When we left off last week, Marta had just regained consciousness. This episode begins with how she ended up in the hospital to begin with. She went into cardiac arrest during a stitch, and had to be forcibly bounced, which Cameron warned could “fry” her brain. Speaking of Cameron, it is at this point that he wakes up, indicating that the flashback to Marta’s incident was his dream.
In an odd sequence, Cameron calls Kirsten to make sure she’s had a physical and is not showing any side effects from stitching, but during the conversation mentions that his neighbor has been stealing his magazines. It seems as though he goes to the neighbor’s apartment to confront him about the magazines simply because Kirsten told him to “man up.” Cameron found his magazines in the neighbor’s apartment, but he also found the man dead, apparently murdered.
As Fischer and Kirsten discuss the scene of the crime with Cameron, they realize that Cameron was probably the intended target. Kirsten decides it would be prudent to stitch into the neighbor’s memories just to make sure. Meanwhile, Cameron is annoyingly cautious with Kirsten and her vitals, to the point of stalling the stitch. Then, he positions Kirsten into the neighbor’s memory, but not near the time of death. She has to insist that he move her through the man’s memories.
Kirsten finds a glowing telescope in the man’s memories, signifying that it is a memory “hot spot.” When she touches it, she is flooded with images of people in the next apartment building. It appears that he may have witnessed something that led to his murder. The team decides to see if Kirsten can identify the apartment(s) the neighbor was watching by going back to the scene of the crime. However, Maggie explains that Fischer will have a hard time justifying their presence. This strikes me as odd considering that Kirsten and Cameron were just there, but the compromise is that Kirsten will take a look out of Cameron’s window since it is directly above the deceased’s.
Linus and Camille seem to be having post hook-up issues that carry over into the stakeout at Cameron’s place. The quirky witticisms (that aren’t necessarily witty) overflow while Kirsten gives a verbal description of what she sees in the windows across the street. Fischer shows up to inquire about their progress, and in a double entendre, Kirsten informs him that she’s been able to rule out some windows, but “there are plenty still with the curtains closed.”
It turns out that Fischer has another motive for being there. He wanted to tell Kirsten that Ed’s death has been officially ruled a suicide and the case has been closed. When Kirsten tells him that she looks forward to proving him wrong, he lowers his eyes and quietly agrees in a gesture that makes him seem smitten. Will there be a love triangle for Kirsten?
Just as the setting was feeling lighthearted, Kirsten spots one of the guys that she saw through the telescope during her stitch. In the stitch the man had a knife and was arguing with a woman. At Cameron’s, the team witnesses the same thing, but they got more than they bargained for when the man apparently murders the woman. Notice I said “apparently.” When Fischer and his team burst in, they find that the woman is perfectly fine and whatever splattered across the wall was not her blood. Actually, the guy is an artist, and what appeared to be a knife is really a painting spatula, thus the red splatter was paint.
There is a connection between the artist and Cameron’s neighbor. The neighbor bought one of the artist’s paintings. On a separate note, somebody was sneaking around the Stitchers lab.
In an effort to defend his over protectiveness, Cameron had Kirsten watch the lab recording of Marta’s incident. Meanwhile, Camille managed to find the woman Kirsten saw in her stitch. Again, appearances were deceptive. It seemed as though the neighbor may have been stalking her, or having a covert relationship with her, but she confronts Cameron (thinking he is his neighbor) to thank him for sending her groceries after noticing her fridge was empty.
So, as without fail thus far, Kirsten goes in for a second stitch, and this is the one that holds the key to the case. Evidently someone was running a scam of some kind, and one of the guys noticed the neighbor watching him. While Kirsten is picking all this up, Cameron is freaking out that she is cutting it too close to the time of memory collapse, which is what caused Marta to go into a coma. Of course, Kirsten bounces out at the last second, literally, and is just fine.
They do some research on the building, allowing them to put some clues together. Then, they call in Fischer for a warrant, but Kirsten doesn’t want to wait around for it. She goes into the building, figures out that a wall has been plastered over the door to one of the apartments that has a secret entrance connected to a store front below. She proceeds to break through the wall with a fire extinguisher. Inside there are a bunch of mattresses and a table littered with passports, all of which are for women. It only takes her a few seconds to realize that this is a human trafficking scheme. Of course, she was right, the bad guys were caught, and the girls rescued.
During the closing scene, Linus appears to be able to talk to Camille about something other than them getting together again, and Kirsten happens upon Cameron just out of the shower. She notices he has a large scar down the middle of his chest. She seems mesmerized by it, and his response is to close the door. As she walks back into the living room, the audience becomes privy to someone spying on them, presumably the same person who was sneaking around the lab, and Kirsten is the focal point.
So far, the show seems to be following a predictable pattern, but I like how the cases they solve are more common crimes, the kind that don’t make big sensations, or the kind that just aren’t discussed. Perhaps next week we’ll figure out why Cameron has that scar, or see if Marta has anything to say.
Top image of Salli Richardson courtesy of Roger Wong/INFevents.com