An important football game goes both ways in Britten’s twin universes, including a murder after a fight in the parking lot. Oh and Rex finds out a secret about Emma. One that affects his dad too.
Rex: Captain Harper gives a speech to the officers about getting ahead of potential trouble spots at the game. She continues talking in voiceover on top of fans walking into the stadium, until someone in a green jersey throws a football at two men in red jerseys–one of the two men turns around and belligerently demands who threw the ball, despite his friend trying to get him to back down.
Hannah: Harper tells the officers their job is to make sure the only thing newsworthy about the game is the score. Next we see the owner of a dry cleaning business–John–who’s placing a bet for $100,000 on Seattle over the phone. The man on the other end asks if he can cover it–since he’d hate for something to happen to John’s other arm. But John says he can do it, so the bet is placed.
Britten’s shocked that Dr. Lee is actually going to the game.
Rex: Britten’s a bit surprised that Dr. Evans will watch the game.
Hannah: Britten explains that it’s difficult for him to care about football games like this, especially since it’s possible for them to go both ways given the switch between worlds. This makes it difficult for Britten to follow the game or even really care.
The next sequence shows the Los Angeles team winning in the Hannah world at 10 seconds on a field goal. In the Rex world, the Seattle team wins in the last few seconds.
Hannah: John gets up from his seat, upset, despite his wife asking if everything’s OK. Meanwhile Britten talks in voiceover about the differences in the football game between the two worlds. Because that wouldn’t be horribly confusing–in one world your team wins, but in the other they lose.
Rex: The belligerent man from the opening shows up dead outside the stadium. Who else saw that one coming? Bird interviews the victim’s brother, who tells them the last time he saw the guy was when he left him at the entrance so he could go get the car. Rob, the victim, was apparently a “walking brawl.” He spent as much time shouting at people in the stands as he did the opposing team. Britten tells the brother they’ll arrange a hotel for him for a few days while they investigate; then he sends the guy on his way. And that’s when they look at the body, which sparks Britten noticing something green–home team colors–on the victim’s ear. Oh and that Rob’s got a broken leg too. Maybe he and John from the other world share a bookie?
Britten walks into Rex’s room and turns down the mega-depressing music on the iPod. Turns out Emma broke up with him, and he’s been lying in bed all day listening to crappy songs. Britten reveals that of course he knows what’s going on. He gave Rex a one-day pass for being depressed, but tells him that he’ll be back at school tomorrow. And then he tries to get Rex to talk, but the teenager won’t do it. So instead Britten heads to work, leaving Rex alone again. Then the kid calls Emma and leaves a message–which is never a good idea here.
Hannah: John’s dry cleaner went up in smoke, killing one of his workers in the process. It’s clearly arson–someone tried to make it look like an electrical short. Vega suggests they ask around for people who wanted to hurt the dead woman, Sabrina, but Britten realizes that her presence at the dry cleaner was incidental. She wasn’t the target, she was merely a casualty. And then he finds the betting ledger with the $100,000 loss. Favorite line this episode: “Sometimes when it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s the guy with the big knife.”
While Vega and Britten walk up to a house, Vega suggests that he and a few of the guys plan a proper send-off for Britten before he heads to Oregon. Britten doesn’t give him a clear go-ahead, but only a bit of one before John’s wife answers the door. The detectives sit with her, discussing the fire at the dry cleaner. Then Britten asks the wife to leave the room so they can take a statement from John alone. Pfft…sure that’s totally what’s going on.
Vega pulls out the ledger after John spins a lie about some neighborhood kids torching the place. The business was insured for $1 million, but his gambling debts amount to $487,000. If we let one plus one equal two…then Britten makes the leap that John set the fire so he could collect the money and pay off his debt. John refutes this and even offers to take a lie-detector test. Britten demands to know who John’s been placing his bets with, but at first the other man won’t say. He’s too scared about it.
They show up at Solomon Kang’s custom auto shop to ask the gent a few questions about the dry cleaner burning down. He says he didn’t do it despite the blended fuel matching exactly what came from his shop. The reason is that he sells that fuel to anyone who comes in–so if they arrest him they’ve got to shut down everyone like him in the county. They bring Solomon down to the station, where the prosecutor tells them if they don’t get more info connecting Solomon to the fire then they can only book him for running an illegal gambling operation. Vega comments the fuel is as good as a fingerprint, since it’s a particular blend with a particular profile. Marco, the attorney, says they need to figure out how the fuel got from Solomon’s possession to the fire.
So Britten decides to look at video from the street cameras near the dry cleaner. That way they can see any custom cars who might’ve appeared in the right timeframe; since Solomon’s guys are unlikely to drive Buicks. And they soon get a hit! The custom paint job is as good as a license plate, which they can’t see, so Britten sets Vega on getting everyone to look. While he goes to bed.
Rex: Rex wakes Britten up, asking to give Emma a polygraph. However Britten puts the kibosh on this–but still explains how to tell when someone’s lying. Rex is convinced Emma’s not telling him something, and so goes off to interrogate her despite Britten’s warnings. Bird calls right at the end of the conversation, and first asks why Britten was calling after Rex. Then they get into the point of the conversation, which is a Los Angeles fan from the football game crashing into a tree. He’s got green paint on his face too, which appears to match the paint on the dead guy’s ear.
Emma’s at school taking a driving test when Rex gets in the car next to her. He figures out she’s lying about the Cassie Anderson thing, but she runs away rather than talk. Until he stops her near a fence.
At the station, Britten and Bird talk to Rob’s brother, who tells them about the green-painted guy who Rob got into a fight with. They go in and talk to George, the investment banker who crashed the car. George admits to the fist-fight in the stands, and soon realizes that the cops are trying to pin the murder on him. Which won’t fly because he was blacked-out drunk and can’t remember a thing after the fight.
Hannah: Britten’s reading about the L.A. game when Hannah walks in. He tells her about the going-away party Vega’s planning; the detective was like a puppy dog about it and Britten agreed because he didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings. Vega calls and tells him they found the car in Koreatown. It’s driven by one of Kang’s runners who’s got a few misdemeanors for priors, so they head over to his grandma’s house in Koreatown. Ginsung, the runner, is working out when Britten and Vega show up at the door asking for him.
He books it out of the house and jumps into the car. Britten and Vega see him from the window and they bolt down the outside staircase. Ginsung soon crashes the car, which allows them to pull him out. That’s when Britten notices the Seattle hat on Ginsung’s keychain…and then thinks about the hat found near Rob’s body in the other world.
Vega and Britten took Ginsung to the hospital after the accident, and soon the doctor tells them that he’s OK to interview. Britten’s of course been staring at the hat on the keychain like it’ll tell him something.
Britten and Vega enter the hospital room and tell Ginsung they’ve got evidence to charge him for the arson. They try to convince him to reveal who hired him, and Kang can’t touch him from prison. Which is fine…except Kang didn’t hire him to set the fire. Then who did??
Vega and Britten go back to John’s house. Britten tells them they picked up Ginsung for burning down the store; that’s when he accuses the wife. She gets defensive, but then Britten brings out the bombshell of the three phone calls she made to Ginsung’s cell phone last week. After John gets upset with her about the fire, she flips out on him for not stopping with the gambling. And then she’s arrested and marched out. One case down!
Rex: Bird finds Britten down in the morgue with the body. He’s wondering why the body hasn’t been released yet, and this gives Britten the chance to explain about the hat. It was the colors of the victim’s team…but it’s entirely too small for his head. So then who’s hat is it?
Britten and Bird find the victim’s brother and mother in the hallway. The brother walks up to them and says he should take his mom home. Except the detectives won’t let this happen, since they need to talk to him. But he can tell his mother whatever the heck he wants.
We finally get to hear the brother’s name–Kenneth–when they bring him into the interview room. Britten reveals he knows about Rob pushing Kenneth around in the stands. The hat’s a perfect fit, by the way, and soon after Kenneth tearfully confesses to beating Rob to death with a brick. Looks like he grabbed the wrong hat when he walked away from the crime scene.
Rex comes into the station, wanting to talk to his dad. Turns out Rex got Emma pregnant. She lost the baby already though, so Britten’s not going to be a grandfather anytime soon. Emma broke up with Rex because she didn’t think he could deal with it…and she was right. Britten advises that Rex tell Emma he’ll be there for her–and that should fix it.
When Britten grabs his work bag to to take Rex home, he sees Kenneth being walked down the hallway. And then John’s wife, in the Hannah world, talks about the field goal that went wide. That one tiny little thing that makes all the difference.
Britten asks Rex about the timing of when he got Emma pregnant. It was right before the accident; sounds like she found out right after the funeral she was expecting. Aroo?
Hannah: Britten slides out of bed, unintentionally waking Hannah. He runs to the school to find Emma and pulls her away from her friends. He asks her if she’s pregnant, and she’s shocked that he knows. “One tiny thing,” huh?
Britten heads back home, where the movers are already packing. Hannah asks for Britten to show them how to get the ladder into the attic, but instead he tells them to step away because there’s something they need to talk about. Dun dun dunnnn.
If you missed the previous episode be sure to read our ‘Awake: Nightswimming’ recap to catch up.