After last week’s Agatha-centric installment, Minority Report is tackling a few of Arthur’s secrets, and boy howdy does he have some boring skeletons in his closet.
This week’s vision is of a mugging, featuring a video beer ad with a clock at 9:42. But it turns out the clock on the ad was fast, so Dash and Vega don’t make it in time to save the victim. Finally! Not that I wish death upon fictional characters, but I’m happy to see Dash and Vega taken down a peg after so many wins. And of course, Vega insists they leave to let the police handle it normally since without the vision, there would be no reason for them to be there. Thing is, if they’d stuck around, they might have noticed that the paramedics packing up the victim are not to be trusted.
Meanwhile, Arthur is hanging out and buying red diamonds (heh, in an episode featuring Reed Diamond!). When Dash shows up to wallow about the mugging, Arthur tells him to get over it and move on. So, basically, Arthur knows what’s up with the mugging.
Dash does not take Arthur or Vega’s advice to drop the case. Instead he looks up the victim: Omri Nellis, who worked at Capital Trust Bank. Dash rushes off to Nellis’ home where he meets (Not) Nellis’ Wife, and she quickly tags Dash with a knock-out device. Meanwhile, Vega has learned that there was no mugging reported the night before, and she heads to the address in Dash’s search history hoping he didn’t do anything stupid, which of course he did.
Nellis’ home is empty, with signs of a scuffle. Lenses, do yo job! Vega finds blood on the floor that matches Dash. She heads to Dash’s place, which has also been tossed, and calls in Arthur for back-up. Arthur admits that he steered Dash away from investigating the mugging murder because he knew who Nellis really worked for, and it was not Capital Trust.
Dash is chained to pipes, returning to consciousness after a dose of chloryl methane. Standing over him are Not Nellis’ Wife, aka Cleo (Melissa Hood), and Aziz (Owiso Odera). “Where we are, no one can hear you scream.” UGH. Don’t say things like that. The big boss, Luca Van Zant (Peter Macon), shows up and is far more imposing than his minions. See, someone took something from Luca, and then killed the banker that had been helpfully laundering his money. And he’s totally going to torture Dash until he gives up some info. That’s not necessary. Dash immediately gives up that Arthur is his brother. Luca likes this.
Arthur’s confrontation with Luca is pretty boring, and punctuated with Shakespearean quotes from Luca. Apparently Arthur popped up out of nowhere and became the only clean identity game in town. I feel like no new information came out of this conversation. Luca tells Arthur that he best get his money back or bad things will happen to Dash.
Over in the pipe room, Cleo is a big fan of Dash’s creepy murder drawing book. As they chat about Cleo’s late husband, Dash pulls an Aggie and starts to creepily tell her all the stuff he knows about her.
Fun fact: Arthur sent the fake paramedics to pick up Nellis’ body so he could hide the death long enough to use Nellis’ identity to steal Luca’s money. Naturally, Vega punches him for this. She gives him an hour, and then she’s calling in SWAT like she wanted to in the first place.
Back to the pipe room, Aziz is getting knife-happy. He needs something for proof of life, dontchaknow.
Arthur meets Aziz in an alley with a helpful drone following him. Hi Akeela and Wally! We’ve missed you this episode! Anywho, Aziz tosses Arthur a box containing Dash’s finger. Gross. And for good measure, he shoots the drone for frankly no reason. They have until dawn to return the money.
Akeela analyzes the finger, which of course belonged to Dash. Vega wants to get Metro PD involved, which she should have done from the start, but somehow Arthur convinces Vega to give him one more chance to talk to Luca. On his way out, Arthur asks Vega to tell Dash “I’m sorry and we’re even.” He’ll know what that means.
Dash currently has bigger problems than cryptic messages from his brother. He’s going to send a cryptic message to his brother. Turns out, one of Dash’s drawings was of Aziz killing Cleo’s husband. And Cleo is quick to turn on Aziz. She kills him, which triggers a vision for both Dash and Arthur, allowing Arthur to figure out where Dash is. Gotta say, a part of me hopes that Dash goaded them into this showdown in order alert Arthur, but the show doesn’t officially confirm that.
Akeela uses Arthur’s info to find a location: Potomac Sugar House. Vega swoops in with SWAT to save Dash, who begs them not to hurt Cleo because she “saved him,” which is not totally true. Oh hey, Wilmer Valderrama is in this scene with one line: “Is he OK?” Wow. Why did you take this job? What do you do all day when the rest of the cast is shooting?
Know who isn’t there to save Dash? Arthur. He’s chatting with Luca about climate change or something because this is still The Future™. Turns out, Arthur was buying time with this whole rising sea levels conversation until Dash was safe. Time for the mic drop: Arthur stole Luca’s money, but he isn’t giving it back. Luca got that money by skimming it from his criminal cohorts, and they are displeased. Arthur put the money in red diamonds, which are trading high right now or something, and gave it back to the people Luca stole it from (with a small finder’s fee). Arthur walks out as Luca’s ex-friends close in on Luca.
The team close the episode using magical future-tech to re-attach Dash’s finger. There’s hugs and Arthur hits on Vega again, which prompts her to point out how different Dash is from his brother. Except, as we learned in the flashbacks throughout this ep, that isn’t totally true. In their first few days after being released from Pre-Crime, Arthur fell for a bartender against all of Agatha’s warnings. But then they have a vision of her getting killed as a result of a barfight started by Arthur and Dash. Way back then, it was Dash that wanted to ignore the visions and Arthur who wanted to try to stop them. When he is too late to save the cute bartender, he’s heart-broken. That loss hardened him. Now he doesn’t try to save the victims in his visions because he doesn’t want to fail.
Remember Henry Blomfield (Reed Diamond), the guy from DIA that wanted to bring back pre-crime? Well, he was there when the Precogs were removed from the milkbath and put through physical therapy, though he was not happy about the program ending. He’s also back to chat with Blake about how much he likes Hawk-Eye, and especially Vega’s not-so-by-the-book methods. Do not trust this dude.
Minority Report is taking a break next week, but when it comes back, it appears that Blake actually does something of consequence: realizes that Dash is a Precog! I think my biggest issue with the show (outside of The Future™ focus) is the fact that the season arc moves at a glacial pace while the case-of-the-week storylines are so rote. One or the other is OK. If you aren’t going to progress the larger story, you need to have better episodic plots. And if you have simple episodic plots, then the serial elements must be more compelling. I’ve forgiven some of these faults because the last couple episodes have prominently featured characters I enjoy. Though the reveals about Arthur turned out to be nothing special, I did get excited about the possibility that Dash instigated a murder in order to send a message to Arthur. These kinds of moral and ethical grey areas are what made the movie and the Philip K Dick story so fascinating. If only the series were interested in exploring things more complex than selfie-drones.
Legion contributor Katia Juanita is recapping and reviewing Minority Report for us this season. Follow her on Twitter @katiajuanita