By Julian
Another week of irrationality on NBC’s The Irrational. This time, an episode doesn’t get hindered by the church bombing case and focuses on Alec Mercer’s (Jessie L. Martin) dating life. As always, his date night gets interrupted with a new case at hand. It is quite a relief to not deal with something dark and turn to something more fun and lighthearted. The question is, “Is it as good as last week’s episode”?
Episode 7 The Real Deal finds Mercer getting back in the dating saddle after his divorce from his ex-wife/FBI agent Marissa (Maahra Hill) with former MI6 agent now corporate fixer Rose Dinshaw (Karen David). His date gets interrupted by a client requesting their help involving an art forgery. They meet with a divorcee named Blair Dalton (Tiffany DuPont) who tells them that her Cezanne painting of The Orchard is a fake. They meet with gallery owner Henry (Kwesi Ameyaw) who tells them that the painting he sold to Blair is the real deal and doesn’t want the piece back. The couple decided to stake out the area only to see Henry struggle with another person and find the former dead on the floor.
Meanwhile, Marissa and Alec’s younger sister Kylie (Travina Springer) reconnect their relationship after Marissa filed for divorce. The latter continues to probe her throughout the episode about being more interested in Mercer’s single life than she lets on. Eventually, they reconnect with Kylie releasing her frustration at Marissa for leaving with Marissa having to find out who she is without Alec.
Back to the main case, Mercer believes that whoever killed Henry is also involved with the fake painting. He and Dinshaw go to an art expert named Evan (Oliver Rice) who claims that the Cezanne painting is not real and that Henry sold a whole bunch. He even name-drops an anonymous figure known as “Mr.Z”. Gathering what they could from Kylie’s hacking skills, they learn that “Mr. Z” is a known money laundering through alleged forgery. Mercer and Dinshaw have a Chinese takeout date at his lecture hall with Dinshaw revealing more about her past life as an MI6 agent and how she left it after blowing her last cover.
Their talk was interrupted by two goons of Mr. Z who escorted them to their mansion and was treated with little intimidation. They were met by a woman, “Mr. Z (Tosca Baggoo) who reveals that Henry supplied her with a lot of money. She was interested in the last Cezanne painting which was news to Mercer and Dinshaw. Later, they go to Henry’s office and find a secret room to also find out that the last fake Cezanne painting of Harlequin was destroyed by someone else. Dinshaw soon gets an alert from Blair that someone has broken into her house.
The couple gets to the house to find her with her ex-husband Carson (Christopher Russell) to which Mercer psychologically advises her to not let her husband as a savior. Carson informs Mercer and Dinshaw that everyone knows about the fake painting which means the culprit knows about the painting as well. Later, they try to visit a forger named Bridget Archibald to get more answers but instead happen upon her father who tells them she died to cancer two weeks prior and resorted to forgery to provide for her ailing dad who almost died to a heart attack. Mercer soon realizes that Bridget is the culprit’s greatest motivator in retrieving the bogus painting thanks to an experiment he assigned to his college assistants.
With the assistance of his assistants, Phoebe (Molly Kunz) and Rizwan (Aresh DeMaxi) they apprehend Evan, the art expert who is ultimately responsible for the death of Henry and the attempted break-in at Blair’s estate. Turns out that Evan was in love with Bridget and wants the last memory of his late girlfriend. Henry tries to destroy it to erase all ties to the forgery ring, and just by happenstance of the revelation, Evan kills him. The case is solved and unfortunately for Mercer, Dinshaw has a new client in Paris to which she promises him they will meet again.
This was a fun episode following a serious Black Lives Matter-esque episode last week. Dinshaw is a fun addition to the series which creates a new dynamic for Mercer. It does make for a great watch than to see him and Marissa in an annoying will they/won’t they get back together again situation. Mercer’s assistants were in the background again until the last few moments of the case which was all right, yet it didn’t progress their developments any further than what we are used to at this point. But we do get developments with Mercer and Marissa both moving on from each other and the latter fixing her relationship with Kylie again. So that’s good on that end.
Episode Seven The Real Deal of The Irrational is a fun after-dinner mint that keeps this show interesting and holds audiences over for what’s to come later on in the coming weeks.
