Review: Elsbeth, “Death of a Playwright” | Season 4, Episode 2 / Cupertino, "Vik & Bo" | Season 1, Episode 2

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“The plot is getting hard to follow.”

I talked in last week’s opening review of Elsbeth about how the show would need to keep itself fresh in its fourth season. The idea of a Columbo-esque procedural works well, in theory and execution, but the more you go to that well, the more you have to try to keep things loose and unexpected. This week’s episode, “Death of a Playwright,” doesn’t feature any serious in-fighting between Elsbeth and the detective assigned with her on the weekly case. Instead, what happens is that we get the rarer-still instance in which all the clues point to one person only for us all to learn that someone else is the murderer. We’ve watched enough episodes to presume, if not know outright, that the biggest name among each installment's guest stars has to be the killer. But, to paraphrase an entirely unrelated fictional writer, what this episode presupposes is, maybe they aren’t?

I also remain a bit surprised that this wasn’t the season premiere, not just because of its place in the production order, but because the guest cast is positively stacked. Nicholas Braun shows up as Jeremy, the son of recently deceased playwright Richard Perrick (John Doman). Perrick hadn't written anything new for years, but was enough of a literary titan that his producer Lenny (Richard Thomas) is able to pass on the rights to his most famous play to up-and-coming "theater maker" Nelson Thibodeau (Isaac Powell).

Jeremy wants those rights instead, and can’t stand Nelson, who seems fairly talented but also incredibly obnoxious and phony. When Nelson dies by falling down the stairs of the small theater where his smash-hit play was being performed before moving to Broadway proper, it seems like it could have been an accident. Or it could have been foul play. Seeing as Jeremy didn’t show up to the ceremony at which the lights of Broadway theaters were dimmed in Richard’s honor, he must have been off killing Nelson, right?

Now, I appreciate how the script (by showrunner Jonathan Tolins) kept me guessing, at least somewhat. About halfway through, it became pretty clear that Nelson was Richard’s son, and that this piece of familial lineage was a major aspect of his death. What I didn’t expect was that Sheila (Betsy Aidem), Richard’s widow, was the real killer and that Jeremy was actually the son of Perrick’s producer Lenny. Elsbeth has had tweaks on its own formula before, from establishing that a murderer may be vastly more sympathetic than their victim to making the murderer not even realize they’d killed someone (because someone else was pulling the strings). This twist was a fun one, and kept me on my toes, even if typing out even a few of these details makes me feel like Captain Wagner, quoted above.