"Haunted, episode 1x03: Fidelity" Staring: Matthew Fox, Russell Hornsby, John Mann, Michael Irby, Lynn Collins Guest staring: Pauley “Abby” Perrette, Lynne Langdon, Ken Marino, Patrick O’Connor, Julene Renee, Reamy Hall, Todd Patrick Breaugh My god, there’s actually previouslies on this episode! There might actually be some continuity to this show! Ahem. Sorry. Got a little carried away there. Previously on Haunted, Frank died, came back to life and started seeing dead people. His ex- wife reminds him he’s no longer a cop, in case he forgot, and their son has been missing and presumed dead for two years. Oh, and Simon told him a storm was coming. Whatever the hell that means. It’s a really windy day in Los Angeles and cops are congregating around a hotel, particularly in a room where a dead woman is lying in a shallowly-filled bathtub with a stunned look on her face. Marcus closes a window and mutters that those damn Santa Anna’s make people crazy. Yeah, blame nature. Cop #1 exposits that the victim is Ruby Pratt and according to her company ID she was a sales rep. Marcus summaries that she was strangled and drowned in a bathtub of a cheap hotel, which is the same MO as the “Avery woman” last week. He asks who found her. The maid. Who the hell else? “Face up in less than eight inches of water,” Marcus waxes. “Horrible way to go.” “Never heard of a good way,” Frank mutters from off screen. Marcus asks what the hell he’s doing there. Frank says the Avery woman’s husband hired him to find out who killed his wife and since this murder sounds a lot like that one...Marcus says his client is their suspect. “Yeah,” Frank says. “He did say he had a two hundred pound pitbull up his you-know-what fingering him for his wife’s murder.” Heh. “Two hundred,” Marcus repeats indignantly. He-he. Frank says the guy has an alibi for both murders and they're looking for a pattern killer. Note to self: don’t have a fanfic open in another window when recapping. I just broke several pages of porn with a description of a murder scene. Damnit. Frank points out the faint redness around Ruby’s nose and mouth and reminds Marcus that the Avery woman had trace amounts of Hexane in her lungs. The coroner translates this as industrial strength brake fluid. Frank says if enough is poured on a cloth and held over someone’s face it works just like chloroform. Good to know. Thank you, Hollywood. Frank thinks this reeks of pattern killing, not crimes of passion. Then the woman’s husband (and the fact that I just screwed up and said “the guy’s wife” shows just how effeminate I think he looks, I guess) shows up because apparently the cops couldn’t hold him back effectively. He picks Ruby up and sobs all over her and basically totally contaminates the crime scene. Frank leaves Marcus to deal with him. He’s in the fancy looking elevator for all of ten seconds before weird shit starts happening. The lights flicker, the whole cabin shakes, rattling the chandelier and a feminine voice I assume is Ruby’s makes distressed choking noises. Frank grabs his neck and frantically pounds a few buttons. This does nothing. So he just plasters himself to the wall and screams until the elevator suddenly stops, throwing him to the ground. The door opens and Pauley Perrette, in a flowery dress and a cute little curly bob combination that makes her look like a flapper scampers in, alarmed, to ask if he’s okay. “What happened? Did the elevator get stuck?” Frank, panting and shaking, says uh-huh, “then it got unstuck.” She hands him a matchbook she finds on the ground, asking if it’s his. He takes it and walks away, still gasping and panting and looking shell shocked. “Um...officer?” She chases after him with this springy bounce like an overcaffeinated puppy. He says he’s not a cop. She says but, he was in “the room”. He says he’s a PI. She brushes it off and says she was wondering if she could go up and “take a peek”. “I’m an amateur sleuth...I’m even a member of the James Elroy crime club.” He pauses to ask what her name is. Nadine. She’s the desk clerk. He says go up to the room and ask for Detective Bradshaw. Tell him Frank sent her. Why is he trying to piss Marcus off now? And he adds that she should take the stairs. She scampers off excitedly. Have I mentioned I love Pauley Perrette? She’s so cute. Ooo! Opening credits! “Two years ago, my son was taken from me. Since then I’ve lost everything. My job, my marriage...even my life. But I came back. And the dead came with me.” Since I never saw the pilot episode when the show aired I was very grateful for this little plot summary. Hard rock music. Jittery images. Grungy text. Blatant ripping off of “Seven”. And it ends with the scene from the pilot of Simon grabbing Frank and crowing “Gotcha!” Slow motion pan over Los Angeles. It’s a little smoggy, but when isn’t it? Frank is standing outside a courthouse brooding when Jess comes around the corner and totally startles him. She laughs that he’s a “little jumpy”. Yeah, how long ago did Simon sneak up on him, stab him and try to throw him from a building? I think he’s justified. He asks if his client is off the hook. She says well, his alibi checked out. He asks if they found a profiler yet. She says uh-huh. He says “let me guess, he says you’re looking for a male Caucasian...late twenties, early thirties... intelligent, strong loner type.” No, you’re looking for an elderly grandmother who loves knitting and has cats. You’re profiling a serial killer – what do you expect? He says he just talked to Ruby’s boss – Mrs. Avery was a regional sales manager. “Guess who her best sales rep was.” “Ruby Pratt,” Jess responds immediately. Girl’s no dummy. “You’re amazing,” she adds. Honey, you’re not married anymore. You don’t need to stroke his ego. He says it’s just common sense, but she insists that he’s always ahead of everyone else. “That’s why I hated going to movies with you. You figured them out in the first ten minutes.” Oh, whatever. If he’s so smart how come he hasn’t figured out that Ruby’s husband is the killer? What? No, I’m not trying to spoil the rest of the episode, but come on! The guy was so obviously faking that little sob fest. That’s the #1 indicator of guilt on crime TV. Or it’s the #1 indicator you hired a bad actor. Take your pick. Jess brings the mood right back down by saying she found an old picture of them with Kevin while she was looking through a scrapbook and she thought he might want it. She then hands him a picture that Kevin would probably have showed his therapist years later as illustration of his unhappy childhood. I mean, he’s the only one not smiling and he’s standing almost completely behind them like having him in the picture was an afterthought. Frank chides her for looking at pictures again. She says she misses those days. Then she sort of smiles sadly, nods and leaves him to wallow in renewed bad memories. Victim #1’s (Belinda Avery) husband whimperingly tells Frank he doesn’t care if he’s been cleared or not, he just wants to find out who killed his wife. Frank says he’s trying and he thinks Mrs. Avery and Ruby both knew the killer. Mr. Avery doesn’t know Ruby. Belinda had many good sales reps across the country, what does that have to do with anything? Frank squirms a little and patiently explains that both women went to hotels with this man. Mr. Avery sobs as he insists that his wife would never *ever* have had an affair. She loved him, damnit! He leaves and Frank stares at the picture of Belinda until it somehow gives him a papercut. “Psychic Eye Book Shop”. A woman with an annoying voice asks Frank if she can help him find anything. Does she normally sound like that or did she suck helium before starting this scene? He asks if she has anything on ghosts and a sudden breeze blows through and knocks a few books from the shelf. He helps her pick them up and she points to the rather old looking book in his hand and says he should definitely get that one because it has a good description of the five stages of haunting. Level one: a vague sense that someone is there combined with a drop in temperature. Level five: get the hell out of the house and stay away from high places, large bodies of water and/or farming equipment. I might be interpreting her words loosely. Hotel of death and adultery. Frank finds Nadine behind the counter and asks if she remembers him. She does (even remembers his name) because judging from the way she’s batting her eyelashes and generally flirting she has a crush on him already. Really? Does he give off some sort of powerful pheromones or something that would justify girls always throwing themselves at him? Oh, right...I forgot I was watching a television show centered on a single, angsty former cop. He says he needs to go back up in the room and... “Yes!” she interrupts eagerly. “I mean...sure!” She puts up a sign saying she’ll be back in 15 and goes with him up the stairs because he’s still afraid to go in the elevator apparently. She asks what his “affiliation” is with the case. He says he’s working for one of the husbands and he has a feeling the killer is going to strike again. She delightedly says she follows her gut when she’s solving a case too...”er...when I’m reading one...” A bell dings and she says ‘oops, that’s my boss, gotta go’ and scampers off. She is so wonderfully flighty. I love her. He shrugs and keeps going, picking the lock on the door and going in all by himself instead of waiting for her to bring the key. He wanders the room for a minute before he hears a gust of wind and the sounds of Ruby whimpering and water dripping coming from the bathroom. Naturally, he goes to check it out. Obviously none of those movies he went to with Jess were horror flicks. The tub is completely filled with disgusting brown murky water and the tile surrounding it is in dirty disrepair. He manages not to gag and tries to force the faucet to shut off. This doesn’t work. So he rolls up his sleeve and reaches into the tub. The fact that he has made it into his late thirties is a miracle. Of course within seconds something yanks him completely underwater, almost straight down like maybe the tub is fifty feet deep. We watch the dripping faucet for a while and then he resurfaces, sideways, gasping and clawing at the tile and faucet before being yanked under again. Some unknown amount of time later, Nadine is hovering over him, sprawled on floor next to the tub, poking him in the forehead. Seriously, I love her. ‘Mr. Taylor? [poke poke] Yoo-hoo...are you alive in there? [poke jab]’ Snerk. She gives him the worst attempt at CPR ever – basically just pinching his nose and kissing him. I think there may have actually been tongue. He snaps awake and tells her he’s fine. Then he jolts upright like he’s been hit with a cattle prod and looks at the now-empty tub. It’s dry, but he’s wet, so... how much of that was real? She hovers and asks what happened because he scared the heck out of her. He says he slipped into the tub, which was overflowing. Yeah, sure. She says well, housekeeping sometimes leaves the faucet dripping... He says he’s pretty sure this wasn’t housekeeping’s doing. She brushes this off and asks if he got what he came for. Yeah, if what he came for was to get nearly killed and scared silly. He asks her opinion of why a woman like Ruby would “pick a dump like this to have an affair in”. She says they rent rooms by the hour and “for a lot of the people that come in here it’s not about feeling good about themselves...it’s not even about the sex. It’s about getting even with somebody.” Okay. What? So Frank goes to question Ruby’s husband. He fake moans that he thought he knew his wife but apparently not and can he get Frank a drink or something? Frank says um, no, does he know why his wife was at the hotel that day? He says he sure does: it was business. Um...unless you mean the prostitution business I’d say it was more pleasure. Or, apparently, revenge. Frank dances around the issue, saying he sees this a lot in his line of work and he doesn’t know how to tell Mr. Pratt, but... “Then don’t tell me,” Pratt says simply. He pants and screws up his face but can’t quite force out a tear. Frank insists that whoever killed Ruby will probably try to kill again so if he can think of anything useful he should speak up. He says he has no idea – he’s a math professor so in his mind every problem has a definite solution, but he doesn’t really want to consider the solution to this particular problem. Frank says he just has one more question: besides Mr. Pratt, who is the one person Ruby would be most likely to confide in? He says her best friend Alice maybe. Frank goes to talk to Alice, who says she and Ruby were not actually “best friends”, more like close acquaintances. Yeah. Trust a man to get things wrong when it comes to his wife’s social/work life. “So then this woman totally screamed at me on the phone and my boss said...” “Mmm-hmm...that’s nice dear. Have you seen the remote?” Frank asks if Ruby would have told her if she was seeing someone other than her husband. Alice reluctantly admits that there was this one guy...Jimmy. He was a musician, she thought he was cute and they spent a lot of time together. Frank asks if she was in love with him. Alice says she’s pretty sure *he* was in love with *her* but he wanted more than she could give him and it didn’t end well. Frank is talking to Marcus on his cell on the way back to his apartment, saying he can’t get much of a lead on Jimmy but apparently Ruby dumped him a month ago. Marcus says he’ll look into it. Then he hangs up and has a fairly pointless conversation with Jess, bitching about the fact that every damned suspect on this case has “bulletproof” alibis. This somehow leads to a conversation about how strange Frank has been acting lately. He’s putting things together really quickly, like he’s suddenly “found a crystal ball”. “Or maybe he’s just a good detective,” Marcus argues. Yeah, that’s definitely not it. Seriously, how much of a clueless buffoon was he before that this barely competent fumbling looks impressive? Marcus figures they all have good days and bad days and after a number of years they pretty much even out, but she should talk to him about whatever issues are between them. Meanwhile, Frank is sitting in his apartment reading Ghosts and Other Paranormal Crap for Dummies. Apparently, the key to figuring out what a ghost wants is to find out who they were when they were alive and how they died. Duh. The phone rings, startling him and then we cut right to him sitting at the bar downstairs with Nadine. “So...on the phone you said you had something about the case,” he says. She says she thinks Ruby was getting revenge on her husband because he had this *look* on his face when he was brought to the hotel “like it was the first time in his life he realized he didn’t even know her.” Beat. “You came down here to tell me that,” he asks. She says yeah, well, that and she was wondering if she could buy him dinner. He totally looks like a deer caught in headlights and says ‘um...thanks, but I have all this stuff I have to do...y’know, um, with the case...and the thing...with the other thing...and yeah, really busy’ and he runs off like his ass is on fire. She frowns at his still spinning barstool and mutters “some detective you are. You don’t have a clue.” Actually, I think he does in this case, dear. He’s just not into groupies. He’s shuffling papers around and pinning pictures of the two victims to a corkboard upstairs when he comes across that matchbook he got from the elevator. It says “3 for 1” on one side and “Hyland Motel” on the other. He calls Marcus and tells him to get a unit over to the Hyland Motel because that’s where the next victim is going to be if they don’t get there first. Marcus is baffled and asks how the hell he knows that. He says he can’t explain but Marcus needs to meet him there pretty please. Dude, you need to work on coming up with excuses for why you know shit you shouldn’t know. He pulls up to the motel and asks the guy cleaning the pool if a woman checked in tonight “looking like she was going to meet someone”. “You’ll have to narrow it down a little,” the guy doesn’t say but probably would if this was the real world instead of television. “She wasn’t one of your regulars and she was alone.” Frank says he needs to know where she is because she’s in trouble. The guy says “it’s LA. Who isn’t?” Heh. Frank pulls out his gun, waves it threateningly saying not him yet. Damnit, you have an ID! Use it! If you keep waving the damn gun at random civilians your going to end up shot or in jail! Moron! The guy sighs and says her name’s Winters and she’s in room 815. I mean 202. Frank runs up to the room and kicks in the door without even bothering to knock. He doesn’t turn the light on, instead waving his flashlight around the empty room frantically. The bathroom door is shut. He kicks that down too (maintenance is going to love this). The curtain around the tub is closed. He finally turns on the damned light, groans and opens the curtain. Nothing. The tub is totally dry. He looks relieved until he hears something behind him and slowly turns to find Ms. Winters floating in the completely filled shower stall. Because that’s totally possible. The door pops open (how convenient that it waited to do it when it was most dramatic) and he’s bowled over by several gallons of water and a dead body. He tosses her off him, smacks the wall angrily and the network cuts to commercial before he can start cursing. Morning. Detective Hey It’s That Guy asks Frank if he’s sure he didn’t see any other witnesses or cars parked in the lot or anything. Frank shakes his head and mutters that he was too late. The detective squints and says he’s saying that like he knew it would happen. Seriously, Frank, you need to work on coming up with stories to tell the police and the DA. “I just knew” or “I had a hunch” isn’t going to cut it. Detective reminds Frank that he brandished a weapon which is a felony since he stopped working for the police department and under these particular circumstances he’ll let it go but Frank had better watch it. Then he ominously tells the newly arrived Marcus that he’ll see him in his office when this is over. He leaves and Frank and Marcus kind of chuckle. “Just like old times,” Frank says. Marcus says no, this is definitely different because now Frank has some sort of freaky ability to predict the killer’s next move before he even makes it. Oh, and Ms. Winters worked for a subsidiary of the same company the other two victims were connected to. Yeah. I’d have to consult with the gang from Criminal Minds, but I’m pretty sure that serial killers – while methodical and prone to patterns – are unlikely to choose their victims like this. Frank says it has to be somebody who “really knows” that little world. More like somebody *in* it. Marcus says it’s definitely not boyfriend Jimmy because he’s in Germany. Jess walks up to needle Frank some more about how he knew Ms. Winters was going to be a victim. He says he didn’t know it was Ms. Winters. Marcus says yeah, but he knew *somebody* would be in danger and where they would be. Frank sighs and asks if they would believe him if he told them he was sick or he’d won the lottery. They groan and sort of nod. “Why?” “Because I’ve never known you to lie,” Jess admits. It’s his greatest curse, apparently. He says then they have to just trust that he has some sort of “insight” into the case that he doesn’t really understand but can’t ignore. Um...no they don’t because that sort of thing usually sends up red flags with law enforcement. And reporters. And the general public. You’re on a one-way road to trouble is all I’m sayin’. He’s walking back to his car later when Jess catches up and hands him the casefiles for the last two murders, promising to get him the third when it’s put together. “Why,” he asks, baffled. She sighs. “Because I’m tired of seeing the bad guys get all the breaks”. He says this doesn’t sound like her. She says yeah, well, “lately I’ve had this sense of dread and I just can’t shake it”. Yeah, I’m getting that feeling too. But that’s because this show is starting to look like – had it survived – it would have gravitated toward the “there’s random evil in the world that must be stopped” nonsense that “Ghost Whisperer” tends to wallow in. He suggests she “get away from it all” for a while. She says she doesn’t think she can get far enough. Night. Again. Back home, Frank arranges the contents of the files on the floor, along with the pictures of the three victims. A sudden wind whips the papers up into his face and he whirls around to find the windows completely closed. That's cause it wasn't the wind, dummy. And Gus is barking crazily. Like my mother pointed out: the only purpose this dog serves, apparently, is to warn Frank and the audience that a ghost is around (not that Frank understands this message...ever). When he looks back down he finds only the three victims pictures remaining where he put them - except now they’re all pictures of Ruby. The matchbook is above it, flipped to the side that says “3 for 1”. I’d listen to this ghost, Frank. I don’t think she’s above taking a baseball bat to your skull. So Frank goes back to Ruby’s husband’s place. Nobody answers the door and all the lights are off. So he wanders around and follows a noise through the nearby woods to a little shack in the middle of nowhere. Naturally, it’s unlocked, so he just walks right in and finds a bunch of surveillance pictures of Ruby with “Jimmy”, a big jar of Hexane and a rag. Like I said, the husband did it. He whips out his cell phone and calls Nadine, of all people, to ask her to gather the hotel registries for the last year and bring them to his apartment. Mr. Pratt is right outside listening to this with an evil look on his face. Frank hears a noise and whips out his gun, diving through the front door of the shack and pointing it at the place where Mr. Pratt was standing five seconds ago but of course he isn’t there anymore. Ruby is though. Laying next to him, gaping and shaking, her eyes totally milked over and her skin an interesting shade of grayish blue. Frank leaps away from her and turns to find her gone already. Frank’s apartment. Nadine arrives to find the door slightly ajar and no lights on inside. She knocks and goes in anyway, calling Frank. She’s totally the kind of woman who hears a weird noise outside and goes running out in her nightie all “Hello? Rapist? Murderer? Hello?” The door slams behind her. Meanwhile, Frank is headed home, calling Marcus. He gets a machine and leaves a message about putting an APB on Bob Pratt immediately because he’s the murderer and he just killed those other women so they would think it was a serial killer and not a jealous husband. Oh, and check the greenhouse near his place. He arrives to find the door locked again, but all the lights are off, which is unusual because he usually leaves every light in the apartment on whether he’s home or not. Seriously, I would love to see his electric bill. Must be fun. He calls for Gus, pulls out his gun and gets all of ten feet before Mr. Pratt leaps on him from behind and gags him with Hexane. And when I say “leaps on”, I’m not exaggerating. The guy is a good three inches shorter than Frank. Lucky for him, the Hexane works quickly and Frank pitches to the floor. Frank wakes up in the bathroom to the sound of water running. He looks over to find Nadine unconscious in a slowly filling tub. Pratt is sitting on the edge of the tub with a gun (probably Frank’s), which he points at Frank when he starts moving, ordering him to be quiet. It should be noted that Frank is not at all restrained. Yeah, because you probably don’t need to worry about him fighting back or anything, Bob. And it’s not like he’s bigger than you and would totally win that fight. Genius. Frank sways and gasps and looks at Nadine, who has water just starting to come up over her chin. “It’s not too late to stop this,” he says. Bob, recognizing the clichéd line, spouts the requisite reply, which is that it *is* actually much too late. Frank looks at Nadine, blinks a few times and decides he has time to get a confession. How did Bob get the women to the hotels? He said they would meet their husbands there for a little romantic fling. Frank goes right to taunting. “How about your wife?...What did you have to do? Pretend to be Jimmy Stent?” Bob grinds his teeth and tells him to can it. You know, you wouldn’t have this problem if you’d tied him to that pedestal sink and gagged him. Just saying. For a murderer who concocted a ridiculous scenario to distract the police you’re not so good at thinking things through. His gloating to the contrary is interrupted when the bathroom door blows open suddenly, distracting him so Frank can knock the gun from his hand and punch him to the ground without even breaking a sweat. Yes, it’s obvious the guy can’t fight worth a damn. Frank pulls Nadine from the water and then strangely takes the time to re-holster his gun. Bob regains his balance and tackles him. He gets beaten down pretty easily again. Seriously, just stay down. You’re clearly not either a lover *or* a fighter. He passes out and Frank goes to give Nadine mouth-to-mouth, which he does about as competently as Jack Shephard, which is to say I hope I am never in a situation where I need CPR and the only person around is Matthew Fox. Better than Nadine, but...tip #1: tilt head back so you don't blow air into the victim's stomach. Nadine coughs awake anyway and he pulls her into his arms, babbling that everything is okay now. She just clings to his arm and GhostRuby looks at him approvingly through the now-broken mirror. Later, people are milling around the apartment. Nadine is laying on a stretcher, Jess is standing over her looking at the hotel record book and Bob is being taken away, glowering. Marcus tells Frank they found the pictures at Pratt’s place, along with some divorce papers Ruby was getting ready to file. Frank half-listens while he calls Mr. Avery to tell him he caught the killer. And there’s Gus, sitting on the couch in the background, watching the world go by. Has he been there the whole time? Some guard dog you got there, Frank. Nadine tells Jess she found Ruby’s name in last year’s registry so she’d been there before. Probably with Jimmy. Jess thanks her for her statement and Frank walks up to ask if he can have a minute with Nadine. Jess leaves, reminding Nadine to call if she needs anything. And the cops in the background are standing amid stacks of boxes, taking bets on how long the show can go before Frank starts actually unpacking crap. Nadine says it was “stupid” to go into the empty apartment with the open door like that. No kidding. She admits she’s not a very good detective. Yeah, well, he totally did the same thing. Many times. Which is probably why he reassures her that no, she did great. And, you know, next time she decides to stop by his apartment it won’t be this crazy. I wouldn't be so sure. And is that your idea of asking for a date, Frank? Been away from the dating scene for a while, have we? “No offense, Frank,” she frowns. “But I am *never* coming here ever again.” Snort. He nods and smiles and tells her to “take care” before the paramedics wheel her out. Jess asks if Frank is okay. He says yeah, he’s getting used to rejection. She whaps him lightly and laughs that she wasn’t talking about “Nancy Drew”. Frank turns serious and says hey, they stopped one of the “bad ones”. She says yeah, but she wonders how many more are out there. Yeah, that’s why there’s a police force. And why we have to have this clichéd conversation at least once in every cop show that ever hits the airwaves. Blah blah less of them than us blah blah sure. He watches her leave, all dewy-eyed and a familiar voice nearby praises “that’s some nice work tonight, Mr. Taylor.” Frank obviously not recognizing it yet, just nods and says thanks. Then the voice gets all creepy and ominous and he turns to see Simon (naturally) smirking at him. “What’re we gonna do about that bad feeling your wife’s got,” he smarms. He disappears and Frank just gasps and looks shaken and maybe starts to cry a little. And scene.