Recap: Wicked City Episode 2 “Running With the Devil” – ABC, original airdate Tue. 11/3/15
(For all Wicked City recaps, click here.)
I’m starting to get into Wicked City — although I noticed that though tonight’s episode was called “Running With the Devil,” we never actually heard Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With the Devil.” Meh, that’s okay, I guess. Onto the recap!
The episode picks up where the pilot left off, with Kent and Betty walking out of the Whisky with Mallory. They pile into a beautiful Mercedes convertible — a different car than I remember from the first episode — all three in the front seat, as Kent’s secret admirer radio dedication (“Shout at the Devil” by Mötley Crüe) comes on. Meanwhile, the sh*t has hit the fan and Roth is freaking out, because he’s pretty sure the killer grabbed Karen — and then he finds out that Kent changed the dedication, so he now has to look for this Mallory K. girl, too. He puts out an APB on Karen and has Contreras hit the strip to look for leads on Mallory.
Kent and Betty head to a motel, and Betty has serious misgivings about what they’re going to do, but Kent reassures her it’s just her adrenaline and there’s no turning back. Where’s Mallory? Oh. In the trunk. All tied up. Screaming and crying. Wait, but they’re not going to kill her; this is just some sort of sexy captor-hostage role-playing thing. (Look, I’m no role-play expert, but I’d draw the line at “let’s throw you in the trunk.”) She’s an actress, and she thinks they’re producers. Mallory’s an actress — a very high actress — and she has to be pretty, so when she gets a huge gash in her forehead trying to get out of the trunk, Betty stitches her up, reminding her that she’s a nurse. Wait. I’m so confused. Does Mallory think Betty’s a producer, or a nurse? Or some sort of nurse-producer hybrid job? Or is she just so wasted that she doesn’t notice the inconsistencies? Whatever. Commence threesome action!
Meanwhile, it turns out that Diver has Karen. (Is it just me who finds him somehow creepier than Kent?) She’s totally freaked out, knowing how close her fate could’ve come to Emily’s, and he’s a total jackass. He clearly wants to get all up on that, but instead of consoling her he tells her to use that fight-or-flight adrenaline to write something really good. And she does. She writes something really quickly, and he tells her how much he loves her angle within, like, 2 seconds (is he a speedreader?). Good, she tells him, because she wants to end on a positive note. She’s scared she’s going to get killed, so she’s going home. Stay, for the story — and to fulfill your dreams, he tells her, and promises to protect her. (SNORT.) At this point, the detectives find Karen (reminding her that it’s really dumb to hide from a killer in a place he knows all about) and tell her about Mallory.
Back to the threesome: Mallory’s all tied up, and Betty tells her “don’t say a word, don’t even breathe” as she directs her kisses southward. She starts moaning, and Necrophilia Kent covers her mouth, with a crazed look in his eyes. As she finishes, Kent and Betty start up, and then Betty gives the knife to Kent. This is it! This is where he’s going to kill her! Nope. He does that whole I’m just cutting off the restraints with my knife thing, like he did to Betty. (Does he do this to every woman he sleeps with?) He’s going to drive Mallory home (and by drive her home, I mean get her away from Betty and stab her – not in a euphemistic way) but he lets his guard down (the way no serial killer ever really would) and falls asleep next to Betty. When he awakens to find she’s gone, he’s totally unsettled that she’s gone, and Betty’s totally unsettled that he’s reacting so harshly (she’s pretty sure he’s totally into Mallory), and I’m totally unsettled that I’m getting so wrapped up in this show. (Also, where are Betty’s kids? Shouldn’t she have been home from work by now? Her sitter must be worried sick.) Kent tries to reassure Betty that he’s not into Mallory at all, and just wanted to drive her home, because it was the right thing to do.
Diver is totally agitated that Contreras and Roth are taking his beautiful Karen away, and Contreras tells Diver that if he cares so much about Karen, he should help the LAPD by giving him some info on the coke found on the victim, in exchange for some should-be-confidential info that may be interesting for a journalist. Diver knows the coke dealer: Bucket. (BUCKET? That’s worse than “Diver.”) Roth and Contreras go to see Diver, and Roth’s stripper-cop-lady-on-the-side is there. Roth has her arrested (oooh, she’s gonna be mad!), and after a near-arrest, Bucket gives up a name: Angie. (Finally, a normal name.) Angie will know this Mallory chick, and she’s a dancer for MTV (wow, that’s not a cliché at all), AND she’s shooting a Def Leppard video downtown right now.
Roth and Contreras head to the set. Roth: “MTV: A station that only plays music video.” Contreras: “Yeah, no one’s ever gonna watch that.” (eyeroll)
Roth talks to the director — WAIT, that’s Joe Walsh! — who pulls an SVU (something we’ve all noticed, and comedian John Mulaney even has a bit about it): Cops show up to question someone and they’re too busy doing their jobs to pay any respect to the cops. It’s total BS. “This is my set. Nobody makes a move without me,” the surly director says. He summons Angie after Roth threatens an ass-kicking; Angie says that Mallory had to leave the set because of her stitches. They get her address, but in the meantime Kent has gotten it too, and he’s there talking to her roommate. He claims he’s a detective, smooth-talks her roommate (an aspiring actor) a bit, and then when the roommate offers to have Mallory call him, Kent manages to get the roommate to give him his number instead — he likes to be in control. (Roomie doesn’t find this suspect at all? Really? Don’t call me, I’ll call you is not something someone pursuing important information would say.)
Then he calls some casting guy from a payphone near his work, donning a fake accent, and pretends to be a Love Boat producer to get Mallory’s number. (Wouldn’t she and her roommate have the same number?)
Here’s an awkward yet important scene: Kent, it turns out, works at a place that replaces car upholstery! That explains the nice cars – plural – that we see him driving , and the fact that he can go all stab-happy inside said cars with minimal cleanup. How do we find this out? A hot woman comes to his job, to pick up her Mercedes (the one he was driving at the beginning of the episode) early, with a check that has her phone number on it — because she wants him to call her. His work buddies don’t get how he gets such hot chicks. “You reupholster cars, just like us,” they say, in the way that nobody ever talks to anyone else — in the way that only TV show characters talk, to establish important plot information. It was so awkwardly worded! (But hey, at least we know now.)
Back at the station, Roth and Contreras figure out that Kent has been posing as a detective and questioning Mallory’s roommate. Karen’s working with a sketch artist, so that the detectives can hit the hospitals with a sketch of the killer — after all, he was with Mallory when she got the head wound, and she had to get stitched up somewhere. Roth shows the nurses at the hospital the sketch, mentioning Melanie’s name, and we watch Betty slowly, silently freak out, trying her best to process what’s going on while hiding her fear.
After his hospital stop, Roth sees his stripper-cop-whatever girlfriend, who is angry because he arrested her, and because she’s been grooming Bucket for a year (anyone else get an image of someone combing a yarn wig placed atop a 10-gallon pail right now?) and Roth could’ve wrecked her case. After a brief fight, she gets the last word, telling him to go home and deal with his real life while he still has one.
The next morning, he’s dealing with it (making breakfast while listening to a recorded autopsy), and talks to his wife about the case. He promises her this case won’t be like the Hillside Strangler case (where he obviously cast his family aside), then … casts them aside (gently) when his beeper goes off. Meanwhile, Kent is calling Mallory’s roommate from a payphone. Roomie is stalling because the cops are there, trying to trace the call, and Kent — knowing something’s up — hangs up, after a train loudly rushes by.
Betty heads to Kent’s house, where she talks to his niece Mary before he gets home. He pulls up on his motorcycle and freaks the [bleep] out, because he knows Mary could’ve inadvertently blown his cover. He’s so mad that Betty figured out where he lives and just showed up without asking, and tells her to go home and he’ll call her — but she knows he’s hiding something, and shows him the sketch. He plays dumb about the sketch, but looks alarmed to find out that the cops are looking for him and Mallory. When he asks what the cops said about Mallory, Betty’s suspicions that he’s more into her are again aroused. Why is he so obsessed with her, Betty asks. What has she done, aside from taking his order at Hamburger Heaven? Bingo. Kent’s got Mallory now; he knows where she works. Betty tells him, as she leaves, to lose her number.
Speaking of leaving, Diver is mad that Karen is leaving, and he wants to get it on with her. Ick. He begs her not to stop writing, “‘Cause you got something. You got something real.” “You think so?” “I know so.” “What are you waiting for?” Karen asks as they look into each other’s eyes. Ugh, they’re gonna do it. REALLY KAREN? Gross.
Back at the station again, Contreras has used his trusty IBM to narrow down which 2 payphones Kent could’ve called from (based on the train horn thing), and Roth puts two and two together when he says that one is near an upholstery shop (since there was upholstery foam in the last victim). Roth heads to the shop as Contreras heads to Hamburger Heaven — someone at the station has figured out where Mallory works, too.
But it’s too late. Mallory is with Kent, who says he’s taking her to an audition, and roofies her up (to calm her down, so she doesn’t blow the audtion, of course). Roth has broken into the upholstery shop (without a warrant — great idea). He looks inside an empty freezer, then under the floorboards, where he finds a dead, rotting body with a note: “Detective Roth, sorry to have missed you. From, Your Secret Admirer and Mallory K.” In this instant, Roth knows he’s screwed, and Mallory is as good as dead. (I’m confused as to why Kent would be dumb enough to lure the detective to his upholstery shop, unless that was a different upholstery shop. A decoy upholstery shop?)
Kent finds Betty in the hospital parking garage, and delivers a flowery, emotional speech about how he’s not going to let go of her and needs her. After spouting off some you’re my other half garbage (and quoting Plato), he asks her to come with him so he can show her everything. Everything. If she doesn’t like what she sees, he’ll disappear, he says. He’s so creepy. (Creepy enough that he’s also left a note for Karen, in kid writing, at her apartment. “Do you want to play? Prove your worth?” He must have slipped it in the door when she and Diver were having their gross goodbye sex — twice. OMG, he was THERE right when Karen was, er, getting there.)
Kent takes Betty to that same bluff (it would be called Makeout Point in any other show, I’m betting; I’ll call it Murder Point from here on out). He gives her more flowery words, and she smiles, but is scared as he opens the trunk to a panic-stricken, tied-up Mallory. Kent tells Betty that Mallory knows too much about them — so she must die in order for them to live. Betty stands outside the car, watching blood spray the insides of the windows, listening to Mallory scream as Kent kills her. That’s the end of this episode — and, really, life for Betty as she knows it. She, too, knows too much, now.
Wicked City airs Tuesday nights at 10/9c on ABC.
Photos: © 2015 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Eric McCandless