Elsbeth Season-Finale Recap: Ramen Holiday

If we’re looking at Elsbeth’s second season finale purely from a plot function-oriented perspective, it wraps up one major plotline — Kaya Blanke’s journey from competent but coasting beat officer to rising star among the ranks of NYPD detectives — while giving viewers a reunion between Elsbeth and a bunch of the killers she and Kaya have foiled over the first two seasons. Kaya’s promotion to an elite task force based at another precinct means that Carra Patterson, who brought such warm steadiness and instantly believable deep knowledge of New York to her performance, will be a guest star going forward.

Speaking of guest stars, “Ramen Holiday” does not skimp. Through a clever and economical set of introductions via a perp walk taking Elsbeth to her cell in the Midtown Detention Center’s women’s wing, we get reacquainted with Stephen Moyer as the lecherous theatre director Alex Modarian, Mary-Louise Parker as the fraudulent minimalist Freya Frostad, Alyssa Milano as the mafia princess Pupetta Del Ponte, Arian Moayed as the self-appointed male ally and mixologist Joe Dillion, Gina Gershon as plastic surgeon Vanessa Holmes, Rhetta as matchmaker extraordinaire Margot Clark, Elizabeth Lail as scammy tech entrepreneur Quinn Powers, and André De Shields as fashion designer Mateo Hart.

As usual, the guest stars all look like they’re having such a fun time at work, perhaps none more than Moyer, who delivers a funny impression of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of The Lambs. Elsbeth’s personal rogues’ gallery also reminds us of the many worlds of wealth and privilege she’s visited over the series’ first 30 episodes and re-creates some of the conditions of an eliteness bubble even in jail. Lots of known (alleged!) murderers, all gathered in one place, all with means, motives, and opportunities thanks to the freedom of movement provided by the warden, Mrs. Martin (Donna Lynne Champlin, who confounded my expectations by not singing so much as one note in this episode).

The rich, entitled inmates get awfully grouchy without activities such as arts and crafts and theatre rehearsals, so Martin indulges them. Naturally, Modarian is the writer and director of the jailhouse theatricals, and his oeuvre addresses a theme that unifies all members of his company: How The Deceitful Elsbeth Tascioni Railroaded Each Of Us Into Our Current Predicaments. When Elsbeth sits in on a rehearsal, she’s first dismayed by the script’s accusations of evidence planting, then delighted to see Mateo (probably her favorite perp to date), and finally, puzzled by how much the actors openly loathe their director.

Getting to be a big man on the cellblock — as a writer-director, library cart manager, and facilitator of the flow of goods on the prison black market — just isn’t enough for Modarian, though. He’s got a plan in the works that will enable him to be transferred to a nicer prison and would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling murderer literally stabbing him in the back before he could even get a bite of his delicious ramen.

When Elsbeth and Officer Rocco Bellini (Geoffrey Allen Murphy), who idolizes Captain Wagner and dreams of getting hired to serve as one of New York’s Finest, discover Modarian’s body, she can’t help noticing a very particular aroma wafting up from the still-hot bowl of ramen. She can’t place it but knows she’s smelled it before — she’s convinced it’s no coincidence and has something to do with the murder. Warden Martin is happy enough to let Elsbeth’s irrepressible curiosity and inclination to investigate burble along, while an outside team conducts their own investigation. The warden seems nice enough, even warm at times, and thanks to her massive tote bag collection, Elsbeth knows they’ll continue to get along fine.

Nobody’s alibi is ironclad, and there are the complications of no cameras in the laundry room, kitchen, or library, but after Elsbeth speaks with her suspects and collects other small details, her unconscious goes to work, furnishing us with a dream ballet — their very own version of Chicago’s “Cell Block Tango”, in which the (alleged!!) murderesses explain their own reasons why Alex had it coming and had only himself to blame for his sad end. Each (alleged!) murderess — Quinn, Pupetta, Freya, Vanessa, and Margot — is wearing a bedazzled prison jumpsuit in one of the shades of the rainbow, combining two of Elsbeth’s great loves, theatre and bold colors.

It makes perfect sense in a retrospective episode that a detail from an earlier case would hold the key to solving a new one. This time, it’s the ramen knife and the distinctive aroma it left behind even when dissolved in Modarian’s bowl of ramen. Now that there’s no black market goods available to let Pupetta ensure that their food has actual flavor, everyone is reminiscing longingly about how good they had it when Chef Veev (Pamela Adlon) was locked up with them. Eureka! This reminds Elsbeth about the memorable spice blend she learned about by watching one of Veev’s masterclass-type instructional videos, a blend that accounts for the delicious smell left behind in the library. From there, a cascade of insights leads Elsbeth to the real killer, Warden Martin.

Martin made use of the passageway between the kitchen and laundry room that Pupetta’s Uncle Vinny dug to easily move between wings to call on his girlfriend (and in Martin’s case, commit murder). The warden insisted that she didn’t want to hear or know anything about the very lucrative black market Modarian was running, but that was a smokescreen. She was using her many tote bags to move contraband into the prison! She had to eliminate him because he was planning to leverage his in-depth knowledge of Martin’s corruption to secure a transfer to a nicer prison.

One of my favorite elements of “Ramen Holiday” is its many charming little callbacks to tiny moments in previous episodes, even beyond all of the returning guest stars. If the episode is a single harmonious outfit, these are the accessories that make it sing. I’m sure I missed a bunch, but some of my favorites that I did notice include the title’s allusion to Elsbeth’s fondness for Audrey Hepburn from the Halloween episode; using a Chicago number to remind us of the “Hot Honey Rag” that Elsbeth performed with Keegan-Michael Key’s character; Chloe the consultant (Jordana Brewster) being Judge Doussaint’s downfall; and the Lavish Ladies marathon Margot watches.

Meanwhile, on the outside, no one can visit Elsbeth until she’s been inside for at least a week, and Kaya is increasingly anxious to see Elsbeth before she’s sent on an undercover assignment with her new unit. Wagner tries to reason with Judge Doussaint, who isn’t buying the Captain’s appeal for leniency and giving Elsbeth the benefit of the doubt. Thankfully, Teddy uncovers a detail that seems like a thread worth pulling on — Crawford was not the judge originally assigned to Andy Mertons’s murder trial. It landed on Doussaint’s docket, but he recused himself due to a scheduling conflict. When Officer Slater learns that the scheduling conflict was caused by an invitation to attend a junket hosted by the Historical Law Society, and later, that Doussaint’s companion at the junket was not his wife but Chloe the consultant, well. Guess who’s coming home!

Elsbeth’s arrival at Kaya’s farewell party is just in time and quintessentially her — a sweet surprise orchestrated by Wagner and Chandler featuring a color-blocked, entirely sequined minidress. Kaya and Elsbeth have a lovely moment of farewell which did not make me tear up one bit, no sir. I’m fine!! Following Cameron’s sweet toast to Kaya, Elsbeth offers her own toast and new insights into her next chapter. After the year she’s had, it would be reasonable to consider leaving New York and starting again somewhere new, but she’d rather follow Kaya’s example and stay where she’s needed, right here at this precinct where she can continue to do good work and make a difference for the better. Again, I’m feeling totally fine, with no disruptions to my emotional equilibrium over here! Thanks for coming along for the colorful, quirky, and increasingly emotionally complex ride this season, friends. I hope we can do this again next season!

In This Week’s Tote Bag

• We have no coat of the episode this week, but we do have the exuberant pom-pom and tassel-bedecked vest that Elsbeth creates in arts and crafts. Intentional or not, the design owes something to both Japanese fine artist Yayoi Kusama and contemporary self-taught scholar of Roman Catholicism and tassel enthusiast Greedy Peasant (a.k.a. Tyler Gunther).

• Judge Doussaint’s exacting requirements for the state of his trouser cuffs — he wants a slight break on the cuff, he doesn’t want to see it bunch on the shoe, or to see any sock — suggest that he’s a fellow devotee of menswear expert Derek Guy’s tutelage.

• Something to keep an eye out for next season: Wagner tells Teddy he’d make a good detective and it flusters him briefly, but he’s not not interested in the notion.

• One more thing to ponder for next season: are we really done with the Judge Crawford storyline? Is Delia permanently out on a narrative limb, with no further questions? Crawford must have had other enemies, and so maybe one of them with massive financial resources approached Delia to kill him in exchange for ensuring that her family would be set for life.

• And for one final accessory, here’s a piece the dream ballet Agnes de Mille choreographed for Oklahoma! And it’s always a good time to revisit the pas-de-deux between two of the most talented and stunningly attractive film performers of the 20th century, Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse in Singing In The Rain.