I come back from vacation to this? After a two-week reprieve from Memphis Beat duties, I’m taking the baton from Greg Akers for last night’s episode:
Episode Named After: The burden of family tragedy Det. Dwight Hendricks (Jason Lee) has carried for years, since his cop dad was killed on the job when Dwight was a young boy.
Rowdy Memphis (Plot Synopsis): Rather than an A plot and a couple of B plots, this week’s episode runs on two roughly equal tracks. Dwight and his mother (Celia Weston) take a road trip to New Orleans to attend the parole hearing of Tim Mason (Memphian Red West), the man convicted of killing Dwight father 30 years earlier. Mason has brain cancer and has only a few months to live, making him a candidate for the state’s “compassionate release program,” but needs the approval of Dwight and his mother in order to obtain parole.
On the second track, Lt. Rice (Alfre Woodard) steps in for Dwight, going into the field as Det. Whitehead’s (Sam Hennings) number two as the pair investigate a potential arson case at the Carver movie theatre, a case that takes a detour — no, really — into private sex parties that were being hosted at the theater. (In an otherwise poorly written show, the sex-party bit allows Woodard a funny line reading while interrogating a sex-club member: “I don’t know what kind of woman you usually go for, but I’m of the dominating variety.”)
For Dwight, this week’s story is about coming to grips with his father’s murder — including evidence that his dad might have been on the take. Back on the home front, the other case is a mechanism for continuing to build on the at times prickly, at times combative relationship between Rice and Whitehead, who find a new level of respect for each other as they solve the case.
