On this episode of Frequency, “Signal and Noise,” Frank returns home a hero but realizes his life and career remain in jeopardy, Raimy warns Frank about Julie’s fate and father and daughter hone in on a suspect in the Nightingale killings.
Raimy is adjusting to her new life which includes learning the details surrounding her mother’s death 20 years ago. She’s on the Nightingale Task Force which will give her all the information she’ll need to know to lead Frank in the right direction.
Frank Returns Home
Raimy breaks the news to Frank about Julie that when they saved his life, they set in motion a chain reaction that resulted in Julie’s death. In the world where Frank died, the Nightingale Killer stopped, but in her reality, he’s killed at least 20 more. Julie is taken January 10, 1997, so that gives them 11 weeks to find the killer and stop him. Raimy wants Frank to warn Julie that she’s going to die, by telling her how and when.
Frank leaves the hospital a hero for dismantling a notorious drug gang. He receives a big hug from young Raimy and Julie and returns home to Queens. Even though there’s a party going on in his honor, Frank doesn’t feel much like celebrating. He tells Satch he wants to become a member of the Nightingale Task Force.
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Later, Frank finds young Raimy in the garage playing with the radio. She wants to know if Frank’s return means that her parents are going to live together again. Frank may be back, but a lot has happened in two years.
Franks tries to talk to Julie, apologizing for all of the pain he’s caused her and Raimy. But the fact that there’s protection detail sitting outside the house has Julie on edge. Frank assures her they will only be there until the people who shot him are caught. He tells her that with the Nightingale Killer on the loose, their home is the safest place she can be right now. This doesn’t bring Julie much comfort. He wants to be sure she’s taking the threat seriously. Julie assures him she is, but she can’t do cop talk all the time.
Raimy Finds a Possible Suspect
Elsewhere, the killer strikes again. A woman leaves a bar and begins to feel woozy. She collapses and is approached by a man asking if she’s okay. He’s dressed in black and his face isn’t visible. He offers to help her, picks her up and puts her in the back of a van.
Raimy has been doing some digging and uncovers some information about their marsh where her mother’s remains were found. She tells Satch there was a sexual assault case in the same marsh in 1994 — two years before her mother was abducted. Raimy believes there’s a link. The marsh is out of the way, so someone would have to know it’s there, making two separate unrelated incidences so close together an unlikely scenario. Satch hypothesizes that maybe the assailant liked the spot so much, he decided to use it as his dumping ground. There is no file on the assault case because the charges were dropped and the case expunged. Raimy found out about it from a newspaper article in the archives.
The accused was a man named Thomas Goff, a college student in his early twenties. Goff is now an investment banker who has two kids and lives in Jersey. Satch is dubious that this is the guy, but Raimy reveals the woman he attacked was a nursing student.
Frank and Raimy talk, and he still can’t wrap his head around why Stan Moreno would sell him out. Raimy points out it isn’t the first time a narcotics cop went over to the dark side, suggesting Moreno was in bed with the drug dealer Frank was trying to take down, Little Jay.
Frank isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do, but he isn’t eager to rat out Stan. Raimy says he has to quash it because they have bigger things to deal with.
Frank is Forced to Cooperate
Frank is set to go before the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB). He asks Moreno where they are with Little Jay and Moreno is non-committal. They’re looking, but the guy is slippery. Frank offers to help out. He did spend two years with Little Jay and has some ideas of where the drug dealer might be holed up. Moreno reassures Frank he’s got the situation under control.
Frank answers questions regarding the shootout with four men from the suspected criminal gang. He’s sticking to his story that this was a criminal sting gone bad. The officer decides to talk to Frank off the record. She’s already spoken to Stan Moreno as well as the other men under his command, and they all testified there was no sting that night nor was Frank led to believe there was. There are no records and nothing in the log books. So, it’s Frank’s word against that of three decorated cops. A representative from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOB) tells Frank he can capitalize on his current popularity, and if the investigation goes “right,” he can have his pick of posts, including the Nightingale Task Force.
Just a Youthful Indiscretion
Raimy heads to Jersey to speak to Goff who writes the whole thing off as a youthful indiscretion. Goff suggests that if Raimy thinks there was more to the incident she can go talk to Lisa Boyle, the woman who filed the charges. Goff reminds Raimy that Boyle also dropped the charges. They were friends, they were drunk, and it was a stupid night.
Raimy questions why Goff took Boyle to that marsh, but Goff responds that Boyle took him. She said the marsh was a nice place to take a walk, and he’ll regret what followed for the rest of his life.
Unfinished Business
Raimy is frustrated and takes it out on Frank. He hasn’t done anything on his end, including telling Julie. He tries to explain that things are complicated with Julie, and he can’t go telling her the truth unless she’s ready to listen. All Frank wanted was one night, one dinner, one bedtime. He isn’t eager to blow up his life by sounding like a crazy person.
Raimy accuses Frank of doing whatever he wanted for two years because that’s what Frank does, and he still can’t do the right thing by his wife. While he’s worried about blowing up bedtime, Raimy’s entire world has been blown to hell, and Frank still can’t stop being selfish. Frank believes he is doing what’s best for his family, but Raimy demands he do it better, starting by finding Goff.
Frank assures Raimy they will save Julie, but he can’t do anything as long as Stan Moreno wants him dead. Frank has to find Little Jay, the man whose criminal empire he just spent the last two years taking down. He’s the only person who can corroborate Frank’s story and prove that Moreno is dirty. He has to talk to Little Jay and make him understand that either they work together against Moreno, or they both go down.
Frank tracks down Little Jay with minimal effort. He warns the man that half the NYPD is looking for him, including the men he thinks are his friends. If Little Jay keeps running, Frank tells him he’s going to die. Like it or not, Frank is all he’s got. If he goes in with Frank, at least Little Jay has got a shot.
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Raimy Follows a Hunch; Frank Pays Goff a Visit
Raimy is haunted by flashbacks of her mother. The only personal item recovered from Julie’s body was a locket containing a picture of her and Raimy as a little girl. Julie never took it off.
The memories Raimy is grappling with involve Daniel, and her mother’s matchmaking attempts. In spite of Raimy’s lack of interest in meeting a former patient of her mother’s, Julie pushed and invited Daniel over for dinner. But mother knows best, and Daniel and Raimy hit it off.
Raimy doesn’t have time to mourn her relationship with Daniel when her mother’s killer is still on the loose, so she questions Lisa Boyle. She is hesitant to corroborate Goff’s account of what happened that night other than to say it wasn’t just a youthful indiscretion. Raimy questions if Boyle was paid for her silence, but Boyle still doesn’t crack.
Raimy asks Boyle what she would think if she knew there were more women. Boyle tells Raimy to ask her anything she wants.
Frank recruits Satch to help him investigate Goff. Satch doesn’t understand how Frank even knows about the sexual assault charge since it was wiped, so while Satch is all about gut instinct, he needs Frank to break it down for him and explain what the hell they’re doing in New Jersey.
Frank reveals the victim was a nursing student, and since the case was quashed, nobody talked to Goff because nobody thought to. Goff’s mother runs interference with her son. Frank asks for just a few minutes, but she offers to give them the number to her lawyer instead who would explain to them why that would be the worst career mistake of Frank’s life.
After having the door slammed in their face, they hear the sound of metal grinding from a nearby shed. Inside is Goff, and the woman kidnapped earlier from outside the bar is bound and gagged in a small cellar. Frank and Satch consider checking it out but are intercepted by Goff’s mother.
In the present, Raimy is making some progress. She tells Satch about a college student named Maya Gowen who went missing in ’96. She lived in the same Jersey town and went to the same Jersey college as Goff. She also happens to be the woman he’s holding prisoner just yards from where Satch and Frank are standing.
Events unfold back and forth simultaneously. As Raimy is piecing together what may have happened to Maya. The woman was never found. Satch tells Raimy that he and her father looked at Goff. Raimy points out that in 1996, police thought the Nightingale Killer only abducted women from New York, so a missing woman from Jersey wouldn’t have made it into the file. Satch wonders why Raimy is still pursuing him. It seems Boyle’s finally admitted that Goff raped her, and Raimy believes her. Suddenly, Satch’s revelation that he and Frank spoke to Goff registers. Satch tells her that when they spoke to Goff, there was nothing there.
Raimy suspects Gowan may have been at Goff’s first before he settled on an MO. He operated close to home, liked how it felt and then moved to the big city. She decides to take another trip to Jersey.
Goff emerges from the shed and is more than willing to talk to Frank and Satch, but his mother is insistent that her son keep his mouth shut. Frank and Satch have no choice but to get in their car and leave.
Goff returns to the shed and is attacked by Maya who managed to break free. She knocks him out just long enough to escape into the nearby woods, and a bleeding, crying Goff falls to his knees. Standing nearby is his mother who wants to know what her son has done. Goff asks his mother to help him.
The Harder They Try, the Worse Things Get
Raimy arrives at the Goff home but is told by the occupant that nobody by the name of Goff lives there. He does recall that a family by the name of Goff lived there up until the mid ’90s but haven’t lived there in almost 20 years.
Raimy hurries home to communicate with Frank and is caught in the act by Gordo. Raimy tells Gordo he has to leave but he refuses. Raimy’s mother’s remains were just found 20 years after her abduction, and he’s her best friend. Julie was also like a mother to him, and Gordo doesn’t think Raimy should have to deal with any of this alone. Gordo doesn’t understand all the secrecy since Raimy has always told him everything in the past. Raimy assures him her life is more complicated than he could possibly understand. Gordo continues to reach out, but Raimy unceremoniously throws him out.
Frank receives a call from one of Little Jay’s guys informing him the drug dealer is coming in and hangs up. Moreno makes an appearance, wondering what Frank’s doing at work so late. He asks Frank if he wants to grab a drink, but Frank passes. Moreno questions how things went with Internal Affairs, and Frank tells him they’re all on the same page. Moreno is glad to hear it. Frank does want to know what the story was going to be if he hadn’t cooperated; that he was some corrupt undercover cop who went off the reservation and gets himself shot?
Moreno responds that if Little Jay had taken Frank out, what difference would any story make to him. Frank wants answers. He put himself on the line for Moreno for two years, and now the guy can’t tell him why he got shot. Moreno says that more questions mean more answers about both him and Frank and questions if Frank really wants to go there. He tells Frank to go home, hug his wife, and they all live to fight another day.
Who Tipped Off the Cops?
Somebody tipped the cops off because just as Little Jay is getting ready to turn himself in, he gets shot.
Frank arrives home and decides it’s time to warn Jules that her life is in danger. They have to start taking precautions. He can’t protect her if she doesn’t believe him. Jules does believe him, but she’s going to figure it out like she always has, on her own. Frank swears he’s not leaving her, but Jules points out that Frank already did. He chose his job over his family. He argues he got shot to get back to them. He was trying to do something good for her and Raimy to make them proud. There’s a reason for everything he’s missed, but Jules says he never bothered to share those reasons with her before.
Frank figures the only way to get Julie to believe him is to show her the radio. He tries to get through but has no luck. He begs Julie to say something, hoping Raimy will respond, and even though she’s sitting there, Raimy refuses to acknowledge Julie.
Later, Raimy makes it clear to Frank that the reason she hung him out to dry is because everything they do, messes up something else. If they tell Julie, maybe they will save her but she dies tomorrow. Goff is the answer.
Frank admits that he and Raimy don’t know each other very well yet, but he’s going to do everything in his power to save Julie. After that, he doesn’t care what happens to him. Raimy tells him she does.
While laying in bed, Raimy has a revelation. She remembers that when she questioned Goff, there was a shed on the property, but when she returned, it was gone. Raimy goes back to Jersey, searches the nearby woods and discovers the remains of the cellar where Maya was held.
Should Raimy have talked to her mom? Has Goff’s mom been covering for her son all these years? What do you think happened to Maya?
Frequency airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW. Want more news? Follow our Frequency page on Facebook.
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Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
Jennifer has worked as a freelance writer in the entertainment field since 2012. In addition to currently writing feature articles for Screen Rant, Jennifer has contributed content ranging from recaps to listicles to reviews for BuddyTV, PopMatters, TVRage, TVOvermind, and Tell-Tale TV. Links to some of Jennifer’s reviews can be found on Rotten Tomatoes.
