Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 20: Ramen Holiday

A perp walk takes Elsbeth to her cell in the women's wing of the Midtown Detention Center and, through one economical sequence, reintroduces her personal rogues' gallery: theater director Alex Modarian (Stephen Moyer), fraudulent minimalist Freya Frostad (Mary-Louise Parker), mafia princess Pupetta Del Ponte (Alyssa Milano), self-appointed male ally and mixologist Joe Dillon (Arian Moayed), plastic surgeon Vanessa Holmes (Gina Gershon), matchmaker Margo Clarke (Retta), scammy tech entrepreneur Quinn Powers (Elizabeth Lail) and fashion designer Matteo Hart (André De Shields). Warden Mrs. Martin (Donna Lynne Champlin) indulges them with arts and crafts and theater rehearsals, which recreates an eliteness bubble even in jail.

Modarian is the writer-director of the jailhouse theatricals, whose oeuvre addresses how the deceitful Elsbeth Tascioni railroaded each of them into their current predicaments. When Elsbeth sits in on a rehearsal she is first dismayed by the script's accusations of evidence planting, then delighted to see Matteo, and finally puzzled by how much the actors openly loathe their director.

Being a big man on the cellblock as writer-director, library cart manager and facilitator of the prison black market is not enough for Modarian: he has a plan to leverage his knowledge of Martin's corruption into a transfer to a nicer prison.

He never gets a bite of his ramen. Elsbeth and Officer Rocco Bellini (Geoffrey Murphy), who idolizes Captain Wagner and dreams of joining New York's Finest, discover Modarian's body, and she notices a very particular aroma rising from the still-hot bowl, which she cannot place but is convinced is no coincidence. Martin lets Elsbeth's curiosity burble along while an outside team runs its own investigation.

Nobody's alibi is ironclad and there are no cameras in the laundry room, kitchen or library, but Elsbeth's unconscious supplies a dream ballet — their own version of Chicago's “Cell Block Tango” — in which Quinn, Pupetta, Freya, Vanessa and Margo, in rainbow-colored bedazzled prison jumpsuits, explain why Alex had it coming.

The solution comes from a detail of an earlier case. With black-market goods gone, the inmates reminisce about how good the food was when Chef Veev (Pamela Adlon) was locked up with them, and that reminds Elsbeth of the memorable spice blend from one of Veev's instructional videos — the blend behind the smell in the library.

From there a cascade of insights leads her to Warden Martin, who used the passageway between the kitchen and laundry room dug by Pupetta's Uncle Vinny to move between wings, claimed not to want to know about Modarian's lucrative black market while using her many tote bags to move contraband into the prison, and killed him because he planned to trade that knowledge for a transfer.

Outside, no one can visit Elsbeth until she has been inside at least a week, and Kaya is anxious to see her before an undercover assignment with her new unit — her promotion to an elite task force based at another precinct means Carra Patterson will be a guest star going forward. Wagner reasons with Judge Dousant, who is not buying the appeal for leniency. Teddy then finds the thread: Crawford was not the judge originally assigned to Andy Mertens's murder trial — it landed on Dousant's docket and he recused himself over a scheduling conflict.

Officer Slater learns the conflict was an invitation to a Historical Law Society junket, and that Dousant's companion was Chloe the consultant (Jordana Brewster), not his wife. Elsbeth arrives at Kaya's farewell party in a color-blocked, entirely sequined minidress arranged by Wagner and Chandler, and after Cameron's toast she toasts Kaya and says she would rather follow Kaya's example and stay at this precinct where she is needed. Wagner also tells Teddy he would make a good detective, which briefly flusters him.

The prison murder is solved by smell. The distinctive aroma left in Modarian's bowl of ramen comes from the spice blend Elsbeth learned about by watching one of Chef Veev's instructional videos, and tracing it leads her to Warden Martin. Martin used the passageway between the kitchen and laundry room dug by Pupetta's Uncle Vinny to move between wings, insisted she did not want to hear about Modarian's lucrative black market while using her many tote bags to move contraband into the prison, and killed him because he planned to leverage his knowledge of her corruption to secure a transfer to a nicer prison.

Elsbeth's own release comes from the outside thread. Teddy finds that Crawford was not the judge originally assigned to Andy Mertens's murder trial — it landed on Judge Dousant's docket and he recused himself over a scheduling conflict — and Officer Slater establishes that the conflict was an invitation to a Historical Law Society junket attended with Chloe the consultant rather than his wife. With that, Elsbeth comes home, arriving at Kaya's farewell party in a color-blocked, entirely sequined minidress arranged by Wagner and Chandler, and toasts Kaya before saying she will stay at this precinct where she is needed.

Unresolved inside the episode: the Crawford storyline. The recap asks directly whether it is really finished, whether Delia is permanently out on a narrative limb, and whether one of Crawford's other enemies with massive financial resources approached Delia to kill him in exchange for setting her family up for life — no answer is given in this episode. Wagner's suggestion that Teddy would make a good detective is also left open for next season, and Kaya's undercover assignment with her new unit has not yet begun.