Photo: Michael Parmelee/CBS
Elsbeth is such a fun show — the bold and bright costumes, the cheeky humor, the parade of notable guest stars, the warmth of friendships — that it can be easy to miss the bleaker themes thrumming along below its sprightly surface. Is justice for everyone possible when the ultrawealthy seem to be able to get away with just about anything? A great deal of what makes each episode so satisfying is watching Elsbeth and Kaya outwit people who assume that murder charges will be simple to wriggle out of with the application of their overwhelming wealth and influence. Ever since Elsbeth first crossed paths with the late Judge Crawford, cracks in her sunny veneer have been increasingly difficult to fill in. In this season’s final episodes, it seems as though the cracks are wending their way down to her foundation.
Elsbeth takes some solace from Captain Wagner and Kaya as she sits in an olive-drab NYC jail uniform, weeping about the dark place she’s been in for the past few months. It’s okay to wallow for a bit, but getting stuck in unfixable what-ifs and abject gloom aren’t really options right now. If they’re going to keep fighting this war, she’s got to remember who she is and what she stands for. It’s hard not to read some post-2024 presidential election vibes in moments like this, and “I’ve Got a Little List” offers proof positive that Elsbeth exists in our current electoral politics reality, as ICE agent Wes McCarthy (Ben Horner) mentions that his investigation of the murder of Lichtenburg’s Crown Prince Wilhelm von Hofer “takes precedence over the situation in Greenland.”
Let’s back up and talk about how Elsbeth has landed herself in this literally and mentally dark place. As shocking as it is to see her arrested and then totally failing to get any kind of traction in her arraignment hearing, this fall is less precipitous than it might seem. In retrospect, this seems to have been in the works for a long time. We learned in the psychic episode with Tracey Ullman that Elsbeth’s affinity for richly textured clothes in exuberant colors reflects the influence of her zazzy late grandmother, who encouraged her to think of them as psychological armor. We know from all of the episodes with Crawford — including the one where he tried to put his thumb on the scales of the ethical and legal situation with her abusive former client’s divorce case — that she was staggered by seeing just how many levers of power and influence Crawford had access to, and how skillfully he wielded them to the last.
Returning to casework so quickly after Crawford’s shooting was ill-advised. First, Elsbeth experiences an awful flashback to Crawford’s murder, triggered by her standard reenactment of the murder. Then, she becomes so obsessed with the possibility of Rod Bedford (Billy Magnussen) being the killer that she loses her ability to stay on the right side of the investigative line. She’s correct about Rod, whose apparent lifelong inability to experience joy or delight has driven him to escalate from standard rich-jerk thrill-seeking to getting away with murder, but that’s irrelevant once she veers into criminal harassment territory. Elsbeth’s near-nihilistic recklessness is the other side of Rod’s anhedonia-driven thrill-seeking coin. They’re not exact equivalents by any means, but it’s disturbing that neither of them seems capable of breaking their respective behavioral fevers.
I can’t fault her quite as strongly as Judge Dousant (the always welcome John Carroll Lynch) does. It’s true that she has previously been an advocate for Crawford’s murderer, Delia Kirby, but that was before the judge’s killing. It seems as though he is being every bit as driven by his emotions as he thinks Elsbeth is. There’s further context to consider, too. For example, Rod’s entitlement and blithe assurance that everything he might ever want is within reach, thanks to his gun-manufacturing family’s staggering wealth, are both deeply provoking. (Shout-out to Magnussen’s performance here. Rod is yet another exquisite entry on his résumé of ultraentitled, deeply insecure men. Byron Gogol in Made for Love is the apex of his work in the intolerable douchebag space, but Rod gives that tech bro a run for his money.)
Back at the office, Elsbeth and Kaya chafe at being forced to take seriously Agent McCarthy’s equally casual sexism about the “angry feminists” of Lichtenburg’s Crown Free Movement and his many assumptions about their propensity to violence, an alleged plan to murder Prince Wilhelm in the U.S., and their use of a “lady gun.” Ugh! All of this is enraging, and I only experienced it as a person aware that she’s watching a fictional TV show.
We know that the real Elsbeth is still in there, though, and thankfully, her fever does break. She identifies the last clue Kaya needed to arrest Rod in her usual nonlinear way, during an inventory of her personal effects as she’s being processed into police custody. Never let your imaginary AI friend inadvertently rat you out when it’s only meant to juice your social-media engagement stats, friends! (Also, don’t do murders, it’s bad for the soul and bad for business, even for a gun manufacturer.) She even seems a teensy bit jazzed at the prospect of being moved to the Midtown Detention Center, where she’ll be jailed among many of the killers she helped to put behind bars. You can’t keep a good woman of distinctive taste in outerwear down by making her look a little wan in some unflattering jail uniform! This is Elsbeth Tascioni and the season finale we’re talking about! Let’s go!
In This Week’s Tote Bag
• Coat of the Episode obviously must go to the Big Bird–coded yellow belted mohair number we see at the scene of poor Prince Wilhelm’s murder. I really hope that its half-furry, half-feathery capelet was included with purchase — it’s the element that makes the whole look sing. I must also praise the hot-pink-and-black number Elsbeth sports on her fateful last trip to the Canister Club. The color combination and lush texture would have been enough for me, but the wild eye on the back puts it in the realm of wearable art. Is it a third eye? Protection against the evil eye? Some third thing of significance that hasn’t yet occurred to me? Incredible work.
• Here’s a fun fact about this week’s episode title: It comes from a song by the same name in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Mikado. It’s super-racist and wildly catchy, and this is a perfect opportunity to encourage you to seek out Mike Leigh’s film Topsy-Turvy, which stars a host of your favorite British actors and captures the process behind the operetta’s creation.
• Is Agent McCarthy’s surname a coincidence? I’m going to say no. I also hope there are several outtakes of all three actors in this scene breaking when Elsbeth wonders aloud if they should call Disney to alert them to the Crown-Free Movement’s cabal of princess-assassins.
• If there has ever been a real-world analog for the Canister Club, I want to know about it. A cigar bar and whiskey-tasting lounge that is also an open-carry shooting range? Yikes!