Directed by Alex Chapple
Written by Ed Zuckerman
The murder of lawyer Lily Yee is connected to the theft of a pair of pants that were evidence in a civil suit against her parents, who own a dry cleaning store. The plaintiff alleges they returned the wrong pants to him and lost his own; the pants he received were actually brought in by Rachel Monroe. She works for SavingsMart, a discount store chain with a very strict "family values" policy, and was having an affair with a fellow employee - the presumed owner of the pants. This gives both of them a motive for murder since they'd be fired if the company found out about the affair. Van Buren's former boss Fuller, who is now the head of SavingsMart security, gets involved in the case.
Fuller retrieves the pants, which belong to a David Cahill. Blood on the pants proves a match to Yee's, and Cahill is charged with murder; but the pants are ruled inadmissible as evidence after Fuller lies to the judge. Cutter and Rubirosa discover Cahill had been sourcing toothpaste for SavingsMart that was later found to be contaminated with antifreeze, and used this to blackmail SavingsMart who ordered Fuller to get the evidence against him dismissed. He also sold the toothpaste to a company which supplies hospitals, prisons, and retirement homes - expecting such places to have so many deaths that no one would investigate properly.
In exchange for no charges, the SavingsMart legal team agrees to get the evidence re-admitted and all tubes of the toothpaste recalled. Fuller's testimony gets the pants re-admitted as evidence, but Cutter then lures him into confessing under oath that Cahill blackmailed SavingsMart over the toothpaste. McCoy points out that Cutter deliberately broke their deal with SavingsMart's lawyers (which included no bad publicity); but is secretly happy, knowing it's what he himself would have done when he was EADA.
This episode contains examples of:
- Alternate Company Equivalent: In-Universe. SavingsMart has a black guy/white guy detective team that answers to an older black boss.Green: Rachel Monroe is being followed by a black guy and a white guy.
Lupo: And it's not us. - Broken Pedestal: Averted. Even after what Fuller did, Van Buren still believed the man she once looked up to was still inside him somewhere. She was right.
- Chinese Launderer: The Yee family's business.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Cahill murdered an innocent woman to cover up an affair, he put poison toothpaste on the market, rather than admit he wasted an amount of money that his company would have found trivial, and tried to frame Rachel Monroe for it. The other SavingsMart executives were willing to commit perjury to help a murderer walk rather than have anyone find out about their connection to the toothpaste.
- Crime After Crime: Cahill broke company policy by having an affair with a coworker. To cover it up he burglarized Yee's office, which led to him murdering Yee, and to cover that up he blackmailed the company.
- Faustian Rebellion: Fuller's epic Take This Job and Shove It moment in court.
- Frivolous Lawsuit: Herbert Wiggins brought one against the Yee's dry cleaning store.
- Kicked Upstairs: Rachel Monroe's new job in Singapore was technically a promotion.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Dry cleaning mix up leads to outrageous lawsuit, then murder, then conspiracy to dump poisons in hospitals and old age homes.
- N.G.O. Superpower: Jack describes SavingsMart as bigger and more powerful than most governments. Their employees fear them the way many would a totalitarian regime.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The dead lawyer is the daughter of the still-alive operators of the dry-cleaning business.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: SavingsMart transfers Monroe to Singapore to keep her from testifying in the case.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Based on the case of Pearson V Chung, in which the plaintiff sued a dry cleaner for over $67 million for losing his pants. The SavingsMart angle references the various controversies involving Wal-Mart during the company's huge country-wide expansion in the 2000s. Finally, the tainted toothpaste references scandals involving tainted Chinese made products.
- Sleeping Their Way to the Top: Monroe was reportedly doing this to advance her career.
- Smug Snake: Derek Cahill.
- Stupid Evil:
- The SavingsMart executives were completely innocent of any wrongdoing when Cahill threatened to go public about the poison toothpaste, which he was entirely responsible for. But, they were so desperate to avoid bad publicity that they caved to his demands, which not only made them actually complicit in the very crime they were being blackmailed for, it got the prosecutors wondering what Cahill had on them. The end result was not only the bad publicity they feared, for which they now had no defense, they put themselves on the hook for criminal liability.
- After committing burglary and murder to try to cover up his affair, because it violated company policy, Cahill blackmailed the company about the poison toothpaste to get him out of prison. It apparently didn't occur to him to simply let the company find out about his affair and then blackmail them to not punish him.
- Take This Job and Shove It: Fuller dramatically quits his post at SavingsMart on the stand.
