At the end of the previous episode, crime boss Jimmy McManus shot detectives Ray and Chris point-blank in the chest and left them in the street to die. When help arrives, Ray is lucid and fighting, but Chris is in bad shape and not expected to survive.
Lt. Gene Hunt is roaring mad, and the entire 1-2-5 Precinct is armed and loaded for bear. But McManus has gone underground, and Chris is close to death. Annie sits at his bedside, praying for him, and praying for each of the detectives in turn, by name, outlining their weaknesses.
During the night, McManus is surrenders to an unseen cop, who killing him and leaves his body in the street. The 1-2-5 works the crime scene. Ray is back on the job, wisecracking through his pain and anger.
FBI Special Agent Morgan arrives to provide "assistance", aka "supervise" aka investigate the 1-2-5 to determine who killed McManus. A witness arrives to identify McManus' killer... and fingers Sam Tyler. Sam has Windy as an alibi. Or maybe he doesn't, since no one else has seen her and her apartment appears to be vacant.
When they search Sam's apartment, they find The List. You know, the one listing everything from coma to alien abduction as reasons for Sam's time shift mystery. "That's research," he says. "I write science fiction." Yeah. Right. And there's a gun in his closet that looks like it could be the murder weapon.
There's enough evidence on hand to lock Sam up, so lock him up they do. And then things get weird. Correction: things get Seriously Weird.
Let's blame it on the network for cancelling the series. Sure, ABC threw the fans a bone by agreeing to given them "closure" on the story. But the writers had to find a way to make it happen. So things get weird, in a mish-mashed "What they heck were they thinking?" and "They can't seriously believe we're gonna believe that explanation!" sort of way.
There must have been a sign on the wall in the writer's room that said: "When in doubt, make Sam hallucinate." He does that a lot in this episode. Does Sam remember shooting McManus, or is he imagining it? Does Windy really exist? Does Sam even exist? Does Windy call Sam 2B as in his apartment number, or as in "To be or not to be?" Who are all these people at this trippy party, and why are they in costume?
And by the way, Agent Morgan is with the Dream Police and he's here to fix the itty bitty little robot that lives in Sam's head.
Alas, those poor writers! It feels as if the network notified them of the series cancellation after they had finished polishing the first half of this episode, leaving them precious little time to wrap things up enough to provide fans with "closure". Suddenly the clock starts ticking and they panic. They had a lot of loose ends to tie up, and they made one big tangle of the second half of this episode trying to do it.
They did, however, pay homage to the BBC series by placing Sam on the roof and having him contemplate whether or not to jump. And they did a nice job of letting Sam and Annie connect on an emotional level, something they've been making tentative movement toward over the past few episodes.
The first half of the episode is a deep and meaty story about sticking up for family. In this case, the 1-2-5 Precinct is the family, they all rally around Chris as he lays dying, and they pitch in to help Sam find "the real killer". It also touches on the theme of nature vs nurture and the dark night of the soul that was explored in the previous episode.
One more episode to go....
(Original air date 03/25/09)