In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
It's Christmas in Las Vegas, the perfect time for someone to get murdered. And in this case, it happens to be a construction dude named Merrick. It would seem that Savino and his henchman Nicky are the obvious suspects, since they did threaten him the night he died and all. But Savino can't be responsible for all the deaths in this town. Instead, the corrupt construction dude had a problem with the ladies… a lot of ladies. Including Nicky's wife. But even that redheaded mistress who nursed Merrick back to health after his run-in with another red herring wasn't responsible since he had yet another mistress. A preacher woman, in fact, and he had big plans to build this woman Amy a big old church and donate all his money to her. But Merrick's real wife, and his business partner D.B. Sweeney, are the guilty ones, as they tag-team strangled him and dumped him in the cement mixer because they couldn't bear parting with all of their money. What a lovely Christmas thought.
Over at the Savoy, Savino has hired adorable little Dixon to come work an undercover gig and find some sort of thief. And he does, while looking even cuter than we'd thought possible in his waiter uniform (a fact that does not go unnoticed by the always awesome Yvonne). In return for his crime-fighting efforts, Savino gives Dixon the key to a sweet suite for the night, and while Dixon waffles for a minute about the ethics of accepting this gift, he opts to take it and throw the holiday party that they aren't allowed to have at the Sheriff's station. And at said party, he and Yvonne have a feisty conversation, which leads us to believe that there might be a little S&M play in their future because Yvonne totally has a dominatrix thing going on and Dixon seems her willing submissive.
In other romantic news, sort of, Rizzo comes to town with Diane Desmond on his arm, and informs Mia they are getting hitched. Meet your slutty new stepmom, honey. Just what you wanted for Christmas. There is a snag with Diane's work permit (international drug charges and all), but those get quickly swept away, and after a helpful tip, Savino realizes that Diane's working as a mole for the FBI and plans to take down his operation. So he tells her to leave, which is kind. But Rizzo finds out and takes the more dramatic approach and pumps her full of drugs in a fake OD situation.
Then there is the ever-complicated relationship with the Lamb brothers. They investigate the Merrick murder, and get shot at by a suspect, but the sparks fly when Ralph catches wind of a potential dating situation between Jack and Mia. Since he put the kibosh on the whole dating a mob bosses' daughter thing before, he thinks Jack should comply, but Jack went out with Mia to a honky-tonk bar and had a lovely time drinking and dancing and would like their relationship to continue. Ralph gets pissy about it, but Jack says that Ralph has long done whatever the hell he has wanted and Jack's been the one forced to clean up the mess. So Ralph acquiesces. Jack goes over to the Savoy, where Mia tries to dump him because her dad hates the Lamb brothers and will probably try and have him killed at some point, but Jack doesn't go that easily and the two have a very merry Christmas. Meanwhile, Katherine shows up at the Sheriff's station with homemade cookies for Ralph, and he has a gift for her… horse shampoo. So they exchange an awkward hug. Looks like Jack got the better end of the deal this time around.
-- Angel Cohn
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Elvis's "Blue Christmas" plays while Jack puts the finishing touches on a spit-and-polish job on his truck that's so good he gets jibes from Ralph about it. Ralph can't believe Jack got it looking so good, and Ralph defensively says he just didn't feel like "driving around a garbage can" and asks if that's a crime. Ralph knows when to back off. Well, no, he doesn't, but he backs off regardless.
Over at the Savoy, Christmas music plays while Vincent and Laura stroll the floor in their finery with their two heretofore-unseen daughters. Vincent boasts that he's getting Santa to stay "after hours" so they'll have the whole store to themselves, and Laura, clearly pleased, says he's "spoiling the girls."
On the opposite end of the father spectrum is, of course, Rizzo. Outside, Mia's waiting to spend her first Christmas in years with her psycho father, and she's surprising him with a steak dinner. When he pulls up, he's got his own surprise: Diane Desmond's got a giant engagement ring on her finger. "We're going to be family," she crows, pulling a shocked Mia into an embrace, with Mia's unhappy "OMG!" the kind of reaction that in real life would fool nobody but on television goes unnoticed -- although the Savinos look less than overjoyed at the news either.
So instead of having dinner with his daughter, Rizzo announces basically that he's going to get straight to plowing Diane, but not before instructing Vincent to talk to some contractors about something. Savino bundles his family off in a car and bids Mia goodnight. She stands there, trying not to cry, and then spots Jack across the street. And how much of a drama queen is Jack, standing there draped all over the hood of his shiny truck just WAITING for Mia to notice him? I mean, good god. She smiles and strolls over and he suavely talks about how she wanted him to ask her out when she wasn't at work or whatever and she gets in the truck and Jack is not yet aware she's doing this to get back at Daddy.
At the construction site for the now-in-progress Tumbleweed, a gangster named Nicky is getting up in the face of the contractor, Del Merrick, over delays and blown budgets. Savino is, of course, the voice of reason, but warns Merrick that they don't mind a little padding of the bottom line, but "Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered." Merrick is amusingly baffled by the turn of phrase, but he eventually gets the message and tells Savino he had no idea that the double-charging or whatever else was going on, but that it stops now. So everyone's placated and a Merry Christmas to all, except for the Jewish mobster Berman, I guess, who gripes about having to shell out for eight nights of presents.
Mia and Jack are having a great time in some honky-tonk bar, and Mia can't believe she actually likes it. That's Jack's cue to get her up on the dance floor. Mia protests, but then drains the rest of her beer and starts waltzing with Jack.
Daylight now, and construction crews are hard at work on the Tumbleweed. Or they're trying to be, but the cement mixer is jammed. When it's dumped, out sloshes a very dead Del Merrick.
After the opening credits, the Lambs show up at the site to meet Katherine, who's there with discombobulated wife Ginny Merrick, fretting about how her husband was supposed to be honored by the Rotary Club today. She's fobbed off on Dixon, who squirrels her away to comfort her or seduce her or whatever it is he does. Katherine says if this isn't a mob hit, she doesn't know what is. And then up comes Pete Holm, who introduces himself as the guy who managed Merrick's operations for more than twenty years, and starts naming all the "clients" who had a beef with Merrick just last night, and threatened him. He's long gone before I sat up straight and said, "Holy shit, was that D.B. Sweeney?"
I'm getting a little tired of the Diane-Desmond-throws-herself-at-Vincent scenes, since they don't really seem to go anywhere, but here's another one: it starts with her whining about a green dress clashing with her eyes and ends with her in her underwear and Vincent angrily telling her that if she's got a problem with her costumes and whatnot for the show to take it up with her fiancé.
At the sheriff's office, Ralph and Jack are looking over financial records for Merrick, while Dixon is whining about how there's not going to be a Christmas Eve party, and Yvonne points him to a regulation that prohibits alcohol-induced carousing in the sheriff's office, and Dixon asks Ralph why he put "this fascist" in charge, and Ralph, who, you know, fought ACTUAL FASCISTS on behalf of his smartass son, says it's because she's the toughest one there.
In comes Savino, wondering why his construction permit has been pulled. Maybe because of the dead body? Savino and Ralph have their requisite episodic quip-off, with Savino a little too outraged that the discovery of the dead body of the contractor might cause a bit of a delay. Savino says they worked things out with Merrick just last night. "After you threatened him," says Ralph. Savino would use the word "persuaded." Also, the Tumbleweed is already behind schedule, so Merrick's death is an inconvenience.
Instead, Savino suggests looking at crimes being committed at the Savoy -- burglaries, specifically. Savino suspects an inside job. Ralph sends Dixon -- who protests -- to investigate, and then writes a note -- being a dick about it the entire time, naturally -- for Savino get the permit back.
Over to the coroner's office, where he tells Ralph and Jack that Merrick was beaten but not to death, and then choked, so it's looking less and less likely this was a professional mob hit. There's also a months-old serrated scar across his chest that's mystifying. Fortunately, Ms. Merrick shows up and says it was a construction accident in Arizona; a crane swung wide and caught him, she says. After she leaves, though, the coroner and the lambs call bullshit because they've never heard of a serrated crane hook. "Somebody tried to kill him before," says Ralph.
Over at the Savoy, Savino checks in with Dixon, who says the burglaries are taking place during shift changes, suggesting an inside job. Dixon suggests going undercover as a waiter. It's a preposterous idea that's given a half-assed explaining-away with Savino saying it'll work because Ralph keeps Dixon in the background and half the people in town don't even know he's a deputy. I mean, even that implies that half the people in town do know he's a deputy (and for god's sake, the ratio at the Savoy has to be close to a hundred per cent by this point). "Sometimes I don't think my dad knows I'm a deputy," whines Dixon. Instead of telling him to stop being such a baby -- or even realizing that you probably shouldn't send somebody undercover at a place they have just spent some time OFFICIALLY INVESTIGATING, Savino says he's going to get him a uniform.
While the Lamb brothers keep working the Merrick murder, Yvonne comes in with some work card applications, including a few rejected ones. The only one they take notice of is that of one Diane Desmond, who has been rejected due to federal narcotics charges. Jack offhandedly tells Yvonne to let the Savoy know Desmond's no longer welcome to work there, but I'm sure there will be big consequences to come from that.
Meanwhile, Ralph has found a death threat against Merrick, signed "Hiroshi Watanabe," who sent it from Southwestern Nevada State. "Let's go to school," says Ralph.
Watanabe turns out to be a janitor who attacks the Lambs and then bolts when they show up in an auditorium to question him about the murder, or maybe he was just worried that they were going to bludgeon him with homespun ranch wisdom.
They manage to corral him, while he protests his innocence. Ralph brings up the death threat, and he says he wrote the letter because Merrick killed his daughter.
With things a little calmer, he explains that he and his family were herded into a Merrick-built Japanese-American internment camp that caused his nine-year-old daughter's double-pneumonia. He swore his revenge, and one day discovered Merrick was building something nearby -- he caught him at night, slashed him on the chest but couldn't finish the job. Instead he drove him to the hospital, explained what happened and then started visiting him in the hospital. "Eventually we forgave each other for everything," he says, but eventually Merrick's wife picked him up and Watanabe never saw him again. Of course, this is different from the story that Merrick told his wife, and Watanabe's description of her as red-headed also doesn't jibe.
Rizzo has gotten the news about Diane Desmond not being allowed to sing, and he's almost as mad that he had no idea about her arrest -- no conviction -- with a "few feel-good pills," as she puts it, in the Miami airport. Meanwhile, Mia is opening a package from Jack, including a card that says he wants to dance with her again and an LP of honky-tonk music. When Rizzo takes an interest, she passes it off as a local manager trying to get his acts at the Savoy. "Over my dead body!" snarls Rizzo, throwing the honky-tonk record into the trash. He's pissed about "Roy Rogers and Howdy Doody" affecting their business and wants to do something about it.
Meanwhile, Dixon is such a great undercover agent that he's parading around the sheriff's office in the waiter's uniform he plans to wear undercover. He flirts with Yvonne for a little bit, before dropping the bomb that Christmas is usually a little subdued around his place because his mom died around the holidays. Yvonne didn't know.
Jack is calling the Savoy and asking for Mia -- under the watchful stinkeye of Ralph -- and asking if she got his package, and all I can say is Jack wishes she got his package. When he's done working on his love life, Ralph tells him Pete Holm has no knowledge of Merrick's mistress. "We've gotta find her. Mistress equals motive," says Jack. I love how these two cowboys -- well, at least Ralph was an MP -- are full-fledged Dragnet officers already.
Yvonne suggests calling a jewelry store because a man with a mistress buys jewelry and asking for the address Merrick was sending it to. thing we know, the Lamb brothers are being shot at from behind a closed door by a panicky redhead who drops the gun and then bolts, grabbing a suitcase while screaming over top of the wacky caper music that's playing. She fearfully tells them she'll double whatever Nicky's paying them. That would be Nicky Tomisano, the redhead's husband. She says he killed Merrick, and she knows she's .
Over at the Savoy, Rizzo's placing bets at the bar when Diane strolls over to tell him she talked to her lawyer, who is going to straighten everything out. Elsewhere, undercover deputy Dixon is snooping around and comes across man in storage room picking up boxes. He bolts when Dixon comes in, and Dixon yells, "Stop! Sheriff's department!" immediately, like SO MUCH FOR YOUR COVER. He loses the guy, but finds a door key left in the lock.
Ralph's questioning Tomisano at the sheriff's office, who's playing the "my wife's a slut and I don't care who she bangs" card, adding that if he killed the guy responsible for mob construction, he'd be in the ground to him right away. His wife is dealing with Jack, whose excuse for shooting at the Lambs is that she thought she was shooting at someone else (her husband). She was on the outs with Merrick anyway, since the ingrate left her for a candystriper at the hospital named Amy Seger.
Turns out she's got a record: aggravated assault, narcotics use and sale. Hardly the kind of person you'd find with a respected businessman, says Jack. Jack, you'll recall, was just interviewing this respected businessman's girlfriend, a gangster's wife, so that line makes zero sense, except to set up Ralph as they roll up on Seger's address: a church. "Hardly the kind of person you find here," he says.
Inside, there's a full-on revival going on, singing and clapping. The woman preacher at the front is conspicuous by her gender, this being television, so it's not a surprise when Ralph asks a woman in a back pew where Amy Seger is, and it turns out she's the preacher.
Meanwhile, Savino's meeting with D.A. Reynolds, who's got some bad news for him. According to his good Washington source, Diane Desmond is working with the feds. "Diane's a crazy broad, but she'd never turn." Drug charges can turn a girl like a top, says Reynolds, especially when she's got a Hollywood career to protect. Savino asks if he's sure, and Reynolds asks how else she'd be able to get her federal drug charges to go away in one day with one call. "She's here to get info. Take you down. To take you all down."
Over at the church, Seger tells the Lambs that the Lord brought her to Merrick because he was suffering very deeply. Ralph's all, "Yeah, and the string of felony narcotics charges?" Seger tells a story about a father who played coronet for all the big bandleaders and started doing junk, while mama put dope in her baby bottles to settle herself down. And then one day she found Jesus. As did Merrick, who apparently got tired of turning God's country -- which had cured his tuberculosis -- into the devil's playground, so he had decided to shut his business and devote his life to God after one last project: "Our church," says Seger.
The Lambs leave, speculating on whether she had anything to do with the murder. Probably not, they figure, because it sounds like Merrick was turning over everything to her. His business partners probably wouldn't be too happy about that, nor his wife. Maybe the Lambs should be asking for some sort of confirmation instead of just believing the story of whoever it is they've spoken to most recently?
Over at the Savoy, Savino is staring at Desmond and Rizzo when Dixon strolls up and says, "Found your traitor," and Savino is all discombobulated, and Dixon says, "Sorry, my turn of phrase inadvertently resonates with your other subplot, but what I meant to say is I found your thief."
The bad news is the thief got away, but he left his calling card -- a hotel key that's too new to be in use yet, so Dixon has already figured out it was a locksmith who recently did some work and he's already been arrested. "I think he was just glad it was us who picked him up, not you."
Savino's so pleased he brings Dixon to a nice upstairs suite that's his for the night as a reward. Dixon looks out over the strip and says things look different from up here. "The way you see things always depends on where you're looking from," says Savino, while my eye-rolling workout starts getting intense. Dixon reluctantly declines though, since his dad the sheriff is all moral about taking gifts from a gangster -- I mean, "for public service." Savino smoothly suggests he spend a little time in the suite anyway and walks out, leaving the key on the coffee table, smiling to himself.
Over at the beautiful Merrick house, Ralph sits down with Ginny and doesn't waste a whole lot of time getting right to the point about how she'd have to give it all up if Merrick gave everything to Amy Seger. Ginny says Amy wasn't the first woman to catch Del's eye, but she figured he'd get tired of her eventually, like he did with all the rest.
Meanwhile, Jack is visiting a construction site to talk to Pete Holm, perhaps remembering the Law & Order rule that if you have even a C-list recognizable name in a bit part, that person always turns out to have committed the crime in question. Jack presses him on Merrick's plan to fold the business and turn the money over to Amy, who Holm calls a "two-bit conjurer." Holm says he wasn't worried, because there's lots of business in Vegas. But he does let it slip he owns 20% of Merrick Construction, at which point he awkwardly says he should get back to work.
Back at the sheriff's office, an officer gives a message to Jack that Mia Rizzo called, wanting to discuss work-card issues. Of course, Ralph is right there, and starts smirking about Mia calling to discuss work-card issues on Christmas Eve.
He brings Jack into the office and confronts him on getting involved with Mia. Jack cuts off any interference before Ralph really gets going, so Ralph asks about Pete Holm instead. Jack figures he all but confessed to killing Merrick, since he devoted his whole life to building another man's business. Ralph is still in the "Ginny did it" camp and doesn't buy Jack's "second-fiddle" theory, and Jack snarls that of course he wouldn't, and angrily stomps off. Ralph knows they're not talking about the case anymore.
Jack lays into him about keeping his ranch afloat while Ralph's struttin' his badge up and down Freemont Street, just like he did when Ralph was away at war. As you can imagine, Ralph's not pleased to be reminded of what he missed with his son and wife while he was away -- and Jack appears to regret his words as soon as he says them -- and stomps out.
Savino goes to see Diane in her dressing room, and she purrs that she knew he'd come eventually. He turns up the radio and starts dancing with her, feeling her up and kissing her -- clearly checking for a wire -- and even rips open her blouse. She's enjoying it, but once he's determined she's clean, he tells her he knows about the FBI, and just because she's not wearing a wire it doesn't mean she's not a rat. He wants her gone, and angrily gives her until morning to make herself scarce.
Jack's making a report on Pete Holm to Yvonne, despite Ralph's grousing that it's a waste of time, at least until Jack mentions an injury on Holm's right hand -- he winced when Jack shook it. This twigs with Ralph because Ginny had an injury on her left. They quickly deduce that the two of them stuffed Merrick into the cement mixer, using Yvonne as a prop as they walk through it. "This is exactly why I left my last job," she says, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Holm and Ginny, in Ralph's office together, deny the allegation, except Ginny blurts out a detail of the body's condition -- the fact that it was beaten before getting thrown into the mixer -- that only the cops and killer knew. "Nice work," grumbles Holm, as Ralph makes them put their hands on the desk, where he finds mirror-image wounds from a cement mixer blade on their wrists. Book 'em, boys!
Afterward, Jack's working on the paperwork when Ralph gruffly says he'll take care of it, because Jack's got somewhere to be. Jack's not going to pass that up, so he heads for the door, wishing his brother a sincere Merry Christmas before he goes, and the brothers smile at each other.
Over at the Savoy, Dixon appears to be hosting and bartending a Christmas party for a bunch of deputies and assorted hangers-on. He snatches some mistletoe to hang between him and Yvonne, but she slaps him and walks off, leaving him to chase her and demand to know why she's so bossy. "Because you love it," she says, and then she roughly shoves a bucket in his hands and tells him to go get some ice. Despite his apparently raging boner, Dixon eagerly does so, while Yvonne bites her lip all turned on.
In the hall, he runs into his uncle. "What are you doing here?" says Jack, surprised. "Nothin'. You?" asks Dixon. "Nothin'," says Jack, and they go on their separate ways. Mia lets Jack into her room, oblivious to the bombshell she's about to drop on him that they can't see each other anymore. Jack jokes he knew he should have got her Patsy Cline, but Mia's serious, what with the conflict between their families (in all senses). "I'm not afraid of your father," Jack says. "You should be," Mia says. Yeah, I'm kinda with Mia on this one. Jack asks her if it wasn't working for her the other night when she was in his arms on the dance floor, because it was working for him. "Jack, don't make this harder," she says, and opens the door. He asks if this is what she wants, and she says it doesn't matter.
He leaves, but as she closes the door he sticks his foot back in. "It matters to me," he says, and kisses her. She kisses back, and clothes start coming off, and this is where we leave them.
"Blue Christmas" starts back up as Katherine stops by Ralph's office to give him some Christmas cookies. He's got a gift for her too: Horse shampoo. Since any woman would be powerless to resist such powerful romance, she invites him to join her with some friends having a drink at the Gemini, but he begs off, citing paperwork. She says she doesn't like the thought of him alone on Christmas Eve, but he says he's got a couple of murderers "in the hoosegow" to keep him company. They wish each other merry Christmas, then hug -- he awkwardly kisses her on the cheek -- and hold the embrace a little long, but with no follow up tonsil hockey.
Over at the Savoy, Savino's hurriedly meeting Rizzo in Diane's dressing room, saying he came as fast as he could -- and stops up short when he sees Diane, dead on the couch, needle sticking out her arm. "It's a shame about her. A shame," says Rizzo, looking utterly indifferent, adding, "Once a junkie, always a junkie, right?" The camera zooms in on Savino the Conscientious Mobster's horrified face, and then it cuts to him getting a drink while his family opens presents on what appears to still be Christmas Eve. Savages.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Seriously, he realizes Ralph and Jack are good honest ranch hands but they might want to stop taking suspects at their word. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.