photo: nbc
Father Dearest
Original Air Date: May 2, 2012
Caitlin – Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com
The first scene of this episode involves a small child smeared with his mother’s blood. And that doesn’t even begin to touch how twisted things get. This is one of those episodes where the writers seem determined to outdo themselves.
A young boy, Sam, calls 911, saying his mom is hurt. The operator tracks the cell phone and Olivia and Nick find Sam, covered in blood. Still, his mother isn’t dead, though she is unconscious from a head injury.
Sam told the detectives that his mom and sister were fighting. His father shows up, wondering where his daughter is. It seems she was looking for her biological father, having only just learned that her mom had used a sperm donor to get pregnant with her. She was looking for the donor- known to her only by the number 141- against her mother’s wishes, and the detectives find her waiting at a coffee shop. They do so with the help of Dr. Huang, back to offer his help! For one episode, at least.
Kate is angry at her parents for not telling her the truth, though her father never knew either. But we soon learn that Donor 141 is the biological father of quite a large number of girls, several of whom have been desperate to figure out who he was. One may have even used his sperm to have her own child. And that’s still just the tip of the iceberg, especially as several of them have already met with the man.
The detectives are able to track down a man named Colin pretty quickly. All the evidence points to him, including a room charge on his credit card at a hotel where the long-lost father and daughters supposedly went after their reunions. When the girls are brought in for lineups, though, they all say he isn’t there. Apparently someone is intentionally posing as Colin to his biological children.
Any mention of a hotel room in this context should probably set off warning bells. Our suspect was sleeping with these underage girls while making them think they were his daughters. This disturbing development is kept from Colin’s daughter, Taylor, though she pretty miffed about all the siblings she has running around New York. After a brief red herring with a man Colin fired, we get James Van Der Beek in the station.
Okay, so this is very decidedly not Dawson’s Creek. Sean is A. the former boyfriend of Colin’s wife, Anne, and B. just arrived from seducing Taylor and leaving her in a high-end hotel different from where he slept with the other girls. The theory that he’s a sociopath weakens in the face of his apparent obsession with Anne. He asks to dance with her in exchange for telling her where Taylor is. And then he says he killed Taylor. Leaving her distraught parents behind, the detectives go to find her body. They find her alive instead; convinced she’s in love with Sean.
Considering we’ve have actual incest on this show multiple times, you’d think not-actual incest wouldn’t be as bad. But that would be assuming the guy in the situation wasn’t making girls think he was their father while seeking revenge on their actual father because he was obsessed with their mother and then becoming obsessed with the father’s daughter he actual raised to the point he told her parents he’d killed her. You follow all that? Me either. And we didn’t even get enough of Huang to numb the madness.
Next Week: Learning Curve
Follow @Cait4TTC
TheTwoCents 