Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 15: I See... Murder

Tim Pierson (Max Jenkins) is killed by an arrow in a city park while waiting for his internet date to arrive. The recap identifies the killer before the credits: Marilyn Gladwell (Tracey Ullman), on-call psychic to Tim's stepmother Phyllis Pierson (Jill Eikenberry), whom Phyllis has relied on throughout the two years since Tim's father George died. Marilyn charges $1,500 an hour, working out to about $200,000 a year and roughly 133 hours of consultation annually.

Phyllis herself notes that Tim was dead set against the arrangement, arguing the cost was too high and that she should find a therapist like other normal neurotic people.

The financial motive sharpens around the family company. George's advice, as conveyed by Marilyn, was not to sell Bakewells to their rival Snackerdoodles, which runs counter to Tim's intent to do exactly that at a swiftly approaching Bakewells board meeting. Marilyn's stated lack of motive and her claimed alibi make her an unlikely suspect at first, alongside her vaguely Eastern European accent and caginess about where she grew up.

Kaya Blanke has been promoted to detective, and Elsbeth's new patrol officer is Nikki Reynolds (b), more buttoned-up than Kaya but not as starchy as Lieutenant Connor. Nikki keeps work and private life strictly separate, which Elsbeth initially experiences as judgmental; the two eventually bond over dogs, with Nikki saying she hopes to transfer to the K-9 unit and accepting Elsbeth's invitation to walk Gonzo with her.

Kaya's visit to the Park and Rec department produces video of the park, and two representatives of the Rodent Death Society explain advances in rodent-killing arrows — blunt tips incapable of puncturing a human sternum — and the danger of rat poison to birds of prey.

Forensics recovers a serial number from the arrowhead, which identifies where it was purchased, and Elsbeth and Kaya hold a Zoom call with Harlan Wike (Buzz Anderson II), co-owner of Wike's Hardware Store in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Wike explains that the line of arrowheads was discontinued once modern, more accurate and lightweight carbon-fiber arrowheads arrived, and shares extensive woodchuck content — Bucks County being the woodchuck-hunting capital of the Northeast, and woodchucks not actually chucking wood.

Nikki's review of Tim's dating profile shows he used the same intro line with everyone, got blocked often, and that his final match, Kristy Brown, catfished him: she was the invention of his murderer, built around shared interests in Italian horror films, basketball and cryptocurrencies.

The park footage looks fruitless until Elsbeth spots a small shrubbery moving in a very non-shrubbery way, which reminds her of her duck-hunting dad's head-to-toe camouflage ghillie suit. The break on the alibi comes from Bucks County: Marilyn's assistant Reagan Lott (Kate Rigg) grew up there, as did Marilyn, then known as Mary Lou Grunderson and Reagan's babysitter. Marilyn sometimes lets Reagan handle phone consultations with new clients, and Reagan did so on the night of Tim's murder.

Means follows: as Mary Lou Grunderson, Marilyn's local fame as the 1971 Woodchuck Festival Champion of super-accurate bowhunting lives on. Elsbeth, Kaya and Nikki enlist Phyllis to lay a trap using the fictional Aunt Bitsy whose equally fictional recent death Tim invoked in his dating-app messages, and Marilyn takes the bait and implicates herself several times over.

Once Marilyn is in custody, Captain Wagner asks her to reach the spirit of Scotty Fenton, a young man whose death he blames himself for not preventing. She had impressed him earlier by asking whether an old blue station wagon meant anything to him; it was the vehicle of a serial killer who preyed on male college students, whom Wagner had been unable to stop before another student died. Marilyn determines that Scotty's spirit has moved on, at least some comfort to Wagner.

In the final moments Marilyn has another vision: terribly dangerous times ahead for Elsbeth, involving lots of blood, lots of water, an evil figure in a dark robe, and dead silence.

The arrest is engineered rather than confessed. With motive and opportunity already in place — the possible loss of $200,000 a year plus what she would make as a Snackerdoodles shareholder if the Bakewells acquisition went through, and an unknown location on the night of the death — the team needs Marilyn to act. Elsbeth, Kaya and Nikki use Phyllis and the fictional Aunt Bitsy, the dead relative Tim always invoked in his dating-app messages, to lay a trap. Marilyn takes the bait and implicates herself several times over in the process.

Means had already been established from Bucks County: changing a name does not erase Mary Lou Grunderson's local fame as the 1971 Woodchuck Festival Champion of super-accurate bowhunting, and the arrowhead traced back to Wike's Hardware.

Unresolved inside the episode: Marilyn's final vision of danger ahead for Elsbeth — lots of blood, lots of water, an evil figure in a dark robe and dead silence — is delivered as a warning and is not resolved here, and the season-long storyline involving Judge Crawford remains open. Whether Marilyn returns later in the season is not established in this episode.