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Elsbeth
Pilot
Season 1
Episode 1
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
You know what’s great about a really well-executed spin-off series? If you already know and love the new main character, great! If you don’t do it, it’s no impediment to enjoying the show! Say hello (or hello again) to titular Elsbeth Tascioni, whom you may know from her appearances on The good wife and The good fight. Elsbeth is a Chicago attorney who has been assigned the role of outside observer for the NYPD by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the terms of a consent decree in a wrongful arrest case against the Unit. of Major Cases of the department.
Like last year Poker face, Elsbeth is a how-and-why story, rather than a whodunit, which allows its pilot episode to avoid many of the pitfalls so common in pilot episodes. When we know that each episode will rely on healthy doses of exposition and character introduction, we’re inclined to forgive dialogue that sounds clunky elsewhere. The central question of each episode is always: “How will Elsbeth solve this?”
Mainly, Elsbeth solves mysteries by apparently being quite kooky. She is prone to tangents and questions that come out of nowhere. and she is the sharpest knife on the block. Underestimate her at her own peril. In fact, I credit her seemingly clueless nature for being a big part of what makes her such a good lawyer and investigator; Her mind moves so fast that she notices and processes small and/or overlooked details before others. What may seem like despicable folly is also a quality that Elsbeth takes advantage of.
The pilot’s crime of the week is the murder of a wealthy student, actress Olivia Cherry, by her teacher/principal and former lover, Alex Modarian (Stephen Moyer). Out of spite, mixed with a broken heart, Olivia refuses to back down on her threat to report Alex to the dean for using her classes and theater productions as her personal, annually updated dating pool. To avoid the negative repercussions of being discovered as a simple womanizer, Alex risks the (even harsher, as far as I know) negative repercussions of being discovered as a murderer.
It’s a shame Alex hasn’t chosen a path in life that puts his cunning ways to non-murderous use, because his plan is detailed and quite well conceived. Having sneaked into the dressing room during rehearsal to replace Olivia’s medication with something stronger, Alex then enters her apartment with the keys Olivia had demanded he return. Finding her nearly unconscious on the floor, he ends the act by faking a death by suicide, complete with related browser history, fake text messages courtesy of a SIM card cloned from Olivia’s phone, and a plastic bag tied with duct tape around the Olivia’s neck. Yuck.
Elsbeth arrives at the crime scene the next morning, stepping off the double-decker Hip-Hop tour bus wrapped in tote bags and sporting a baby pink wool coat, a long granny plaid scarf, and a foam crown from the Statue of Liberty, and is Officer Kaya Blanke quickly led her to Olivia’s apartment. We know Officer Blanke (Carra Patterson) is a true New Yorker because she’s skeptical of this chatty little redhead and, perhaps most importantly, because she’s drinking one of those classic, uniquely New Yorkers.We are happy to serve you” Cup of coffee.
The main case unit is investigating Olivia’s death as a suicide, and the detective’s immediate exasperation at Elsbeth’s presence is only partially assuaged when he learns that Captain Wagner suggested she attend the investigation. Assessing the scene of his first crime (“I usually look at pictures, but this one… is better”), he remembers the open houses he likes to attend on Sundays out of curiosity about how other people live and, say, what? is it really that wallpaper? purple fabric? This is the first of several moments that made me think of Elsbeth as a Cher Horowitz type of person. Clueless may have become so. Elsbeth’s habit of interrupting herself loudly and monologuing quirkily is the deceptively professional and silly version of Alicia Silverstone’s immortal readings of classic Cher lines like “Ooh, I wonder if they’ll have that in my size!” and “Did I run into any bad lighting?” Has my hair flattened?
Normally, I’d save my thoughts on the costume design for the “Just One More Thing” vignettes at the end of a recap, but Elsbeth’s whole wardrobe and props situation is doing too much work to not discuss it in some depth. In addition to the pink coat in her first scene, she also wears a long coral winter coat, fluffy white gloves, three blazers in bouclé tweed (aka Chanel tweed), a blazer that can only be described as feverish. She dreams of ’80s sofas that come to life and at least three blouses with bows. That’s not even all she wears in this episode. All the bright colors of her and power clash making Elsbeth stand out among a sea of police uniforms, a visual reminder to everyone that she is very No the police, just a harmless, exuberantly dressed weirdo. The same goes for the many bags she carries: I lost count of six different bags from the beginning. Elsbeth refers several times to her only being in New York for a week, so perhaps they’re just reflecting her status as a newcomer with no fixed address, but they also disarmingly shout “a fool is coming.” !”
Having gone to Olivia’s bathroom with Officer Blanke, Elsbeth also meets the coroner’s officer and chats amicably with her about New York landmarks to visit while gathering details about Olivia’s cause of death. No overdoses on lorazepam, but suffocates, and shrewdly examines the medicine cabinet. Certain details catch his attention and do not amount to a death by suicide: if Olivia was on the brink, why is her diaphragm cage empty? Why did she use teeth whitening strips? And who was a (presumably) significant enough male presence in her life to leave room there for (again, presumably) her Old Irish antiperspirant?
Later, after a little tête-à-tête with Alex, in which he jovially takes advantage by dismissing her question about Old Irish (he’s a Ralph Lauren man), Elsbeth returns to her office to grab her phone. Resume the conversation with a Colombo-eque “I just want to know one more thing,” makes a more productive rhetorical double by showing Alex two text messages Olivia sent the night of her death and wondering aloud why the punctuation on those messages is so different. of her usual style. A 20-year-old using two spaces after a period? How curious! Alex may have passed the literal smell test, but something seems off here, an awkwardness that he deflects by jokingly summarizing Elsbeth’s killer profile (it certainly sounds strange): “So, you want me to keep an eye out for a killer who Does it smell like an old Irishman? and he uses two spaces after periods in texts? You are a funny one.”
The many times Elsbeth comes face to face with Alex (in his office, in a bar, even at a rehearsal where he explains to her that bad acting occurs when the actor’s face and body do not behave in accordance with each other). ) as she approaches her prey provide some of the episode’s funniest scenes. Carrie Preston and her partner True Blood alum Stephen Moyer is clearly having a lot of fun and even imbues his scenes with a bit of screwball comedy energy. Hepburn and Tracy, but make it a murder investigation!
Elsbeth, Officer Blanke, and Alex remain on this little merry-go-round throughout the episode, with Elsbeth hypothesizing that Alex rejects or conjures up evidence to signal suspicion to others. Meanwhile, Officer Blanke and even Captain Wagner (a delightfully deadpan and embattled Wendell Pierce) come to respect Elsbeth’s methods as she deploys her relentless joy in the service of catching the real bad guy rather than letting an innocent TA take the fall. the blame. Alex finally gets up from his own petard by being so focused on interim innocent who forgets that innocent people don’t need to work to make sure their faces and bodies say the same things because they aren’t acting at all.
When Alex is finally caught red-handed, trying to frame his tech assistant by hiding the SIM cloning device in her bag, he’s not even mad at Elsbeth. He enjoyed her fight and recognizes what a formidable opponent she is. All’s well that ends well, although Alex definitely should have dated other women besides those whose careers he had in his hands, or failing that, accepted his cancellation packages instead of resorting to murder. Olivia deserved much better, but at least some properly applied justice will be served in her name, thanks to Elsbeth.
But wait, how does she help Elsbeth fulfill her task of being an outside observer under the NYPD consent decree by volunteering so strongly to work on this particular case? Alex jokes at the beginning of the episode that she has something to do with the police department, but no one knows exactly that.” Good. The outside observer thing is technically true: we see Captain Wagner on the phone with Elsbeth’s DOJ handler, assuring her that he’ll like her and will definitely prefer her to the alternate observer he could send, Cary Agos, but we also see Elsbeth speaking on the phone to her handler, reminding him that she is also there to investigate Captain Wagner. He has been accused of corruption and the Justice Department wants to get to the bottom of it. Stay focused, Tascioni!
• The cold opening incorporates a perfect and bold homage to the opening credits of Sex and the city, while Elsbeth is soaked by a passing vehicle splashing through a large puddle. Elsbeth is truly delighted by this New York welcome, she immediately puts the foam Statue of Liberty crown on her head and is splashed again.
• I can’t stop thinking about Elsbeth’s mitten garters. They attach her gloves to the sleeves of her winter coats and at the same time provide a wrap-around, enveloping movement of the gloves, as well as the suggestion that she is the type of person who would definitely lose her gloves if they were not attached to the sleeves of her coat. with mitten garters. Note to self: Stock up on mitten leagues for Winter 2025.
• Elsbeth’s use of a very pretty floral evidence folder may or may not be an allusion to Legally BlondeIt’s Elle Woods, another lawyer who’s easy to underestimate. She chose to interpret it as Elsbeth’s version of the scented pink paper that Elle uses for her resume, which she notes “gives you something extra.”
• A fun bookend for him Sex and the city The moment comes in the final scene, where the Lincoln Center fountain erupts into its somewhat celebratory flash, which is not unlike the moment in Clueless where Cher realizes that she is Mostly, totally, madly in love with Josh.. Wagner immediately applies a sarcastic needle to Elsbeth’s metaphorical balloon of delight: “Yeah“We did it just for you.”