SGRoA: Blood Ties, S1 E20: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

this episode will surely be two of those!

Happy Thanksgiving! Thought I'd take a week off, didn't ya, but nope! I like a schedule, even on Turkey Day - or a week earlier, when I'm actually writing this one. There will be an episode next week, too, no worries, I'll just write it on Wednesday or something. Let's get started!

We open on a prison visiting room, a man (identified in captions as Charles) in the orange jumpsuit and shackles. He's asked Vicki to come see him, the "Head Hunter", to discuss his case. Vicki says she's not a cop anymore, but he knows. He saw her ad: "No case too strange." He confessed to killing and beheading a girl, but he says he didn't do it.

Because he's a psychic who couldn't tell what was real, and what was a vision. His "inner voice" stopped when he went to prison, but now it's back, and it's picked another victim.

Cut to a car, a pair of gloved hands, a handkerchief, chloroform. Pan up to the street, the driveway - the schoolgirl trying to open the gate, and being snatched.

two good eps in a row?!?!

This opening fuckin SLAPS. We might have the elusive two good episodes in a row! But I'm getting ahead of myself, here, let's calm down and rejoin Vicki and Charles at the prison.

He doesn't know the actual victim. She'll be pretty, she'll be young, and it hasn't happened yet, but it's coming soon.

Mike doesn't buy a bit of it. "He knew who to pick, didn't he?" he sneers, watching the video of Vicki's interview with Charles. It's rambling, it's incoherent, maybe he's working with an accomplice on the outside to do murders together, to make him look innocent! Vicki says she stills has her notes from the original case, they can pull the files and look them over, but Mike refuses. He's done with this magic bullshit, and Vicki isn't a cop anymore, and no, he's not going to waste his time looking into murders that haven't happened. Vicki protests that magic is real, Mike's experienced it, but he doesn't care. He's done.

mike out!

So Vicki digs into her notes with Coreen, and gets her very own Flashback Time! She and Mike are flirting, and Charles walks in. They tell him they have questions: his van was parked near the scene of a crime. Charles says, "So I was there," and goes on to reveal that the girl was beheaded with a sickle, so he must be who they're looking for. Even in Vicki's memory, Charles seems unsure of these facts, unsure of a lot of things. Doesn't bode well.

Henry asks after Vicki and Coreen's health: have they been having dizzy spells, migraines, blackouts, perhaps a pervasive sense of dread? Weird dreams or visions? "No more than normal, " says Coreen, but of course Vicki's mean about it.

Henry's worried about the ritual from last episode, which is probably valid, and Vicki goes on to say that no, her tattoos haven't been up to anything, either, but if Henry insists on sitting demon watch, he should at least help with the case. So they go to check out a wooded area near "the bridle path", which I assume is a Toronto thing. It was repeated in Charles's confessions and in Vicki's notes.

But when they arrive, Mike is already there with a whole ass crime scene team: looks like someone struck again.

Mike's pissed that Vicki has shown up, and he refuses to tell her anything. Except this: there are enough differences that Mike thinks the copycat theory is the correct one. Aside from that? Vicki needs to stay on her side of the crime scene tape.

Luckily for Vicki, she brought a vampire. Henry slips past everyone and takes a gander at the body: headless, female. Exactly what they thought.

Y'all. We are only 10 minutes into this episode. So much has happened! So many actual facts and so much real information in the dialogue!! A useful flashback!!! Where has this show been all season? Why were there so many horrible episodes to slog through?! I'm so shocked that this turns out to be good, not bad and ugly. Well, I guess if you count Vicki's crispy-ass split ends, it's good and ugly, so there's that. Sorry to ruin the momentum, I'm just so surprised. It was definitely a suck week after last time's delightful Danny Trejo surprise, and I'm just so delighted to be so invested.

Mike and Vicki start fighting in Mohadevan's lab, and she rightly tells them to fuck off somewhere else with that nonsense - though, she did get the chance to say that aside from some hesitation marks on the first body, the crimes are strikingly similar.

Flashback Time! Charles's confession. He says that "something" told him to slit the girl's throat, and Mike offers that it was like a voice in his head, and Charles is startled, because it's that exactly. Vicki pulls Mike out and wants to know why he's handing their perp an insanity plea?

Mike has doubts about his guilt! No blood in the van, no physical evidence, and this guy's details are, well, not terribly detailed, are they? Holy crap, this episode is so fuckin tight, I'm honestly impressed.

No wonder Mike's leaning so hard on the copycat theory. He hates all the magic shit, but he knows it's real, and now that's bumping up against his wish to just be a decent detective. He might have put the wrong guy away, and he had doubts at the time - was he right to doubt then? Was he attuned to the supernatural even before he knew it? What an unthinkable encroachment on Mike's "real" world. But even if the guy didn't do it, there's no framework for that in Mike's cop world, so literally the only way for Mike to be a "good cop" in the "real world" is for Charles to be guilty and this new one be a copycat. Otherwise, he has to capitulate to witches and demons and vampires - and worst of all, to Vicki.

Mike calls the prison: Charles has had one visitor (besides Vicki), his brother, 3 years ago. Kate thinks it would be quite a feat for the brother and Chuck to wait three years to do a copycat, but Mike points out that patience makes people forget, get complacent, be surprised. Still, she's going to look into old cellmates, people Charles hangs with in prison.

They go to see the brother, Kelly, who is a janitor at a closed hospital, which sounds like an amazing job, honestly, so it probably doesn't exist, even though it makes sense to me to keep the building in good repair, so the state can sell it or use it again. Mike thinks the government paying for janitorial at an abandoned place is silly, but I get it, I dig it, I'd move to Canada for that job. Just saying.

Kelly is wildly off-putting, at least to me. Maybe just because it's a story, and I know how they work, and my money is on Kelly being the murderer and him and Charles having some brother psychic bond thing. Mike and Kate tell him why they're there, and Kelly says it's horrible, but he wouldn't know who Charles is associated with these days. Mike asks about childhood, and Kelly says Charles was always the rational one, able to find balance in any situation, except with their psychiatrist mother.

Kelly makes a crack about the cobbler's children, but says he thinks the past is the past, even if Charles couldn't forgive her.

Vicki goes back to visit Charles again, to ask about a copycat, and he has a psychic attack or flash or whatever. "Tell Cellucci he's on the right track," he says. Interesting: Cellucci is, in fact, off to talk to Kelly and Charles's mother.

Back at the office, Vicki complains about Charles's vision, and Henry asks if it would be such a bad thing if Mike found the killer. They should ask him what he's learned. Vicki says Mike isn't speaking to her, and Henry says he'll try: they seem to have more and more in common every day. Vicki turns around to fight about it, proving him right, but he's already gone.

Rebecca Perkins - oh, hey, murderous family named Perkins, nice touch! - Dr of Psychiatry, worked several high profile cases for the department in the 80s, and has a record. Stealing prescription meds. Lost her license, but no jail time. Currently working as an unlicensed counselor out of her home. They're going to look her up in the morning.

Henry shows up to mojo Cellucci, and apparently it works, because Vicki and Henry show up at Rebecca's house in the next scene. Her power is off, seems weird. Oh, wait, it's the house she raised the kids in? There's a height chart on the wall, tracking Charles, Kelly, and Sydney, the youngest kid. Who was like, over 6 feet at age 13? Huh, maybe I'm walking back my Kelly theory. Let's see where Sydney takes us.

They find her office, and Vicki says that Rebecca lost her license, so she must be practicing in a "more grass-roots manner", so this is her current house? Weird. But it gets weirder: she has files on all of her kids, because she was running experiments on them.

Gave Sydney a ketamine/cocaine cocktail. Gave Kelly progesterone. Gave Charles antidepressants. Before they can learn much more, they hear a noise in the attic. It's Rebecca Perkins, in a rocking chair, back to the door - and her (?) head falls off.

Obviously they call the cops, and Mike is absolutely incensed that Henry mojo'd him. Vicki tells him they can fight about that after there's an APB out on Sydney Perkins. Mike tosses her off the crime scene. She's not getting anything from him.

So she sends Coreen, who loves the undercover stuff. The body was, indeed, Rebecca, but the head was that of the first victim. Turns out Sydney went to school with her, so now we have a link to at least the first murder.

While Coreen was out, Vicki's been looking through Rebecca's research. She was trying to control childhood aggression, and divided her kids into id, ego, and superego, then turned them into those, then tried to, like, turn it back? Sydney's the id, Charles seems ego, and Kelly's fussy cleaning an empty place is superego. Rebecca created the monster, and therefore is the monster herself.

Vicki goes back to see Charles to give us some exposition about Freud, and to say that she thinks the experiment created a psychic bond between the three brothers. Charles hates this theory, and also refuses to trade his freedom for Sydney's. Seems like a bad choice, Chuck.

Back at the office , Vicki and Coreen are trying to figure Sydney's motive. Henry pops in to ask why it matters, and Vicki says it will help her find Sydney and get Charles out of jail. But Henry points out that the brothers were treated like 3 parts of one person - if part of that person killed, and another part knew, then they're both guilty. Charles is where he belongs.

They also fight about Vicki using dark magic. Vicki scoffs that Henry is trying to protect her from herself, and he says he can't do that, no, and flounces. For once, I'm sort of with Henry on this one? Vicki should have trusted him more, and should have let him fight his own battle. She's mad at Henry for protecting her, when she ran roughshod over him for exactly the same purpose.

Coreen offers to listen, if Vicki wants to talk, but no. Vicki wants to read Charles's confession again, and give us another Flashback Time.

Charles asks Mike if the confession is "good", and Mike says, with some reluctance or disbelief? that Charles "did very well". Vicki points out there's no motive, and Charles can't even look at her when he says "just cuz." Vicki accuses him of lying, but he screams that the girl "created awful urges in me". She had to die.

Back in the present, Coreen says it sounds like he has issues. Vicki agrees, all those boys have issues... and in an epiphany, says none of them acted alone, probably not in any of the murders.

She heads off to the precinct to tell Mike, who's pissed and tries to throw her out. She says she has to tell him about Sydney and Kelly pops around the corner to be all, "you found him?" Vicki pulls Mike aside and he tells her they have the weapon, it has Sydney's prints on it, all they need is to find him. She says no, Sydney's not working alone, Kelly's in on it.

Mike is having none of it. Kelly's alibi is airtight, his phone records are clean, he hasn't talked to Sydney. Psychic bonds don't exist, Rebecca wasn't a mad scientist, Sydney Perkins is the sole person responsible. Vicki gives up.

Well, gives up on Mike. She goes back to the empty hospital to check up on Kelly. She finds everything she could be looking for: a head in a box, Sydney's body, and of course, Kelly, armed with a sickle, saying he's Sydney, too, because Sydney's in there, with him. They can't be three: they need to be one, reintegrated. He committed another murder to get Charles out, so he can kill him, too, and be one.

Kelly and Vicki tussle, and I assumed Vicki would win, or Henry would show up or something, but no: she gets chloroformed!

One last? Flashback Time as Vicki fades into unconsciousness, her and Mike celebrating the confession. Vicki is convinced Charles did it, Mike has some doubts, and then Kelly is there with his sickle, and Mike is talking about how Vicki's going to get herself killed, and of course, it's because she's chloroformed. Kelly's ready to use that weapon.

Mike goes to see Charles, who has an attack. He says that Sydney and Kelly are together, with Vicki, and Sydney's ready to kill again. Mike doesn't have time to get to her, so he calls Henry. While Henry goes, Mike gives in to the psychic bond thing and beats the crap out of Charles, which does, indeed, throw Kelly's body around a bit. Enough so that Vicki has enough time to break out of a cuff and use her chair to knock Kelly out as he attacks - just as Henry comes to the rescue.

Vicki goes to see Charles, the remaining ego. Kelly poisoned Sydney, then had a psychotic break resulting in a split personality. Charles says they integrated, but Vicki demurs. But she does ask, "If Kelly could feel the beating Mike gave you, why didn't you know Sydney died?"

"Because he didn't," says Charles, as he's released from his shackles, just as he will soon be released from prison. "They integrated."