If you wanted any more proof that online dating is hazardous to your health, just check out tonight’s Common Law. Wes and Travis investigate a death possibly related to a woman’s online dating profile. And there’s someone called ‘Death Wish.’ Seriously.
Travis is sneaking into the backyard of Wes’s house, where Wes is hiding in the bushes. How did this happen? Well, there’s no crime…they’re just trying to catch the raccoon that’s in the shed. Even if they have to shoot it. (Thankfully, they don’t.)
Having come to Alex’s rescue, they’re off to another therapy session with Dr. Ryan, who asks Wes why he’s “trying to insert yourself into your ex-wife’s life.” Wes retorts that “I care about the house because I own half of it.” Everyone else thinks he hasn’t moved on yet and needs to.
And then there’s a dead body outside a tennis court at a country club.
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Wes and Travis arrive at the crime scene and the deceased young lady is quickly identified as Darby Jensen, and Travis quickly deduces Darby was less interested in tennis and more interested in who she could land playing it.
Darby’s landlord describes her as quiet, which is no surprise. I haven’t seen the scene yet where the landlord goes, “She was a raging maniac.”
Once inside the apartment, the guys find out that Darby joined a website called DateSalon.com – and that her computer is missing. They’re not halfway through bickering before they hear a sound…which turns out to be a kitten trapped in the closet. Travis rescues the cat and ends up bringing it back to the squad room for lack of anything else to do with it.
The guys manage to crack into Darby’s DateSalon account and see who she was on dates with before she died. Travis suggests setting up a dummy account to contact her suitors and be able to check them out.
He’s told there’s a new girl in forensics looking for him, which immediately draws his interest. She’s Kendall (Nora Zehetner, Grey’s Anatomy), fresh from Quantico, and she already knows who he is. Oh, and her screen name in an RPG happens to be ‘Death Wish.’ Cute.
“Can you not ruin another professional relationship?” Wes begs Travis, who retorts that Wes should join online dating. In browsing DateSalon, Travis accidentally runs across a profile he didn’t want to see: it belongs to Alex. Wes is stunned to find out that his ex-wife is dating again, but doesn’t get a chance to brood on it because one of Darby’s dates, “cycleguy,” wants to meet the fake lady he and his partner have just created. Game on.
That night, Wes is fixing up the damage caused by the raccoon, and confronts Alex with his knowledge of her DateSalon profile. “We’re divorced, Wes,” she tells him. “I’m allowed to date.” He’s concerned for her welfare, which I can’t really blame him for considering the plot of this episode.
Back to therapy: everyone’s passing a ball around the circle while Wes insists that he doesn’t mind that his ex-wife is dating. He points out some of what’s on her profile doesn’t jibe with what he knows about her, and Dr. Ryan (as well as some of the other patients) point out she could have just been humoring him with her alleged love of jazz, doing things she didn’t care for because she loved him. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, gentlemen?
Wes and Travis go to meet “cycleguy,” who tells them that Darby never showed for their date and so he picked up the waitress instead (and he can’t remember the waitress’s name). Both Travis and Wes look like they want to smack the guy.
Later on, Wes gets the report back from the M.E. just as Travis tells him that he and Kendall spent the night before playing an RPG together. Kendall arrives and tells him not to get weird on her as she gives Wes the information on Darby’s other two dates. Travis says Kendall likes Wes, but then tells him “People on Ecstacy don’t even like you.” Harsh, Detective Marks!
The next dream date is a hotshot driving instructor who thinks he’s all Fast and the Furious and says Darby wasn’t his type. So who’s left? A chemist who lives with his mom…who made his dating profile for him. No, that’s not creepy and overbearing. And Paul just gave Wes and Travis the slip a short time earlier, being that he didn’t look a thing like his DateSalon profile picture…
They track him to a medical marijuana clinic, where they’re pegged as cops in all of twenty seconds and immediately messed with. Travis decides if everyone wants to pretend to be Paul, he’s going to arrest everyone at gunpoint. This makes the room reconsider and the shopkeeper clues them into the fact that Paul is hiding in the storage closet.
Interrogation time! Paul rambles while Travis and Wes look bored. He swears he was at home after his date with Darby and doesn’t seem frightened to be under arrest for murder. That’s weird, but so is Wes checking up on his ex-wife’s date. “I am not stalking Alex,” Wes insists, clarifying that he’s stalking the guy that wants to date her. He and Travis confront the guy and get him to admit that he’s got a wife – and they make him come clean to Alex via phone right then and there.
The situation makes Wes think: what if one of Darby’s dates had a secret of his own and killed her over it? Travis deduces that the encryption code to Darby’s computer is in her cat’s locket. Using that, Kendall brings them back to the driving instructor, who’s been wanted by the FBI for seven years. They immediately go to haul him in, which leads to a practically required car chase that ends courtesy of a helicopter.
Dr. Ryan is surprised when the captain pays her a visit. She assumes he’s asking after Wes and Travis, but he really wants to tell her that he believes his wife is cheating on him. He’s found a receipt in the ashtray for a lunch in Temecula. (Wow, the one time my city’s been mentioned on TV that wasn’t horrible!) He doesn’t know anyone there, so he’s naturally suspicious. She suggests that he take his wife out on a date and not jump to conclusions.
Meanwhile, Wes gives Alex the number of a reliable handyman – the first step in putting some distance between the two of them and moving on with his life. Not that he has much of a choice, as Travis signed him up for DateSalon…which he can’t help but start looking at. It’s bittersweet that one of his “best matches” is his ex-wife. Does anyone else think these two either need to start on the road to reconciliation or the show needs to let this go sooner rather than later? Let’s not leave Wes lovelorn forever. It would be good to see him grow…just like this show is still doing.
For more from Brittany Frederick, visit my BuddyTV writer page, and follow me on Twitter at @tvbrittanyf.
(Image courtesy of USA)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
