Elsbeth Season 3 Episode 10: A Hard Nut to Crack

The Midtown Ballet Company's board, wanting fresh blood, green-lights avant-garde director Donovan Chase's Drosselmeyer's Revenge, a modern pop-goth ballet about the horrors of puberty, to replace the traditional Nutcracker. Only dance instructor Olivia and former company dancer Harris Monroe vote against it: Nutcracker ticket sales keep the company afloat year-round, and the new production has zero child dancers where The Nutcracker carries roughly a hundred.

For Harris the decision is doubly painful - this Christmas is his daughter Noelle's last chance to perform Clara before she ages out of the role.

Donovan is oblivious to the human cost. He refuses to make The Contraption - the giant nutcracker head with sharp teeth at the center of his staging - safer despite technical director Keith Dreyer's warnings, declaring that safety is the enemy of art. Harris, who has overheard Keith adjusting the computer safety settings and noted the contraption demonstration on the calendar, books an appointment at a notoriously slow sliding-scale physical-therapy clinic near the theater.

He slips out a window, hides backstage inside the Mother Ginger skirt prop, changes the Contraption's safety settings, and is back on the treatment table before his therapist returns. During the demonstration the teeth close on Donovan, killing him, and the death is first investigated as a tragic accident.

Keith discovers the safety was switched off and tells the investigators only someone with the security code could have done it. Harris works to steer suspicion toward Keith, his ex, dwelling on texts Keith sent him; he asks Rich not to tell the police about them, knowing Rich's jealousy will do the rest - and Rich promptly delivers the texts to Detective Donnelly and Elsbeth, exactly as Harris planned.

The alibi holds until Elsbeth and Officer Hackett pull on the thread of Orphan Girl!, Donovan's runaway hit. Its famous Orphan Walk is shot live on the sidewalk outside the theater and beamed back to the audience, and the performers' route passes the doors of Harris's PT practice. At the clinic the two meet Rob, the choreographer Elsbeth knows from a previous case, who confirms the sliding-scale setup.

When one performer on the tape keeps looking up, the team finds him: a swing who filmed his own turn on a phone propped in a balcony window, producing footage with the exact time that shows Harris outside the building just before and after Donovan's death.

With the alibi broken, Harris persuades Elsbeth, Hackett and Donnelly to let him watch Noelle's performance as Clara, and he is led away in handcuffs as the first act closes with "The Waltz of the Snowflakes." The company pulls its classic Nutcracker sets out of storage and Noelle is cast as Clara.

Meanwhile, Teddy enlists Captain Wagner's help after failing to find the man called Subway Pete who supposedly fed Alec Bloom when he was homeless, and Wagner's check into Alec's background - no gaps in his parents' housing history - leads him to warn Elsbeth not to get too close to the mayoral candidate.

The murder is solved by show business itself. Harris's alibi depended on the notoriously slow sliding-scale PT clinic, but the Orphan Walk - Donovan's hit production Orphan Girl! being filmed live on the sidewalk - passes the clinic's doors, and a swing who recorded his own performance on a phone propped in a balcony window captures Harris outside just before and after Donovan's death. Combined with Keith's discovery that only someone with the security code could have switched off the Contraption's safety settings, the case closes on Harris, who persuaded the investigators to let him watch Noelle dance Clara once before being handcuffed at "The Waltz of the Snowflakes."

Unresolved within the episode: Wagner's findings leave Alec Bloom's biography in question but nothing about Alec's past is confirmed, and Elsbeth is left with fresh doubts; the episode also does not show the aftermath between Harris and Noelle beyond her single performance, nor whether Teddy's reporting on Alec continues.