Instinct Episode 4
What do fathers and sons, friends, and killers all have in common? The answer is simple, the latest episode of Instinct.
The crime:
We start out watching someone fill a spray can with a substance and the next thing we know – Dylan and Lizzie are putting on hazmat suits and going onto a subway car with dead bodies, destroyed steel and a backpack containing the mystery canister.
When Lizzie and Dylan leave the scene they find a thief with an old Walkman and cell phones. While everyone thinks it’s a terrorist attack, Dylan is convinced that it isn’t. Just as pieces were coming together they are told by Lt. Jasmine that the FBI have taken over the case. And just as they get started on a case involving a bombing at a Central Park carousel, that personal drama we all face smacks them hard.
Dylan and his dad
Dylan is visited by his dad, Roger of the CIA (played by John Doman) who taunts him by telling him he could get him back on the bombing case instead of what he called “the merry-go-round murder”. He refuses and his father asks to take him and Andrew to dinner and leaves.
At dinner, Dylan is shocked when his dad walks in with Lizzie. This agitates him a lot. When Lizzie gets a call about a body and a hotel fire, he’s quick to leave with her.
As the episode closes, we see Dylan bring up the subject of his book Freaks, which he had told Lizzie earlier he wasn’t sure his father had even read. He was offering his dad a copy when his dad said he already owns one. He also said that he recognizes himself in the book when he mentions his mothers cancer and how someone can be loving and still heartless. Roger also tells Dylan he was jealous of his skill and still couldn’t understand why he walked away from his job.
After the most awkward goodbye, Dylan meets up with Andrew who asks how it went and all he said was “somehow.. not bad” and then proceeds to thank Andrew for being him. The two kiss and walk off hand in hand.
I love how each main character has a life of their own. I also fully enjoy finally seeing a happily married same-sex couple on prime time TV that’s just like any other couple. The fact Dylan’s dad accepts Andrew and Dylan’s relationship as much as he does is also a wonderful thing to see. But in all the heart touching Dylan and Andrew moments, let’s not forget the other half of the duo.
Lizzie
After being shut out of the subway bombing Lizzie is sitting at her desk when approached by three colleagues. They ask her to go see why the Lt. has her blinds closed and why she has been chatting with internal affairs so often. After talking her into it, Lizzie goes into Jasmine’s office and finds her getting fitted for a wedding dress.
Lizzie goes from shocked to hurt when Jasmine tells her she chose Sally from internal affairs to help with her wedding instead of her. Jasmine explains that she thought it would be too much for Lizzie after losing her fiancé just a year ago and how her wedding should’ve come first.
Lizzie says she understands and leaves feeling hurt and betrayed. After a talk with Dylan who restated what Jasmine had said, mixed with the fact the killer was hashing out his pain at what had happened to him twenty eight years earlier, Lizzie came to terms with the fact she understood what Jasmine’s intentions were.
In an act to patch things up Lizzie brought in the box with her old wedding dress and veil, in which she had never opened and both ladies got a great laugh when they opened it and found a ugly dress instead of the one Lizzie picked out.
I am really loving the female friendship in this show. Too many times in procedurals woman are made to be snappy and after each other’s heads. I hope we continue to see a continuation of Jasmine and Lizzie’s close friendship.
But let’s not forget that subway bombing, the carousel bombing and the aforementioned hotel fire which leads us to the killer of the week:
Kyle
It was Kyle’s seventh birthday when his father brought him to New York City to go to Central Park, and ride the Subway and to stay at a nice hotel. That night he told Kyle he had to go to the office real quick and left seven year old Kyle in the hotel while he went to the Brooklyn Bridge and committed suicide. From that day, Kevin blamed himself for his dad’s suicide and felt that he would become him.
In order to get rid of those bad memories Kevin destroyed the Subway car he rode in, destroyed the hotel room he and his father stayed in, and the horse he rode at the Central Park carousel. Unfortunately though, unplanned by Kevin, there were casualties due to dumb luck.
Dylan had a hunch it was Kyle when the coroner found Leptospirosis in the hotel victims blood panels. They then went to his carriage and found a picture of him on the blue carousel horse that was destroyed. They also heard his father’s voice on the tape that was in the tape recorder.
While at Kyle’s apartment they found the items needed to make a bomb. Dylan figured out Kyle was watching from the top of his father’s work place and went to talk to him. Telling Kyle it wasn’t his fault and he knew that he didn’t mean to kill those people. Thankfully before blowing up the Brooklyn bridge Dylan was able to talk Kyle into putting the control down, but when Kyle obliged he turned around and walked off the building.
Dylan told Lizzie he didn’t feel like he helped Kyle at all and should’ve been able to save him. But after a pep talk from Lizzie about it being Kyle’s father that failed him, saying that a father can fail his son making Dylan realize in his head he didn’t fail his father, his father failed him. She also mentioned that it’s not easy to move on and she herself hasn’t fully gotten there yet.
Once again the way this show deals with not only psychopaths, but people who are mentally broken, is wonderful. They don’t excuse the person’s actions, but they also make it clear that sometimes people are sick or broken from traumatic experiences in their lives.
Instinct airs Sundays at 8/9c on CBS.