We’re getting down to it. We’re at the second-to last episode of Battle Creek. What I loved about this one was that the preview used footage from the final episode, which gives me the impression someone didn’t care. Sad.
The episode begins with a bit of awkwardness between Russ and Holly. They keep getting Milt’s mail, so Holly was taking that over when she literally runs into Russ. The actions of the previous night will loom for the remainder of the show’s run. In the squad room, Font is back to work, and someone got him a cake.
The case this episode revolves around the murder of the local high school football coach Richard Zaranski. The Mayor assigned the case to Milt, and naturally Russ gets pissy about it, despite the fact that he just got done bashing everyone’s football obsession. Russ figures out that the coach was killed with one of his own trophies. Milt starts busting his chops over the incident with Holly the night previous, which Russ denies.
Most of the episode features an undercurrent of Russ’ hatred of his high school years. Everything brings a smirk to Milt’s face. Russ’ old girlfriend is now the principal, the bully he used to contend with the assistant coach of the football team (played by Eddie McClintock, who you probably most recently saw as a Kree warrior on Agents of SHIELD). His old English teacher was married to coach Z. The revelation that Russ was a poet in high school comes from her; she mentions that he used to write fairly explicit poems in an attempt to shock her. She even offers to find a few of them since she kept the work of her best students, and offer which Milt accepts. Fortunately for Russ, they get called away by a new lead.
Funk and Font have a sort of side story throughout the episode. Funk keeps asking Font what he experienced while he was near death. Font tells him that there was nothing between when he passed out and when he woke up, Which must be what being dead is like. Funk cannot accept this; he can’t live in a world in which there isn’t something more after death. So he decides to hound Font with a list of certified miracles to see if it jogs his memory. The whole thing gets resolved by the episode’s end.
It’s sort of sad to watch Russ continue to act like he’s in high school all over again. Personally, I pretty much hated high school myself and I prefer to believe that things change, but not Russ. His bully is the same, his teachers are the same, and nothing changes in life. He even picks Milt out as the jock, someone who has everything served to him on a silver platter. He was never a quarterback (he admits that in Monaco, they didn‘t have it; he was a bowler in cricket), but Russ argues that he still lives the lifestyle; successful, with resources at his fingertips and an adoring public.
At one point, Holly brings up the fact that coach Z benched a star quarterback at a previous game. The kid is quickly dismissed from the suspect pool, however; he deliberately got himself benched. This is the usual plot point of “parent tries to live vicariously through their child, even thought the child wants to be something else”. Apparently, the kid’s dad wanted the same sort of experience for his son, despite the fact that he’s a divorced mattress salesman who lives in his store. Who doesn’t want that for their child? Kid wants to go to med school, though. So maybe, poor communication is a bad thing to perpetuate.
Milt learns form the salesman that coach Z was taking money from the football program to put into a personal fund. They find out it was Russ’ bully, Phil Dunaway. He was drawing funds out of the program to pay for grades. While it helps to confirm Russ’ worldview, it doesn’t help them catch the murderer. Coach Z probably wouldn’t have approved, but it’s technically not illegal, just immoral.
It ultimately turns out that a suicide case Font had been working ties into the murder. It turns out that the father(by the name of Larry Duncan) of a former player (Eddie) had watched the football program destroy his son’s life. Coach Z didn’t follow proper concussion procedures, putting Eddie back into games before he was ready. Eddie lost his college scholarship when he failed to make the cut, and coach z gave him an equipment manager job out of pity. But Eddie got fired from that for punching one of the players, and decided to catch a train in the worst way possible; by standing on the tracks. Grief-stricken, his father confronted the coach and killed him. The scene in which he admits this is played for all the drama it’s worth, because concussions are no joke.
Overall, this was another good episode. It’s a shame the series will end soon. I can honestly say that I identified with Russ’ stance on the whole thing, even though I disagreed with it.
Final Thoughts:
- A paper bag will never hold lobsters.
- Limericks are fun to write.
- CBS actually has the balls necessary to call the last episode the “Season Finale”, despite the fact that they cancelled the series and calling it the Series Finale would be more appropriate. Because it almost certainly is.
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