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Wanted
Lips are Lips
Episode 1.10 - Dec. 5, 2005
This episode was the second of two episodes
airing Dec. 5 that marked the "winter season" premiere of
"Wanted." The show opens with
Conrad, Carla and Jimmy taking a police dispatch call while
they're out for some reason in the middle of the
night. The call leads them to a grisly scene -- a bloody body
strapped to a ceiling fan in some kind of warehouse space. While the crime scene
is being investigated, Eddie arrives. Conrad:
"Sorry to drag your ass out of bed."
Eddie, a little glazed-looking: "I-i-i... have not been to
bed."
Carla, scoffing: "Oh, we don't need to know."
Eddie, snarking: "Just keep telling yourself that." Then,
Claire Howell from "Oz" arrives. Actually, it's Kristin
Rohde playing the tough-as-Howell medical examiner, Ruth Something-oransky.
She examines the body, reciting the litany of injuries. The victim has
been stabbed about a hundred times ... both hands are broken. Eddie
astutely observes, "So, it's not a suicide." Not
surprisingly, this comment draws
exasperated looks from the team. Back at base,
the team learns that the crime likely was done by a sicko named Gordon Bianco.
He was wanted in the top 100, and this crime has moved him up to the
top 10. His modus
operandi: assaulting and raping gay men with foreign objects,
then killing them in gruesome ways. In a twist,
we learn from M.E. Ruth that the victim was a sheriff's deputy, prompting Conrad
and Jimmy to visit another gay cop, Deputy Reed (Michael Cudlitz).
Reed helps the team stake out a club where the victim might have
encountered Bianco. During the stakeout, Eddie
and Conrad wait and watch outside in a car. Eddie surveys the scene,
notices one major fashion faux pas, and comments, "Before
he left the house tonight, he looked in the mirror and thought to
himself, 'Yeah, in these blue leather pants, I'm smokin' hot.'
Unbelievable." Conrad, amused: "You
get itchy around alternative lifestyles? Eddie,
in a classic line: "I am an alternative
lifestyle. And hey, lips are lips." Later,
back at the base, Eddie scolds Jimmy for a disparaging remark about
"the freak" in "a dress." Jimmy grumbles that
Eddie wouldn't understand. But Eddie disagrees, "My brother's
gay. And he's a hell of a lot happier than than you or I will ever
be." Eddie: "With all the shit we put
up with every day, this is what keeps you up at night? You gotta
shuffle your deck, man." Jimmy: "My
beliefs don't get in the way of my job." What?
At least a couple of episodes have shown otherwise. Eddie has
noticed too: "You keep telling yourself that lie and you'll
start to believe it." The next Eddie scenes
of any significance have him staking out a waiting room at the
hospital where Bianco is headed to visit -- and kill -- his abusive
father. There's a cute moment when Eddie checks out the nice form of
young woman who passes by. Connie catches him on the closed-circuit
monitor and chides him that he'll miss the perp if he keeps checking
out ass. Eddie gives him a quick one-finger salute. Cute, but the
scene also works to re-establish his hetero credentials. Or
not. Later, Deputy Reed drops by the team's base, "Eddie
here?" Jimmy tells him, "3 a.m.? Try
the Chowder Barge. He's probably into his second bottle of tequila
by now." The proceed to discuss whether
being gay and being religious are mutually exclusive. Jimmy finally
gives an explanation of why he became so devout, involving booze,
sex and a three-day blackout. Now if they could only make him more
consistent. The Jimmy in this episode (and others) sure doesn't seem
to be the same Jimmy that is written in the next episode, "La
Pistola y El Corazon," for example.
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