Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 8.

The thing about meta humor is it can get old fast. There’s only so long I can watch a show or a movie while the characters on-screen all but look me in the eye and say “get it, it’s funny because…” before it gets grating. Fortunately, Elsbeth Season 2’s midseason finale, “Toil and Trouble,” manages to take a walk on the meta side, right into the world of procedural network television, while never once losing what makes the show so delightful to begin with, and without overusing or overrelying on meta humor to tell the story.

The episode opens in a shady factory after hours, where the factory owner is confronting a crooked police sargent (Malachy Cleary) over the fact that the department of labor is looking to investigate his factories. The sargent promises that no investigation will make it past him, but it turns out he was partially stalling as they are shortly joined by Detective Felicity Watts (Laurie Metcalf) and Father Garvey (Dominic Fumusa). The two are hurt at the sargent’s betrayal, but can’t process that for long as a shootout begins. Father Garvey manages to shoot the sargent, but then realizes Felicity has been shot in the stomach. He pleads with her to stay with him and then…promptly forgets his line. The whole scene was, in fact, a part of the wildly successful in-universe police procedural called Father Crime, about a priest who solves murders, starring Jack Wilson as Father Rick Garvey and Regina Coburn as Felicity Watts. The director elects to move on from the scene, catching the missed line in ADR instead.

‘Elsbeth’ Heads to the World of Police Procedurals in Season 2 Episode 8
Image via CBS

With the scene wrapped, Regina heads up to the office of Cal Reed (William Finkelstein), Father Crime’s showrunner to express her dissatisfaction at being a classically trained actor reduced to doing procedural TV — this particular meta joke required a quick search, but both Metcalf and series star Carrie Preston are classically trained. The real reason for Cal calling Regina to his office, however, is that the network has requested a splashier end to the season, and Felicity being in a coma just won’t cut it. Regina is devastated, as she has rehearsals for a play beginning in London in a couple of weeks, and was previously promised the time off. Cal gets angry, telling her there are no promises in the industry, only contracts, and hers states she’s beholden to the show. He throws around the usual toxic threats, that he gave her “all of this” and he can take it away just as easily, but before things can escalate past him kicking a box in anger, his assistant Gia (Amy Keum) interrupts with a few updates from production, and “another” manila envelope, which he tosses on his desk. He tells Regina to expect new pages the next day after lunch, and leaves her in his office, where she eyes the envelope he left behind.

At lunch the next day, Regina gets a quick script change from Gia, fortunately not the one she was dreading, then excuses herself to her dressing room to run her lines. Before she leaves, Gia tells Regina she’ll have the new ending to the episode shortly, as Cal is in his office working on the pages now. That, however, is not quite true, as Cal is in his office but is awaiting a masseuse instead. With a towel over his eyes, he doesn’t see Regina entering, handcuffs, and a single high-heeled shoe in tow. She cuffs him to the table, covers his mouth with tape, then removes the towel so he can see her properly. Once he realizes what’s happening, she drives the heel of the shoe through his eye and into his head, using an award statue to fully hammer it in.

Now that there’s been a murder, Elsbeth arrives on the scene, and tries to find out where Detective Flemming (Daniel Oreskes) is from one of the officers on duty (Robert Ariza). The man turns out not to be an actual officer, though, but rather a background performer in costume. Despite this, he directs her up to Cal’s office, where she meets up with Flemming and Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson). Flemming says that Cal’s assistant found him after his massage appointment, but according to security, the masseuse never showed. Elsbeth recognizes the posters for Father Crime, and what follows is some gentle ribbing of the police procedural genre, with Blanke commenting that she didn’t realize the show was still airing, and Flemming scoffing at the whole “ripped from the headlines” genre, wondering who would want to watch a fake cop solve a murder. Elsbeth spies Cal’s whiteboard, which has been wiped clean of all his notes in the middle and replaced with the words “Give Us Wavey” in all caps. Blanke explains that Wavey is the couple name for the Watts/Garvey ship, and that the show has been dragging out the will-they-won’t-they for so long it got old. Flemming suggests a disgruntled fan might be behind it, and Elsbeth agrees that it does appear that way, though she sounds skeptical.

An officer arrives to tell Flemming that the masseuse who was supposed to come that day says she received a call that morning from Cal’s assistant canceling the appointment. Gia confirms that it looks like someone called out using her phone, but tells the officers she wasn’t the one who made the call, especially since the masseuse said the caller had a “weird” accent, and she’s not great at doing them. Not to mention she was away from her desk the whole time dealing with the ice cream truck Regina ordered for the crew. She confirms that people were either at the truck, or having lunch, apart from Jack, who has a personal chef, and Regina, who was running lines in her dressing room, and wouldn’t be eating dairy on a shoot day anyway. Elsbeth notes that the massage time slot is listed as a “network notes call” in Cal’s calendar, and Gia explains it’s because he didn’t like everyone knowing what he was doing at all times, which to Elsbeth means that whoever canceled the massage was familiar enough with Cal’s schedule to know this. Blanke asks if anyone on the show would want to see Cal dead, and Gia produces a list of the entire crew. So much for that narrowing things down.

Elsbeth Suspects the Series’ Star Is the Killer in Season 2 Episode 8
Image via CBS

As they track down their next lead, Blanke catches Elsbeth up on her search for a roommate. In short, it’s not going well, with seemingly perfect candidates all having one huge quality that makes Blanke say no, like pet ferrets or a gun collection. As they chat, a handsome man from the coroner’s office, Dr. Cameron Clayton (Sullivan Jones), interjects to say that he’s just moved to the city for work and his housing situation fell through, so he’s looking for a new place. He gives a quick run down of his qualifications — no pets, no guns, enjoys stress baking, and likes that Blanke lives in Queens, as it’s close to the shelter he volunteers at — and luckily Elsbeth is there to get his information because Blanke might already be developing a little crush. Elsbeth and Blanke gather with the cast and crew to hear the director (Marc Webster) announce that Cal was found dead, hence the delayed return from lunch. It’s Regina that catches her eye, though, as the star is eating ice cream even though she knew it was supposed to be a shoot day.

Elsbeth and Blanke interrogate the crew, who do not hold back on how disliked their late showrunner was. Jack tells them that he didn’t get along with or take advice from anyone, the lone exception to this being Regina, whom he was “weird” about. The director also calls him as much of a relic of a bygone era as Father Priest itself, getting meta once again about the public’s appetite for “copaganda” — though if viewing numbers, and the sheer volume of spin-offs that exist on network TV are any indication, that appetite is thriving — and Elsbeth takes his comment about people not wanting an unrealistic world where the bad guys are always caught very personally. She already told Blanke earlier that she’s not personally a fan of police shows, so she’s clearly got something else on the brain.

Next, the pair head to Regina’s dressing room to talk to her, and she confirms that she and Cal were close. Given how close they supposedly were, she doesn’t seem that upset, but maybe that’s just because we already know she did it. Blanke asks her to bring over the fan mail she’d mentioned to them earlier, and Regina comments that the fans are dedicated, even if she has no idea where they came up with the idea of “Wavey” in the first place. Oh, Regina, you know nothing of shipping culture. Two characters don’t even need to be in the same projects for them to develop a whole ship and fanbase. While Blanke looks through the letters, Elsbeth looks around the room and spots a group photo from Regina’s drama school days. As it turns out, many of her former classmates are quite famous and successful now, winning Oscars, Tonys, Emmys and more. And then, of course, there’s Regina, whose sole claim to fame is 20 years on a police procedural.

Blanke calls their attention back, pointing out a fan letter from someone who claimed they would do something drastic if Wavey didn’t happen on the show. It’s telling that they also addressed the letter to “Felicity” rather than Regina. Elsbeth, whose mind is still on her conversation with Regina, asks if it’s been hard playing the same role for so long, and Regina tells her the job stability is appreciated. She also tells them both that she was recently cast as Lady Macbeth in a West End production of Macbeth, and that Cal agreed to write Felicity into a coma to accommodate the schedule. Elsbeth asks why Felicity needs to even be in a coma for her to leave, and Regina tells her that because of the 24-episode production schedule, she and Jack don’t get many breaks in a year, but putting her character in a 4-episode coma allows her the time to leave. Elsbeth and Blanke head out with the letters, and as soon as they’re gone, Felicity takes out another box, this one containing the shoe she didn’t kill Cal with, and the manila envelope.

That night, over takeout, Elsbeth and Blanke watch an episode of Father Crime. Elsbeth says that the witness Felicity and Father Garvey are interviewing is the one who did it since the actor playing him has 3 Tonys — which is the same logic I use when watching other police procedurals — and Blanke tells her it’s less fun when you know who did it. With the episode presumably ruined for her now, Blanke turns off the TV to chat with Elsbeth instead, saying they haven’t had a lot of time to catch up lately, between her classes, Teddy’s (Ben Levi Ross) visit, and jury duty. The mention of jury duty makes Elsbeth’s face fall, but she recovers quickly, and pivots instead to Blanke’s life, asking if she’s called Cameron yet. Blanke says she looked into him, and he looks good on paper, but she still isn’t sure, especially since she thinks he’s cute, but Elsbeth encourages her to go for it.

Related What Does ‘Elsbeth’s New Enemy Mean for the Show? Elsbeth is going to have to watch her back this season.

Elsbeth Moves Against Judge Crawford in Season 2 Episode 8
Image via CBS

The next day, Elsbeth gives Delia (Meredith Holzman), the defendant from her jury duty trial, a call, and leaves a message explaining that she can’t stop thinking about the trial, and wants to get justice for Andy, but needs her help to do so. As she hangs up, Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) enters, delivering more evidence that Regina sent them. It’s the manila envelope she had in her dressing room, though she told the police that it was delivered to her doorman that morning. It turns out the envelope contained a script for an episode that doesn’t exist, along with a note on the same stationary as some of the fan mail, this one also threatening drastic action if Wavey doesn’t become canon. The envelope had drops of blood on it that they presume came from Cal, but unsure how the two are connected, they decide to read through the script. Elsbeth notes that the victim in the script was killed almost exactly the same way Cal was, though they were stabbed with a knife, not a shoe heel. Wagner suggests this was the killer’s way of taking credit, but Elsbeth says that the script is dated the week before the murder, and alternately suggests that the killer used the script as inspiration.

Since the rest of the script is just Wavey finally confessing their love and consummating their relationship as graphically as possible, that doesn’t help them much. What does help is the fact that the writer left his email on the script. Production reaches out on the police’s behalf, and it turns out the writer is Blake, the background actor Elsbeth previously spoke to, who is promptly arrested. At the precinct, Blake insists he’s being framed when they reveal that they found the other shoe in the trunk of his car, adding that he would never do anything to hurt or impact Father Crime, though things don’t look great for him, since no one can corroborate his alibi of being at the ice cream truck with the rest of the crew. Despite also saying that the actual murder isn’t how he pictured it, Detective Flemming believes the case to be closed. Later in Wagner’s office, Elsbeth tells him and Flemming that she’s not sure Blake is guilty because the evidence lines up a little too neatly, with him owning up to the script that acts as a blueprint for the murder, as well as the letters that implicate him. She also notes that while the text in the letters slant to the left, in a way common for left-handed people (apparently. I can’t relate), the text on the whiteboard in Cal’s office was written perfectly straight.

She instead suggests that Regina is behind the murder, and while Wagner and Flemming are skeptical, Wagner grants her and Blanke 48 hours to prove that it’s Regina instead, which Elsbeth jumps on right away. Or rather, will jump on right away, as soon as she meets up with Delia, who is finally returning her messages. The two head down to the courthouse together for Delia to submit an expedited request for the transcript from her trial. The clerk asks for the name of the presiding judge, and when Delia tells her it was Judge Crawford (Michael Emerson), the clerk pauses and looks at Elsbeth, possibly piecing together who she actually is to Delia, but at least she goes ahead and processes the request. With that done, Elsbeth and Blanke head back to set just as the director announces they’ll be finishing out the season under his direction. They run into Regina, who asks them why they’re there if they’ve made an arrest, and gets defensive when Elsbeth says they’re just wrapping things up, saying that Blake had means, motive, and opportunity.

Elsbeth reminds her she isn’t a real detective, which Regina turns back around on Elsbeth too — putting aside the fact that Elsbeth is a legal professional, I feel like if Regina is trying to get away with murder, then antagonizing the people investigating it is probably not the way to go. Elsbeth then shares that while Blake told them he sent his script to a whole list of people, Regina wasn’t on that list. Regina dismisses it as a lie told by a desperate murderer, then excuses herself as she has a session with her dialect coach ahead of her trip to London. She doesn’t have Elsbeth or Blanke fooled for a second, as they now wonder who she might have stolen the script from. The costumer (Kevin Townley) tells them he threw his script out as he barely even has time to read the actual script since it undergoes so many changes. Blanke says the hair and makeup team, the post-production team, the props team and even craft services said the same thing. The costumer does confirm, however, that the shoe used to kill Cal was stolen from his department.

They ask Jack if he got a script as well, but he tells them he doesn’t read unsolicited material. Since his fitting is happening in his dressing room, Elsbeth asks next about all the posters for his past projects on the wall — all the kind of action-driven movies for whom plot is a secondary consideration. She asks how it’s possible for him to have such a prolific filmography if the filming schedule is as rigorous as Regina told them it is. He doesn’t address the schedule issue, but tells them the reason he has so many outside projects is because he essentially is happy to be typecast, while Regina is holding out for a more prestigious period piece, and Cal was doing her a favor by not letting her do them.

Next, they head out to speak with Gia, who confirms that the script looks familiar since she got it the morning before Cal died. She says he liked to look at unsolicited scripts generally, to see if they had anything good he could repurpose, but he never got around to reading this particular script as he was dealing with Regina’s upset over the new ending to the episode. Elsbeth suggests that Regina might have taken the script at that point, and asks Gia if she knew for certain that Regina was in her dressing room at the time of the murder. Gia says she’s sure as she could hear her running lines, but when pressed, remembers that Regina said the wrong line, instead of the alternate version Gia had just shared with her, which is uncharacteristic. Elsbeth asks where the alternate ending is, and Gia says that Cal wrote on any available scrap of paper, so it could be anywhere in the office. Given the sheer chaos of Cal’s office, Elsbeth and Blanke enlist Gia’s help to track it down.

Back at the precinct, Elsbeth and Blanke piece together the evidence tying the crime to Regina, adding that the lines Gia overheard her running could have been playing from the high-end sound system in her dressing room. The only part that doesn’t add up so far is the call to the masseuse, as she said the person who called her had a “weird” accent. Luckily, the episode of Father Crime currently playing in Elsbeth’s office shows Regina doing an Irish accent. The pair visit Blake in his cell, and he confirms that Regina does a lot of different dialects on the show. They bring the masseuse Heidi (Alexandra Templer) in to listen to snippets of the different dialects Regina has done on the show, but none of them ring any bells. She continues to insist that the best descriptor for the accent is “weird”, which might be true but it doesn’t help them narrow things down at all.

A “Weird” Accent Is Regina’s Undoing in Season 2 Episode 8
Image via CBS

Elsbeth and Blanke return to set to find Regina and Jack in a screaming match, which is apparently a common occurrence. Since the camera is still rolling, Elsbeth asks the director if he has any similar footage of Regina and Cal, and he shows her a clip from Season 13, the same episode she and Blanke were watching earlier in her office, which he kept in case of a lawsuit. The clip shows Cal yelling because Regina only read her dialogue without the stage directions, causing her to mess up the take — which might go a long way to explaining her lack of stage success, since stage directions are a big part of plays. In the video, Regina begins another take, and her Irish accent sounds noticeably different now than it did in the final cut. It sounds, you might say, weird.

Across town, Wagner is attending a cocktail hour that’s all drinks and schmoozing, and is approached at the bar by Judge Crawford. The two exchange pleasantries, with Crawford dropping some veiled comments that are at best elitist and at worst racist. Just as he’s about to leave, he tells Wagner to send Elsbeth his regards, revealing that he knows she stopped by the courthouse, and ending with the ominous promise that Elsbeth will see him soon.

In the meantime, though, Elsbeth is back on the Father Crime set, watching Jack and Regina shoot the original ending for the episode. Regina flips out on Elsbeth for being there yet again, but Elsbeth says she’d just come to share that Gia found the new ending for the episode. She reads it to them off the back of the receipt, saying Felicity was set to wake up through the power of Father Garvey’s love and the two were set to share a long overdue kiss. Whether that bit was an Elsbeth addition just to rile Regina up is unclear, but irrelevant. Regina tells her they don’t have time for the new ending, as she’s set to go to the airport that evening for her flight to London. Elsbeth gets Regina to admit that with the new ending, she wouldn’t have been able to leave, but then asks her if she wouldn’t mind giving her a little taste of her performance before she leaves. Luckily, Regina is as prideful as she is messy when it comes to covering up a murder, and she agrees to do a little bit for Elsbeth. Just as she launches into “Out damn spot” with an indecipherable accent, Heidi interjects, telling Blanke that that was the accent she heard on the phone.

Elsbeth and Blanke tell Regina they learned that all her dialects on the show were dubbed over by her dialect coach at Cal’s request, since she doesn’t have a talent for them at all. Regina doesn’t believe this, citing her accent work as the reason she was cast as Lady Macbeth, and Elsbeth tells her that was the real reason Cal wanted to stop her from going, and why he stopped her from doing all those period pieces. Why he couldn’t just be honest, I’m not sure, but here we are. Though Elsbeth lays out Regina’s means, motive, and opportunity for her, saying that her crime show expertise helped her cover up the murder and frame Blake, there was one problem: the script didn’t mention the victim getting stabbed with a shoe. Instead, it mentioned a “stiletto,” which is commonly used to refer to a shoe, but gets its name from a kind of thin knife. While the script does make reference to a knife in a few places, it doesn’t in Felicity’s dialogue, meaning it went completely missed by Regina, who is in the habit of only reading her own lines.

Crawford Moves Against Elsbeth in Season 2 Episode 8

Back in Elsbeth’s office, she is joined by Captain Wagner, who asks what she’s up to, what with the visits to the courthouse, and the fact that Judge Crawford has taken an interest in her. He points out that the last time she acted like this, she was covertly investigating him for the DOJ, and rather than prolong the lie, Elsbeth decides to let him in on her investigation. Wagner warns her that Crawford is both powerful and dangerous, and warns her that Crawford will come for her if he gets word of this. Meanwhile, Blanke is at home, and decides to give Cameron a call, ostensibly about the free room at her place, to see if he’s available. They set a date to meet and chat, but Blanke is distracted by the news, reporting on the Van Ness divorce case, and naming Elsbeth as one of the lawyers involved. Given the glee with which Crawford is watching the same news report, it’s safe to say the judge is already coming after her.

The first eight episodes of Elsbeth Season 2 are out now. New episodes premiere on CBS on Thursdays, and stream next day on Paramount+.

Your changes have been saved Elsbeth ReviewElsbeth Season 2 heads into midseason hiatus with a delightfully meta episode that also sets the stakes for the back half of the season.ProsThe episode-long meta humor about procedural television is pointed and hilarious and never feels grating.The end of Episode 8 proves how terrifying Judge Crawford really is.Laurie Metcalf is an unhinged delight as this week’s murderer.

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 1 Creator(s) Michelle King , Robert King Writers Michelle King , Robert King Network CBS Directors Robert King , Ron Underwood Where To Watch Paramount Plus Expand

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