Title: Whom the Gods Would Destroy
Directed by: Marc Jobst
Written by: Daniel Boyle
Air Date: February 18, 2007
Previous: Reputation
Next: Old School Ties
Guest Starring: Richard Lintern, Richard Dillane, Anna Madeley, Anna Massey
"Whom the Gods Would Destroy" is the second episode of the first season of Lewis, aka Inspector Lewis in the United States. (Or the first episode. It depends upon how you count the Pilot episode "Reputation", which aired a year earlier in January 2006.)
Oxford professor Sefton Linn, who is up for a vice chancellorship, is about to go out for a reception with his wife when he receives a disturbing phone call. A woman who identifies herself as "Fury" and says she's a freelance journalist asks him about a certain society, the Sons of the Twice Born. This call greatly bothers Linn.
Cut to Dean Greely, a middle-aged artist living in a houseboat on the river. A noise outside leads him out of his boat and onto the dock—and he is clubbed on the head!
Come the next day and DI Robbie Lewis and DS James Hathaway are investigating the murder. The first suspect is Ingrid Nielson, Greely's common-law wife who tracked him to the houseboat, and admits to going on the boat and stealing Greely's wallet and watch. CS Innocent wants Lewis to pin the murder on Ingrid, but Lewis and Hathaway follow their own inquiry. The detectives find a paper with "Sons of the Twice Born" written on it in Greek, and some random letters that Hathaway, who knows some Greek, doesn't understand. Lewis and Hathaway go to Professor Margaret Gold, an expert in Greek, who tells them that the "random" letters refer to telephone numbers.
The telephone numbers belong to three men who were Oxford students back in the day:
- Theodore Platt, the local rich asshole, who is incredibly abrasive and unpleasant and regularly berates his patient wife, Anne Sadikov (Anna Madeley). Platt is a paraplegic because he was in a car accident some years ago. Platt, who was high on drugs, killed the other driver but hired fancy lawyers and got off light. Lewis, whose wife was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run, takes a particular dislike to Platt.
- Sefton Linn.
- And Harry Bundrick, once a med student, who wound up dropping out and taking over his mom's bicycle shop.
It turns out that Platt, Linn, Bundrick, and the late Greely were all in the Sons of the Twice Born, a club of Greek students who admired Dionysus. They expressed that admiration through prodigious use of alcohol and drugs. Lewis and Hathaway come to believe that someone is targeting the members of the long-ago club. Sure enough, Linn becomes the second murder victim...
Tropes:
- Angry Guard Dog: Anne owns two huge, scary guard dogs. She lets the dogs loose, and after she deliberately provokes Theodore into waving a knife at her, they kill him.
- Answer Cut: "Fury" sent a phone number to her target, Linn. Lewis wonders what the phone number is for. Cut to Lewis and Hathaway in a car, regarding a phone booth outside of a phone sex business.
- Asshole Victim: Pratt, who is mean and aggressive and constantly insults his awesome, pretty wife. Also, he's a drunk. Also, he killed someone in a DUI years ago. And oh yeah, he murdered Anne's mother back in the day.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Deconstructed. At first it appears as though the married couple have a dreadful marriage, only for the wife to save her husband's life after he chokes on his lunch, and for a tearful confession of love to commence in the hospital. Then we discover that she hated him, and was only keeping him alive because he was the only one who knew the location of her mother's body.
- Chekhov's Gun: The fact that Anne keeps two Angry Guard Dogs. At the end, she sics them on Theodore.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The housekeeper at the Platt mansion. She turns out to be Tina Daniels, once a prostitute (she still moonlights as a phone sex operator), and one of the two people behind the murders.
- The Chessmaster: Tina and Anne, who did not lay a finger on either Greely or Linn but got Linn to murder Greely and Platt to murder Linn with a series of well-placed phone calls and notes. Then Anne goaded Platt into waving a knife at her, which caused her dogs to attack and kill him.
- Creator Cameo: Colin Dexter, whose Inspector Morse novels inspired this series, is an Oxford don in the dining hall.
- Da Chief: CS Innocent again, as her relationship with Lewis continues to be mildly hostile. She doesn't think much of Lewis's "Sons of the Twice Born" angle and keeps pushing him to focus on Ingrid. Later, when her husband can't make it to a chamber music concert she orders Lewis to accompany her, much to his irritation.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Anne reveals to Theodore that she is the daughter of Patsy Worth, the hooker that Theodore murdered. He is incredulous, shouting "She was just some whore!"
- Establishing Character Moment: Platt, a paraplegic, is introduced wheeling his way out of his mansion to confront Lewis, a bottle of wine in his hand, screaming "Who the hell are you?" He is drunk, shouty, and hostile throughout the interview.
- Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy. Lewis and Anne walk into the dining room only to find Platt choking. Anne saves his life with an instant tracheotomy, without even really trying the Heimlich. It's shown realistically with Anne having to make a slice with a knife first before jamming in the pen.
- Let Off by the Detective: It appears that Tina and Anne will face light penalties (and indeed Anne might face none at all) since they didn't kill anyone, but only sent threatening notes and phone calls. Hathaway however points out that the note Anne sent to Lewis reveals that she actually plotted in advance to set her dogs on Platt. Hathaway calls that premeditated murder and says "Doesn't that make her as bad as Platt?" Lewis says "Not in my book," and that is that.
- Let the Past Burn: Ingrid, left with all of Dean's mediocre paintings after his death, burns them all in a bonfire.
- Literal Metaphor: Hathaway is able to read "Sons of the Twice Born" in Greek, but admits that he can't understand what the random letters are. Then he can't resist saying "It's all Greek to me."
- The Maiden Name Debate: Another sign of Platt being a huge asshole is when he screams at his wife for not taking his name. Anne, whose patience is wearing thin, says that "Platt" is too close to "prat."
- Never One Murder: An iron-clad Lewis rule. Greely is murdered at the beginning, Linn is found shot to death a little past the halfway point, and Platt is killed at the climax.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Lewis and Hathaway walking away together, after Lewis reveals that he's going to let Anne off the hook rather than pursue her for murder.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Tina and Anne orchestrate the deaths of the Sons of the Twice Born because they killed Anne's mother.
- Title Drop: Lewis and Hathaway are talking about Greek mythology, and how the reporter "Fury" might actually be someone making an allusion to the Greek Furies. Lewis, who has been reading Prof. Gold's book about Greek mythology, says "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." (Ironically this expression, often thought to come from Ancient Greek, actually originated in 18th century England
. - Whole-Plot Reference: Bears a lot of similarity to The Secret History as both feature tight-knit groups of university Classics students who commit a murder during a drug-fueled Bacchanalia on and the cover-up of this event leads to more deaths and ruined lives. There are also counterpart characters, particularly in Harry Bundrik (who corresponds with TSH's Francis in that both are troubled and closeted homosexuals in love with another member of the group and haunted by their crime) and in Theodore Platt (who mirrors TSH's Henry as the cruel, wealthy and cultured chessmaster who shows little guilt over the crime. Both even have disabilities though Henry's predates the murder and Platt's comes years after the fact. And the crime in question occurred on both of their country estates.
- Writing Indentation Clue: Unlike most instances of this trope where the detective uses a pencil to help see what the indentation says, Lewis is able to tell that the indentation on the notepad reads "ADENOCHROME" just by looking.
- You Killed My Mother: Anne's motive for the murders. The "Sons of the Twice Born" killed her mother, with Anne's husband having actually done the dead.
