The penultimate episode of Rosewood wraps up the case of Gerald Kelly after a few false starts. “Half-Life and Havana Nights” sticks with the muted yellow coloring and indulges in a FOX crossover of sorts. Daisy Wick (played brilliantly by Carla Gallo) is an old roommate of TMI’s.
The Dr. Brennan associate (From the FOX series Bones.) arrives in time to help Rosie’s team decipher the cremated remains of the missing murder victim; Elena. Wick shows that attention to detail that initially from Brennan to distraction on Bones and helps to send Rosie and Villa on the right path.
Rosewood does pretty well without Wick’s assistance as he works out that the remains have no signs of radium so the girl could not have been held in the bunker. Prior to that they round up all the evidence on hand, the clues lead Villa and Rosie to Cuba, specifically Havana.
They find that Michelle, the supposed third victim of Gerald, alive and well. Unfortunately the daughter of the innocent man framed for multiple murders has a bad attitude. Michelle is also a suspect due to a drop of her blood found on the clothing of another victim.
Annoyingly, after bringing back Gerald’s estranged daughter, a new character is introduced – Harley; an old boyfriend. It is this new chap who murdered the other girls.
Apart from Gerald winning his freedom and re-uniting with Michelle and meeting Donna Rosewood outside the prison’s visiting room, this was easily the weakest episode of either season one or two.
Nothing ruins a “good” mystery more effectively than introducing a new character in the third act who was the killer all along. Granted, Rosewood is not a sitting room Agatha Christie type mystery. However, having the real killer hiding until the end of the search is a no-no; not to mention that it is a cheap cheat.
(Harley could well have been interviewed earlier but if this was the case his was so nondescript that the actor’s name was not included in the show’s credits till this episode.)
Resorting to soap opera tactics to surprise the audience shows just how sloppy this season of Rosewood has become.
Back to the mystery and the heretofore hidden killer, it is the radium, or lack thereof, that leads the team to Harley.
Rosie knocks out the killer after working out that the escaping gas was not a real threat. Meanwhile Villa and her new guy are going to on a date; the opera. As Harley is lead away in handcuffs and a lot of press, hungry for answers to the 10 year old case, Elena’s Panamanian father shoots her killer dead.
Dealing with character relationships and dynamics, Slade and Hornstock have, rather oddly, bonded and are now finishing each other’s sentences. Until recently this was reserved for Villa and Rosie, this new development is as unsettling as the new woman in Rosewood’s life.
The miss-match of the waitress and the pathologist is huge. It smacks of a Pygmalion type scenario and feels like a definite dead end. Of course Tawnya could be an honor grad from Yale, or Princeton fallen on hard times but she does not feel like an unfortunate Cum Laude graduate.
Rosewood has one episode left in this season. It may well start the show back in the direction headed in season one. Rosie and Villa were a perfect match, both on and off the job. Hopefully this unlikely romance will end and the pathologist can go back to Annalise.
Cast:
- Morris Chestnut – Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr.
- Jaina Lee Ortiz – Det. Annalise Villa
- Eddie Cibrian – Captain Ryan Slade
- Gabrielle Dennis – Pippy Rosewood
- Anna Konkle – Tara Milly Izikoff (TMI)
- Domenica Lombardozzi – Det. Ira Hornstock
- Lorraine Toussaint – Donna Rosewood
- Sam Huntington – Mitchie Mendelson
- Robert Wisdom – Gerald Kelly
- Leroy Luckett – Tawnya
- Eric Winter – Adrian Webb
- Lisa Vidal – Daisie Villa
Guest starring Carla Gallo as Daisy Wick, Joy Brunson as Michelle Kelly, Ruben Garfias as Carlos Santiago,Daniel Roebuck as Ernie Portnoy and James Harvey Ward as Harley.
John Legend – Coming Home
What is the song at the end of the show? (And who sang it?)