In which we bid a fond farewell to Mike Logan...
Last Rites {Rights. What is Right?}
episode opens with a kindly priest sitting in a shaft of light, taking a death bed confession in a prison. {why do VSE's (very special episodes) so often involve priests trying to get cops to solve murders they can't talk about???}
flashback to murder dying man describes. {this is just the first in a string of different bits of the crime that we will see during the whole eppy}
Father Shea gets phone call in his office that dying man is dead.
Wheeler sashays into 11the floor in tiny little purple dress and high heels to the whistles and catcalls of her fellow detectives. Logan tells her she "cleans up good." {she does -- purple is a good color for her} Her fiance Colin arrives in a tux to whisk Wheeler off, nodding to "Inspector Logan"
**Logan's plaid ties are out in force in this episode as I would have expected/hoped
red carpet with Wheeler and her hunk o' Cake. World Hunger Benefit sponsored by Colin's employer Credite Belgique. Someone snapping pictures of the happy couple, but not in a good way.
Shea comes to Logan. Shea was Lennie Briscoe's friend. Logan takes him to Peter J's for a chat. {Love the grimyness of it... someone needs to do a compare/contrast on Logan's bar v. Bobby's bar...} Lovely shot of logan and shea's hands on table with their glasses in a gleam of light. Logan frustrated. Shea pulls off collar. {would have liked this to be symbolic of priest actually giving mike some info, but just keeps saying he can't say...}
flashback of crime
opening credits.
{note to self and others. this does not appear to be a good time to be Danny Ross. Danny will be ruing his two talented but troubled detectives in the days and weeks to come...}
Logan and Ross walk and talk with their coffee cups through 11th floor. end up at desks. Wheeler fetching in a lovely lilac shirt. Ritchie just feet away at their joined desk. {we see a lot of Ritchie here in this ep, just on the sidelines of the stuff in the squadroom}
Wheeler tracked down one murder that fits the priest's sketchy profile - the murder of a man and his pregnant wife in the bronx in 1992. Ross says to walk the file over to Cold Case and see what they have. Cold Case has been being bugged by the guy in prison for the murders for years. Still protesting his innocence. {love the gruff cold case guy. great job with very little to work with}
Logan tracks down the original detective who is now a department store dick. {ah, for the good old days when floorwalkers wore carnations...} Detective says two witnesses were a squeegee guy and a hooker {squeegee and the pros -- I envision a whole new urban sitcom!} Also says the ADA on the case was none other than.......
Terri Driver. Logan's pal from the last episode.
they report back to ross. ross tells logan that this is sounding personal. logan shoots back with "it's not personal, I just can't stand the woman" {logan snark. where will we be without it?}
Wheeler goes off to talk to Driver. Driver has a "I heart Mom" mug on her desk and a really bad fake curly bun {take it from someone who has recently worn a fake bun... very fake!} Driver denies any prejudice in case. it's a toss up whether she is in denial or really is on the evil end of the spectrum. certainly her ambition has gotten in the way of the truth...
Logan goes to talk to the pros. who is now working as a home care attendant {the occupation of all hookers gone straight I think}. Says Driver came to talk to her when she was in jail for soliciting. Pros picked the guy in prison for the murder -- Nichols -- out of a lineup... but she knew Nichols from the neighborhood, and besides, she knew three of the plainclothes cops that made up the lineup [two had arrested her, one was a customer].
l/w go to talk to the victim's father -- Bottner Sr. [threepeater ... the woodworking father from Conscience and the photog from Endgame]. he can't believe Driver would have lied, it has to be Nichols... but if the guy will just confess he says he won't oppose parole.
so l/w are off to prison to visit mr. nichols... fetchingly costumed in those buddy holly glasses that all wrongly imprisoned black men wear ... he's been in jail for this crime for 16 years and is looking at another 8. They suggest he confess and get out, he replies:
"I didn't waste sixteen years of my life to get out on a lie..." ... "you're Major Case... find the REAL killer."
l/w walk through the details of the crime using their car up in the bronx under an elevated highway (the major deegan???) details seems doubtful. {reads like a scene from 12 angry men where they act out the crime...} Also there are flashes of yellow everywhere... signs, school buses, traffic signals...
they track down squeegee who is at a veteran's home. sits on a bench in his green army jacket and pj bottoms and smokes. only one good eye. shrapnel during 'Nam. is HAZY on many details... but happy to have helped Driver who told him that she wouldn't rat him out to veterans affairs for his little squeegee sideline...
then off to see what Rogers has to say about Bottner Jr.'s autopsy. She says it was botched. Logan thinks coverup. Rogers demurs "when have m.e.'s ever listened to cops?" Rogers think it more likely that it was a mistake during the murder heyday back in the 90s. {not that great a scene for the last pairing for logan/rogers... but we always have that lovely scene from Renewal where logan cries-- their finest work}
flashback of crime
Driver storms into 11th floor to cry foul to Ross over Logan and his "vendetta" against her.
Ross warns l/w that she is ready to "go to war" over this. Logan accuses Ross of playing politics. They all get a bit huffy "do you MISS Staten Island Logan?" ... and then Ross sends them back to the prison to talk to the priest who started this. if he can't give them more details then it's time to drop it.
Naturally, when they get to the prison it's on lockdown as Fr. Shea has been shived 12 times during morning mass.
l/w by shea's hospital bed. logan asks wheeler if she mentioned shea to driver. wheeler gets huffy. logan thinks he's on to something.
they go back to the prison to talk to the heavily tatooed nazi skinhead "Wayne" who shived the priest. {and got the stuffing beat out of him by the looks of the bruises and cuts on his face}
turns out Wayne had been to the Queens courthouse the day before (not so oddly this is where Driver works) to testify in another case.
Ross not buying this. sends logan and wheeler to talk to the parents of the dead wife. {getting really tired of Ross telling them to stay "low key"} As they walk away Ross looks at the plain brown envelope he's been handed. In it are the pix from the fund raiser linking Wheeler and her finace to a mob guy.
Dead wife's parents (red room) say dead hubby always came up via the bronx to avoid some toll road "he saved a buck and cost our daughter her life"
flashback to crime
Natalie (the daughter of the dead couple who was found strapped in her car seat in the back of the car her parents were murdered in). Says she knows about the murder from google-ing her parents, but doesn't remember it [she was only 18 months old at the time]. She sends l/w to her aunt MaryAnn
Maryann's office has lots of handgun posters -- I'm guessing she works for handgun control?? her first hubby Dylan was a pal of the dead guy.
Back at 1PP Ross pulls Wheeler into his office to show her the pictures. she is not all that concerned that her hubby to be knows a guy who knows a guy who's a crook. "don't you?" she asks ross. Says her eyes are open. Ross does not look convinced.
And we now bring Simmons the forensic accountant into the mix {he's come a long way from the harried hotel clerk in Silver Lining}. Talks a lot of accountant gobbledy gook that just means that Bottner Jr.'s pal Dylan imbezzed from Bottner Sr. who spent years repaying the loss to his company. Also notes that Dylan disappeared off the grid, but popped up recently running a Chelsea Bakery.
When l/w arrive in the pastel and orange daisy haven of the cupcake store they find out that the Dylan they are looking for is a woman. Dylan-who-was took her name and soc. sec. number to make himself legit back when he was calling himself "Jared Bellon" {I so wanted some obscure link to Julian Bello/Bellante from The Gift, but alas no...} Dylan-who-is a lady just needed the soc number back so she could go from selling hash brownies to Yalies to setting up a legit business ... selling happy cupakes to yuppies in Chelsea! {doesn't seem that different really...}
back to Ross. Ross supplies the pithy realization that "neither his [dylan's] wife or his mistress ever knew his real name"
they take all this back to Bottner Sr. {Logan outs the time period for this episode as 'a friday afternoon in August' ... do with that what you will for the timeline... or lack thereof} Bottner Sr. realizes that Dylan-who-was just might have been the murderer... gives l/w a signed mickey mantle baseball that fake dylan had sent him at some point. link to Marty's Memories.
Wheeler lays out all the alias... {we do love a good bulletin board scene}. Marty -- Dylan -- Jared ... all same guy with some stupid name that I forgot to write down ;0). Ross concludes that the crime was probably fake-Dylan, and that its "brutal but circumstantial"
so l/w go back to maryann the exwife who fills in the missing puzzle piece. it seems the car that falsely-accused-Nichols was trying to break into was fake-Dylan's and she never filed a report about it as she was too traumatized by her sister's murder. Dum dum dum... [or I suppose it ought to be "chung-chung" as this is L&O...]
So back to Nichols in prison to confirm from him what kind of car he was breaking into. When he says the magic words "red Audi on 144th Street" they know he is in fact innocent. Logan tells him the other magic words "we believe you" ... and Nichols weeps with joy. Logan is in that lovely grey suit with the subtlest of his plaid ties, Wheeler is in a great green blouse, and Nichols is in light blue prison uni. It's a lovely cool color palette...
the poor guy mutters "sixteen years in jail for trying to steal a car radio..."
l/w take evidence to Driver. she is not amused. doesn't want to hear their side of the story. Logan hits her with: "Just admit it counselor. It's easier to convict some black kid from the bronx than it is some wall street guy..." {knowing that we know that Logan started out doing patrol in the Bronx... this seems to have some resonance beyond just plain anger at the system...}
Logan outraged. Driver defensive.
back at 1pp Ross pulls l/w into his office. it seems the whole story of the case has been leaked to the Ledger. Logan doesn't even really try and deny it. {here's another topic to explore Logan and the media ... how it has been used for and against him...}
in the aftermath we see Driver on the courthouse steps invoking the words of Martin Luther King and promising to see that Nichols is cleared and released. Ross warns Logan that it's not over. Even calls him "Mike."
Wheeler is dropping Colin off at JFK when Colin is hauled off and arrested by the feebs for racketeering. Wheeler cries. Most likely the work of Driver getting revenge.
Logan off to hospital chapel to talk to Fr. Shea and let him know Nichols was released. Logan rages at priest for not doing more sooner. Logan backed in all his speeches by bright stained glass... wants apology from priest as his silence has resulted in his partners' life being in shambles and his own job hanging by a thread. "I did all I could" says the priest.
asks mike if he has any family. mike says no. priest tells him he seems angry. mike says that the priest works in a prison he ought to understand. priest says no. priest isn't angry. priest has a connection to something... tells mike:
"I've been doing this for a long time. My advice to you is get out. You've done your duty. you've served. you've protected. there's another world out there.
Logan: "Is there?"
Shea: "You just haven't been able to see it."
Logan looks up into a shaft of light, holding his head and muttering "oh my... thank you for that thought..." {this sounds better on film thanks to chris noth than it appears on the page...}
mike apologizes to priest. says "I guess I'm not good at doing what people think I should be doing."
priest says, with a smile, that he noticed. [so have we Mikey... so have we...]
As Mike starts to leave the chapel...
Shea: "Take care of yourself detective. And may God watch over you."
Mike: {his final words...} "That ought to keep him busy..."
so bye bye Mikey...thanks for the memories...
unless there's some line next week during Frame... I guess we have to wait until November to find out what Mike Logan's fate is...
fired?
quit?
joined up with the innocence project?
took off for law school?
entered the priest hood?? {mostly giggling over this one...}
joined up with Deakins in that fanfic inspired security company we all just assume he runs since his "retirement"
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