The Firm: Chapter 4

Sorry for the delay in posting this but a cold/flu has held my brain captive the last few days.

Here are my thoughts on last week's episode of The Firm before I entertain you with my thoughts on this week's episode.

The "previously on" features a lot of the future scape information. Things that still have no solid footing in the plot to date. Current time frame focus on the issue of Sarah Holt's laptop which is supposedly the "other problem" that Mr Sniffles brings to the attention of K&C boss-lady Tricia Helfer (I think that will be her new monicker - BLTH).

Once the recap catches up to the last thing we'd seen in the future scape we see our hero Mitch arriving at the "Code Red" meeting place. A boat. Family McDeere wants to pull anchor and run but our hero wants to find out more about K&C's involvement. Mentions that they represent both Mr Sniffles and the insurance company that Holt worked for. They must know something.

We also see a police station where a uniform is talking to a detective about the death of Mr Sniffles off the hotel balcony. Room reserved under Mitch's name and someone looking like him ran away shortly after the body hit the ground. No one reported the breaking in of the room door or Mitchy-boy swinging like a monkey between the balconies. I guess you had to be looking for it to see it.

The Present - 4 weeks before the climax - The Case of the Week is a therapist who is accused of killing a former patient turned stalker and making it look like suicide.

(At this rate, we should reach the culmination of the Mr. Sniffles/Sarah Holt situation in Chapter 7 or 8. hmmmmm I wonder how that will work since the show has a full 22 episode season.)


We meet the detective who handled her stalker case. A man she confided in, cried to, was vulnerable and maybe a little too emotionally angry around. He is all about protecting her and doesn't say anything to harm her case. He looks a little like the detective from 4 weeks in the future, but I can't be 100% sure yet.

Mitch does an excellent job of interjecting "reasonable doubt" into the forensic testimony about bullet trajectory angles for suicide cases. It's a good job all around until he needs to take a break to focus on a "pressing matter". He needs to deal with family drama.

Madam Therapist is a very demanding client. She's very "me" centric for a therapist. At least any that I have known. While Mitch is on his way back from dealing with his family drama plot, Tammy arrives to show Mitch that the police have released the Holt Laptop (more about that later). Tammy tries to get advise from Madame Therapist to help her with her family drama (yawn). Mitch arrives and when he tries to give his employee instructions and thereby send her away, Madame Therapist gets upity about splitting focus and distractions. Maybe if he wasn't 'distracted' he'd have seen the prosecution's curve ball coming.

Turns out Madame Therapist isn't as innocent as she'd like us to believe. Mitch easily shoots down one witness who talked about a green car with tinted windows driving slowly down the block, which because he focused on very carefully, allowed him to see Madame Therapist crossing the street to enter the building. Then the prosecutor brings up a pharmacist who filled a prescription for the victim, found in the victim's apartment, containing the drugs in his system. That's not so bad is it? oh wait, did I mention that it wasn't stalker boy that picked up the pills? It was Madame Therapist. Oooops, caught with pants down.

Madame Therapist goes on to tell Mitch, choked up on emotion, that she had tried avoiding stalker boy, she relocated her office, stayed at friend's places and other things to be hard to find. He always found her. That night she was at her sister's place and she saw the same dark windowed green car across the street (take note of this, it's important - I knew this when I was watching, it's the key to something). She felt she had to do something. She testifies that she filled the script, drugged the stalker and the medication took effect while she was fighting him off. She left him, alive, on the living room floor and ran out of the building disheveled with a ripped blouse.

Mitch has a lightbulb moment that night while talking about family drama with Abby and goes back to court to confront the potential owner of the green car who was really to blame for the death of stalker boy. The detective who was unable to save a previous stalking victim eventually killed by her stalked with a restraining order shoved in her mouth.

Jury finds "not guilty" and no one seems to be looking at the detective since there isn't any real evidence to prove he was anywhere near the scene. Mitch talked to him and he had a lot of "let's say" and "what if" theoretical ideas of what happened next in that apartment, but we'll never know for sure. 

As soon as Madame Therapist mentioned the green car, I knew it was the key to solving the case. I've watched enough "Murder She Wrote" to recognize the give away clues. Let's hope that there aren't too many of these moments in the future. I like to be surprised, not yell at the screen "Mitch you fool, look into the car!!!"

Family Drama - The mob is after us

As we know from the premier episode, a mob boss was taken down based on the information the FBI got out of the evil firm from Memphis. This is why the McDeere clan entered WitSec in the first place. Now, Sonny boy just turned 25 and has been named head of La Familia (Happy Birthday, you're a Mob Boss!! - Hallmark doesn't make cards for that).

I forget how, but Abby finds out about the conversation 2 weeks before with their WitSec contact and wants to talk to him herself because Mitch has seen some weird things.

Mitch takes a break from his current murder trial to take Abby to the WitSec office to talk to their guy. He hadn't heard from Mitch about the things he'd seen in the last 2 weeks, but he'll look into it.

At this point I'm fuzzy on the plot because I'm struck by how off the colouring looks. Mitch's eyes are brilliantly pale blue (which I find fabulous and would lose myself in them for hours if they were on my husband's face) but his skin is looking a bit orange. Like the spray tan gone bad on Ross in an episode of Friends.

It happens again when he meets with Madame Therapist and Tammy in the meeting room at the courthouse. I'm thoroughly distracted at this point and have lost the plot. Time to rewind and listen with my eyes closed to get the plot points for the case of the week.

Conspiracy Case - Sarah Holt

Andrew gets a bit of a dressing down by BLTH because he hasn't done anything about the laptop still in police custody. He has to move of suffer the wrath of the Cylons (oops wrong show).

Andrew proceeds to meet with a tech guy who has to be one of the best looking computer specialists I've ever known. Who tells him that Sarah's laptop has a special chip in it that will respond to a phone call and wipe the hard drive clean. Not only that, but this chip will tell him when the computer has been turned on so that he can then place the call, wipe the hard drive and save the day.

The laptop is almost turned on in Mitch's presence but thanks to Madame Therapist, Tammy takes it back to the office and almost absentmindedly turns it on. Tech-guy sees the flag, places the magic call and the wipe begins. Abby notices the pop-up window that is probably gibberish meant to look like tech code and Tammy begins to freak out hoping to save something to a flash drive before all is lost.

She got something but we don't know what yet. We can probably assume that it will be something key and be the golden ticket somewhere down the road.

Also, Ray is sent to look into the son of Sarah Holt's supposed victim a deputy sheriff somewhere that was too far for him to come home and spend the nights with his poor dying mother. Ray thinks the guy has anger issues and talks to the ex girlfriend. They're in a location that totally looks familiar to me but I don't have the time to stalk Google Streetview to find it so it will have to bother me until I can figure it out. The ex says she didn't want to break it off but the guy's mom was too much a part of his life and if he ever "grew a pair" to look her up again.

Ray thinks it's motive. We'll have to wait and see what happens next time.

In the closing scene, Mitch (4 weeks in the future) is heading to meet up with Andrew at an outdoor cafe somewhere near a Mercatto location. He's being followed by 2 MIB guys in an SUV who are on the phone with BLTH. Her orders "don't lose him again".

Till next time.