may not be one of her many friends but is definitely one of many FBI hotties flooding the room -- make a lot of noise about all the things their warrant covers, including naming by name every single place in the entire casino and then every single camera in the entire casino and then every single elevator and floorboard and whatever, all of them from now back to the dawn of time. (Needless to say, this is Linden mostly doing this.) Nicole and Roberta react in a sullenly polite way to all of this, but they seethe with a Keylela amount of seething.
Linden: "Seethe away, ladies. I will tear up this floor with only my bitten-to-the-quick fingernails and the strength of my convictions, if I have to. But I do not have to. For I am federally mandated."
RICHMOND
HQ: "We hate that old Mayor!"
Darren: "I think we have to drop out of the campaign for personal reasons."
Jamie: "I won't be having that 'personal' bullshit. There is no boundary between where you end and I begin anymore. You are everywhere and nowhere..."
Darren: "Okay, fine. I tried to kill myself that night. It's why I was so wet, and why I couldn't bone Gwen."
Jamie: "Fine, whatever. How do we spin this? I know how we spin this. We say you are on depression medications just like everyone else in your entire generation..."
Gwen: "-- No! This reflects poorly on all of us. Especially me."
Jamie: "I have to go cry now."
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Jamie: "Fine, whatever. How do we spin this? I know how we spin this. We say you are on depression medications just like everyone else in your entire generation..."
Gwen: "-- No! This reflects poorly on all of us. Especially me."
Jamie: "I have to go cry now."
It is very sad! Jamie anger-crying is the saddest. Jamie with the Mean Reds.
Darren: "Gwen, I just want you to know that I wasn't planning on killing myself when I went down to that bridge. Shit just went sideways on me. You see, I took you to that same bed and breakfast where I'd proposed to my dead wife, on the anniversary of it..."
Gwen: "Gross, stop talking. But seriously? Don't apologize. Everybody gets the Mean Reds sometimes. You think I haven't contemplated suicide? Have you missed like half the faces I make?"
Darren: "Wait, depression and grief are normal feelings? They're not this huge deal that I was so paranoid about that the whole first season of this show was basically a wash? Hang on, because I have an idea."
LARSEN
One child is dressed as a ninja, the other as a pirate. God, these people are the fuckin' worst.
Stan: "Yeah, so that was a fun surprise house I was going to buy for Rosie so that she would know what it's like to have a backyard instead of a gross rooftop for all of her dreams."
Terry: "That's so cool! Michael Ames and I were also looking for a house to have together. In my imagination."
Stan: "That's so sad when you say shit like that. Anyway, sell the house or whatever, wait for Mitch who is never coming home and then sell it. But until something else happens, you are the boys' parents, okay?"
Terry: "But I'm just a crazy hooker!"
Stan: "Well, don't get them into prostitution, okay? But yeah, anyway I have to go kill yet more people for no reason at all. I have every reason to think that this murder will set my nonexistent debts straight."
Terry: "Yes. Janek seems nothing if not trustworthy. I'm sure this time will be the time."
Stan: "And you can take them trick-or-treating if you want to. My plan is still pretty hazy but I'm thinking I won't care what happens to them, pretty soon."
Terry: "YOLO. Just like Otis, who lives in the moment."
Tommy: "For the nonce."
CASINO
Nicole, hissing: "So did you find anything?"
CASINO
Nicole, hissing: "So did you find anything?"
Linden: "No. Guess I'm just a crazy person pretending to be a cop."
Nicole: "I would say you wasted my time, except being horrible is my favorite thing. Bye!"
TO THE MAINLAND
Holder: "That sucks that it's all over. This Killing."
Linden: "No. I found this key-card. I did not allow my flat affect to waver as I secreted it on my person. Former Partner, I dissembled."
Holder: "The key-card. That you stole from a federal investigation and is also inadmissible?"
Linden: "Former Partner, I am irrepressible. You know this of me."
She holds it up to the elevator camera like a middle finger, smiling so brightly and beautifully it nearly hurts to look at.
CASINO
Roberta: "Hey, look at this video of Linden finding that City Hall key-card."
Nicole: "Hey, look at this fist of me beating your face in and then slamming your entire body in a doorway over and over until you are a bowl full of jelly that was once a woman."
Was that part amazing? Dear One, it was the amazingest.
Nicole, To A Mysterious Interlocutor: "So Linden found your key-card somehow. I think she literally tore up the floorboards with her teeth."
Mysterious Interlocutor: "Sounds like a case of the Mean Reds."
Nicole: "That is racist."
But who is she talking to? Maybe the person we see -- after Stan swings by Nowack's house -- but also maybe anybody else on this entire show, or a person we have never seen before, or to herself in the future, like Robert Blake in Lost Highway. Never forget the show you are watching.
Mayor: "Argh! I am mad about that! Or maybe something else!"
Carlson: "What can I do for you today, Mayor Lesley?"
Mayor: "It is this darn Sarah Linden!"
Carlson: "Please leave me alone about her. She gives me the agita. I dream of those dignified, whirling loonybird eyeballs all night and much of the day. Seeking, always seeking. Seeing more than mortals ken. The stories dust tells. The skull beneath the skin. Her x-ray eyes dominate, illuminate, irradiate, immolate. One glance and you are undone, down to the sticks and lights and moss of you."
Mayor: "What if I made you Deputy Commissioner?"
Carlson: "Okay, now you're talking. But I fired her, and chased her all around, and the Indians put her in Crazy Jail, and she lives in her car. What the fuck else do you want me to do to her?"
Ben Abani: "Arrest her for pretending to be a police officer?"
Carlson: "That's... Totally valid, actually. She's been doing that as long as this show has been on the air."
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CHASES
Stan follows Nowack in his Volvo to a place. He is a big guy, but then so is Stan. Out comes a giant shiny gun, and Stan -- I'd imagine -- is like, "Wait, what am I even doing. I need a recap of this recap."
Meanwhile, Sarah has noted a tail car, and after a few turns decides to alert Stephen to this fact. They play with his police scanner for awhile until they find the radio telling the story of what is happening to them as it is happening to them. What will they do? Run a red light, obviously, causing a thirty-car pileup, and grinning the whole time, and flee directly to City Hall. Does it work or help in any way? No, huh uh, because the cops are tracing Sarah's phone all of a sudden. Carlson runs to intercept them...
As Stan is taking advantage of Nowack's poor-people car problems to sneak up with a gun. He hesitates because there's a baby in the backseat, but in the end he just smashes Nowack's head around and tells him that Janek's onto him and that he needs to leave Seattle immediately. It is a friendly message, delivered in decidedly unfriendly fashion...
Just as Alexi is, for his part, taking Janek himself off the board. Janek feels the gun against his head and starts apologizing to Stan, but of course it is not Stan holding the gun. It's Alexi holding the gun; it's Ogi Jun that pulls the trigger.
RALLY/CITY HALL
Darren: "One more day! Can you believe it's not raining in Seattle? Hold for laughter. You guys, we are about to take Mayor Adams out at the knees, so thanks for standing with me."
Carlson: "You guys, this is getting ridiculous. I'm reduced to literally blocking your way into City Hall with my own personal body."
Holder: "How can one guy so cute be so useless? Listen, you've got so many units on us that I hope an old lady gets robbed and you look foolish. That would serve you. Although admittedly not the old lady."
Carlson: "I still think I'm doing the right thing, though. And I am tired of your drama, missy."
Holder & Linden: "Think about the election and how Adams is all about horrible Chief Nicole, while Richmond keeps helping us fight her. Think about how Richmond, should he win -- and he honestly should, he is a pretty great guy -- and how the first thing he's going to do is get rid of Adams's buttmonkeys. Are you a buttmonkey?"
Carlson: "Maybe not, but that doesn't make Sarah Linden any less crazy."
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Carlson: "Maybe not, but that doesn't make Sarah Linden any less crazy."
Linden: "Here is a key-card I have found."
Carlson: "Oh, why didn't you say so? Go right ahead."
RALLY
Darren: "Here are my platitudes! Sup upon them!"
Rally: "Yay!"
Darren: "Just kidding, I'm going to lose. And here's why. You know how I didn't kill Rosie Larsen?"
Rally: "We are still not 100% on that!"
Darren: "Okay, well the reason is that my alibi was that I tried to feed myself to the crabs."
Rally: "Okay, we're listening!"
Jamie: "Gwen, this is going south fast."
Gwen: "It's his choice, Jamie! Don't take that away. Don't metaphorically kiss him in the kitchen."
Darren: "So then I creepily crept down to the bridge where ten years I proposed marriage to my wife, and looked down into the dark waters, and -- I was shitfaced, obviously, at this point in the story -- I allowed bitterness and pain to overcome me, and I jumped."
Rally: "Holy shit!"
Darren: "You know that uncle of my boyfriend I talk about every week?"
Rally: "Yes, we love that story! It makes us ignore what you are actually saying! We just see flags waving and like fireworks when you say that story!"
Darren: "Then have at it."
Rally: "Wait, so what are you saying! Clarify your remarks!"
Darren: "Aren't we all just inches from suicide, really, all the time? Somebody's always killing your daughter or your wife or your biological father, or leaving you for motel rendezvouses with sickening runaways, or jamming forks in your leg, or slamming your fingers in a door, or locking you in the mental institution, or slapping your kids with an open hand, or tempting your children into prostitution and/or maid service, or threatening your dog, or going on shooting sprees, or falsifying photographs of you crossing a bridge, or making dumb videos about butterflies, or crucifying you to savage gods, or gang-raping witches on your camera phone, or going on endlessly about waterfront projects? Isn't living in Seattle the fucking worst?"
Rally: "Yes! That is always happening to us! We hate it here!"
Darren: "So are we going to commit suicide tonight?"
Rally: "YES!"
Darren: "NO!"
Rally: "I mean NO!"
Darren: "Vote Richmond!"
Darren: "So are we going to commit suicide tonight?"
Rally: "YES!"
Darren: "NO!"
Rally: "I mean NO!"
Darren: "Vote Richmond!"
Rally: "Okay I guess!"
BUT UH OH BECAUSE MEANWHILE
Linden tries the key-card at the Mayor's Office, and guess what? No dice. Red light. She tries it again, no dice. Red light. She sadly stares at Holder for a second, and then -- just as Stan drives by his endangered family, back to the house where Mitch is sitting, finally home; as Richmond rolls away through a once more loving crowd -- wanders over to the offices of a City Councilmember that, tonight, sit empty. Green light: And we're left with Gwen and Jamie, both of 'em looking scary as hell.
WEEK
Part One of the Two-Night Season Finale -- in which, AMC keeps assuring us with the hysterical tenor of a guy who knows you're about to break up with him unless he does something major, Rosie Larsen's killer will totally no-fooling absolutely be revealed -- involves Carlson, infinite keycards and nervous aides, that photo that pissed everybody off so bad last year around this time, strange alliances, Jamie being super shady or Gwen being super shady or both, and paranoia for absolutely everyone. Everyone!
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Pretty Little Liars and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion and Fringe Science.
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