Elsbeth is back after a Thanksgiving break, but did the hit CBS show return with a turkey? Sorry, friends, not weighing in on that in the first paragraph. What it did return with is To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’s Lana Condor as Peyton Ramsey, the 22-year-old girlfriend of Coach Willoughby (Sam McMurray), an old college basketball coach. The May-December couple become suspects, as do members of the basketball team, when the school’s athletic director winds up dead, and it’s up to Elsbeth (Carrie Preston), as usual, to figure it out.
A Man With Cold Blood is Killed In Cold Blood in ‘Elsbeth’s “Basket Case”
“Basket Case” opens on a hand-held camera walking through the hallways of St. Ivan’s college, while a sports podcast plays, talking about how the coach of the basketball team should retire again, with his team down 0-3, and how it has much to do with the 22-year-old Peyton Ramsey, Coach Willoughby’s girlfriend. The person walking down the hallway is revealed to be Ramsey, who laments the hateful comments. Willoughby says to simply tune it out, except that someone on the team is leaking information on social media, and she needs to find out who before it ruins the brand she’s built up for the team, and Willoughby in particular.
After Willoughby leaves, Ramsey is approached by Athletic Director Dave Coppins (Blake DeLong). Coppins is decidedly not a fan, and the two get into a heated argument, with Coppins accusing Ramsey of distracting Willoughby and turning the one-time coaching legend into a sad, pathetic loser. He tells her she’s banned from the premises, except she refuses, saying until he gets the cojones to tell Willoughby he’s a loser to his face, she’ll stick around. Coppins laughs, countering with the fact that if it comes down to it, the coach will choose his career over her. The scene cuts to Coppins lifting weights in the training facility, smiling as he listens to the players talk negatively about Ramsey. He’s next seen in an ice bath, where he turns to face a visitor. Next thing you know, Coppins is dead, his body in an alley behind the building.
Elsbeth exits the elevator back at the precinct, her attention focused on a news article. The press has identified her as the “mysterious redhead” with Alec Bloom… and can’t spell her name correctly. She follows Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) to his office where she’s introduced to Detective Nina Taylor (Britne Oldford), a recent transfer from the 15th, who is updating Wagner on the murder, with Coppins dying of blunt force trauma to the head. Strangely, he’s also found with frostbite and urine on his body, although the latter is explainable and funny. Elsbeth accompanies Taylor to the college to investigate, and as Taylor, a big fan of the team, chats with star player Jason Roberts, as Elsbeth roots around. Ramsey and Willoughby show up, and Ramsey laughs at hearing about Coppins’ death. Taylor sternly asks about her alibi, but Ramsey refuses to share.
Before things escalate, Elsbeth interrupts and shows Taylor Coppins’ ID badge, which she found stuffed in a cubby. They then go to the ice tub area, where Elsbeth suggests that the frostbite on the body was from it, and he was killed while in it. Supporting her theory is blood on the carpet, and she surmises the body was dragged across the street to make it look like a robbery. Taylor’s first instinct is that Ramsey is responsible, only Elsbeth questions how a tiny woman like her could drag a man’s body all by herself… without ruining her perfectly manicured fingernails.
Ramsey Is a Red-Herring Murderer in ‘Elsbeth’s “Basket Case”
Interestingly, even we don’t know who actually killed Coppins, one of the rare times that Elsbeth hasn’t revealed the killer straight away. So it very well could be Ramsey, only she is openly defiant and refuses to cooperate when brought in for questioning by Taylor. Hitting a dead end, Taylor lets her go, with the understanding that a team will be sent to her home to comb through everything. Despite, and because of, her belligerence, Elsbeth is still unconvinced, claiming someone guilty wouldn’t make it so obvious. Wagner sends Taylor off to interview the players, and pairs Elsbeth with Officer Summerville (Angus O’Brien, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters).
Taylor questions Xavier Dunlap (Sam Ashby), who claims he was with the coach watching tape in his office. She asks him about Ramsey, and is surprised to hear that not only is Ramsey not distracting, but has been a benefit, giving great tips for the players on utilizing their social presence. He also says Ramsey has been a positive influence on the coach, whose past rage issues with players haven’t been an issue since she entered the picture. The scene cuts to Elsbeth, again looking at her phone at yet another headline that has misspelled her name, this time as “Elspeth” (I feel you, Elsbeth — “Lloyd” seems to be problematic too). She finds Summerville, who may have something. According to a friend of his, a cab driver named Big Lou called into a sports talk program, claiming that Ramsey was in his cab and in Long Island at the time, so couldn’t have been the killer. Taylor has reason to believe otherwise when the team scouring Ramsey’s home finds a specific brand and color of concealer that matches marks left on Coppins’ tracksuit, under the armpits left by whoever dragged the body. Despite the new evidence, Ramsey still refuses to relent, but since it’s enough to hold her, Elsbeth has only 24 hours to find her alibi.
In the next scene, Elsbeth is seen talking with Big Lou himself, having taken his cab to where he dropped off Ramsey. Big Lou is, somehow, even chattier than Elsbeth, who can’t get a word in edgewise. She finally gets Big Lou to confirm it was Ramsey in his cab, saying that when he tried to talk to her, she said to quit yapping, or she wouldn’t tip. That’s her alright, but the woman in the house claims not to have ever seen Ramsey (and makes a hilarious quip about Elsbeth being “dressed like a Sour Patch Kid, the second zinger in as many weeks after her fuzzy jacket was likened to a Muppet). But when she sees a young man across the street playing basketball, Elsbeth realizes that it was him that Ramsey came to see, in an effort to recruit him. Ramsey won’t directly say she was there, not wanting to ruin Willoughby’s reputation if it gets out, not like “Tapegate.” It’s the second time “Tapegate” is referenced, a scandal where the coach was disgraced after a visiting team found a wire tap in their room.
A Killer Goes 0-1 Against Elsbeth in ‘Elsbeth’s “Basket Case”
Cut to St. Ivan’s locker room, where inspectors are looking for bugs. Taylor comes in, asking what’s going on. Elsbeth, who has been “improvising” unrelated dialogue (a fun reference to the season’s first episode), explains in a whisper, saying the coach is the killer. Taylor agrees, but we still don’t know for sure. Until we do, as Ramsey discovers back at home that Willoughby has been using her concealer to hide age spots on his hands. Back at the precinct, Elsbeth explains that Willoughby bugged the locker room to find out which players were leaking information to the media, and would have heard the argument between Coppins and Ramsey, sending him into a rage. Back at the college, Elsbeth approaches the couple, and gives Ramsey the perfect opportunity to out Willoughby. She doesn’t, and instead shows off her new wedding ring, with the couple having just come back from city hall, married. If she wants to catch Willoughby, she’ll have to do it herself.
Back at the locker room, a severely stressed Dunlap tells Roberts that he just got back from the police, who were asking him about having watched tapes with the coach in his office. Dunlap reveals, though, that Willoughby asked him to lie, telling him to say that’s what they were doing when Coppins died. Instead, Dunlap went to the player’s lounge and fell asleep playing XBox, and has no one that can verify that, and now he’s a suspect along with Ramsey. The camera cuts to Willoughby, who is listening in on the conversation through the bug, and when Dunlap talks about the makeup on Coppins’ body, and how the pair think it’s possible that the coach did it and tried to frame Ramsey, he looks worried.
It’s a sting, set up by Elsbeth, and after giving a stirring speech to the team prior to the game, the coach hides the concealer in Dunlap’s bag. However, Elsbeth, in the Thingy mascot suit, sees the whole thing. As the police come in to arrest Willoughby, Elsbeth sums up the events leading up to Coppins’ death, how Willoughby heard Coppins arguing with Ramsey, sending him into a rage, and, unaware of his own strength after pumping iron to keep up with Ramsey, threw something at Coppins hard, killing him. Ramsey, who earlier berated Elsbeth for her polite, unconfrontational manner, is impressed that Elsbeth has some bite to her after all.
“Basket Case” isn’t quite a turkey, but easily the poorest of the season so far. Preston, as always, is excellent, and a subplot involving Wagner and Connor (Daniel K. Isaac) is very funny. But Condor’s Ramsey is almost irrationally unlikable, to the point you wish it was her that did the murder, while McMurray is given nothing to work with, and certainly has no hints of rage about him. The commitment to not showing who the murderer is simply isn’t there, with Willoughby so clearly obvious that, even though the episode still works as a howcatchem, it hampers the spirit of it. And things like Elsbeth being able to find a specific cab driver for an unspecified cab company, or Wagner’s indignation with Connor despite the latter simply doing his job, do the same. Oldford is a great addition, however, and hopefully will stick around for a bit, and I really love Elsbeth and Summerville together. Next week’s “Glamazons” looks like it will correct course, however, so here’s hoping.
