Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 2.

I never expected to get real-life confirmation of something from a TV show, yet somehow Elsbeth Season 2 confirmed that I will never, ever travel into space. Way too many things can go wrong in a tight compressed space from which you have no recourse. Not that the episode takes place in space, of course. That’s the kind of wild swing a procedural like this would take on in a much later season. Instead, the episode sees Elsbeth (Carrie Preston), Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson), and Chief Wagner (Wendell Pierce), investigating the death of a billionaire at a private space training facility.

The episode begins with the billionaires in question: Neal (Rob Riggle), who made his fortune in paint, Morgan (Melanie Chandra), a social media entrepreneur, Randy (Ked Merwin), a student, Doug (Terry Serpico), who works in fossil fuels, and Gavin (Jason Babinsky), the poster boy for renewable energy tech. The group is in their space shuttle, completing routine tasks until mission control informs them they’re losing cabin pressure. Neal tries to step in and fix it, but Gavin swoops in with a solution of his own, and their squabbling runs out the clock. Lucky for all of them, this was only a simulation, and they are all still very much earthside, or they’d all be dead. Aaron (Victor Williams), the program director, tries to berate them for their lack of focus but struggles to do so because they can’t seem to stop arguing. However, a failure to complete training will result in not only none of them being able to actually go to space, but also in each of them being out the $16 million they paid for the privilege.

Doug doesn’t have a ton of hope, but Randy, an overconfident youth, maintains it’s possible. It’s clear he and Gavin are close, both excited at the prospect of continuing their training, though how Randy doesn’t find Gavin’s attempts to act like a 20-something to be extremely cringe is beyond me. Then again, the hoverboard Gavin is riding around was cool about 10 years ago, so maybe he isn’t as in touch as he thinks he is. Later, at dinner, the program director brings them new waivers to sign, and Neal debuts his customized space pen, which unlike theirs, has a gold tip and a new graphite ink. Gavin and Randy make fun of the pen, with Randy even calling Neal “Snoozer,” the mocking nickname Gavin gave him. This is enough to set Neal over the edge. He later sneaks over to Gavin’s equipment locker and grabs his flight boots. The tampering becomes clear later when the group heads to the centrifuge for more training, and Gavin is the first to enter the capsule. Nothing seems amiss at first, until the speed of the capsule increases, and a spark inside detonates, killing Gavin, with Neal the only one who seems unconcerned.

Elsbeth’s Past Returns to Haunt Her in Season 2 Episode 2
Image via CBS

Meanwhile, across town, we finally learn the identity of the mysterious voice that greeted Elsbeth at the end of Episode 1. The voice in question belongs to Carter Schmidt (Christian Borle), a character who previously appeared on The Good Wife and The Good Fight, marking the first time another character from one of the flagship shows has made an appearance on the spin-off. Carter has come to New York to discuss an old case his firm hired Elsbeth to help with: the messy divorce of Mark Van Ness. As Van Ness is now going through his second divorce, Carter warns that the parties involved may try to talk to Elsbeth about it and warns her not to talk to them, or risk retribution from the firm. Given that Elsbeth is an attorney, and has a pretty good concept of attorney-client privilege, whatever this issue with Van Ness is, it’s bad enough that Carter obviously worries the privilege won’t apply, or Elsbeth will feel compelled to speak out anyway.

Carter doesn’t get much more of a chance to be shady, as Elsbeth gets a message summoning her to the UGST facility to meet with Blanke and Wagner, who are already on the scene. Wagner explains to Blanke that UGST is a facility for private citizens rather than astronauts, and she rightly describes it as billionaire space camp. Wagner is offended, claiming that programs like this follow in the legacy of the Apollo 11 mission that put men on the moon — disregarding that one of those things was a publicly-funded scientific endeavor and the other is… billionaire space camp. Blanke’s suggestion that the funds could be better spent improving those on Earth is also dismissed, but I suppose that’s what happens when you make fun of the captain’s hobbies and interests. The captain is so interested in space travel, in fact, that he tells Blanke he will be the one overseeing the investigation.

Elsbeth arrives, still rattled from her conversation with Carter, something which doesn’t get by Blanke, but Elsbeth plays it off. She finds Randy off to the side crying, rather than fighting with the program director like the rest of them. She comforts him on the loss of his father, which draws an angry Neal over. It turns out that while Randy and Gavin were close, Neal is Randy’s father, and takes massive issue with how close his son was to the other man, despite their similar interests. Elsbeth is then introduced to Aaron and to Jake (John Behlman), the fire marshal on the scene who reviewed the accident footage. Chick, who takes an immediate interest in Elsbeth, explains that the spread of the fire and the popping sound audible on the video suggests it was started by a lithium-ion battery, while the upward spread of the flames indicates it started below Gavin and grew upward.

Aaron tells them that all the trainees were instructed to go into the capsules empty-handed, and therefore isn’t sure how a lithium-ion battery could have ended up with Gavin. Neal pops up and informs them all that Neal vaped, and despite the small size of the vape pen, it would still be enough to cause the blaze. Aaron finds Gavin’s vape pens in his room, and, sure enough, one is missing. Closer inspection, however, reveals that the pen is actually a smokeless air inhaler used as a quit-smoking aid, and the inhaler doesn’t contain a battery. Aaron assures them that his staff wouldn’t have the kind of access needed to sabotage Gavin, which narrows the pool of suspects down to the four remaining billionaires.

Related ‘Elsbeth’s Showrunner Explains How Season 2 Ended Up With 20 Episodes Instead of 10 [Exclusive] The series airs on CBS.

Elsbeth Hunts For a Missing Battery in Season 2 Episode 2
Image via CBS

The next day, Elsbeth speaks with Jake at the facility and asks him what could have started the fire if not a vape pen. He tells her whatever it was, the battery would have had to be pocket-sized. Passionate as he is about fires, though, he is even more interested in Elsbeth, and attempts to flirt with her. His efforts are interrupted by a phone call, but luckily, he has Blanke to act as a wingwoman, even though Elsbeth doesn’t seem overly interested. Instead, she shows Blanke a rubbery residue that is stuck to the bottom of one of her tote bags. She also suggests that if no one came in or out of the premises, then all they’d have to do is check every device for a missing battery.

It’s a good idea, but easier said than done in a scientific facility that contains more gadgets than anyone could count, which Elsbeth realizes as soon as she enters the trainees’ common area. There, she also sees Neal intent on continuing his training, as he doesn’t see why Gavin’s death should derail the rest of their plans. Doug comes around to the idea, and Morgan even calls her team to order a new centrifuge to be delivered next day, but Randy storms off, upset that none of them are as upset by Gavin’s death as he is. Before he goes, he manages to call his father “snoozer” one more time, and Elsbeth probes into the origin of the nickname. Neal claims it’s nothing, just something Randy made up, but bristles at Elsbeth’s suggestion that his son might find him embarrassing now that he’s a little older. His foul mood, Neal insists, is because the dream trip to space with his dad is being derailed, even though everyone in the room knows it’s grief over Gavin’s death.

In Aaron’s office, Blanke and Wagner wonder how else the battery could have gotten in the centrifuge if not with Gavin. As he was the first user, there was no previous occupant who could have tampered with it. Blanke asks whether their suits could have been tampered with and Elsbeth notes that the equipment lockers have no physical locks on them. Looking at motivations, Aaron suggests that Doug is the only plausible candidate, as his work threatened to become obsolete with the green energy tech Gavin was developing. They question Doug, but he tells them that as much as he disliked Gavin personally, he was also responsible for making him billions in the last year, and reveals the two of them had an agreement where Gavin would extract lithium for his batteries from the waste at Doug’s fracking sites. With that avenue looking less likely, Elsbeth asks Doug about the origin of the “snoozer” nickname, which she heard Gavin use on a security recording. He explains the nickname actually originated with Gavin, and he used it to embarrass Neal at the World Economic Forum.

Neal, again, tries to play off the nickname as harmless ribbing. Rather than call him on changing his story, Elsbeth instead explains that the vape pen wasn’t actually a vape pen and therefore couldn’t have caused the fire, making this case a murder investigation. Like Aaron, Neal points her towards Doug, but she further explains the mutually beneficial arrangement Gavin had with Doug. It might have derailed his alibi, but Neal is nevertheless delighted to see his son’s hero knocked down a peg or two, and gleefully informs Randy of this development when he walks in on them. Elsbeth confirms the story, and Neal makes another push for his son to join him in the family paint business, but Randy storms off. With Doug no longer a possibility, Neal suggests that Morgan might have had something to do with it, telling Elsbeth she and Gavin were in a relationship even though he was married.

A Pair of Shoe Lifts Crack the Case in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 2
Image via CBS

Rather than investigate that right away, Elsbeth instead examines a photo of the crew, noting that all the men appear to be roughly the same height, even though Gavin’s medical records put him at 5’5″. While that revelation leads to an epiphany for her, Blanke and Wagner investigate Gavin’s room for anything out of the ordinary — as Wagner also offers to act as Blanke’s mentor while she finishes up her college credits — and find an earring on the floor. This leads them to Morgan, who scoffs at the idea that she and Gavin were an item. She tells them that the extent of their relationship was her trying to get tips on his solar power ventures so she could do some insider trading, and adds that she wouldn’t be with a man that short anyway. She explains what Elsbeth has come to realize on her own: Gavin wore lifts in his shoes.

Elsbeth suggests the lifts are how the battery got into the centrifuge, with the killer carving out the inside of the lift to pop the battery in, which would also explain the rubber shavings she found on the bottom of her bag. The motivation, she suggests, is not because of the mean nickname, but because Randy idolized Gavin, and didn’t feel the same about his father, instead joining in on the mocking. The reasoning is too thin for Wagner to be conclusive just yet, but he gives Elsbeth the go-ahead to look for the missing battery anyway. She does so with gusto, but gets a tad distracted by all the exciting new tech prototypes at the facility. Not that Jake minds in the slightest, as it gives him an excuse to hang out with Elsbeth, and the two of them testing all the toys is actually really sweet.

Meanwhile, Neal, who is living awfully dangerously considering the NYPD is still actively investigating the premises, sneaks into Morgan’s room once he sees she’s otherwise occupied shouting at her team to deliver the new centrifuge — I’m not sure how a social media maven would have that kind of scientific access, but I can’t pretend to understand billionaire’s lives. In Morgan’s room, he extracts the battery from her red light mask in order to frame her. Elsbeth’s investigation, however, leads her and Blanke in another direction, as a text from Gavin’s assistant reveals that his hoverboard was not working the morning of the fire. She concludes that’s where the battery must have come from, but a quick test of the device reveals that it works just fine.

Things are going much better for the remaining crew, as they take part in another simulation, only this time much more successfully. Neil also uses the opportunity to tell them all to never use the “snoozer” nickname again, confirming Elsbeth’s suspicion that it did play a part in his motive. Her only sticking point is the now-functional hoverboard. Jake suggests a meditation session, but Elsbeth is too distracted by the battery problem. Just as Jake tells her that a lot of the batteries are interchangeable, they overhear Morgan calling her assistant to complain about her red light mask not working. After Morgan tells them she hasn’t changed her own batteries in years, Elsbeth checks the battery in the hoverboard and finds Morgan’s assistant’s prints, proving it came from the mask. They dislodge the battery to check for more prints, but that becomes unnecessary as the battery pops out along with a second object: a gold tip belonging to a space pen.

Neal is caught red-handed — or rather ink-handed — when Aaron presents the team with a new set of waivers to sign, and Neal’s broken pen spills ink everywhere without the gold tip. He is arrested, after confirming that his motivation did stem from his son’s preference for Gavin, rather than the mocking nickname. Back at the precinct, Elsbeth and Blanke learn on the news that Morgan ended up embarking on the trip to space alone, with Randy obviously no longer interested, and Doug the new problematic element with Gavin gone. The news program also mentions popstar TruRose’s upcoming divorce from one Mark Van Ness, with TruRose claiming she has evidence to nullify the prenup, and the reporter adding that her team is looking to speak with those involved in Ness’s first divorce. Looks like Elsbeth now has the answers to questions Carter didn’t want to answer.

The two episodes of Elsbeth are out now. New episodes premiere on CBS on Thursdays, and stream next day on Paramount+.

Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 2 takes a dig at the excesses of billionaires while also setting her up for trouble down the line.ProsThe introduction of the Van Ness subplot is a good setup for trouble to come for Elsbeth.The episode got in good digs at the ridiculous wastefulness of tech billionaires.

Elsbeth Tascioni, an unconventional attorney, gives her singular point of view to make observations to catch criminals alongside the NYPD.Release Date February 29, 2024 Main Genre Crime Seasons 2 Creator(s) Michelle King , Robert King Writers Michelle King , Robert King Network CBS Streaming Service(s) Paramount+ Directors Robert King , Ron Underwood Where To Watch Paramount+ Expand

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