Editor's note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 3. A weekly TV season with enough episodes to justify a Halloween-t
Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 3.
A weekly TV season with enough episodes to justify a Halloween-themed episode? Airing on Halloween, no less? TV is so back! Not to say that Elsbeth is the only network show doing this, that’s certainly not true, but there was a time holiday-themed episodes were the norm for every series. Now in the era of shortened seasons and binge-driven streaming models, we just don’t see this as much as we used to. Fortunately, the format returns in fine form with Elsbeth Season 2’s third episode “Devil’s Night.”
The Murderer Has No Memory in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 3
The episode begins, as always, with the murder being investigated. In this case, a youthful woman, Mac (Brittany O’Grady), is being chased down a obscure alley by a man in an animal mask. After a failed attempt to grab her, the youthful woman spins and shoots her attacker before… waking up the next morning in her bed, still in last night’s dress. Her roommate Sissy (Zolee Griggs) walks in on her and points out the things that have changed since the night before: Mac now has bangs, and is also sporting a petite hickey and a heart-shaped tattoo with the names “Amy” and “Rick,” though she has no idea who those people are. When Sissy goes to answer the knock at their door, Mac checks her little gun sheltered and finds it empty. Her panic only increases when their unexpected guests turn out to be the police, led by Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson), here to arrest Mac for disorderly conduct and assault. At least it’s not a murder charge, so a very relieved Mac goes with them willingly.
Down at the precinct, Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) asks Blanke why Mac looks so familiar, and Blanke tells her that she’s Mackenzie Altman, a former child star known for her role on the show “Father’s Keepers,” a show about four girls being raised by their widower father. Blanke also points out that Mac’s roommate also used to be one of her co-stars, playing one of the younger sisters, though notes that neither of them ever managed to become eminent after the series ended. Despite her encyclopedic knowledge of the show, Blanke insists she hated it back in the day, and only watched because her sister did. Sure, Kaya, we believe you. The pair of them are joined by Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce), who points out that Elsbeth, in her Holly Golightly finest, is the only one who came to work in costume, but that turns out to be untrue, as Lt. Connor (Daniel K. Isaac) also came in costume, dressed as Winston Churchill. He says that while he enjoyed Halloween as a kid, nowadays it’s more of a headache for him as it just gives people license to cause chaos all night.
Returning to the chaos at hand, they’re interrupted by the arrival of Danny Beck (Ryan Spahn), Mac’s attorney and manager, who informs Wagner that the club owner who pressed charges against Mac has agreed to drop them. Wagner, not falling for the too-smooth attitude, shows Danny into his office to finish the paperwork, leaving Elsbeth alone with Sissy. Sissy tells her that this is nothing for Danny, as he’s also rescued clients from sex cults and Colombian drug cartels. Mac watches the two of them chat from inside the office where she’s being kept, and Elsbeth pokes her head in to let her know she’s free to go. When Mac doesn’t seem excited about the news, Elsbeth joins her properly in the office, and there Mac asks whether anyone was murdered the night before. Given that that’s a suspicious question, to say the least, Elsbeth tries to figure out why Mac would even ask that, not buying the curiosity excuse. Mac shrugs the concern off as probably a dream, and Elsbeth asks her to describe that next. Mac confesses that she might have killed someone, but doesn’t actually remember much of it. She describes the alley, and the man in the mask, and adds that her gun was missing from the sheltered, but otherwise can’t remember much about the night before.
Elsbeth Helps Mac Piece Her Memory Together in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 3
She calls in Sissy to lend a hand her paint a picture of what happened the previous night. Sissy tells Elsbeth that they started the night at a red carpet gala held by the Postmark channel — in Sissy’s words, a low-budget Hallmark — but they’d barely arrived before Mac gave them all the slip and took off with Daz, an actor she has the hots for, and Sissy didn’t see her again until that morning. While they can’t track Mac’s phone, since it was with Sissy all night, they’re able to at least figure out Mac’s second location through Daz’s social media, leading them to a bar called The Hideout Club. There, the bartender Shannon (Angela Wong Carbone) is furious at seeing Mac again and explains to Elsbeth that Mac showed up with Daz, started dancing on the bar, accidentally-on-purpose flashed the crowd, refused to let the bartender cut her off, and then when Daz left with a more successful actress, turned to smashing bottles instead.
The bartender’s efforts to get her to stop after shattering the backsplash only resulted in the destitute woman walking away with a broken nose, which at least explains the blood on Mac’s dress. While she isn’t the least bit sorry for all the damage she caused, Mac still has the audacity to be stressed out by all this, and Sissy suggests meditation with a guided app Mac likes to employ, except Mac can’t find her earbuds. Tracking them to their last location leads the trio to the alley behind the bar, where Elsbeth finds the earbuds…and also the corpse of the man in the animal mask.
The man turns out to be Sonny Miller (Geronimo Ambert), a personal trainer-turned-rapper, and a friend of Mac’s. She insists she’d have no reason to hurt him, but Danny — who Sissy called — orders Mac to stop talking until he arrives. The detective on the case, Detective Smullen (Danny Mastrogiorgio) agrees, and is annoyed to see Elsbeth there already. There’s still no love lost between them, but Elsbeth and Blanke don’t have much time to roast him, as they now have a distraught Sissy on their hands, terrified that Mac will go to jail before introducing her to a up-to-date agent, and forcing her to find a up-to-date place to crash. Priorities, I guess. Back at the precinct, Smullen tells Mac that since the murder weapon was custom-made for her, and has her prints all over it, there isn’t much of a case she can make for her innocence. Danny argues that Sonny was a drug dealer and putting Mac at risk, and Mac hesitantly agrees with Danny’s version of events, adding that she’s trying to stay sober and Sonny endangered that, which must be why she killed him.
Elsbeth comes in to point out that this version of events doesn’t track with what Mac told her before, especially given that Mac has said she doesn’t remember that night, but by that point Smullen has left the room, after telling Mac that shooting her dealer isn’t a good enough reason to keep her out of jail. Connor asks Wagner if Elsbeth is always present for interrogations, challenging whether she’s there to investigate the department or the cases themselves. He also offers Smullen an opportunity to speak with him regarding Elsbeth’s presence under the guise of looking to improve the department overall. As for Elsbeth herself, she’s followed out of the interrogation room by Danny, who tries to cover for Mac by saying Sonny was trying to take advantage of her. Before he can try to sell her any more snake oil, though, they’re interrupted by Blanke, who takes Elsbeth to the holding cell at Mac’s request.
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Smullen Is Annoyed at Wagner’s Treatment in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 3
Down in the cells, Mac thanks Elsbeth for helping her sort out the truth and uncover the fact that she’s a murderer, but Elsbeth doesn’t seem to think it’s as elementary as Mac and Detective Smullen seem to think. She asks Mac where she got her gun from, since the barely-there Halloween costume didn’t leave much room for a concealed weapon, but Mac can’t remember any of it. She tells Elsbeth that this was the first time she’s ever blacked out like this, though far from the first time she’s partied this strenuous. Elsbeth takes her concerns to Smullen and Wagner, who don’t want to hear it, believing the case closed. Smullen is frustrated that Mac is getting preferred treatment just because she’s eminent, and while he may have a point there, Elsbeth rightly snaps at him for refusing to believe Mac’s claims that she doesn’t remember what happened the night before, just because she’s a woman. Smullen is affronted, but I’d be interested to see if that particular statement comes back at any time over the course of the season, since shows like this rarely, if ever, touch on how often women are (or rather, aren’t) believed by law enforcement.
Outside, Danny gives a statement to the assembled press, saying he’s proud of Mac on both her sobriety journey, and on standing up to her abusers, until one of the journalists asks him about the video that has now gone viral. The video in question, which he knew nothing about, shows an intoxicated Mac wielding her custom pink gun and threatening Sonny with it, throwing any existing concepts of her innocence out the window. Mac insists she was only joking and wouldn’t ever actually hurt Sonny, and adds that the video is several months elderly, from back when she was still getting high — she’s strictly a booze and Xanax girl now — and anyone could have sold it to TMZ, as there were a lot of people at that party. When Smullen asks her how often she handles her gun, she tells him that she took it out only rarely as she kept forgetting the passcode until Danny changed it to her birthday, and even then she only took it out once.
Blanke asks her what “club” she was referring to, and Mac explains that she and Danny were in the process of building a club in Montenegro, where Sonny wanted to film his music videos, which Mac eventually agreed to. She explains to them that the club has been undergoing delays, and is costing more than originally anticipated, more than the $6 million she has already invested. Sonny would have had no reason to be upset by the cost or the delay, however, as it wasn’t going to cost him anything. Elsbeth suggests that she and Blanke take Mac out to try and fill in the rest of the gaps from her wild night out, and Smullen reluctantly agrees, only because he knows Wagner won’t back him up. So while he opts to stay behind and work out the specific charges — and to sign up for a session with Connor to discuss his issues with the department — Elsbeth and Blanke follow a social media trail of Mac’s whereabouts the night before.
Their first stop is a tattoo parlor-slash-bar, where the tattoo artist explains that Mac had come in with the intention of getting a lower back tattoo until she met a bachelorette party at the bar, did a bunch of shots with them, and then got the couple’s names — Amy and Rick — tattooed on her arm. The photos also explain Mac’s up-to-date bangs, as she guesses she must have cut them herself to fit in with the bridal party, who all also had bangs. More photos show that Mac was with them up until they got on a pedal bus for more drinks, and she eventually fell off, with the party leaving her behind. She takes Blanke’s phone to try and trace her next steps, but suddenly decides she needs to swing by her apartment first.
Mac Feels Used By Those Around Her in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 3
There, she finds Sissy going through some clothes, and Mac accuses her of selling her clothes online, followed by the accusation that she must have sold the video to TMZ too. A furious Sissy says that she only sold the clothes Mac gifted her, but there is a deeper issue at play here, starting with the fact that Sissy is not the destitute girl’s real name, but rather was the name of the character she played on “Father’s Keepers,” and it’s not looking good for Mac that she can’t even remember her co-star’s real name. Sissy (I don’t know her real name either, so I’m going with Sissy) turns things around on Mac, saying that while she might live in her house rent-free, Mac takes so much advantage of her, like she did with Sonny, that it’s Mac who uses the people in her life, not the other way around. There is definitely one person in Mac’s life who is using her, though, and that is Danny, who arrives just as the conversation is getting heated to… chastise her for going out in public with her messy bangs when he’s still trying to make a deal with the Postmark Channel for her, and the channel apparently required several meetings with him about her hair specifically — which feels racially loaded if you ask me. Elsbeth is rightly surprised that this is his priority when his client is still facing a murder charge.
While Elsbeth and Blanke are out on the trail, Wagner brings Connor into his office to demand the gist of the conversations he’s been having with those at the precinct. While he initially doesn’t divulge the contents of those confidential conversations, he eventually reveals that overall morale is low, with the officers finding Wagner remote and blaming him for Noonen’s departure. He adds that they’ve noticed he plays favorites with Blanke and Elsbeth, the latter of whom makes them uncomfortable in her undefined role within the precinct. And speaking of, Elsbeth, Blanke and Smullen arrive with updates. While Elsbeth and Blanke share which parts of Mac’s hazy night they figured out, and which parts remain a mystery — the diminutive hickey, where she got the gun, and how she ran into Sonny — Smullen offers a bombshell of his own, saying a quick call to a production company in Montenegro that Sonny had been in touch with revealed that Mac’s club doesn’t exist, meaning Danny lied to Mac about taking her $6 million for investments, likely pocketing it instead. With Sonny’s phone records showing that his next call was to Danny, the motive for the murder is now pointing squarely at Mac’s manager-of-all-trades. The one hitch in this plan is that Mac is still the one who pulled the trigger.
Mac’s Manager Becomes the Prime Suspect in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 3
As Elsbeth tries to puzzle that out in her office, she’s visited by Danny, who demands she stay away from Mac, as Mac is very suggestible and tends to trust the wrong people — say, for instance, a sleazy manager who claims to be a lawyer but doesn’t act like one, while also acting as her agent and accountant. Elsbeth again tries to paint a picture of Danny’s whereabouts the night of the murder, and he says he stayed at the Postmark party all night, claiming their social media would back him up. The only problem with that alibi, as far as Elsbeth is concerned, is Danny’s costume, Mutant Mike, is a popular costume that also features a mask, making it unclear whether he’s actually the one in the images. This is how I know Danny isn’t actually a licensed lawyer, because why is he volunteering information to Elsbeth that allows her to trap him like this?
Smullen brings Elsbeth back to Wagner’s office so the team can look over Mac’s toxicology report. The report indicates that the blood on her dress was Sonny’s after all, and also that the hickey on her neck actually came from a monkey. The most glaring part of the report, however, is that Mac had extremely high levels of scopolamine in her system. While used in very diminutive doses as a nausea medication, Wagner reveals that the drug, also called Devil’s Breath, is used in Colombian drug circles as a hypnotic drug to compel people to carry out someone else’s muddy work. With so much of it in Mac’s system, it accounts for her memory loss and also gets her off the hook for Sonny’s murder, as she was given the drug without her knowing and thus isn’t liable. Danny gleefully suggests that it was one of Sonny’s rivals that gave it to her — again, dude, stop volunteering information — and leaves to give Mac the news. Once he’s gone, Elsbeth remembers that Danny once aided a client caught on a drug cartel’s bad side in Colombia, and since that’s where the drug is from, she proposes that it’s more than a coincidence.
They get Jason Fox (Dan Hoy), Danny’s former client, on the phone to explain his experience. He says it was a quinceañera for a cartel boss’s daughter gone wrong, where he was paid to make an appearance, drugged with Devil’s Breath and then nearly killed the cartel boss who was hosting the event. He found out after the fact that he was given the drug by someone working for the rival cartel boss, who wanted the competition out of the picture. While the M.O. matches up, Elsbeth asks why Danny is no longer Jason’s agent in delicate of all that happened, and Jason explains that Danny was stealing his money. Elsbeth and Blanke visit Mac to catch her up and find her scratching the monkey bite on her neck. Elsbeth asks where she would have even found a monkey, but the only thing that comes to mind is Mr. Peaches, the monkey that guest-appeared on “Father’s Keepers” who was adopted by Roya (Haven Burton), one of the set designers, after the episode filmed. Roya, fortunately, happens to live in Manhattan.
On Roya’s trail, Elsbeth, Blanke, Smullen and Mac head to Roya’s Halloween party, where the woman by the door specifically stamps their right wrists with a monkey design observable only under blacklight. Roya is miffed on Mr. Peaches’ behalf for whatever offense Mac caused, and doesn’t buy the drugged excuse as she says Mac was lucid the entire time. A look at security camera footage reveals that Mac was drugged at Roya’s loft, and the team calls in Danny to spell things out for him. They tell him they know that Sonny knew Danny was stealing from Mac, and suggest Danny lied and pretended to cut him in on the deal just so he could set him up for the kill later. They explain that he gave Mac the gun at the loft, and gave her the drugs as well, ordering her to hug Mr. Peaches — whom she hates — as a test to see if she was under his control. Danny insists that he’s never been to Roya’s before, but a quick scan of his left wrist reveals the monkey-shaped undetectable ink stamp.
Though Mac is off the hook for the actual murder, Blanke and Elsbeth tell her she’s still under arrest until they finish carrying out due process, but Elsbeth assures her a up-to-date lawyer will be able to lend a hand her out. Blanke even uses her “Father’s Keepers” knowledge to assure Mac that this is a chance to start her life fresh. But motivational speeches can only go so far, and Mac decides to instead get back in touch with Sissy, something both Elsbeth and Blanke suggest she not do. Meanwhile, Wagner and his wife Claudia (Gloria Reuben) are out for the evening, with the Captain still dwelling on what Connor told him, specifically mulling over the fact that most of the precinct doesn’t care for him. She tells him that Noonen was able to get on everyone’s good side by being more sociable and that if he wants things to change, he’s going to have to make the effort himself. The one question still nagging at Wagner though, is whether Connor is trying to move on him, or on Elsbeth.
The first three episodes of Elsbeth are out now. New episodes premiere on CBS on Thursdays, and stream next day on Paramount+.
Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 3 puts a innovative spin on its own procedural format in a delightful Halloween-themed episode.
- A TV show with enough weekly episodes to support a Halloween themed episode? Yes, please.
- Elsbeth puts a fun spin on its own format with the way the mystery unfolds.
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