Sins of the Father
Directed By: Mary Harron
Story By: Julie Martin and James Yoshimura
Teleplay By: Darryl LeMont Wharton
Falsone and Lewis investigate the murder of a man who was lynched and beaten, and Lewis discovers that the motive extends back to the times before The American Civil War.
This episode contains examples of:
- An Aesop: The problem of race relations in the U.S. will never go away until the country deals with its past of white men having African-American slaves, and whites saying they never owned slaves, or offering to buy an African-American a drink (both of which Falsone does at the end of the episode with Lewis) isn't going to help.
- Armor-Piercing Response: After Rigby gives his justification for murdering Ridenour (see Sins of Our Fathers below), Lewis points out Ridenour had a one-year-old baby who's been deprived of a father. Rigby has no answer to that.
- Call-Back: Bayliss brings up the time Pembleton told him he needed to confront his dark side as to why he's experimenting with dating both men and women.
- Compliment Backfire: Lewis teases Falsone about the fact his reaction to seeing a modern-day lynching was to say, "Wow." Dr. Cox says the same thing when she arrives at the scene, and when Falsone points that our, Lewis points out since Dr. Cox is educated, it doesn't sound as bad coming from her, to which Dr. Cox replies, "Thanks, Lewis...I think."
- The Dreaded: Patty Ridenour was notorious to the point that Pembleton remembers his grandmother using her as a boogeyman to scare him into not being naughty when he was a kid. Especially since Pembleton isn't even from the region, but New York City.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Pembleton is just as dismissive at the idea the Civil War has anything to do with the murder Falsone and Lewis are investigating as Falsone and Giardello are, but when he hears the victim's name was Ridenour, Pembleton remembers how his grandmother told of a warning passed down to her family about Patty Ridenour, who hunted runaway slaves.
- Hypocrite: Gharty has no problem needling Pembleton about Bayliss possibly being bisexual, but he gets very defensive when Pembleton brings up the fact Bayliss had breakfast with Ballard.
- Inside a Wall: Turns out Rigby is hiding in a room behind a wall in his parents house, until Lewis figures it out.
- Mirror Character: Ridenour and Rigby were both obsessed with their past - Ridenour had Confederate flags and imagery hanging in his own, while Rigby had pictures of Malcolm X and other prominent African-Americans in his room.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Patty Ridenour is loosely based on the real-world Maryland kidnapper Patty Cannon
. - O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The usually phlegmatic Lewis is angered and disturbed by the shrine to the Confederacy in the victim's living room.
- Shout-Out: During a montage of Falsone and Lewis interviewing people to find Rigby, Nina Simone's version of "Sinnerman" plays.
- Sins of Our Fathers: It turns out this was Rigby's motivation for murdering Ridenour - Ridenour's great-great-great grandmother was a hunter of runaway slaves, she captured Rigby's great-great-great grandfather (who was not a runaway slave, but a free man), and beat and lynched him the same way Rigby did to Ridenour.
- Uncanny Family Resemblance: Stephanie Roth plays both Patty Ridenour in the nineteenth-century flashbacks and Ridenour's wife Pamela in the modern day.
- Waxing Lyrical: When Munch is talking to Bayliss and Pembleton about the old woman who accidentally killed someone by running over them with their vehicle, Munch refers to her as the "little old lady from Pasadena".
