The new CBS drama Elsbeth is a detective comedy series that revolves around a quirky lawyer, Elsbeth Tascioni, who is sent to the New York PD after a thirty-year career as a defense lawyer in Chicago. Elsbeth is going to release an episode every week, with a new murder mystery that Elsbeth Tascioni will solve, relying on her efficient intuitive techniques. Each episode, we will get to see guest appearances from some A-list actors as the culprits of the murder mysteries. However, this show isn’t following the format of a whodunit mystery; it’s more focused on the quirky detective’s unconventional techniques to deduce how the murder has been committed. In this episode, we are aware of the identity of the killer from the very beginning, so the story keeps us in suspense as to how Elsbeth will catch the culprit.
Spoilers Ahead
Who Killed Olivia?
Episode 1 opened in a theater hall with an ongoing show where we saw a woman play the part of a murderer and kill another woman named Olivia. Meanwhile, backstage, the director of the theater, Alex, sneakily left the area and entered the dressing room. He went to Olivia’s dressing section and replaced her medicines with some other pills. Before he could leave the room, every actor from the show entered the room, and amid them, Olivia talked to Alex. Olivia had been threatening to go to Dean to complain against Alex about his habit of sleeping with his students. Olivia was also the one who slept with him to get a big part in the play, but as soon as Alex replaced her with another actress, Olivia decided to blackmail him. Therefore, Alex chose to get rid of Olivia once and for all.
How Did Elsbeth Catch Alex?
In the meantime, Elsbeth Tascioni arrived in New York after leaving behind her thirty year career as a defense lawyer in Chicago. After one of her cases went terribly wrong, the Chicago officers put her on a mission and sent her to the NYPD as an observer. However, Elsbeth couldn’t suppress her desire to become a detective and interfere in a murder case, even though she was strictly prohibited from doing so by the police. She met with Captain Wagner, who didn’t quite trust Elsbeth and asked her to stay out of trouble, while one of the officers, Kaya, became a really good friend of hers. Kaya almost became a Watson to Elsebeth’s Sherlock, and together they set out on their journey to solve the murder case of Olivia.
Initially, Elsbeth wasn’t allowed to conduct her own investigation, but despite strict orders, she looked into the scene and found that Olivia’s death wasn’t a suicide. She found Olivia had whitened her teeth and inserted a diaphragm before she killed herself, which meant she had been expecting someone who might have arrived and killed her. During this time, when Elsbeth was asked to leave the scene, she stumbled upon Alex, whose presence at the crime scene surprised her. She was skeptical about Alex, so she asked him some random questions, but the way Alex tried to ignore her heightened her suspicion.
Elsbeth looked into the last messages on Olivia’s phone and found that Olivia’s style of texting didn’t match the texts she had sent the night she killed herself. She soon began to look into the way Alex texted people, and soon she got her hands on a copy of a drama school syllabus written by Alex. Elsbeth also asked around the theater students who were sleeping with Alex and found out that he was nothing more than a pervert who was giving opportunities to his students if they agreed to sleep with him.
Elsbeth found an uncanny similarity between the copy of the syllabus and the last texts of Olivia. In both of these texts, there was the same pattern of misspelling, which made her certain that she was going after the right guy. One night, at a gathering, Elsbeth came to meet Alex and showed him the way he had misspelled while writing the syllabus. She accused him of killing Olivia and texting from her phone to make it look like a suicide. Alex completely refuted the accusations and told Elsbeth that he wasn’t the one who had written the syllabus, but one of his students. The student was brought into custody and interrogated by the police. Even though the student revealed that he didn’t actually type the syllabus all by himself, as he had just cut and copied the information written by Alex and pasted it on the copy of the syllabus, the police were ready to conclude the case, blaming him for the murder. Alex thought that he had finally gotten away with the crime, as the police arrested his student, but during the rehearsal, he found his student backstage. As he learnt that the police, lacking the evidence, couldn’t arrest him, Alex decided to produce evidence in order to frame his student. However, when backstage, once again Alex sneaked into the dressing room to save his neck, he was caught in the act by the police. Alex was arrested for the murder of Olivia, and the NYPD couldn’t thank Elsbeth enough for her contribution to the case.
What Will Elsbeth Do To Wagner?
Captain Wagner finally acknowledged Elsebeth’s help and welcomed her to the NYPD to continue her work as a detective. Elsbeth was more than happy to hear the news, but she was a little bit sad for Alex, who seemed to be a great actor and a handsome guy. However, there could be no mercy for criminals, so Elsbeth moved on from that. In the concluding scene of the episode, Elsbeth received a call from a seasoned detective inspector, who asked her to keep an eye on Wagner, as he might be a corrupt police officer. Elsbeth tried to convince him, saying that Wagner seemed to be a nice guy who had just started liking her, but it was an order from the head, so Elsbeth had no other option but to follow the command of her superior to save her position. In the upcoming episode, let’s see if Elsbeth can unravel the secrets Wagner has been hiding all along.Â