Jane is in a dress! Well, a skirt and top, to be more accurate, but either way, her “court outfits” are super cute. Even if the whole Paddy Doyle trial is upsetting to everyone and their mother.
After Jane walks into the station in her court outfit, the episode begins with the fact that Cal, a cop who spent 30 years in the arson unit, has been shot while on vacation in Atlantic City.
Hope shows up at Maura’s place with coffee. Two bags of coffee beans. Turns out they’re both coffee addicts, and Hope admires Maura’s La Pavoni Coffee Grinder. On the counter is the front page of the paper with this headline: “Mob Boss’s Love Child Won’t Testify.” And thus sets off the main focus this week – Paddy’s trial.
Hope and Maura also discuss the picture on the wall of Hope mourning Maura’s “death” at her grave site (is it just me, or is this a super creepy picture – notwithstanding Maura’s backstory – to have on your wall?). Hope says that hard as it is to believe, when that picture was created, Paddy was a different person – “thoughtful, smart and unbelievably kind.”
So apparently, he morphed into Tony Soprano over the years, but through it all, Hope has always been the love of his life, and he’s been the love of hers.
When Maura burns herself on the coffee machine, Hope fixes it up with a specific bandage – hemostatic trauma gauze, which she’s carried in her bag since the 1980s when she nursed war victims on the other side of the planet.
Maura brings up the fact that Hope’s charity work was financed by the $2.5 million that Paddy gave her way back when. Dirty money. He terrorized an entire community to get that money, but it also saved a lot of lives. Hope says she’ll talk to Maura about everything except that money.
At the station, things are brewing with Lt. Cavanaugh. He tells the crew he actually looked up to Paddy Doyle when he was younger. They both wanted drugs out of the neighborhood. Paddy was Cavanaugh’s CI, a.k.a. Criminal Informant.
Later, after a funny scene with Maura doing yoga and Jane attempting to do yoga, Maura says she’ll go to court with Jane. “That man is my father, and I have to see this through,” she says.
At the courthouse, the witness for the prosecution, Jackie Donovan, turns up dead after a bad car wreck (teamsters driving a truck) just a block from the courtroom. Two U.S. Marshals also died. “Paddy got to him,” says Jane.
Astoundingly, without that witness, the judge grants bail for Paddy. He’s free for the time being. Man, our justice system sucks!
Things continue to heat up with the Cavanaugh connection. The team determines that Cal was investigating the fire that killed Cavanaugh’s wife and 2-year-old child way back when. Paddy sent someone to Atlantic City to take Cal out before he could talk.
The team goes to Cal’s house to talk to his wife. Maybe they can find something there. His wife says their garage got broken into right around the time Cal was killed and his files were ransacked. But one thing he told her was never to sell the Ford Granada in their garage. That was their retirement, he said. (Even though it’s only worth $500).
Obviously, there’s something in that Granada. Jane gets under the car and starts taking things apart. They find some evidence inside the muffler. Arson photos from 1245 Silver Street – Cavanaugh’s apartment. Turns out a white male entered the basement right before the fire. The neighbor who saw the guy died in 2005.
When Jane and Maura go into a bar and see Paddy there drinking with his pals, free as a bird, he tells Maura he had nothing to do with that crash that took out Donovan. “I wish Jane had killed you,” Maura tells him.
Later, Hope tries to hug Maura, who says she doesn’t like to be hugged when she’s upset. After a couple minutes, Jane says, “Can we give you a hug now?” “It won’t help,” says Maura. “Can we try?” says Hope.
I’ve got mixed feelings about Hope. On the one hand, she’s trying to establish a relationship with the daughter she thought died decades earlier. But she’s got a blind spot when it comes to Paddy. That happens. Women love men who are really, really bad for them.
As the squad delves into Paddy’s “book,’ they figure out that the connection between Cavanaugh and Paddy (his C.I.) was all a setup. Paddy helped the drug unit bring heat onto a guy named Garcia, a Colombian drug dealer. But Paddy started buying cocaine to fill the void.
When Cavanaugh finally realizes that Paddy is the one who killed his wife and child, he goes after him at the bar. Jane and Maura break up the fight and take Paddy back to Maura’s, where she injects him with Lorazipam to knock him out (and worries about the addiction properties of that drug, a.k.a. Ativan!).
In the evidence that Jane found in the muffler (or was it in the files?) are photos of Paddy with that same hemostatic trauma gauze that Hope uses. She nursed him after the fire. She says Paddy didn’t tell her how he got those burns, but cat’s out of the bag – he killed Cavanaugh’s 25-year-old wife and 2-year-old son.
“You made a bargain with the devil and it has come due,” yells Maura. “You’re going to testify against him!”
If he makes it, that is. Cavanaugh once again gets his hands on Paddy in a bathroom at the courthouse and is about ready to shoot him. Maura, Jane and Vince stop him, and Cavanaugh tells Paddy, “You’re gonna experience hell … you’re gonna stay alive, but without her!” (Meaning Hope, since she’s going to testify against him.)
I loved the end scenes. The slow-motion scene where Hope both tries not to look at Paddy in the hallway and yet gives him a look like, “I know who you really are now.”
And then Maura and Hope share such a wonderful look between them – as if Hope is finally “getting it” and is on her daughter’s side. I don’t know if she still really gets that the dirty money is still dirty, even though she used it to help people. Maybe that’ll come eventually.
And then that wonderful end scene with Maura and Jane sharing sweet potato fries. I love these girls. Through everything, they’re always there for each other, and that is a rare trait among women on TV these days.
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