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JOHN DOE
Episode 1.10 "The Mourner"
Written by Matt Pyken & Michael Berns
Directed by Mimi Leder
Guest Stars: Doug Hutchison (Lenny Pesco), Rekha Sharma (Stella)
Air Date: 12/13/02
John faces off against a genius serial killer this week, and his name for no obvious reason is "The Mourner". It doesn't really matter anyway. The only interesting things that happened during this episode happened in the last five minutes, so the rest of it is pretty much shit.
Remember that episode of America's Most Wanted John appeared on? It rears its fugly head once more as an unseen man watches it. Said faceless fellow demonstrates his insanity for us by pausing on a shot of John and tracing around his head with a Sharpie. Nothing says crazy like tracing your TV with indelible ink. Nothing. It gets better when the guy breaks into John's place and dances a little jig. He also steals a cookie and takes a photo of John's scar while he's asleep. You see? Crazy. Oh, and apparently the police are looking for some sadistic serial killer who leaves pink envelopes with clues leading to his next victim. Holy fuck, it's the Riddler! No, sorry, it's someone far less pathetic. It's a guy who works in raw sewage.
John figures out one of the clues, sort of since Frank actually helped, and barely manages to save a sewer working from drowning. Hey look, it's Percy from The Green Mile. Wait, they're calling him Lenny here. The second this guy appeared more than once on screen I knew he had to be the killer. I mean, come on, he told them what the next clue meant. That's such a fucking giveaway. Stupid writers. Anyway, the Most Bullshit moment of the episode pops up well after this. After sorting some strippers by the color of their underwear (don't ask) John has to choose between two cops sitting on a bomb. Both are sitting on pressure plates, one of which triggers the bomb, the other disarms it. John wastes too much time trying to analyze things and Lt. Avery has to save the day. John blames himself for being the cause of all this, and no one really tells him otherwise. You're telling me two cops were strapped to a bomb in the middle of the fucking street and no one called the police to let them know? I mean, yeah it wasn't a busy intersection, but come on, this is Seattle. Someone was bound to notice that.
John and Crew are basically at this yahoo's mercy when his next victim turns out to be Stella, the hot Indian Computer Guru that occasionally flirts with John. Digger helps the team out, and made me want to put my fist into the screen to strangle his scrawny neck. I don't like Digger too much. I wonder sometimes what the show would have been like if the original cast had remained. Meatloaf would have been a much less irritating actor that William Forsythe. Well, it's really too close to call, but I'd like to see it anyway. Maybe Digger would have broken into song from time to time, though, and nobody wants that. Least of all, me.
John figures out what I knew 15 minutes into the episode, that Lenny was the real culprit. Some genius he is. I guess he didn't read the rulebook. Item 12, Paragraph 3, Sub-Paragraph 15 of the Plot Rules Applicable to Guest Stars which states, "The Guest Star is the Fucking Killer Dumbass!" The confrontation heats to a boil when Percy forces John to choose between catching him and saving Stella. Being John, he chooses a hot piece of Indian ass over a guy who vaguely looks like Kevin Spacey minus the charm. Hey, who WOULDN'T make that choice? The real clincher, though, is the fact that Lenny has a little scar on his chest just like John's. Hey, remember in "Idaho" when Mrs. Palmer told John there were three kids who survived that experiment. Sure, she was lying to him probably, but why mention a second boy when John only knew about Theresa? Maybe she was covering her bases in case John found out about Lenny. So either Lenny copies John's scar because he's obsessed or he really is linked to John. Who knows at this point? He seems pretty bright and obsessive like John, but he didn't seem to have any of John's other characteristic weaknesses. The only time we saw things through his eyes he was wearing night-vision goggles. Of course, how would he know if John sorted the strippers in the proper order? Hmmm... Could go either way really.
Several good things about this episode. For starters, it pitted John's talents against someone who was actually smarter than he was. They've finally brought a Moriarty into the mix. That's good, if they can make the guy interesting. Right now, he's kinda silly with a name like Lenny. He makes me think of Laverne and Shirley. The other good bit was the added romantic entanglement with Stella. So far, she's been the only character he interacted with on an intellectual level that understood what he was talking about. Plus, she's really cute. Good choice there. What was really good? Karen only showed up for 30 seconds and she didn't say anything irritating. Joy. Digger should be shot in the face and buried in human waste. That is all I have to say about that character at this point. "The Mourner" gets:
Episode Rating: 5 out of 10
- Steven Dougherty recently resumed his career as a telephone sales representative. If you get a call from him, buy whatever he's selling because he loves you and he needs the money. Thank you.
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