The Ledger

13.19 Seer

In this unusual episode (13.19), a man claiming to have psychic visions is a suspect in the murder of his attractive female neighbor. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with a couple having an argument in the kitchen of their apartment. The woman is about to throw the man's keys out the window when she looks out and sees the body of a woman next to a dumpster several floors below. The victim is well-dressed, and there is a foot-print near the body, apparently from the murderer. Briscoe and Green check in with the annoying forensics guy, Beck, who has been showing up almost as much as Medical Examiner Rogers lately, and Beck, since he knows everything, tells them all about the footprint and how the murderer's feet are pronated and so on. This guy is like the Detective Goran of the original series...there is no obscure area of knowledge that he doesn't know inside and out. This sort of caricature, in my opinion, doesn't belong on a relatively realistic drama like L&O.

Anyway, they learn the victim's name is Rachel Caldwell from East 83rd Street. When they visit her apartment, they meet her neighbor, Tim Grayson, who is sort of creepy. They learn from the ME that there was an attempted sexual assault on her, and she was hit in the head with a metal bar or similar object. The detectives talk to her friend Lee Ann Parker, who says they were hanging out a a bar, Mavericks on 73rd (a real bar, by the way). She says that she and the victim liked to go to "Tart" parties, sexually-provocative events that were usually sponsored and controlled by women. The latest was at Plato's Retreat, a club downtown. They talk to a woman named Adrian who sponsored the party. They speak to her in her art gallery, right underneath a giant photo of a woman's breast.

To further investigate, Briscoe and Green go to the party that night to see what they can find out. While there, a woman falls into Briscoe's arms. They learn that the victim was talking to Geoffrey Viceroy, a lawyer, at least that's what his business card says. The dets track down Viceroy and see that he is an old man in a wheelchair, who doesn't get to sex parties at clubs, obviously. Someone stole his business cards. He says he got them from the firm's print shop. Guess who works upstairs at the print shop? Surprise! It's Tim Grayson, the creepy neighbor! Although this "reveal" makes perfect sense given the structured nature of L&O story telling, it's still a bit of a surprise when you see it's him.

Grayson even has a photo of the victim on his desk at work, so it looks like he's a little obsessed, and he has one of those madonna/whore complexes that creates so many problems in the sexually deviant: "Why would she dress like that?" he asks. Once he's in for questioning, Grayson drops the next bomb: he says he had a "sense" something was wrong. He says he had a vision of her injured in an alley. As Green begins to get him to talk, Briscoe, who had been playing "bad cop" says mock-eerily, "I see a cup of coffee," and exits, as Green gets Grayson to tell him the details of the crime.

Grayson and Green head to the crime scene where Grayson walks through everything he says he saw in his vision. He even locates the murder weapon, which for some reason CSU had missed, even though it was in plain view right next to where the body was found. Meanwhile, Briscoe and Southerlyn search Grayson's apartment, where she mispronounces "Feng Shui" but they find some shoes that match the prints found at the scene.

They arrest Grayson, and his defense attorney, Maters, quotes Hamlet to McCoy ("There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy". He acknowledge he catches the reference, and Masters follows it up with a motion to suppress everything Grayson said, since he didn't know he was a suspect. The judge agrees, suppressing everything but the shoeprint and the shoes.

Skoda questions Grayson and finds him delusional, and probably experienced these visions as a way of distancing himself from the guilt he felt over killing the girl.

At trial, one of the defense tactics is to ask about the seductive nature of the victim's outfit. This is admissible? What the victim was wearing is relevant to why she was killed? What is this, 1984? Another tactic is to bring up a supposed psychic who is semi-legitimate because he can predict the future and has been hired by Japanese corporations to do just that. Do the script writers not see a difference between having a vision of what's happening now/in the past and a clairvoyant who sees the future? It seems to me the two are unrelated. Anyway, McCoy shreds the psychic, but it's unclear why he even had to bother.

McCoy introduces telephoto pictures Grayson had taken of the victim. It's clear he was stalking her. In the midst of cross-examination, Grayson confesses to McCoy that he killed her. McCoy tells the defense counsel he's never had anyone confess to him like that in the middle of a trial. (I'm not sure whether this is supported by previous episodes.) The defense counsel gets Skoda to testify that Grayson has a need to please authority figures, and he might have confesses to both the police and McCoy just to please them.

Anyway, all this becomes irrelevant because the victim's friend, Lee Ann Parks, said something in her testimony that was inconsistent with her previous statement, and consequently, SS suspects that Parks is a lesbian and had feelings for the victim. It turns out, rather ridiculously, that Parks is the real murderer, and that Grayson had merely watched the whole thing happen and repressed it. What nonsense.

Posted by adm at April 9, 2004 06:37 PM

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