This episode is intense from the opening scene. There’s a mass shooting in a diner, five dead, total chaos, and no apparent motive. It doesn’t even look like a robbery in the first place. The cash register is untouched, the wallets untouched. The victims have hands raised in the air, like they’re trying to placate someone. You feel the frustration and confusion on the team immediately.
Burgess and Ruzek are on the investigation trying to piece together what happened. Burgess being at the diner working to avoid the noise at home has made this personal. Ruxek takes Burgess back to the scene to jog her memory, she remembers seeing a young Latino man, maybe in his 20s, fight with one of the victims, Bosco. The man fled in a dark car, and the witness caught a partial plate with the letters “DB.” That’s the first solid lead and it leads them to David Jose Garcia, a gang member with a record, a missed court date and an active warrant. It’s a promising lead.
They bring Garcia in because they suspect him to have possibly been the shooter, specifically because he’d had a confrontation with Bosco beforehand. But Garcia’s got an alibi he says he was having dinner with his girlfriend and watching a basketball game on TV. His social media checks out, and his account holds up. Suddenly, though, he mentions something significant: the night before the shooting, he saw a guy sitting in a car outside the diner holding a gun and speaking to himself.
That alters the inquiry completely. It turns out the individual Garcia identified is Neil Andrew Rogers, a retired school teacher and a regular at the diner who kept to himself. He was always there when Marge was working, sitting by himself with a book or a notebook. Never bothered anyone, just kind of. hung in the background. No one suspected him at first.
But when they find him and start questioning him, it all comes out. Neil’s not doing well,his wife died a few months ago, and every night he’s been going to the diner and ordering the same omelet she loved. He hated it but ordered it anyway. That in itself says a lot about where his head’s been. He admits to having a gun on him that night, not to hurt anyone, but because he was planning on killing himself. But when the shots rang out, panic took over and he ran. He was shot and then ran, but the shooter said he would find him and he was a dead man, and that’s why his blood was found on the scene.
By the time things started falling into place, Neil hadn’t pulled the trigger but did identify who did, Marge’s husband, Jeff. Neil explained Jeff stormed into the diner on the night in question, came straight up to Marge and started shouting. She pushed him and he pulled a gun. It all happened so fast. Bosco tried to protect people,maybe even fired a shot, and then it was chaos.
Digging deeper, the team finds out Jeff had over $100,000 in gambling debts. She had found out about a robbery he had done and was going to turn him in. She actually called 911 that day and hung up without giving her name. You can hear her on the tape. She had attempted to be a good Samaritan and it cost her her life. All of those people, five people gone, because Jeff was in debt, scared and angry.
They have it in hand when the team arrives. Jeff’s armed and will not go down without a struggle. It’s intense. They’re counting down to it, taking the shot, and it’s finished.
The episode concludes the case but the show doesn’t stop there. We have here a quiet, very real moment between Ruzek and Burgess. Burgess just got promoted to detective and they’re trying to plan a wedding on top of the rest, getting 120 people into a backyard. It’s real-life, messy business. Ruzek says he doesn’t want to look back on this moment and all he’s going to remember is the stress. And Burgess gets it, trying to hold on to each other, hold on to the good things. It’s kind of sweet actually. This episode carried so much—sadness and guilt and the heaviness of silence and the pressure to achieve some kind of peace. Neil’s story is heartbreaking, and gave the episode true depth.
What did you think?
Loved it
Hated it
So/So
Comments