If you ask me, the ninth episode of The Irrational was the weakest one of the series so far just because of the absurd writing. The emphasis seemed to be more on the idea of how to live one’s life, which was very tediously delivered to us through Mercer solving a complicated case about Vincent’s death. Vincent, the owner of an alternative medicine company, dies, and Mercer offers to help with the case as he thinks it is a homicide.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Did Mercer Take On Vincent’s Case?
Kylie was a big follower of Vincent’s live streams and all the health products that he advertised. Vincent owned Paradigm, a company that gave away new-age supplements for living longer and healthier lives. Mercer knew Vincent from way before and shared a similar ethos when it came to their individual work. They both believed in hard work, but it seemed Vincent had gone too far in his endeavors. Mercer wasn’t a big fan now, as Vincent had gone ahead and spread misinformation about Western medicine. However, that didn’t mean that somebody had to run him over. Vincent was live-streaming his run when a vehicle hit him. It was a clear case of hit-and-run, or so it seemed. Kylie saw the livestream and couldn’t believe that she had seen a death happen right in front of her. Mercer got to the scene of the crime and noticed that there were no skid marks, which meant that the driver wasn’t surprised at all after he had run Vincent over. The driver had not applied the brakes, which implied they always intended to kill Vincent, which made this a clear case of murder in the first degree, and Mercer had to investigate it. It didn’t matter that Vincent was now peddling some flimsy medicine to gullible people; in Mercer’s eyes, he didn’t deserve to die like that, and as there was a former association, Morgan, the investigating officer, allowed him on the case.
Why Did Phoebe Meet With Derek Mitchell?
Mercer went to Vincent’s funeral and met Tori, Vincent’s wife. Kylie was of the opinion that, in such cases, it’s the spouse that has to be kept a close eye on, as generally speaking, they are the ones that have something to do with the murder. Mercer had a conversation with Tori and received the information that Vincent had spoken against the owner of a big pharmaceutical company, which kind of made him his nemesis. The man in question was Derek Mitchell, and Mercer planned to get a sense of whether he had something to do with the murder.
Mercer got Phoebe to go in as Kerry, a fellow pharma company owner, to talk to Mitchell and find clues if he slipped up, and he gave something away about how he truly felt about Vincent. If it had been Mercer who’d visited instead, Mitchell could have been spooked and hence shut off. But seeing Kerry, he opened up, and Phoebe did a pretty nice job of making it seem like Vincent had betrayed her. This got Mitchell to empathize with her, and he spoke about Vincent in a negative yet compassionate way, as if to suggest that although Vincent was against the company and he hated that, his death certainly felt unnerving. There were no signs of glee or latent contentment in Mitchell. In fact, it was Mitchell who spoke to Phoebe about Vincent’s hiring of a bodyguard, which indicated that he was worried about his well-being.
Why Was Tori Arrested?
When Mercer got to know about this bodyguard, he started to look for him but found just his name in the records: Johan. Johan has been missing ever since Vincent’s death. The car that had run Vincent over belonged to Tori, and Morgan arrested her. Mercer came to see the interrogation and found clues to suggest that Tori was hiding something. She confessed that she was sleeping with Johan because he reminded her of her husband when he was younger. Vincent had dedicated his life to his company, Paradigm, and Tori had fallen by the wayside, and sleeping with Johan was a desperate way to get his attention. Kylie started looking for Johan online and found that he was a big fan of Vincent, probably his biggest. The strange thing, however, was that Vincent never had any photos with Johan on his channel or any other platforms. Johan had practically stuffed his Instagram feed with Vincent’s photos, as if worshiping him, and the case seemed to become like the one where a fan had killed his hero.
How Did Mercer Find Vincent’s Killer?
Tori wasn’t going to get much out of Vincent’s wealth, so that made her less of a suspect. The arrow pointed towards Johan, and Mercer, along with Morgan and Kylie, tried to hunt him down. Tori helped by giving them Johan’s address, and the team visited the place and found one of Johan’s friends, Aaron, living there. It seemed like Johan had escaped to his birthplace, Germany, but the credit cards in his name were all pointing to purchases made in Long Island. The team visited a big mansion, and Mercer got an inkling that Johan wasn’t just a bodyguard. Had he been just that, he wouldn’t have been able to pay for the luxurious mansion. Kylie suspected perhaps Tori had paid him off to kill Vincent, but Mercer did the old *69(landline number to place a call to the last dialed number) trick to find out who Johan had called last. It was a cancer hospital, and Mercer figured it all out.
Vincent was having chemotherapy for his cancer, and he wasn’t dead at all! So where was Johan then? It turns out that Vincent’s last stream wasn’t live after all. He had got his fan Johan to go on the run holding his Go Pro and record his video and run him over; he merged that video with his own footage of having gone for a run. Vincent was cruel and smart enough to mangle Johan’s face so that Tori wouldn’t recognize him. The fact that Johan looked a lot like young Vincent, plus that he had the same tattoo of Paradigm’s logo on the same spot on his arm, helped Vincent fake his own death. It was all done to hide the fact that Paradigm’s miracle supplements didn’t work at all, or worse, may have given him cancer. Vincent didn’t want to let his work go down the drain and resorted to inhuman cruelty to protect his legacy. But now the truth was out, and Vincent ended up in jail.
Final Words
In the ninth episode, Mercer was compared to Vincent in their capacity to be dedicated to their work, leaving aside family and friends. But seeing his once-friend Vincent go down a dark path made Mercer wary that longevity isn’t important. It’s the little moments of joy that give meaning to life, which is why he gave Phoebe and Rizwan some time off to put them elsewhere instead of work. As far as the church bombing case went, Marisa made it look like she was running for office and hence approached Sanford for help. This was all done as a plot to gauge his reaction to the church bombings, which had gotten him sympathy votes. Little did Marisa know that her house was bugged, and perhaps it was Sanford who had done so after sensing that Marisa was onto him. It will be interesting to see how Mercer would fit into the case, as now it is becoming more of a showdown between a powerful politician and the FBI.
