Because "In Plain Sight" airs at 10 on a Sunday and is one of those series that Hulu can't show until 8 days after it airs, it's often taken me a few days or more to get to each episode of this season, by which point it no longer feels worth the effort to blog about it. (Or I'm tied up with more regularly-scheduled features.) But this week's episode, which I finally finished a few minutes ago, was worth commenting at any time or place, and not just because it guest starred the great Clarke Peters, aka Cool Lester Smooth from "The Wire." Spoilers coming up just as soon as I write what I think you think is my biggest flaw..."Duplicate Bridge" wasn't exactly an "Only 'In Plain Sight' could tell this" kind of story. With a few tweaks, I could imagine it on one of at least a half-dozen other crime dramas. But where that ordinarily signals one of the series' weaker efforts, this was one of the show's best -- suggesting that the problem with the "Was a witness killed because of his old life?" episodes isn't just that they're generic, but that they're not very well-executed.
Here, the writers (specifically, Lynne E. Litt) came up with an interesting character in Norman (played wonderfully, as you'd expect, by Peters), a story with several unexpected twists (specifically, that Norman was responsible for the bridge collapse) and, most importantly, centered it all around Marshall for once. Mary's a good character and obviously the show's bread-and-butter, but it was nice to see her take a backseat in this one, to have Marshall mostly be right about everything (he didn't suspect Norman's double/triple life, but he damn sure knew Norman was going to blow up the bridge, with or without Mary on it), and to see that Frederick Weller could more than carry an episode, and go toe-to-toe with Peters while doing it.
After a bad season premiere, I've been mostly enjoying this second season of "In Plain Sight," but "Duplicate Bridge" was a cut above. Nicely-done, people.
What did everybody else think?
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