SouthLAnd – Recap & Review – The Runner

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SouthLAnd
The Runner

Original Air Dare: Mar 23, 2010

Farrah Kaye – Associate Editor
farrah@thetwocentscorp.com

So, Sherman made it through his first time alone but it wasn’t exactly what he expected. Did he feel the power? Or is it just that he’s too emotional and wants to save everyone? (I’m going with emotional…) Cooper schooled Brown on the basics of being a cop and I hope that doesn’t make her question her skills. Clarke is still gone but Adams finally warmed up to Cordero (as did I). The previews show Sherman and Cooper visiting Dewey in rehab and, well, I’m sure that’s gonna be a trip!

Opening scene: Adams comes upon a murder scene. The victim is a young woman, face down on the ground, who has been shot in the back. Adams assumes she’s about 19 or 20 and does drugs.

Voiceover: Every victim has a story. Det. Lydia Adams has seen this one before.

Instead of going backwards in time, we pick up right from the opening scene, rare for the show. Cordero is gone for some reason and Adams is partnered with a guy named Suarez. Bryant and Moretta are on the case, too. Someone finds the girl’s purse and they find out she’s a student at SULA. The neighborhood is a bad one and people in the area always hear gunshots so this wasn’t a rare thing to hear. Moretta and Bryant know a guy in the area and go to find him for information. They try to wake him up but he won’t so they flip his mattress over. I love these guys. They ask him for information and he says he doesn’t know the girl but knows about her. Sherman and Cooper are going to visit Dewey in rehab and after are going to a funeral for a friend of Cooper’s. The detectives are at the scene and find a second shell casing, so either the shooter missed or there was a second victim. As they are looking around, television station vans show up. Adams and Suarez go to notify the victim, Nicole’s, parents, who are very proud parents of their children (their other daughter won a bronze medal in the Olympics and Nicole was at SULA on a track scholarship). They said they haven’t seen her for a bit because she was at track practice all the time and that she had been dating a football player at the school. But she had been shot on the “wrong side of the street.”

Some of the other detectives go to the hospital looking for gang-related shootings where the victim is acting shady. They come upon a guy who tried to shoot himself but flinched and took his ear off instead. Don’t worry, they saved the ear. HA! Adams pulls up the football player/boyfriend’s profile. His name is Tyler and has a record for beating women. Moretta and Bryant find the guy who got shot by the second gunshot. He tells them about Nicole and her sister. The sister was “too good” for that life but Nicole was a druggie, a “rip and run.” When Adams and Suarez go to Tyler’s dorm room, his room is empty and the dormmate says Tyler lives off campus. The administration won’t tell Adams where he lives and also tells her that Nicole wasn’t a student anymore. The woman is protecting Tyler and Adams threatens to pull Tyler off the field in the middle of the game to question him, which gets her the information. Suarez questions Adams’ tactics. She seems to get along with him better than Cordero from the start, but again, no explanation of what happened. While Cooper and Sherman are driving to see Dewey, Sherman says that Dewey wants to make amends with Cooper and Cooper says Dewey needs to make amends with Brown more than anyone. Adams and Suarez find Tyler and all he has to say is that Nicole was fine and it’s a shame she’s gone. He’s a skeezer, big time. He says he broke up with her because she got into the drugs and he can’t be around that stuff. Suarez takes the “I’m a fan” stance, knowing his stats and gets Tyler to talk a bit. By the way, did I mention Suarez looks like he stepped off the set of a Telenovela on Telemundo? He’s got this 80s Texas-style mustache going. It’s hard to take him serious. Anyhoo…Tyler’s lawyer shows up wanting to know why he’s being investigated. They ask him where he was and he says he was in his place because of curfew … then he skeezily hits on Adams. Ugh, gross.

Cooper and Sherman get to Dewey’s rehab facility, which looks like a Hawaiian island. Dewey still looks nuts and is acting as crazy as ever. And his nickname? You Tube. I can’t tell the difference between drunk Dewey and sober Dewey. Adams and Suarez go to visit the coaches and the assistant coach says he called Tyler to verify curfew, but he called on his cell phone, therefore meaning he could’ve been anywhere. The coach’s lawyer (they all have lawyer’s apparently) says if they have a question about the alibi get a warrant. At rehab, Dewey tells the guys about how much he was drinking … 30 beers a workday, 10-12 before his shift even started. This was for about 5-6 years. Cooper is pissed off about it. Dewey offers Cooper a free punch but tells him just to sit down. Adams and Suarez talk with a friend of Nicole’s who tell them about the lifestyle Nicole led with Tyler…nightclubs, drugs, alcohol…and how she stopped going to classes months ago and that she caught Nicole stealing her stuff, preparing to sell it. In the group rehab session, Dewey says Cooper saved his life by making Brown turn him and thanks him. Cooper does not look amused. The leader asks Cooper if he has anything to say in support of Dewey and Cooper is stone cold silent. Oh Michael Cudlitz, what you say when you say nothing at all!

The detectives get to the station and they are told to move on from Tyler as a suspect. They are told to close the case ASAP, no matter what they have to do. Bryant and Moretta remind us they are still doing the task force and Bryant says he doesn’t like Gil. They quickly come back to the current case when they see a kid they know. He wants to “look cool” and asks Bryant to cuff him. They throw him in the back of the car and he gives them the info they want. Nicole was known as “the runner” and she was shot by a guy named K-Dog who was bragging about shooting her. The coroner’s report comes back – Nicole was pregnant. Adams assumes Tyler killed Nicole because he didn’t want to support the baby. They go to Nicole’s parents’ house to talk to them and they find her sister. She says her parents are in denial of everything Nicole did. Their parents are pushers for them to be perfect and even her bronze wasn’t good enough. Nicole didn’t even want to be a runner, but dad made her. Nicole and her sister weren’t close because she couldn’t be as “perfect” as her. Dewey finds Sherman to make amends with him and his amends is for that first day on his job with having to shoot the gang banger because Dewey wouldn’t let Sherman search him. Sherman doesn’t really know what to say to the whole making amends thing. Adams and Suarez find the Hills at the funeral home and not only do they tell Mr. Hill that Nicole was pregnant but that she did drugs. He says no way, that is not his daughter. Suarez pulls them away after he starts getting really angry.

Cooper and Sherman are heading to the funeral for Cooper’s friend. He was a cop and Sherman is asking questions about what happened to him but Cooper is oddly quiet. He also mentions his ex-wife will be there. At the station, someone finds a picture of Tyler at around 11 PM the night Nicole was shot, despite him saying he was home at 9. Bryant and Moretta go to one of their guys to find out more about K-Dog and Nicole. The guy says Nicole was stealing from K-Dog. In return for the information, Bryant and Moretta will help him out with some of his legal “troubles.” K-Dog hangs out at a park and keeps a gun in a baby stroller. Cooper and Sherman get to the funeral and Sherman is taking mental notes of things, like the friend’s ex-wife is sort of sad but that a man in the back is bawling his eyes out, surrounded by a group of other men. Cooper’s ex-wife is there as well, but they haven’t talked yet. You can see Sherman’s thought process beginning. Adams receives a frantic call from Nicole’s sister that her dad bought a gun and is going to go kill Tyler. They find Mr. Hill sitting in his car in front of Tyler’s apartment. He wants to know what is going on because it’s humiliating. Seriously man? He finally breaks his perfectness and cries because he wants his daughter back.

After the funeral, Cooper is visiting with his friend’s ex-wife when the man Sherman saw previously is still bawling his eyes out and being escorted out by the group of men. Bryant and Moretta see K-Dog at the park and he reaches for something in the diaper bag. He starts running when they call out to him and he runs with the stroller and throws the gun, which goes off. HOLY MOLY, there’s a real baby in the stroller! It’s his brother. I swear, I about choked when I saw that. Cooper introduces Sherman to his ex-wife and we find out his friend killed himself. Cooper and his ex seem to have a good relationship. When Sherman asks if they know why his friend killed himself, Cooper avoids the question and says they need to get gas. At the station, Adams is questioning K-Dog, who is worried about his little brother (oh really? How about keeping a gun in his diaper bag?). K-Dog says Sisco (the guy Moretta and Bryant went to for information on where to find K-Dog) told him to kill Nicole and Tyler was not involved at all. K-Dog tried to shoot her in the leg so she couldn’t run, but he missed. Suarez says “not a bad first day, partner” and he’ll see her tomorrow. Ok, seriously, what happened to Cordero?! Sherman says Cooper’s ex-wife seems cool and Cooper starts talking about his friend and how they went on double dates. After Cooper split with his wife, Cooper would see him at gay bars (LIGHT BULB!) but his friend would ignore him and after that, his friend moved away and had some kids with his wife. Sherman says it’s been a long day. Adams calls her mom (who is in Paris still), just to thank for her the things she did for her over the years.

Next week, the task force gets nuts … Gil and Bryant go at it, Moretta’s daughter sees a shooting and holy wow, even the preview has me shaking!

So wow, a lot went on during this episode. Dewey is still crazy. Brown and Cordero are absent and we’re not sure why (Brown could have had a day off, however, Cordero seems to be gone for good and it’s annoying to not know why!). Adams seems to have a lot of cases that she relates to, which is nice, and I liked her reaching out to her mom. But the big storyline, which oddly got the least screentime (it didn’t need much to do what it needed to), was the fact that hello, we’re finding out Cooper is gay … and more importantly, Sherman is finding it out. I liked how he threw in that “I saw him at gay bars…” line without even flinching. I don’t think Cooper has ever been so quiet in an episode. Michael Cudlitz and Ben McKenzie were amazing in this episode. What did you think about this episode? Leave your two cents below.

Funny line of the night: “All this special treatment and you don’t even carry the ball.” – Adams to Tyler

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