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JOHN DOE
Episode 1.02: "Blood Lines"
Air Date: September 27th, 2001
Written by: Brandon Camp and Mike Thompsen
Directed by: Mimi Leder
Guest Stars: Stephen Lee (Ward Pickford), Katharine Isabelle (Shane Pickford), and Long Nguyen (Nguyen).
We pick up a short while after we left off last week. John walks into his place of employment and explains everything that happened after he heard the woman on the ferry call out the name "Tommy", which we assume was meant for him. It was one of the weakest intros I've ever seen on television. It's a fine example of lazy writing to have a man explain what happened as opposed to showing what happened. Of course, they want to compress those events into a couple of minutes, so I'll cut them a bit of slack, but only a bit.
Next, we get a shot of a man, Pickford, taking a casual dip in his backyard pool, only to discover his pool is now filled with blood. I guess he didn't notice that when he was standing next to it. Maybe he's color blind, too. The cops are called in, and we find out the blood is human. The interesting bit, I guess, is that no one knows how the hell it got into the pool in the first place. The writers concoct a rather silly scenario as an excuse for Hayes (Jones) to call in John Doe. It just so happens that John needs Hayes to run a fingerprint he pulled from the window on the ferry. At the very least, it's nice to know that the police still don't wholly trust John. It would have been awfully convenient for him just waltz in there and get what he needed. Lt. Avery (Jayne Brook) proves she's not as dense as she originally seemed by actually bothering to run Doe's social security number. It's understandable that Hayes trusts John, since Doe saved the man's life and all, but he should be the only one.
It turns out that the victim in this ep is as much a killer as the little Asian guy. You see, Pickford was importing illegal immigrants that he managed to kill when the heat was on. Two of those immigrants were the brother and daughter of a Vietnamese embalmer named Nguyen (Long Nguyen). Nguyen kills Pickford's brother and makes a couple of lazy plays on the daughter (Katharine Isabelle), but he ends up tripping on his own sword. The whole thing was interesting enough as far as killings go, but not much of a mystery really.
John's fixation on the Woman in Teal takes up the secondary plot this week, and it makes the man look worse than Neurotic Bob on crystal meth. He takes what he knows about her, which is pretty much limited to her physical appearance, and tries to apply statistical models in a psychotic attempt to figure out who he is. He even has lists of what he likes and what he dislikes. He likes spicy hot dogs and he hates tequila. Real thorough there, Sherlock.
By episode's end, John gains an assistant, the grudging respect of Lt. Boss Lady, his picture in the paper, and loses his only lead to his history. It would have been mind-numbingly stupid if that fingerprint turned anything up. There are thousands of people on this planet without their prints on file, and most of those are women I'll wager. Even though last week's clue is a bust; this week's is a humdinger. That picture of John finds its way onto the 'net where it pops up on the screen of some executive type in an anonymous office building. Executive Ass Kisser immediately prints that sucker out and takes it to the Woman in Beige, our next mystery matron. You know what else is odd? Beige Woman's office building is in the Middle East, or maybe Istanbul. I don't much notice these places on sight. Curious, in any event. "Blood Lines" gets:
Episode Rating: 7 out of 10
- Steven Dougherty does have his prints on record, but that's between him and the FBI.
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