Ahhhh, domestic bliss at the Dunbar home once again. Christie badgers Jim about committing to a weekend conference in Boston (how exciting a fashion conference will be for a blind guy!) while Jim dodges her assault with vague and noncommittal responses, seeming to be hearing about it for the first time, which doesn’t go over very well with the wife.
Cornered, Jim gives some guy-type “probably—if I don’t get a case” response and then ducks behind a homicide as an excuse for further delay. I can’t tell you how often I’ve encountered that one. There’s no good way around the old “homicide” excuse.
“You know,” Christie says archly. “If you’re five minutes late the guy will still be dead.”
“Nice,” Jim responds. He commits to…that’s right…calling her later to let her know if he will commit (how did this guy ever get married?) and says he has to go.
“Then go,” Christie says, shooting a concentrated icy wave of consternation at Jim before slamming the door.
“Okay,” Jim says, presumably to Hank. Boy does everyone’s favorite actor nail the I-have-no-idea-what-women-are-talking-about routine in this episode! Makes me feel kind of sorry for him.
It’s really not Jim’s day. He arrives at the crime scene, where Jerry Tuxhorn’s face has been blown off by an intruder, and receives a cold reception from Karen. Someone isn’t over the whole “Either you’re gonna tell her or I’m gonna tell her” incident with a certain criminal ex-boyfriend. At least Karen offers to take Jim out canvassing the area with her. Feeling the chill (and being able to readily recognize it, since it’s not the first chilly vibe shot at him that day), he opts to stay behind. Marty and Tom seem baffled and instantly know something is up.
In the elevator at the squad, Jim tries once again to convince Karen of the rightness of his behavior throughout the whole Nick situation, stating again that he had the best of intentions. His effort is met with negative levels of enthusiasm (and a good deal of eye rolling, but Jim is spared that—although I’m sure he felt it just the same).
Meanwhile, Hank looks back and forth from Jim to Karen as they spar, seeming to be following their conversation and eagerly awaiting a resolution to the struggle. The moment is cute. Too cute for Blind Justice. Still kind of enjoyable, but it gets close enough to the edge to cause me to worry for a moment until I can relax at the end of the scene with the knowledge that at least Hank didn’t hide his face in his paw and whimper.
They exit the elevator, Jim doing that disgusted headshake he uses to show how pointless it is to even argue; the silent final comeback to many of his arguments.
The squad tries to figure out the crime, noting that the Tuxhorns are unemployed and living off their savings and that someone in their building had a previous collar for breaking and entering.
Marty finds a way to work a jab at Jim and Karen into the conversation. “You know, these office romances. They always blow up in your face.”
Wait a minute! I just got that! Blow up in your face. You know…’cuz of what happened to Jerry Tuxhorn? Oh, that Marty and his wit. (But I really did just get that.)
Jim shakes his head again and Karen retorts cleverly with, “Stick it, Marty.”
“Yo, Jim!” Tom says in a conspiratorial whisper. “You could always get combat pay.”
Jim shakes his head, corners of his mouth going down. “It’s not enough,” he says with dead-on comedic timing. Tom and Marty enjoy a good laugh over this one. Finally, a moment of male bonding for Jim.
Tom and Marty interview the hygienically-challenged (and that’s the least of his problems) neighbor of the Tuxhorns, who claims his innocence by admitting that he has been creepily surveying the Tuxhorns for long enough to know their daily routine—down to what Mr. Tuxhorn had in his briefcase and how he spent his days in the park. Some of his information is news to Tom and Marty, so hygienically-challenged guy wisely decides to capitalize on what he perceives to be his advantage.
“Now look who’s in charge,” he says, and the three of them laugh until Marty cuts in with a brusque, “Not you, idiot!”
Karen and Jim go to the park and are directed to where Tuxhorn used to play chess. Karen offers to take Jim to the chessboards, but Jim declines.
Jim seeks out Lester, who had been Tuxhorn’s regular opponent. Lester doesn’t seem thrilled at the idea of a conversation with Jim, but Jim pushes.
“I just need a moment,” he says, flashing his badge at Lester’s opponent. “That’s if your opponent, who stinks like a spliff, doesn’t mind.”
I really don’t know what a spliff is, but I love the delivery.
The opponent slinks off and Lester laments losing out on a twenty-dollar game. Jim offers to play him double or nothing, so Lester racks up the chessboard. This is possibly my favorite scene of the entire series. Who cares about furthering the plot?—blah blah blah, Jerry was heavily into debt with some bookies. Whatever. But here two of my favorite things in the world are combined: Jim and chess. Indulge me here for a moment:
Here’s what strikes me about the chess scene. That took a lot of guts for Jim to use chess as a conversational opener. Had he even played since losing his sight? And this wasn’t one of those specially adapted chess sets for the blind so Jim would have to have the entire game in his head—and while conducting an interview. Talk about multi-tasking. This trivializes his later success with chopsticks. It is realistic that he lost in five moves and his reaction to losing, a self-depricating laugh and shrug, is adorable.
Chess Jim is to me what Ted the Drug Dealer is to Kyt. I already know how geeky I am so there’s no need to stage an intervention.
Jim and Karen talk to Joan Tuxhorn, who weepily admits to knowing of her husband’s unemployment and gambling and insists that her husband was a great man—although we are given nothing with which to support this statement.
Later, Karen enters the precinct alone. “What, you leave him in the car?” Marty asks. I must admit to finding this amusing, but Marty generally cracks me up.
Marty and Tom hassle Karen, trying to get her to spill what’s going on with Jim but she won’t budge so they settle for a recap of the Joan Tuxhorn interview. Marty and Tom offer to go talk to a bell-hop from Jerry’s phone records. “Unless the honeymooners want it,” Marty says as Jim enters the room.
“What the hell is going on, Jim,” Fisk asks Jim after everyone else has left.
“Nothing,” Jim responds.
“You know, I, too, was a detective once.”
“Boss, there’s nothing going on here that we won’t get handled.”
Marty and Tom get from the bellhop that Jerry had been heavily into debt with several other bookies.
Karen and Jim enter Fisk’s office. Fisk obviously has more important things on his mind, namely that tasty sandwich he’s longing to devour just as soon as he’s given one moment’s peace.
He is subjected to more theories about the Tuxhorn’s financial situation—should they go through the financial records?—and Jim brings up the issue of suicide since Jerry Tuxhorn’s blood alcohol level was “through the roof.” Fisk, eyeing his sandwich longingly, suggests that perhaps Joan Tuxhorn killed her husband herself.
“Well, having dealt with her face-to-face a couple of times, I’m not getting that kind of hit off her,” Karen says. Make a mental note of this statement, made by Karen. Interesting, as long as it’s her idea, but if Jim were to suggest it…
The conversation ends, but Karen and Jim make no move to leave. Karen is too pissed at Jim to ask him to step aside and Jim, for some reason, doesn’t seem to notice that the silence is growing awkward and that Fisk is really dying to get back to that sandwich. Finally the sandwich fumes are too much for Fisk to bear. “Apparently, Karen would like to leave, Jim,” he says, “but instead of asking you directly, she wants me to pitch in.”
Sighing and doing the Dunbar headshake of disbelief (he has several different headshakes), Jim allows Karen to leave and Fisk is left happily alone with his sandwich.
Jim corners Karen in the break room. “Karen,” he calls to her. “Karen!”
“I’m right here,” she snaps.
“All right. What can I do to make this up to you, huh? Just name it.”
“Just give me some time to cool off, okay?”
“Karen, come on. Look. I need you. Seriously, you know? Like the flower needs the rain.”
For a second, this seems to hit Karen. He really does need her.
But Jim’s little attempt at levity has ruined the moment for her.
“Wow. You think this is funny.” Then she reverses the scenario on Jim. “If I was a guy, and someone came to you with information on a girl I was dating, would you come to me with it, or would you go to the girl?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t have a policy on this,” he evades. Again. No wonder all the girls are so mad at him.
She gets brutally specific. “Would you go behind your male partner’s back and tell the girlfriend to get lost? And be honest.”
“First of all, I didn’t do that. And second of all…” he braces himself, ready at last to give a woman a direct answer. “Yeah! Probably.”
“Like hell you would!” Karen says, causing Jim to secretly resolve to remain in his vague and noncommittal mode for the rest of eternity.
“Look,” he says, “I’m not going to argue with you about this, all right? I’ve tried to apologize. Just do your job!”
“I am doing my job!”
I love this line and the delivery and all the things that are happening at this moment. In fairness to Karen (and I’ll admit that her little grudge in this episode, especially after his attempts to make things right, does get on my nerves—or maybe it’s just that I wouldn’t have been strong enough to disappoint Jimmy Dunbar so I’m just jealous of her chutzpah), she really has been doing her job, including all the extra things she has been doing in order to make sure Jim is able to do his job. Is Jim implying that he now takes these things for granted? If that is the case, I’m sure her passionate answer is enough to knock that idea right out of his head, perhaps get him thinking of what her job actually is compared with what it has become, now that she is partnered with him. Very powerful moment.
Jim and Karen find lots of books, some from the library, in the Tuxhorn house. They corner Joan over facts about her husband’s gambling and she finally tries to direct them to a menacing but nameless bookie.
At the squad, Marty and Tom are ready to interview creepily-stalking hygienically-challenged neighbor again. They throw some ideas around with Jim and Karen first.
“You might want to throw out the concept that Joan hired him to kill her husband,” Jim suggests.
“Where did you get that?” Karen asks scornfully.
“You know, at the end of our interview, she really decided to jump onboard the whole bookie idea. Almost felt like she was steering us that way.”
“Well,” Tom says, “what makes you think she hired somebody as opposed to doing it herself?”
“No, I don’t think she’s capable of it,” Jim responds. “I mean, a shotgun blast to the face?”
Karen looks right at Jim. “Woman shoot guys all the time.”
That conversation effectively killed, all the guys disperse, Jim puffing out his cheeks.
Marty and Tom have their interview and come to find that neighbor boy couldn’t have killed Jerry Tuxhorn because he was safely off selling his body to some guy in exchange for drugs. With a shiver, the guy explains. Vividly. “I let this guy crawl all over me like a swamp leach for money to fix. Okay? Are you happy now?” His tone seems to imply that Marty and Tom are somehow responsible for his unseemly habits.
In the squad room, Karen leaves, saying a general goodnight to everyone. Jim replies last, saying, “Good night, Karen,” in a mocking, sing-song voice that causes everyone else to stare at him.
Fisk mouths, “What’s going on?”
Marty mouths, “They’re fighting,” and acts it out with a clawing motion.
Fisk drops his briefcase and Jim says, “Anyone still there?”
Now, here’s the question. How much of this is he aware of? He has to know they’re still there and, judging by the silence, may be able to guess that something is going on. Why does he ask? Is he making a subtle point? Interesting.
Marty and Tom mouth, “Ask him.” “No, you ask him!” to each other, but their moment is lost and Jim has left. Tom, still mouthing for some reason, calls Marty a chicken.
“Kiss my ass!” Marty says, pointing, as if there could be any doubt about his meaning.
At the blissful love nest of Jim and Christie Dunbar, Jim is at the counter, sorting his money with the aid of a cool gadget that reads off the amounts to him so he can fold his bills for future identification. Cool, watching him use blind technology. It also would have been nice if the concept of Braille had ever been mentioned, even in passing, in this series. Even if he never learned it, the topic might have been broached at least once, one would think.
Christie enters and it is soon apparent that she still isn’t any too happy with Jim, although Jim, manlike, seems to have forgotten the entire thing. Christie asks for Karen’s number and seems momentarily suspicious when Jim is reluctant to give it to her. When he explains what he found out about Nick, Christie is full of sympathy. But upon further probing, Jim has to confess that he had gone to Nick instead of to Karen.
Now Christie is mad on Karen’s behalf. “It never crossed your mind to tell her first!”
“I was trying to let the guy be honest with her. Do the right thing.”
“Maybe she wanted to make her own decisions instead of you making them for her.”
“What are you doing, huh? Are you gonna beat my brains in about this too?”
“She gets her heart broken and you can’t give her at least one day to get over it?”
“All right,” Jim says, lifting his hands in his characteristic “I’m done talking to you about this” wave.
Christie doesn’t let that one slide. “Oh, the conversation’s done?”
“Oh my God,” Jim says, almost under his breath. “This is such a long day!”
And I really do feel for the guy at this point. However right or wrong he has been, he really can’t win.
“You did the same thing to her that you did to me this morning,” Christie says ominously. “You couldn’t take five minutes and consider what the other person might be going through.”
Then the real source of Christie’s irritation becomes clear to Jim. “Oh no,” he groans. “I didn’t call about Boston.”
“No, Jim,” Christie says, ice back in her voice. “You didn’t. But it doesn’t revolve around you so why the hell should you care?”
He treats us to a back crack, but not an audible one.
When he has deemed it to be safe, Jim lurks in the doorway of his bedroom, a puppy dog look on his face, as he asks Christie what she’s doing. She hasn’t completely thawed yet, but seems civil enough as she tells Jim she’s reading “The Da Vinci Code.”
“What’s the code?” Jim asks. Is it just me or is that question really cute, and in a completely unintentional way?
The conversation gives Jim one of those little moments of inspiration about the case.
Back to square one in the squad room, Marty notices Jim sitting with his hand to his lip. “Uh-oh! Dunbar’s thinking again,” he says.
Jim asks the squad where criminals get their ideas for their crimes. “I’m sure you have a theory,” Karen says, slipping into the role formerly played by Marty. Jim ignores that and goes on to suggest that perhaps some clue could be found in a book, seeing as how the Tuxhorns were such avid readers.
“They also have a TV,” Karen, still channeling Marty, says. “Possibly a VCR, but don’t quote me on that.”
With the boys on board with the theory, Karen has no choice but to go along with Jim to the library, where they are met with some resistance (“I don’t like this one bit!”) but are able to find a book about a person who faked his own death in order to get the insurance money.
They scurry to the morgue and are told that Jerry’s body has already been released to Joan Tuxhorn. They then go to the mortuary and find that Jerry has already been cremated.
Now the squad, backing up Jim’s theory, finds a lead on a missing guy who resembles Jerry and who was seen leaving a bar with a woman who fits the description of Joan. Jim and Karen Interview Joan again, telling her of their suspicions.
Marty and Tom get ready to follow a lead on the whereabouts of Jerry Tuxhorn. Fisk pulls Jim aside. “We’re sure about this, right?”
“We’re pretty damn sure, Boss,” Jim replies, laying all of Fisk’s doubts to rest once and for all.
Marty and Tom track down Jerry Tuxhorn at a motel and find him in his underwear in a closet.
Karen meets up with Nick at a coffee shop. Nick, who has the fastest-growing hair I’ve ever seen, lets Karen know he’s sorry for the way he broke up with her and for not revealing his past to her. “But I need to know,” he says, “If I stepped between something with you and your partner.”
At Karen’s denial, he jumps to his real point, which is that he suspects Jim of having caused the feds to look into his activities and then wonders if she could do anything to help him. By the end of the discussion, Karen seems able to see Nick’s true colors for herself and even suspects Nick of having taken advantage of her from the start. “Get yourself a good lawyer, Nick,” she says venomously as she leaves.
At the squad, Karen seems more civil so Jim tries again. “Karen, come here, please. I’m really sorry.”
Karen admits she has a bad history picking guys and that part of her behavior was caused by her embarrassment over Jim knowing about it in this situation. Jim tells her Nick is a fool and doesn’t deserve her. They part, amicably.
Marty and Tom return from picking up Tuxhorn. Jim bets them the murder case won’t make because of the cremation and way all the evidence has been destroyed or cleaned up. Marty disagrees and takes the bet as they all get ready to leave. Marty and Tom go back into their “Ask him” “No, you ask him” routine, but this time it’s cut short by Jim.
“Are you guys kidding me? I can hear you. What do you want?”
They invite him to a sports bar to watch the Knicks with them. I’m liking how no one seems uncomfortable over asking a blind guy to “watch” something with them.
At the sports bar, Jim looks a little lost trying to follow the game, but seems to be enjoying his night out with the guys.
While catching Jim up on what’s happening in the game, Tom demonstrates an astounding ability. He is able to say “he threw up a brick again!” and swallow his beer simultaneously. Mesmerizing talent! Then Marty hands Jim a shot. “What is it?” Jim asks. “That’s your combat pay,” Tom says. “It’s wheatgrass juice,” Marty says. “Here, drink up.” Jim drinks but still isn’t drunk enough to tell the guys what happened with Karen when they push again. He stands to leave, insisting he has to go home.
“Well, be careful man,” Tom says. “We don’t want you to drink and walk.”
Pause. Then Jim laughs at the joke and is joined by Marty and Tom. Nice moment of newly-realized comfort and camaraderie among the boys.
“That’s not right,” Jim says, still laughing. He starts to walk away, but turns back to ask for directions to the F Train. A reminder to the guys that Jim is still different. They seem blown away.
“Can you imagine that?” Tom asks Marty after Jim leaves.
Marty shakes his head. “No,” he says, his face saying even more than his answer.
Outside, Jim hears the haunting sound of “Moon River” being played on a saxophone and is thrown into a reverie involving kissing Christie in a club while that same song is being played.
He comes out of it and finds himself once again standing on the street, blind.
He crosses the street, looking—just as he goes off camera—like he’s directly in the path of a car that heads that way a moment later—but I doubt if that’s intentional.
