Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 16: Hot Tub Crime Machine

Freya Frostad (Mary-Louise Parker) has built a career and a life on the belief that one needs only 44 things, enforcing a one-in, one-out policy on possessions, including gifts she bestows on her husband Axel (Will Swenson) and their lover Taylor (Jess Darrow). She talks about how people slide into untidy, clutter-filled lives to control unruly feelings, and the recap frames her as someone who will not admit she would rather dump Axel and be with Taylor exclusively, going instead to the extreme of drowning him in their hot tub.

The mechanism is deliberate: Freya uses the necklace Axel secretly gave Taylor as bait to lure him into getting tangled up with the drains in the hot tub, then uses their Finnish NotRoomba to seal the Tub Top. Her motive is a near-frantic desire to get Taylor to herself rather than Axel's breaking of the rule of 44, which also explains the repeated urgent-care visits she orchestrated by poisoning Axel with arsenic extracted from a former client's stash of 19th-century flypaper. She acquiesces immediately to replacing Axel as the third member of their relationship.

Elsbeth and Detective Edwards bring Taylor in for a discreet chat about her relationship with the Frostads while the hair clogging the drain is out being tested on Tub Top's dime, thanks to an offer from its corporate reputation protector. Axel's many urgent-care visits for severe GI issues come into focus when Taylor mentions the soothing post-workout beverages Freya customized for each of them — Axel's were very bitter and he drank them anyway.

The hair test comes back showing the clump was entirely Axel's hair, with none of Taylor's despite their joint use of the hot tub, and positive for arsenic.

Elsbeth independently hires Freya to guide her own decluttering, as she did with Matthew Broderick's character in the college-admissions episode, and learns about Freya's former clients, including one who hired her to clear out a $20 million carriage house and owned 147 gilded deviled-egg plates. That specific recollection pays off when Elsbeth and Edwards identify a recurring monthly charge to SELF in Freya's credit-card statement as a self-storage unit: the minimalist is a highly organized hoarder of her past clients' castoffs.

The carriage-house family had inherited wealth from forebears in pest control, leaving arsenic-impregnated flypaper for Freya to store and use.

Figuring out why Freya killed Axel sends Elsbeth and Teddy on parallel journeys. Elsbeth tries Freya's method and finds that one woman's clutter is her route to the divergent thinking that drives her murder-solving. Teddy comes to her for advice at least twice, worried that he has not experimented enough, that he and Roy may be rushing, that he could repeat his parents' breakup, and that Elsbeth's closeness to Roy complicates things.

Elsbeth eventually puts her foot down: the decision is his, she will support him whatever it is, and no one is to blame for his difficulty committing — he is a grown-up and needs to embrace the responsibility and consequences of his own choices.

Detective Edwards takes the step of telling both Elsbeth and Captain Wagner that she is polyamorous, and Wagner, who had been curious and judgy about her love life, apologizes; the recap notes the explanation of dyads, triads and New Relationship Energy. Elsbeth also works on letting go of how her relationship with Kaya used to work so that Kaya and Cameron can flourish as a couple.

The closing montage, set to "I Got You, Babe," shows Teddy committing to Roy, Cameron and Kaya slow-dancing and kissing among the birthday balloons and presents he organized, Taylor being snapped up as another couple's third at a coffee shop, and Elsbeth reunited with her things from the storage unit and FaceTiming Angus.

The case is proved on objects, not on a confession. The hair clogging the drain — paid for by Tub Top's corporate reputation protector — is entirely Axel's, which is wrong given that Taylor used the hot tub too, and it tests positive for arsenic. Taylor's account of the soothing post-workout beverages Freya customized for each of them explains the severe GI issues behind Axel's urgent-care visits, and the arsenic is traced to 19th-century flypaper from a former client whose carriage-house family made its fortune in pest control. Freya, the minimalist with a rule of 44 things, keeps her past clients' castoffs in a self-storage unit behind a recurring monthly charge to SELF.

The motive the recap settles on is Freya's wish to have Taylor to herself, not Axel's violation of the rule of 44; she had acquiesced immediately to replacing Axel as the third member of the relationship.

Unresolved inside the episode: the recap does not stage an arrest scene, a charge or a court outcome for Freya, and it raises as an open question whether the sensitive matter Kaya asked to speak with Wagner about is a real issue or only a way to get Elsbeth out of the room so Kaya's birthday-party details could be coordinated.