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After a jokey intro that has Ralph threaten to shoot three thieves rather than do the paperwork necessary to arrest them, we meet a dentist who sends his assistant out of the office while he puts on the gas and turns on the radio to fix a showgirl's tooth, so it appears things are about to get rapey, except the showgirl wakes up and finds the dentist dead.
Through the Lambs' investigation, it turns out the dentist was using dental cement to make fake casino chips to pay off a $37,400 gambling debt, so Savino's glad he's dead, even if he'd have liked to be the person to make him so. But the Savoy's troubles aren't over, for a couple of reasons: One is that the person who killed the dentist looks to be continuing the fake-chip-making business, but an even worse one is that Mayor Bennett suddenly wants an auditor in the count room in all casinos. Savino suddenly decides that Bennett is a problem, so in classic mob style, he decides to champion an unknown challenger, one George Grady (played by slovenly Gil Bellows). Savino -- with the help of the already restless and dissatisfied Laura — INSTANTLY makes over Grady to help him resonate with voters better, as well as pulling dirty tricks like cutting the signal from the television station broadcasting the mayoral debate just as Bennett is about to rebut Grady. Bennett's not helping his cause any, first by apparently being as prone as any politician to favor his cronies with his political power, but also by refusing makeup for the debate, because he'd rather be a sweaty, untrustworthy-looking man than a woman with pancake makeup all over his face. Katherine is intrigued by Laura, incidentally, and is trying to get to know her while being less than forthcoming about how she's the assistant district attorney and all.
I guess Savino's plan to eliminate the mayor not with cement shoes but through democracy (albeit a corrupted form of it) is in keeping with the way he's trying to steer clear of the law, so that the money can keep flowing at the casino, which is why I don't understand (or buy) the way we arrive at this episode's Lamb-Savino Squint-Off. Working together, Lamb's and Savino's crews determine that a Savoy cashier was in on it, and it's her boyfriend who fabricated thousands of fake chips in order to scam his way right into the casino's vault. Savino finds him first, and like I said, I don't buy him exposing himself directly to trouble with the law by holding a man at gunpoint when the police are looking for that very same man.
Come to that, I'm a little confused about Grady's motivation. He seems awfully willing to give himself over to Savino the kingmaker, given that his seems to be running because Bennett's fond of patronage. Well, whatever. Ralph gets the forger, Savino's pulling the puppet strings on Grady and Laura has already soured on Vegas, given her husband's penchant for pulling out of lunches to go whack a guy, or whatever. Jack might even get to know Mia a little bit better, if he can stop acting like a raging douche when he talks to her (which might help her to forget her dad getting beat on and arrested by Ralph).
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Jack's not going to wind up dead or anything, but he really needs to stop flirting with Mia. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Ralph's out on a road with a mileage sign for nearby towns in Nevada, Arizona and Utah, so it's in that place where the states converge. He arrives at the place, where Dixon's got his gun on three men with their pants down around their ankles. "You boys are going to get yourself quite a sunburn out here dressed like that," he says. Dixon explains that he only had the one set of cuffs and didn't want them running off.
Turns out they're on a tri-state minor crime spree, so Ralph growls that if he wants to arrest them in Nevada, he's going to have to do the paperwork necessary to extradite them from Arizona and Utah. "I hate paperwork," he tells them, and winds up taking Dixon's shotgun and pretending he's going to shoot all of them. "Out here, nobody's going to be the wiser," he says, pumping the gun and pointing it at them.
Naturally, it's all a con, and Ralph sends them scurrying off since the money's going to get returned, and he threatens to kill them the time they show up in his state.
"Sometimes there's a difference between law and justice," he says to Dixon, and Dixon says he doesn't actually mind doing the paperwork. Nobody ever became a legend with paperwork, Dixon.
Over to a dentist's office, where a showgirl comes in with a missing tooth and a sob story about a collision with another showgirl, and the jovial dentist lets his hygenist go so they don't miss lunch, leaving him and the showgirl alone in the office. Then he gives her a whiff of gas, losing all humour in his demeanor and asks the showgirl if she minds if he puts on the radio. The scene definitely leaves a Vegas: SVU vibe to it.
Over to the count room at the casino, where some flunky named Frank is dropping a fizzy tablet of some kind into water. Mia warns him that if he's sick and makes everyone else sick, he's fired, but he claims it's just the pastrami he ate. Mia's suddenly got a bigger problem: representatives from the gaming control board stroll in, talking about a new city ordinance that Mayor Bennett signed just this morning, giving them access to all of their records. I don't buy the Savoy having no idea about the ordinance until now, but this is where we are. In the confusion, Frank's drink gets spilled, causing a five-hundred dollar chip to fizz suspiciously. Mia keeps her poker face in front of the board auditors -- who are portrayed as the villains, of course, horning in on the good honest mob folks running the Savoy.
But she brings the chip to Savino, who says it's good work. He tells his men that the only person he knows capable of this kind of work is a slot cheat named Jackie Sullivan, who is either behind this or knows who is. But the larger problem is the "thugs" in the count room (Savino counterintuitively does not mean his employees). That's going to be trouble back home: "Who cares about some fake chips if there's no more casino?"
So he's roaring off across the casino floor on the way to give the mayor a piece of his mind, but is stopped by his wife. He forgot all about the lunch they had planned. He promises to make it up to her, and this is a song and dance she has clearly heard many times before. "I made an art form of dining alone in Chicago, Vincent. You said it'd be different here," she tells him. There's only so much groveling even a relatively progressive mobster like Savino will do to a woman, and he snaps, "I told you I had business. I'll see you tonight."
Back over the dentist's office now, where we uneasily await the showgirl's waking up to find she's been violated. Instead, she wakes up and finds herself alone. She calls out Dr. Safran's name several times as she wanders through a strangely huge office, but it seems to be to give us a moment or two to admire her showgirl qualifications. Then it's not Vegas: SVU anymore, but regular Law & Order. She finds him dead on the floor.
After the opening credits, the Lamb brothers are on the scene, finding traces of gold under the dead man's fingernails, and a black book full of gambling debts. The ex-wife shows up, who -- after her shock at seeing the body -- tells Jack and Ralph that she divorced Saffran when his gambling problem caused him to lose their son's college fund. She'd initially thought he was cheating on her (at least, in a more traditional sense of that word). Jack brings up the "You'd get more out of his will than a divorce" angle, which is dumb considering we're already pretty clear on Howard being skint. "All of nothing is no more than half. Howard was broke." She is surprised to find out the sum total that Howard owed, however: nearly $40,000. As for the gold, she says there wouldn't be enough -- maybe a hundred dollars -- in the office worth killing over. They also ask if she knows the bookie, a guy named "Pollack" in Howard's black book. She wryly informs them that Safran's poor spelling may mean that he's talking about an actual Polish person.
Savino storms into Mayor Bennett's office, who's there with D.A. Reynolds and ADA O'Connell. But Savino doesn't mind the audience, and he lays into Bennett with the fury of a man finding out his election donation hasn't earned him the right to operate with impunity. "I serve at the pleasure of the people of Las Vegas. And a lot of those people aren't too pleased with the way you and your kind conduct business around here," says Bennett. Savino takes offence at the reference to his "kind," ("You mean honest, taxpaying citizens?" he says) and then growls Bennett is going to regret this. O'Connell reminds him that threatening the dude is a felony, so Savino puts on his hat and heads for the door. "Someday, Bennett, when you're looking back and wondering where it all went wrong, it was right here, right now," he says.
Savino tells ... Beansy(? I think? I'm having trouble keeping track of the mob guys) that they gotta make sure the mayoral election challenger, a schlub named George Grady, contends really well really quickly. Also, Borelli's got Sullivan the forger in the bathroom. Sullivan claims not to know anything about the chips, and the repeated dunkings in the toilet don't shake him off his story.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Wisniewski -- a.k.a. "Jimmy the Pollack" -- has been brought into the station, where he reminds the genius brothers that dead people can't pay their debts. Plus, Saffran didn't owe him any money any more; Saffran paid it off in full the week before.
I'm not sure what's to stop this bookie from making up that story to throw off his motive angle, but the Lamb brothers accept his story. Also, Jack has found a strange monthly expense for a property rental.
Savino meets with mayoral challenger George Grady, played by Didn't You Used To Be Gil Bellows in a loud jacket and receding hairline. Savino figures any other broke token challenger to an incumbent would be down twenty or thirty points, but Grady's only eight back of Bennett. Grady says it's because of Bennett's cronyism. Savino says the upcoming debate is crucial because more voters will see him there than anyone else. "Bennett's part of the past of this town. You want to be part of its future, you need me," says Savino, and a suddenly savvy Grady says, "And you need me." Savino nods, looking almost impressed at Grady's mercenary style.
Later, Savino broods about his problems while out with Laura, who's feeling neglected, but seems to open up when her husband confides in her the problems he's facing if he can't get the skim back home to Chicago. "If I can't figure a way to get Bennett out of office, I could lose the Savoy," he tells her. She's a little more chipper about their chances to turn Grady into an overnight contender, and what luck! The Las Vegas League of Women Voters just happens to be meeting tomorrow night, and women as a group did not vote for Bennett in the last election, so those votes may be up for grabs.
Elsewhere, the Lambs descend on Saffran's rental property, which turns out to be a lab full of smashed equipment, including moulds to make fake chips. Instead of fake teeth, he was making fake chips, says Ralph, and Jack has to go, "Reckon he bit off more than he can chew," and then he puts his sunglasses on while The Who kicks in.
The police work continues back at the station, where Ralph is planning to head over to talk to Savino -- once again leaving Dixon in the office.
When they get to the Savoy, Savino jokes that they should try using the telephone once in a while. They fill him in on the fake chips, and Savino acknowledges they found a few, but with the dentist dead, now his problems are solved, apparently. Not so, say the Lambs, explaining that someone stole the dentist's equipment and could now be, as they speak, churning about fake chips by the trayful. A couple of two-steps here, and suddenly Ralph and Savino are working together on their "mutual-interest situation." Savino says he may have a lead, but Ralph's got to promise not to bust his chops.
By which he means the lead is a bruised and bloody Sullivan, who sticks to his story about not knowing what's going on, but does say he heard about getting chips made out of dental cement, but it's not common because it's only sold to dentists.
As for Grady, he is currently charming the pants off the League of Women Voters. I mean not literally, not yet. Although they all have dresses on, and I'm not sure "charm the dress off" has ever been an expression. He's dressed much better and his hair is combed in a way that manages to hide its ignoble retreat from a decent hairline.
Bennett, meanwhile, is even gruffer than usual. He's approaching Wilford Brimley levels of gruff. "What the hell happened to Grady? The suit he's got on cost more than he has in his campaign fund," he says, asking O'Connell how Grady could be affording this. She's curious too, and even more curious to find out about Laura, which she does when they show up. As for Savino, he's acknowledging the work she's done in polishing this turd of a candidate, and she warns him that the televised debate is going to be tough.
Ralph and Dixon show up at the only medical supply shop closer than Carson City where dental cement can be bought -- Dixon sarcastically devouring the fresh air that he doesn't get to experience from being cooped up in the office all day. Ralph warns him not to get used to it. Their easy joshing vanishes when they find the night watchman dead, however.
Naturally, the only thing stolen is a drum of dental cement. Whoever did it couldn't get it by legal means, then. "Now we've narrowed it down to someone who isn't a dentist," moans Dixon, which was pretty funny, and then Jack selflessly volunteers to go work with Mia to look through records of who was on duty when fake chips were found.
The day, Savino's men hijack a truck carrying a load of televisions; they've got a list of businesses where they're going to drop them off. "Some days it's a pleasure coming to work," says one of them, in direct contrast to Jack, who in the scene had been moaning about how much he misses the ranch.
Over at the beauty parlor, ADA O'Connell makes chitchat with Laura, sitting under the hair dryer while she reads a Time magazine with Kennedy on the cover and then makes joke about Kennedy's influential friends in Illinois. Borelli strolls in to drop off a television compliments of Grady, so everyone can watch him mop up Bennett in the debates. Laura looks awkward while O'Connell looks like she's piecing things together.
Mia and Jack working in the files. "We could be here all night." "Worse things have happened." She looks at him but doesn't respond, so he starts nosily poking his nose in the business of her interest in D.A. Reynolds, which she politely but firmly reminds him is none of his beeswax. Plus, Reynolds brother DIDN'T beat up her dad. Damn, for how long is she going to bring that up?
Lamb goes to see Savino to tell him about the dead security guard and the theft of the dental cement. "You're going to be buried in fakes before you know it."
Meanwhile, Jack has found a cluster of transactions of just under $2,000 that in sum add up to the amount Saffran owed -- good thing he just made enough to clear his debt and didn't add any for himself, hey -- and Mia realizes that since anything over $2,000 needs to be reported, he had some help with the cashier, who must have been in on it.
They head out on the casino floor, while a gaming supply guy trundles a crate of equipment in, the camera and music letting us know that something is up with this guy.
We watch the gaming-supply guy get let into the vault by the security guards, while Savino and Lamb discuss Savino's plan to switch out their chips entirely. Their realization that stealing that much dental cement could only mean Buddy would want a quick score soon before Savino switches the chips out, and so they spring to the safe, but they're too late. The guards are tied up and the safe has been robbed.
The guards start babbling as soon as their gags are removed. It must be stressful knowing that a screwup like this can cost you not only your job but your life. An angry Savino "wants hands" on the thief, but Ralph admits they have no idea who he is. That's when Jack shows up with the cashier in tow who helped Saffran get away with it.
Savino laughably tries to get Ralph to leave the cashier Holly there with him to question. I mean, Savino showed him Sullivan. While the Lambs shake the story out of Holly at the station, Savino conducts his own investigation.
Things rapidly spill out; Holly was a patient of Saffran's, and they both had debt so they figured this was a good way to clear it up. But Holly's boyfriend Jesse warned them it was only a matter of time before the casinos got wise to them, so they needed a big score. Saffran balked, and that's why he's dead now.
Time for the debate, which turns into a little on-the-nose in terms of its parallels to Kennedy-Nixon, especially when Bennett refuses, Nixon-style, to get made up for the debate because that shit is for the wimmins. Just offstage, Laura Savino and O'Connell dance around a bit, with neither of them coming fully clean as far as their interest in their respective candidates.
And then Savino's at a trailer in the middle of nowhere with a gun in the face of Holly's boyfriend Jesse, who was about to abscond with the money. Savino marches him outside, where, of course, Ralph is waiting for him, draped on the hood of his truck because standing there dramatically is more important than maybe RUSHING INTO THE TRAILER TO STOP A POTENTIAL MURDER.
Come to that, it makes absolutely zero sense that Savino would go to handle this himself, especially given that he would know Ralph would be after the same guy. But we need our regular Savino-Lamb staredown, right? Savino actually tries to make the case for KILLING the guy to Ralph! It doesn't go over well. "You know as well as I do that there's a difference between law and justice," snarls Savino. Lamb does not say, "Why, what a coincidence! I was just talking about this the other day with my son!" He does say, however, that, "Killing a man for stealing your money is not going to serve either one." Savino, obviously, turns Jesse over to Ralph, although I'm sure Ralph's raised shotgun was a compelling argument.
We roll out on a montage of the debate and people all over the city watching on their free televisions. Grady, natch, is poised and mayoral while Bennett is sweaty and old and obviously a liar. But Savino's got more than image-polishing tricks up his sleeve. One of his men cuts the broadcast line just as Bennett begins his debate address. Ralph, watching the debate at the office, is no dummy, and knows exactly what just happened. In his own office, Savino shrugs: "Why take a chance? People always remember the last thing they see."
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He's really looking forward to continued overreaching parallels as this election plot continues. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.