Photo Courtesy Of Fox
Warning: Spoiler Alert
Clear your calendars for next Thursday night at 9:00 pm EST, as the answer to perhaps the greatest television mystery since who shot J.R. Ewing, gets revealed, as the Fox miniseries “Gracepoint,” concludes and tells the shows viewers, whose responsible for the death of 12-year-old Danny Solano. This episode answered a bunch of long-standing questions and concluded with a seemingly guilty suspect in custody, for the murder of the boy, the only question remaining, did they capture the right guy?
The story opens at Fairport Hospital, as Detective Emmett Carver recovers from the angina attack he had, when he and Detective Ellie Miller attempted chasing down a suspect, hiding in the Harvey Ridge Hut. Carver fell to the ground clutching his chest, telling Miller he thinks he’s dying, so Ellie gives up the chase to save Emmett’s life. When he regains consciousness, the first thing that confronts him is Miller’s voice telling him he almost died on her last night and he needs an operation.
Carver tells her it’s nothing and won’t affect the case, but she replies it had, as they lost the suspect in the chase. The taciturn detective told Ellie, she should have pursued the suspect rather than attending to him. She tells him she’s heading to the station to update all police personnel, he says he’s getting dressed and joining her and she just smirks at him and says right. Carver tells her not to leave, then loses consciousness once again.
CSI inspects the Harvey Ridge Hut, while Ellie briefs her staff on what took place, giving the best description she could of the man who knocked her down and ran into the dark woods. She then informs her people about Carver and that she doesn’t know when he’ll be fit for duty, as he’s in the hospital, unhooking himself from all the machines, gets dressed then tells hospital staff he’s heading home. Instead he heads straight to the station.
Miller’s shocked to see her boss back at the station and tells him he’s certifiably insane, trying to get back on the case. He says he’ll take care of his health once they solve the case and she replies he’ll drop dead in the field. He responds, that’s the case then she can get his job which she’s always wanted and she truly looks shocked, tells him that’s horrible and she doesn’t want his job. He says that’s good as she’s underqualified, when the Chief calls them both into his office.
The Chief tells Carver he needs to step down from the case, but the detective refuses, the Chief says he’s sending his medical records to County and he’ll be placed on restricted duty the next day. Emmett responds, then he needs to catch the killer in the next 24-hours, but he gets another piece of bad news when the Chief tells him he needs to surrender his firearm, since he’s passed out on the job. Carver begrudgingly hands it over.
Beth Solano heads to Reverend Paul Coates apartment, as she’s having second thoughts on keeping her baby, she wants to have it, but she’s terrified she can’t protect her new child, after losing Danny. She says the world’s a sick and nasty place filled with people who let you down, especially the ones you trust the most. She then tells Paul that Mark slept with Gemma, which Coates had determined on his own. She starts to cry and he hugs her, but gets perhaps a bit too touchy-feely with her.
Ellie brings Susan Wright back into the interrogation room, as she’s still in custody. She produces two cigarette butts, they found in the sand next to Danny’s body. Susan says she’s not talking until the police recover her German Shepherd Archie, but Ellie counters unless Susan talks, she’s putting her dog at risk, he could be recovered by canine patrol in a nearby town and get put down. Susan then says she and Archie took a walk between two and three am and she saw Danny’s body on the beach from the cliff they were on. She says she went down to see the body and smoked two cigarettes, then tells Miller that he was beautiful.
In the town newspaper’s office, Owen’s attempting to fix the copier when he hears a female voice saying hello, he looks up and sees San Francisco Globe reporter Renee Clemons, whose leaving town as the papers stopping coverage of the story. She tells Owen that she’s got some info that he can take or leave and the paper’s editor Kathy Eaton, says that Owen will leave it. He however says with Clemons leaving they should hear her out, she then tells the pair that Carver’s got a heart condition.
Mark Solano and Vince Novik are on the way to a service call, when Mark tells Novik to slow down. He sees Beth leaving Coates apartment, he looks like he wants to confront her, but tells his assistant to keep driving.
Miller briefly speaks with Carver and she tells him she doesn’t think Wright killed Danny, but she knows far more than she admits to. Carver tells her to get back in there and keep on digging. Ellie tells Susan that she’s lived in Gracepoint her entire life and that Susan couldn’t have scene Danny’s body from the cliffs, so it’s time she tells the truth. Over the next few minutes, Wright reveals a tragic tale of how her family fell apart. She starts off with the phrase, You people destroyed my family.
She tells Ellie her husband was a plumber and they had two girls and her husband had sex with the older one. (Notice, she uses the phrase had sex rather than molesting, could that mean anything?) Then her husband decided it was time to have his way with their younger daughter, but the older sister tried protecting her and her husband killed her. He told Susan she’d run away with her boyfriend, but soon after “Ellie’s people,” in other words, police officers and soon they found her daughter’s body and charged Wright’s husband with murder. She says he tried to implicate Susan as well, saying that his wife was in on the whole sordid affair, though Wright claims ignorance. They put her younger daughter in a foster-home and took the baby she was carrying, as soon as she gave birth.
Beth comes home, surprised to see Mark working out on his punching bag in the middle of the day and asks him why he’s not at work, but he ignores her and keeps slamming the heavy bag. She asks if they can talk, he takes off his gloves and says if she wants to talk, perhaps they should start why she’d been at Paul Coates apartment that morning. She says she got scared and needed advice, the ultra-sound she’s having later that day freaked her out. She wants to keep the baby, but wants it to grow up happy and that she and Mark, aren’t happy currently. She suggests counseling and he assumes it’s with Coates and says no way. However she gives him a card from a psychiatrist, which doesn’t make him any more amenable to counseling. She tells him she loves him, she doesn’t care she just wants them happy again and they hug as she tears up.
Speaking of the Reverend, Paul’s watering flowers on the church grounds when Tom Miller comes around and asks Coates for his computer back. Coates caught the boy destroying the laptop on the Miller’s driveway and confiscated it, telling Tom to tell his mother, or he would. Paul asks Tommy if he told his mother and the boy asks why won’t Coates give it back to him. Paul tells the boy if he reveals to him what he tried to destroy he’d give him back the laptop, if he doesn’t he’ll go to Ellie or Carver. Tom says if he does that he’ll tell them he hit Danny on their overnight trip, the Reverend tells the boy to think about what he just said. With a hard edge to his voice the boy replies, No, You think about it.
Ellie’s at her desk and goes through newspaper archives verifying Susan’s story. She then heads back into the room and says she needs to know what else Susan saw the night of Danny’s murder. She tells Miller, she was down on the beach, not on the cliffs and saw a boat pull into shore and a guy got out, laid Danny’s body on the beach, got back in her boat and took off. She told Ellie she recognized the person in the boat, Vince Novik. She then said she stayed with Danny’s body so long, because he looked so peaceful and she wondered if her oldest daughter looked that peaceful when the police discovered her corpse.
Carver, Miller and a group of uniformed officers raid the Novik home and arrest Vince, who yells to his mother that he’s find and he’ll return home soon. Vince’s mother’s talking with Ellie and Emmett hears a dog barking, he gets a pair of bolt-cutters snapping the padlock on the workshop and sees Archie sitting there, chained to a stake in the ground. As Carver and Miller enter the station she tells her boss, that Novik’s mother said something strange, she said Vince loves Danny and he has him on his arm. Ellie tried to ask her if her son used to pick Danny up, or hug him, but she kept repeating the one phrase. Miller said her Alzheimer’s disease’s progressing quickly.
Ellie goes back to interrogate Susan, while Carver heads into the room Vince’s held in, he pushes a picture of Susan Wright at him and asks Novik if he knows that woman and Vince responds he doesn’t. Carver then asks him if he’s got a dog and Novik says not really, then Emmett says they found a dog in his work shop chained up that belongs to the woman he claims is a stranger. Ellie starts asking Wright about Vince and shortly there after, she tells her that Novik’s the infant that Social Services took away from her. She says that for most of Vince’s life she had no clue where he was, but then they changed the laws so that parents and children could establish contact. She tells Ellie it took her 18-months but she finally tracked him down.
Vince finally realizes his deny-defense won’t fly, so he tells Carver that Wright approached him a few months back saying she’s his mother, he says she lies about everything. Then he says he hadn’t a clue he’d been adopted until Wright arrived. However, he still emphasizes to Carver that the woman’s a pathological liar.
Back with Ellie and Susan, Wright tells the detective she wrote Vince for months before she came to Gracepoint, but his mother hid all the letters from him and in her current state, believes she gave birth to Vince. Back with Carver and Novik, Emmett asks to see Vince’s arms, wants to check out his tattoos and Novik shows the detective one arm, Carver says he wants to see the other one and there’s a tattoo of Danny’s name on his arm, he says he got it after Danny got killed. Carver says you have a tattoo of your boss’ son name on your arm and Vince asks him what’s wrong with that.
Back at the Solano, Mark and Beth are sitting around the dinner table with their daughter and her boyfriend Dean and Beth asks if there’s an update on Vince. Chloe says, to her father that he knows Novik didn’t kill Danny and Dean, says they’d been very close. He went out hunting with the two of them and Vince and Danny acted like brothers. Beth then says what camping trip and looks to her husband whose as clueless as she is. Mark asks when this happened and Dean said a long while back like October or November, they’d said that Mark knew about it and they told them they did it a lot. Solano calls the station to inform the detectives.
Carver’s about to finish his session with Novik when he asks him how come he didn’t ask Mark’s permission to take his son hunting and Vince remains silent. He leaves the room and talks with Miller and they decide to release Susan, he also tells her they traced the call that reported the light on at Harvey Ridge Hut and it emanated from Danny’s missing cellphone, the killer’s toying with them. Carver’s cellphone rings and he leaves the station, driving to Paul Coates church, the Reverend hand over Tom Millers laptop, he tells the detective he walked by the Miller house on his way home and saw Tom destroying it. He believes there’s information about Danny on there that Tom was trying to get rid of.
He then says that Tom and Danny had been best-friends, but drifted apart, they started having arguments and Tom made fun of the Solano boy after Danny quit Mark’s soccer-team. He then tells Carver that Tom threatened to tell him he hit Danny, then says to the detective he never struck the boy. Carver leaves making a call to an associate about recovering hard drives.
Miller tells Susan they’re releasing her and she asks if she can visit Vince before she leaves. When they arrive, he tells Ellie to get her out of his sight, but Susan tells him how lonely she is and just wants to get to know him. He tells her to tell Ellie she’s lying, but she says she didn’t and puts her face up against the cell door. He puts his hands on her cheeks and says if she doesn’t say she’s lying and then leave town he’ll slit Archie’s throat then take care of her. She tells him he’s his father’s son, he’s got his father’s sickness and the two women leave.
Carver heads down to the newspaper office and goes through an interview with Owen and Kathy Eaton, as he finishes giving background on the Solano case. Owen then asks him about Rosemont and how he blew the case; they had the suspect dead to rights when they recovered the little girls pendant among his possessions. The female detective who was to bring it to the evidence room at the station, stopped at a hotel for a celebratory drink with another detective on the case, her car got broken into and they stole all her possessions including the pendant. The female detective was Carver’s wife who was having an affair with the other detective and so his daughter wouldn’t find out he took the blame. He said they can print the story as long as they leave out his ex-wife’s name.
Back at the station Carver and Miller are about to call it a day, when he asks if she noticed Tom and Danny drifting apart the last year or so and she said she hadn’t. He then asks if they can borrow Tom’s laptop the next day and she says, sure thing. She heads home goes into her son’s room and starts panicking when she can’t find her laptop. Her cellphone rings and it’s her deadbeat sister needing a check in order to avoid getting evicted.
Ellie heads to the apartment, gives her sister the check and her sister finally reveals what she saw the night of Danny’s murder. She saw a man carrying something heavy wrapped in a rug and put it into the Solano plumbing van, she didn’t see his face but it must’ve been Mark. Miller shakes her head and tells her sister it wasn’t Solano, it was Novik.
The Story Concludes Next Thursday Night at 9:00 pm on FOX.
