'Common Law' Episode 1.03 Recap: "Soul Mate"
The show starts off with an anxious Travis arriving at a house. He walks around to the back yard and meets up with his partner, Wes, who is hiding in the bushes. Wes hands Travis a stun gun and they look to the shed where “he” is. After deciding on a plan of action, the boys walk up to the shed with Travis ready to open the door. He swings it open and they both immediately fire their stun guns at a raccoon. They manage to hit the poor critter and scare it into the cage waiting outside the shed. Wes and Travis are pleased at a job well done and Alex, Wes’ ex wife then enters the scene. Alex thanks them, and Wes talks about the damages the raccoon has done to the house and already begins inviting himself over to make repairs, a clear sign that he isn’t over her yet even though they have been divorced for a year now. And that is how Soul Mates, episode three in the first season of Common Law, begins.
Wes’ and Travis’ case for this episode comes about when a couple at a tennis court discovers a dead woman. The detectives are instantly at the scene, taking in random details about the crime like how they are no witnesses since no officers are talking to people and the woman wasn’t an active tennis player because her shoes were new, no scuffs. Travis then notices a price tag poking out from the sleeve of the woman’s dress. It says the Action Hut on it, and Wes and Travis are off, following their first big clue.
At the Action Hut, they meet a store clerk who is able to identify their Jane Doe as Darby Jensen, a lonely woman who is constantly buy clothes for kayaking or cycling that makes her look good and then returns them within a few days. It is clear she is trying to impress or find a man, and the clerk even admits she had flirted with him on a few occasions. He directs the detectives to Darby’s address, courtesy of the credit cards she used, and they leave, following the trail.
At Darby’s apartment, they meet a friendly elderly woman, the landlord, who leads them to Darby’s place. Wes and Travis learn from her that Darby was all alone, no family or friends besides her cat, Milo. The find out she was at the tennis courts because she had a date and the land lord reveals that Darby was a cautious person and worked for a computer security person.
They walk inside the apartment and Wes starts going through the first thing his eyes land on, Darby’s mail. He figures out she has an account on datesaloon.com, a dating site for singles. Travis is upstairs and notices her daily affirmation about soul mates and finds a cute little gray cat in the closet, Milo. When they finished scrounging around the apartment, Wes and Travis leave with Milo and head to the station to process what they found.
Though they couldn’t find her laptop, the detectives are able to find her on the date site and notice her screen name is iamforyou. Wes hacks in with Travis help and they discover that Darby had three dates this week; one with cycleguy, one with rocksyourworld, and another with raceya. Travis decides to create a fake account to try to meet one of the boys by using the same general information Darby used and a picture of Amy, a cop that was walking around. Another cop, Kate, adopts Milo and takes the sweet cat away, and Travis is introduced to Kendall, the new girl in forensics. Travis gets a small crush on the pretty girl because she is simply a woman in the office he hasn’t dated yet, but it helps that he is impressed with her because she’s smart and plays the same video games as him. However, events take an awkward turn when Kendall only talks to West about what she found on Darby’s profile because she is actually smitten with him. Travis goofs off on datesaloon.com and discovers that Alex has a profile, which surprises and upsets Wes.
The boys are in another therapy session and during an exercise they talk about Alex having a profile on datesaloon.com. The other couples in the group try to convince Wes that it’s ok, it has been a year since the divorce so I would made sense that Alex would of moved on and be seeing other people. However, Wes is still upsets and continues to be down about it when the duo leaves therapy for a fake date at a cycling class they managed to land with cycleguy.
It turns out that cycleguy actually never met Darby, she stood him up. He has the right alibi to prove he couldn’t be at the scene of the crime at the right time and Wes and Travis are at a dead end. They go back to the office, but are then out of the door as soon as Kendall hands over raceya’s and rockyourworld’s addresses that she managed to find by hacking on to the site. Wes and Travis are immediately back out and looking for raceya, aka Ted House, race car driver of the year, at the tracks. Ted talks about Darby and mentions that they did go one a date together. However, they didn’t hit it off so Ted never saw her again. Ted says he couldn’t have killed her anyway, he was at a race that night. That leaves rockyourworld, so Wes and Travis begin hunting him down.
Rockyourworld turns out to be a guy named Paul who still lives with his mom and is growing a mini marijuana forest in his bedroom. The arrest Paul, assuming he is the culprit, and take him back to the station for questioning. Paul talks fondly about Darby. He says they went out on a date, and he really liked her and was already looking forward to their next one. Though Paul seemed like a good guy, if you don’t think about the pot, he lacked an alibi so Wes and Travis made the arrest and considered the case closed.
Wes couldn’t let go of the case though. Paul’s arrest was too easy for him and he knew there had to be more. The two detectives talk about it while Wes goes through Alex’s profile on datesaloon.com, stalking the men she might potentially date. The two boys go after a man named TangoPhil who turns out to be married and make him tell Alex the truth. While Wes is scaring away potential dates for Alex, Travis has a realization. All throughout the episode, Kendall kept mentioning a cloud that Darby must of used. Kendall would be able to access it if she had the right encryption code because they couldn’t break or crack it since Darby was smart, she was worked for a computer security company after all. Travis realizes that the code must be with Darby’s only best friend. Milo. Calling Kate, the cat’s new owner, they have her look into the locket on the cat’s collar. Travis was right, the boys were able to find the code and bring it back to Kendall so she could get into Darby’s cloud. Once inside, they are able to find out that Darby did thorough background checks on all of her dates and she had accidently found out that Ted House was actually Roger Williams, the driver to a Swiss bank heist that managed to steal over 100 million Euros. Roger has been on the run from the FBI for seven years and must have figured out that Darby knew his secret. Wes and Travis realize that Roger had hired a man to put on his helmet and uniform to race for him while he went and killed Darby. After a small car chase involving a helicopter, Roger is arrested and is sent to prison.
The show then ends with Wes giving Alex a card for a handyman, a sign that he won’t be coming around as much and attempt at moving on.
Though I know I keep talking about how awesome I think Common Law is, I must say it once more. The hilarious duo that is Wes and Travis have once again managed to have me laughing so hard that I could barley breathe and made me excited for what was going to happen next. The episode was great of course (who thinks of meeting murders on dating sites?) but yet I’m a little heartbroken. The minor characters such as the captain and Dr. Ryan and the other couples in the therapy session that I have grown to love were not seen as much in this past episode. It was still fabulous and fantastic, I recommend watching it if you have a second! But I hope in the next episode we will get to see more of the other characters in the series.