Episode 18/6: Political Animal

Fan Review by Mari

CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!

3 young good looking men are found shot to death in an apartment. One of the corpses has a handgun clutched in his hands. At first glance? Murder-suicide. An investigation into the mens' backgrounds reveals that one of them was homosexual, and the detectives guess that there might have been a love triangle.

I went to a few gay journalism sites who criticized this episode not only for "over-generalizing guestimations" but for depicting gay men as indiscriminate sex-fiends who will troll anyplace just to get cheap, dirty, anonymous fun. I think they're being a little too sensitive. The detectives may seem to be prejudiced, but they are looking at the very first sketchy clues, and their opinions do end up changing.

Because it turns out that 2 of the 3 men are NOT gay, or at least not openly. One of them is an investor who is a swinger with the ladies, the other is a once-engaged war veteran who had recently returned from Iraq. It is determined that the killings are not a murder-suicide/love triangle, but rather set up to appear that way. A partial print belonging to none of the three is found on the gun. Since the gay man, an attorney, was shot at least 6 times while the other 2 had only one bullet each, he is believed to be the focus of the killer's rage.

The detectives investigate into the Todd the lawyer's activities, but he specialized in environmental law, considered very low-risk by most. The only bit of info that seems to lead anywhere is a phone call to a political fundraiser named Victor Vargas (guest star John Ortiz) with plans for the 2 to meet. In Vargas, they are presented with a dapper-dressed, immaculately groomed, and highly knowledgeable campaigner who has successfully raised millions for local political candidates. He steers the investigation towards the "MVP", a conservative congressman named Jim Gilles who has made several anti-homosexual decisions of late, possible losing the support of one his biggest contributors: the murdered attorney. Rumor has it that Gilles is also secretly gay, and when he is questioned by Green and Lupo, he vehemently denies it. Green does a web search and locates a gay journalist who eagerly spills lurid details supporting the gay rumors: Gilles is gay, and hidden in the conservative closet so as not to jeopardize his reelection campaign. When he's not home with wifey and kiddies, he is getting cozy at a local department store restroom with anonymous gay buddies. The new theory on motive is: Todd, the young lawyer got angry at Gilles for voting anti-gay on many issues and not only withdrew his financial support, but threatened to out Gilles amd reveal him to be a hypocrite.

Lupo acts as a decoy in the restroom and through some secret foot tapping ritual, is propositioned by Gilles, who is arrested for "public indecency".

There were several LOL moments that lightened up these sequences. I think the 2 best lines in this episode came from Green: "You two were thanking each other's brains out." And later, "Gilles wants to know when he can meet Lupes in the bathroom!"

It turns out Gilles has a solid alibi for where he was at the time of the triple homicide. To spare him any further embarrassment, Van Buren decides to toss the arrest paperwork and let him have his life back. I thought that was very decent of her, but I would hope she would use a shredder, not just a regular waste-can.

Following a hunch, Green and Lupo take a deeper look at Victor Vargas, the impressive fund-raiser, and learn several surprising facts about him. For one, he doesn't live in a penthouse in the "nice" part of town. It looks, also, like he makes a habit of making felonious donations in the names of families who really don't have money to be contributing to political causes. Another clue leads to Josh Perleberg (the actor who uttered those infamous words almost 3 decades ago: "WARRRRRRIORRRRRRRRS...COME OUT TO PLAYEEEEEEEEE!" David Patrick Kelly), a wealthy investor who gave $20 million to Victor Vargas for gems that he never got. Yes, even though Vargas is supposedly living the high life in Manhattan because of his successful career in politics, he is also running a little jewelry store in town somewhere, and ripping off investors left and right. Besides Perleberg, Vargas also stole $5 million from one of the 3 roommates: Sean, the investor.

A vase handled by Vargas is tested for prints in the lab (Hey, is that lab woman the same actress who plays that wacky tech in CRIMINAL MINDS?) and a match is made to the partial on the murder weapon. There's no doubt Vargas gunned the three men down. Why the gay lawyer Todd took more shots than swindled investor Sean is beyond me, and never really explained. Anyway, the shocks from Vargas are not over. He is revealed to be an experienced con-artist wanted in Florida for fraud and theft, not to mention evading prosecution. A shirt with a splatter of "cocktail sauce" is also ponderered.

Unexpectedly, McCoy finds himself being appealed to by Melanie Carver, a congresswoman that Vargas raised lots of money for, to go easy on the fugitive, who is also known as Victor Montero. Carver believes that the man who provided so much money for her campaign must be mentally defected in some way, and that it might be best to "put him away" in some mental ward. I think McCoy had his suspicions early on about Carver.

Naturally, with some of those many stolen dollars, Vargas/Montero posts bail and is found trying to OD on pills. After he recovers, he fires his attorney and acts as his own. Do the surprises ever stop? He convinces his favorite politicians to testify for his case, and then accuses each one of them on the stand of having means and motive to kill the three men.

McCoy sets something up, and the congresswoman confronts Vargas in a restroom and records his confession on tape. In the end, Vargas, who clearly has some issues with self-esteem and wanting to be loved and respected by the elite, is truly pitiful, while Congresswoman Carver reveals herself to be rather cruel, and not a little dishonest. She tries to tell McCoy, "I told you so. He's got a personality disorder." But really, she is a nasty politician and money makes her world go 'round, no matter where it came from.

This episode was difficult to follow, kind of like "Bottomless", but it was intriguing and full of twists. It also had the right amount of humor. Green and Lupo continue to be an awesome duo. For Jeremy fans, Reedy Gibbs and Bruno Alexander (Jeremy's step-dad I believe) both appear in this episode. I'll give it an A.

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