Episode Report Card Lady Lola: B- | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Killing Time
By Lady Lola | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 04.03.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Meet Rosie Larsen. She's a 17-year-old high school senior who has a few secrets hidden up the sleeve of her pink sweater. And she's dead. When the aforementioned sweater turns up in a seedy park near Seattle, Rosie becomes a roablock for Sarah Linden's exodus from the Emerald City. Sarah was mere hours away from quitting her dreary job as a homicide detective and moving to gorgeous, sunny Sonoma with her son and fiancé. Then Rosie came along and screwed that plan up. So now Sarah's stuck in Seattle with Stephen Holder, her cocky, uncouth replacement. Sarah spends the episode looking for Rosie or her corpse -- whichever comes first -- and questioning Rosie's parents, teachers, and friends along the way. Rosie's blue-collar parents went on a camping trip the weekend before and thought Rosie was with her friend Sterling. For her part, Sterling cracks like a fresh egg during questioning and admits that she hadn't seen Rosie since Friday. When Rosie's rich, a-hole boyfriend Jasper turns out to be a dead end, her disappearance becomes high-profile enough to attract the attention of Mayoral Candidate Darren Richmond. Richmond's advisors counsel him to energize his bid for office by campaigning as the tough-on-crime candidate who will find Rosie's killer. The political scheme gets personal for Richmond, however, when Rosie's body is found in one of his campaign cars.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's a typically dreary November Monday morning in Seattle as 30-something strawberry blonde Sarah Linden takes a jog. Whether it's to relieve stress or purely for pleasure, it's definitely better than the running Rosie Larsen was doing the night before. Sarah and Rosie's runs are crosscut. Sarah huffs and puffs, Rosie screams and staggers. Sarah picks up speed as Rosie stops to hide behind a tree. A flashlight flickers ominously behind Rosie, finally catching up to her. Sarah's run also stops when she comes across an animal carcass. She stares at it grimly, almost blankly. You get the sense she's been around death before. Linden's phone rings, and she picks it up nonchalantly. She gets a call and heads to work. Credits.
Still in her running gear, Linden drives up in the drizzle to a crime scene as some punks nearby rubberneck to get a glance of the gore. The cop on duty apologizes for calling Sarah in. He briefs her that the body is a Jane Doe and the coroner is en route. He directs her through the crime scene, offering to walk with her, but she says she can handle it. He asks if she's leaving Seattle and her job on Friday. She corrects him with a smile -- today is her last day.
Linden clicks on her flashlight as she walks through the forbidding warehouse. Birds flap away as she surveys the blood-stained walls and clothing dropped slipshod on the floor. She approaches the corpse cautiously, creeping up to it in the dark. Jane Doe is hanging in a clear tarp that's soaked in blood. Linden puts on her gloves and carefully removes the covering. Just as it's falling to the ground, the lights click on, and her colleagues jump out of the darkness. Underneath the tarp? A blow-up doll with a sign that reads, "Bon voyage, Sarah!" Sarah smiles broadly as the guys pour her a glass of champagne, blow noisemakers and sing "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow!"
After the celebration, she heads home with Jane Doe under her arm. She calls out to her fiancé Rick to ask if he's still home. They horse around until he notices Jane Doe and says, "I'm not even going to ask." They kiss playfully. Sarah stops to ask where her son Jack is. Rick assures her he dropped Jack off at school. Sarah wonders if Jack's mad that they're moving. Rick says tersely, "He's 13. It's his job to hate us." He promises that Jack will come around, then jokes what Jane Doe thinks about Sonoma. She brushes it off as he tells her the movers are coming in an hour. He also says her friend Reggie wants to take Jack on one last spin on the boat before they leave. She kids that Reggie should give her away at their wedding. Rick doesn't seem to care, he's so excited to marry her in the first place. He asks one last time, even though he seems completely certain of the answer, if she's ready to change her life for him. They kiss, and she says, "You know I'm not one for words." He replies, "That's a good thing. I only need two of them." A car honks outside. Sarah wonders why he can't wait and fly with them, but with a cab waiting downstairs, it's a little late for that. As he hurries out the door, she tells him, "I do... want to marry you." He happily reminds her that the tickets are on the refrigerator, and their flight is at 9:30 that night. She smiles as she watches him leave, then heads over to the fridge, where she kisses a picture of herself with a younger Jack.
Later that morning, she's packing up her office and planning Jack's boating trip with Reggie when a strange man busts in. He's a gangly, dirty blonde who looks a little strung out. Nonetheless, he immediately adopts a defensive tone and asks what she's doing there, though she should probably be the one asking that question. After they have a pissing contest over whose office they're standing in, he introduces himself as Stephen Holder, her replacement. They exchange territorial glances as she allows him to start moving his stuff in. They banter awkwardly about her move to Sonoma. He says sarcastically, "Nice weather, ocean, beaches... hate that shit."
It breaks the tension until Holder notices a case file open showing a brutal picture of a dead woman and a piece of artwork. He snarks that the crack head must have thought she was Picasso. Linden corrects him that the six-year-old son drew it. He asks indifferently, "Did he get iced, too?" She says he didn't, but we never learn what happened because Sarah's boss comes in to give her one last assignment. She is reluctant to take the case just hours before she has to leave, but he assures her she'll be able to pass it off at six o'clock. He urges her to take Holder along to show him how to work a scene. Linden is too much of a lady to groan at this suggestion, but I couldn't say the same for myself given Holder's general presence thus far.
Linden drives to the crime scene as Holder tells her about his background. He went straight out of the academy to undercover work and was especially effective in narcotics. Surprise, surprise. She asks if he thinks homicide will be any different. He says, "At least you've got a bad guy." Linden replies wryly, "Yeah, who's that?" They stop at a light, and Holder locks eyes with a down-and-out teen. He puts up a peace sign. She flips him off, so he returns the favor. Not such a good guy himself, eh? Holder asks if that's why Linden is running away, because she can't pinpoint the bad guys anymore. She looks on blankly.
They reach the scene, a park that Holder immediately pawns off to being full of hookers, tweakers, and baseheads. The officer on-scene hands Linden a blood-spattered sweater, and she schools him that their vic is no crack ho if she was wearing a recently cleaned, baby pink, dry-clear-only, wool sweater. There's also an ATM card with the name Stanley Larsen on it. Holder reformulates his theory that a guy lost his wallet while getting serviced. Linden steps aside to take in the scene. She tells the cop to walk the scene and call in sex crimes. Holder wants to stay, but there's no body, so Linden wants to walk away and finish packing her office. Holder promises he won't let her miss her flight, then swaggers off, revealing a serious crucifix tattoo on the nape of his neck.