Warning: Spoiler Alert
Dr. Henry Morgan’s, witnessed many events that mirror previous experiences over his 200-plus years on earth, and been part of some momentous, and historic events over his lifetime. Unfortunately the situation he confronted in the new episode of the ABC series “Forever,” brought back memories of a gory event back in the 1880’s, when he tried finding clues from the body of London, serial killer, the infamous Jack The Ripper. Besides trying to determine the identity of the madman, emulating serial killers over the last 100-years, Henry’s reunited with his mystery caller Adam, who not only knows Morgan’s secret, but shares the ability to regenerate after dying.
The episode opens with an attractive young woman, dressed to the nines, leaving a hotel and giving the doorman a hundred-dollar tip. The doorman thanks the woman named Mary, for her generosity and she responds she had a good night, causing us to realize, she’s a high-priced call-girl. The doorman, asks her if she wants him to hail a cab, but she turns him down with a smile, saying she’ll catch one on the street. She doesn’t get to hail that cab, as we watch her being grabbed from behind, and she disappears.
Henry Morgan and his assistant Medical Examiner Lucas, conduct an autopsy of a man and Henry determines quickly he died of a heart attack. Lucas shows his disappointment in the common death, hoping for something more exciting, such as the creature from the Alien movies, popping out of a patient’s chest. Henry berates him for reading comic-books and Lucas corrects him, calling them graphic-novels.
Be careful what you ask for, as wishes can come true. Lucas picks up the office phone and it’s NYPD Detective Jo Martinez, calling for Morgan and wants both of them to report to her station house, to examine a package they received. Henry tells Lucas, she should call the bomb squad, but Lucas informs him that the package’s bleeding.
The package got left during the previous night on Detective Hanson’s desk, a neatly wrapped brown box, wrapped with a bow, judging by the size of the box, my first thought’s was the box contained a human heart. When Morgan opens the box, that’s exactly what’s in the package and Henry and Lucas take the organ back to their office to examine it. Without a body, the Medical Examiners able to determine some clues about the organ’s owner, it’s from a women in her late-twenties to mid thirties, in otherwise excellent health. The heart got extracted while the woman lived and the event occurred between three and five days earlier.
Martinez and Hanson come up with four missing women that fit the profile and they show Henry pictures of the possible victims. The first woman’s a smoker, Morgan determines due to the lines on her face. The second woman suffered from an iron deficiency, which ruled her out, but the third woman’s the victim according to the doctor. They find out she’s a college student, whose got a rap-sheet for prostitution, under the alias of Mary Kelly. That’s when Morgan realizes, that whoever killed the woman, reenacted the murder of Jack The Ripper’s final victim.
The two detectives and the doctor head to a hotel in which Kelly used a credit-card three nights before, and question the doorman from the beginning of the episode about Mary, but the doorman tries playing it off like he doesn’t know her. Martinez, then tells the doorman, they know Mary’s a prostitute and tips him to keep her secret, but they’re investigating her disappearance over the last few days and the doorman reacts with concern, showing that he knows her. He then tells the trio, she was there three nights earlier and in a good mood as she left the hotel. Martinez asks the doorman, which direction Mary headed and he replies the same way your friend’s headed now.
Morgan walks away from the group to the other side of street and Jo starts calling for him as she’s lost him, but she hears his voice asking if she sees him and she replies she doesn’t. He pokes out from behind a corner and tells her Mary couldn’t see her murderer either, as he hid there and then pulled her into the shadows. Martinez opens the rusty doors of a small enclosure and Morgan says that’s where she got killed as he slammed her against the brick wall, finding the same fragments he found in the heart. He then says the killer took her somewhere special, then sees a sign for a butcher and sausage maker.
The sign sends him on a flashback to London in 1888, as a London detective named Abberline brings Morgan to the scene of a murder, he tells the doctor that they’re lots of copycat killers trying to leave their victims like the victims of the Ripper’s killings, but only the real Jack The Ripper takes a body part from the victim. Henry goes to look at the corpse and the woman’s heart’s cut out.
When Morgan speaks again, he tells the detectives that Mary’s body’s hidden in the butcher’s building and when they discover the victim she’s displayed exactly as the original Mary Kelly’s corpse was found. As the trio start examining the scene, Martinez’s phone rings, she picks it up and hands it to Henry, saying the call’s for him. When the Medical Examiner grabs the phone, the voice on the other end’s unmistakable, it’s the man who identified himself as Adam, the mysterious caller that knows Henry’s secret and has the same blessing/curse as Henry, he can’t remain dead. However he revealed in his last call, that he was far older than Morgan, closer to 2,000 years on the planet. Somehow Adam’s aware that Mary Kelly got murdered and that Henry’s with the corpse that second. Morgan realizes that Adam’s outside the building as he hears the same sirens that are heading towards the crime scene from Adam’s phone. Morgan goes outside, trying to find him, but only finds the phone Adam left behind.
Morgan’s shaken by the call and heads to Abe’s antique shop and tells his companion of the phone call and wonders whether Adam’s the original Jack The Ripper and killed Mary Kelly. He soon finds out however that Adam went to the crime scene looking for clues, Martinez, Hanson and Morgan might have missed and he did. Under a drain-cover Adam found a Black Dahlia, the signature flower left by an American serial killer in the forties, signaling that the killer may kill his next victim emulating that killer.
Jo and Henry head to a library to find copies of the London Herald accounting the Ripper’s last victim and they see it’s signed out under Abberline’s name and Morgan tells Martinez, that’s the name of the detective that led the Ripper investigation. They also see that he took out a copy of an article of the Black Dahlia murders and he’s still in the library. Martinez stares down a thing young blonde man, who grabs his books and briefcase and runs away. He drops his briefcase and Henry see’s a bone-saw and a drawing of a Black Dahlia, among his belongings. Jo overcomes the man and arrests him.
Turns out the man’s a graphic artist whose the creator of a Graphic Novel series called the “Soul-Slasher,” who turns men into serial killers throughout history. In order to get everything as real as possible, he’s done intensive investigation of all the serial killers he’s written about and presents each minute detail in his books. However along with the fame and money, he’s acquired some very creepy fans, who post some truly terrifying comments on his website, many of them stating that they helped the “Soul-Slasher,” murder Mary Kelly.
Just after they release the author, Captain Joanna Reece, tells the killer’s struck again and indeed copied the killing style of the psycho that committed the Black Dahlia murders. Lucas notices something in the victims mouth, a piece of nylon stocking and Henry says the next murder will follow the pattern of Albert DeSalvo, The Boston Strangler, who killed a group of young women in the 1960’s by strangling them with silk stockings. Henry also finds a leaf next to the footprints of the murderer, a common item in a park, but from a tree that only grows in Brooklyn, instead of Manhattan where the body got discovered.
Henry tells Abe that the murderer used a certain type of outdated scalpel, that are quite rare, he estimates that possibly 100 still exist. He then asks Abe if he’d visit “The Frenchman,” another Antique dealer that deals in ancient weaponry and other kinky items. Abe tells Henry that he gets creeped out by “The Frenchman,” but Morgan gets him to take one for the team.
When Abe arrives at “The Frenchman’s” shop, we become aware that “The Frenchman’s,” neither a man or French, instead she’s an Asian woman who seems attracted to Abe. As she greets him she shows him an air of antique handcuffs, that were once used on prisoners in Sing-Sing, when he asks what her plans for the cuffs are, she asks Abe if he’s free for dinner that night. He then tells her he’s there on business to find out if she has the scalpel he’s looking for, but she looks in her ledger and sees she sold it two weeks earlier, but won’t divulge his name. As she goes to help a customer, Abe grabs the book, slips it under his coat and leaves the shop.
Abe’s studied the ledger for hours but can’t crack the code “The Frenchman,” uses in the book, its Japanese characters but not spelling any words. At that point Martinez calls Henry and tells him the website’s buzzing with all these members who say they killed Kelly and she needs to narrow it down. Morgan asks if any of the posters live in Brooklyn, and the next scene a SWAT Team invade the home of Mark Bentley, typing on his laptop when the officers burst into his home. As Hanson puts Bentley in handcuffs, Jo tells him that the person on the website’s still typing, they discover his 18-year-old son Devin typing on the site, when the cops burst down his door, he says he knows why they’re there.
Back at the station house Martinez interviews the teen, who thanks her for arresting him, as it will get him major props on the site. He then tells the detective that the only evidence they have are posts on a website, not DNA or any real evidence and Martinez realizes, that Devin’s correct.
She walks out of the investigation room and into the main part of the station and she sees Mark Bentley arguing with Hanson, telling him he wants to see his son. The detective replies that Devin’s stated he doesn’t want to see his parents or a lawyer. At that point Bentley’s wife walks into the station, saying she wants to see her son and blaming her husband for buying Devin the comic-books and taking their son to slasher-films. Henry then intervenes in their conversation, saying Devin’s obsession with blood and death may stem from Mark’s influence, but that the slaughter of women, means a woman in his life severely traumatized him. Bentley says his son’s not a monster, but Morgan says if he killed those women, he’s indeed a monster.
Henry then tells Martinez that Abe stole “The Frenchman’s,” ledger and all they have to do is crack the code to prove Devin bought the scalpel. Jo goes ballistic when he reveals that, telling him that if the ledger got obtained by stealing, the evidence becomes inadmissible. She tells the doctor she’s going to try to get a subpoena to access the ledger legally and tells Henry to stay right at the station, but as soon as she leaves, he takes the stairs and leaves the building.
Morgan heads to “The Frenchman’s,” shop and presents her the ledger saying she probably has missed it, she replies that Abe must have had a guilty conscience. Henry then tells her the client’s a suspect in a series of murders and Abe took the ledger attempting to crack her code and she laughs saying he couldn’t have deduced anything, but Morgan tells her they identified the last name as Bentley. She’s shocked and then he asks her if she could refrain from telling the police what Abe did. She agrees, then insults her customer in Japanese, which Morgan recognizes translates into the customer was an uptight older guy. Henry then realizes that it’s Mark who killed the women and leaves the shop, but the older Bentley stabs him in the abdomen when he reaches the street and tells Morgan he’s got eight minutes to live, then goes into the store preparing to kill “The Frenchman,” in the style of the Boston Strangler. Somehow, Henry picks himself up off the stoop and attacks Bentley, the two struggle and fall down a set of stairs into the basement. Bentley gets up, steps on Morgan’s spine and breaks his back, then he heads back upstairs.
Martinez arrives at the shop with the subpoena, but realizes something’s amiss, she then sees Bentley and tells him to put his hands up, but he reaches for a pistol and puts four bullets in his chest. Henry’s dying in the basement, fearing Jo will find him, when we see a pair of men’s shoes and hear Adam’s voice. He tells Morgan that if Martinez watches him die, it’ll be bad for everyone, pulls the knife out of Morgan’s back and slits his throat killing him instantly and Henry reappears in the river, naked and holding his throat.
The final scene has Adam calling Morgan again and saying he did Henry a favor, extracting him from a messy situation, but Henry expresses his shock at the cold and callous way, Adam slit his throat. The caller tells Henry, that after all his time on Earth, he realizes that death’s part of the process of life and he’s killed often over the years, then tells Morgan he knows him. Henry tells Adam that he doesn’t really know him, then throws the phone Adam left for him into the ocean.
The Story Continues Next Tuesday at 10:00 pm on ABC.
