Elsbeth Recap: Ferris Bueller Would Never!

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: it’s hilarious that shortly after an episode featuring Alan Ruck airs, we get one with Ferris Bueller himself, Matthew Broderick. You could also frame this bit of casting as following up Nathan Lane’s Max Bialystock with Broderick’s Leo Bloom from The Producers. Either way, it is delightful.

Successful procedurals about solving murders within an hour of screen time require an arrogant perpetrator. All murderers are arrogant to some degree; a person would have to be arrogant to think that killing another person is (a) something they’re capable of planning and doing, (b) justified or merited by their reasons for doing so, (c) something they can get away with, thanks to their superior planning and flawless execution of their plan and victim.

We’ve seen the occasional crime of passion and vigilante-style murder, but most of what is showcased most often on Elsbeth are resentment-fueled murders of one sort or another — score-settling, reputation-preserving, correct theatre behavior-enforcing, and so forth. Sure enough, the murder in “Foiled Again” is a combination of score-settling and business/reputation-preserving.

The most arrogant murderer Elsbeth has faced to date is Judge Crawford, who pops up again at the end of this episode, but Broderick’s Lawrence Grey is a very close second, drawing on essentially the same well as His (Dis)honor — Lawrence believes he’s too smart to get caught, but just in case, he makes sure to lay a trail misdirecting the police to a patsy. (Trying to pin a murder on a cat? That’s a classic blunder on the order of getting involved in a land war in Asia!) And anyway, who would suspect him? He’s an Ivy League guy, he’s a successful businessman, and he’s got it made; why would he need or want to kill anyone?

Lawrence has been so successful for so long at helping entitled rich kids get admitted to Ivy League schools (specifically and exclusively Ivies) that one of them comes back to jab him with a fencing foil. Professionally speaking, that is. Ethan Brooks (Rob McClure), a long-ago client of Lawrence’s college admissions company, OutMatch, has ascended to the role of Director of Admissions and fencing coach at a pretend-Ivy, Baden University. Good for him! Well, it is good for him and potentially catastrophic for Lawrence. Ethan — who hasn’t even touched the fruit-and-cheese basket Lawrence sent over to congratulate him — is so filled with resentment towards Lawrence for the role he played in forcing Ethan into a life he didn’t want that he vows never to admit any OutMatch client to Baden. Given that there are only seven schools in the traditional understanding of the Ivy League, that’s closing off a lot of potential business for Lawrence. I’m not sure what rankles him more, the knowledge that he could lose business or Ethan’s promise to ruin his reputation wholesale.

Just as Ethan planned to use his ability to spot and reject applications from OutMatch clients — Lawrence knows he’s not messing around because his assistant (played by Broderick’s son James Wilkie Broderick) reports that Baden’s Early Action decisions were “a bloodbath” for OutMatch applicants — Lawrence uses his knowledge of Ethan to eliminate him as a threat. (The shot of Lawrence sitting in the half-light from his fireplace, stroking a white cat in his lap, Bond villain-style, is priceless. Lean into this type of self-aware silliness, shows!) Ethan has severe allergy-triggered asthma due to cat dander, and it was Lawrence’s guidance that led him to fencing as a means to reduce the effects of his asthma (and make his college applications stand out more). Having challenged Ethan to a fencing match to settle their differences, Lawrence lines Ethan’s fencing helmet with dander from his own cat, then uses a zip-tie to make it impossible for Ethan to remove it and use his inhaler when he inevitably has an asthma attack. Opening a window and using catnip from his cat’s favorite toy to entice Baden’s Instagram-famous Quad Cat into the fencing gym is a good gambit, but he still leaves behind clues and questions that need answering, opening the door for Elsbeth, Kaya, and Detective Donnelly to investigate.

Lawrence’s hubris led him to leave some threads dangling, and the trio home in on them quickly, learning that Quad Cat is so-called because she has four toes on all of her paws, not just her back paws. She’s also hypoallergenic, so she can’t have triggered Ethan’s fatal asthma attack, and anyway, the presence of her distinctive paw prints and the notable lack of regular-cat paw prints at the scene eliminate an unexpected feline encounter as the triggering event. Lawrence quickly emerges as a viable suspect — he was working with a client on campus the night of Ethan’s murder, and Ethan had not been reticent on the subject of blackballing OutMatch applicants — and attempts to insulate himself from suspicion by claiming that he used to have a cat, the fluffy Veritas, but he died some time ago. Elsbeth, who is also allergic to cats and sneezes anytime she’s around Lawrence, remains skeptical.

This week’s murder is primarily a prompt for Elsbeth to reflect critically on her pretty hands-off parenting of Teddy (Ben Levi Ross). Was it a mistake not to hire a college admissions consultant for him? Would he have been better off attending a more prestigious school than the University of Illinois? Did he — as Lawrence snidely puts it — fail to launch, and if so, is it Elsbeth’s fault? I suspect worries like this are part of what drives Elsbeth’s desire to ask Teddy all sorts of minutely-detailed questions every time she sees him. Learning that his parents’ demanding careers as high-powered attorneys left Teddy to his own devices much of the time also provides some insight as to why he’s so vigilant about guarding his privacy and not relying on his parents’ connections for professional purposes, too.

When he learns that Captain Wagner helped him land his current, highly competitive job, Teddy correctly assumes his mother told Wagner about the job in the first place. His disappointment and anger are something to behold as he storms out of the party Elsbeth is throwing to celebrate Kaya’s completion of the last of her required undergraduate courses. (Congratulations, Kaya! You’re crushing it, and I hope to see you in plain clothes by the end of the season!)

This situation puts Elsbeth in a tailspin about her parenting choices, exacerbated by having hired Lawrence for a brief consultation on how to make her prospective future grandchildren likelier candidates for highly competitive colleges. Their conversations don’t convince her that the Ivy way is the only way, exposing Lawrence as an out-of-touch snob with a shamefully narrow view of what higher education is worth pursuing and why. They also reveal that he’s not a good enough schemer and liar to outwit Elsbeth, particularly once she meets and teams up with his daughter Mandy (Cassidy Layton).

Oh, the delicious irony of Mr. Only The Ivies Count Lest Your Child Fail To Launch having a daughter who’s in an aimless 19th month of a gap year between high school and college. It’s like a nutritional supplement. What’s the deal with Maddy? Is she straightforwardly rebelling against her dad? Is she — horrors! — just not interested in or lacking the grades for the Baden Universities of the world? No, it’s skepticism about the value of accomplishments for their own sake. Even if she did buy into achievement culture, she thinks her parents would get all the credit for it. I think parents can pretty easily brag about their wonderful children without taking credit for their excellence, but I also wasn’t raised by a cutthroat college admissions consultant. Mandy’s circumstances are unpleasantly rarified and specific to her!

It turns out that when her beloved Veritas is involved, Mandy is quite motivated to learn and do as much as possible. Helping to take down her dad, who not only killed Ethan but lied to her face about Veritas being dead when he was, in fact, at (presumably) a no-kill shelter, is just the icing on the cake. It kind of puts the drivers of Teddy’s hurt and anger in perspective, and sure enough, he visits the precinct to apologize and clear the air with his mother. He also brings Roy (Hayward Leach) along with him, ensconcing his boyfriend in an interrogation room to wait to speak with Elsbeth. (I really enjoy Teddy’s puckish sense of humor.)

Teddy has been keeping Roy away from his mother because he’s afraid that the full Elsbeth experience is a lot to deal with, but he needn’t have worried: the two of them get along super well, well enough to power an 83-minute conversation! Roy is exactly as lovely and sweet as you’d imagine and hope and he looks a little bit like the Philadelphia 76er’s star rookie (until he sustained a season-ending injury), Jared McCain. It’s actually Roy who gives Elsbeth the idea to suggest to Mandy that Veritas could actually be alive and well at a nice farm (or good shelter).

With the case closed, Roy fully ensconced in his apartment, and Teddy and Elsbeth reconciled, Teddy drops by his mom’s place one more time before heading back to Washington, D.C. Word on the street is that the vile Mark Van Ness is getting taken to the cleaners in his divorce proceedings, and Elsbeth is very relieved that the black car with tinted windows era of her life is over.

This is our moment to predict that there’s one more of those cars in her near future, and we’d better be quick on the draw with that prediction because mere seconds later, the vile Judge Crawford pulls up and menacingly invites her into his car. He’s very passive-aggressive about how she “wriggled out of trouble” with the Van Ness case and what he assumes are her ethics violations. He also insinuates that with the murder case he presided over being reopened, the original defendant, Delia, will be under incredibly minute scrutiny. Of course, so will he be — he made too many basic errors for someone of his experience and acumen. And Elsbeth just wonders, why might that be?

In This Week’s Tote Bag

• Well, Elsbeth’s highland fling (hee!) has ended with Angus returning to his regular firefighting and bad song-composing life in Scotland, but Elsbeth feels sure they’ll see each other again “when the time is right”. I’m putting in my formal request (which I don’t really expect to be fulfilled, but hope springs eternal) that this reunion takes the form of a multi-episode arc. Maybe around the season finale? I’m just spitballing here!

• Matthew Broderick is usually such an affable presence that it was particularly fun to see him play meanness so casually. His delivery of “Well, as long as he’s happy” upon learning that Teddy works for a nonprofit is so soft you might not hear right away how acidly dismissive it is. Likewise, his faux-bewildered “Do they still do that?” in response to Teddy’s philosophy major. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be this guy. And while you’re at it, encourage them to major in the humanities.