Captain Shaw of the cyber-crimes unit gives Lindy so much leeway because she's trying to 'turn' and recruit her.
The first time she talks to Lindy, Shaw outright tells her that she can give Lindy the resources she needs to achieve her aims; offering up your department to someone who just got off probation for almost aiding your department's biggest failure (as Shaw herself calls Bubonic Plague) isn't exactly customary police procedure. Especially considering that she could easily get a lot of cooperation from Lindy while she's under police protection from the Flirtual Killer. While the ICU and SOS cases were brought to Lindy 'off the books', it was Shaw who let Lindy get in on the YOLO case (which, given that it involves missing teens, is essentially tailor-made to make Lindy willing to actively help the police). Later on, Tommy asks Shaw what she's playing at with Lindy, and Shaw simply replies that nothing she does is accidental; therefore, everything she does (especially in regards to Lindy) is with purpose. Add in the part where Lindy apparently reminds Shaw of her own younger self, and to me, at least, it seems pretty clear. Shaw is grooming Lindy (in the original sense of the word, not the squicky pedo way) to become a cyber-cop. Whether this will actually work, given Lindy's fairly justified distrust of police effectiveness, is another matter.- Seems to be justified as of "AMA": Shaw appears to treat Lindy like another member of her precinct, giving her instructions to follow up on a lead while Yeager and Tommy go to question an alleged mugging victim. In addition, her case file and a flashback implies that Shaw wanted to recruit Lindy without her necessarily knowing she would be working for the police, in an operation to take down Bubonic, the Black Hat hacker.
- Also, if you listen closely to Shaw and Lindy's conversation right before George sets off the alarms, Shaw talks about 'being impressed with the work you've been doing for us' and 'making your position here more official'. Sound like the prelude to a job offer to anyone else?
Tommy had a thing for Lindy even before the series started; he just didn't do anything about it/pretended he didn't like her because his partner was in love with her
As early as ep 2, Tommy calls Lindy 'beautiful' (albeit when he knows no one else will hear him) and there's definitely a subtext of I-wish-I-didn't-think-that-way. Whether it's Casey Diedrick's acting choices or specific direction, Tommy's burgeoning feelings for Lindy are established very early on, if you look carefully, and they're obvious enough that he gets called out on them in ep 4 by someone who's only met him once. Messy emotional situations like this don't generally come out of nowhere.While we see Ben and Lindy's first meeting via flashback, we don't know (yet) how Tommy and Lindy met. The first time we see Tommy in the pilot, he certainly isn't friendly to Lindy - but at the same time, there's none of the heavy disapproval or contempt you'd expect for an almost-criminal who broke his best friend's heart, or even that a hacker would normally get from a cyber-cop. It's implied that Ben deliberately introduced himself to Lindy as part of an investigation (probably the Bubonic Plague case-if you listen to the dialogue between Lindy and Bubonic in ep 5, it's clear that he was the one who made the job offer that got Lindy put on probation) but then fell in love with her; at the very least, Ben turned her in after they started dating. If it's the former, who's to say that Tommy wasn't with his partner that night? It could simply have been a matter of Ben seeing her first.
- As it turns out, a flashback sequence in "AMA" indeed shows Ben making initial contact with Lindy before Tommy was supposed to, and the two men having an argument afterwards.
Tessa has a terminal illness, and is pursuing TFK in hopes of going down in a blaze of glory and/or playing bait for the cops
- Tessa is definitely living the 'you only live once' theme to the hilt, and in "AMA" her behaviour is downright dangerous - she's already been told that TFK targets the people around Lindy, and she invites a total stranger into their apartment? (personally, I would have thrown her ass out onto the street for endangering me and my room-mate) Now at the end of AMA, her Flirtual profile shows her wearing Lindy's jacket, and dating Lindy's matches... and for her date with TFK, she's wearing a distinctive article of Lindy's clothing as well. This goes beyond thrill-seeking to downright courting death. Given that Sophia's memories of her seem to be of a thoughtful, timid, sort of person, some kind of terminal illness (maybe the fight with her parents was about her deciding not to seek treatment?) would make a lot more sense than risk-taking to the point of stupidity.
- Very confirmed. She reveals she has brain cancer, and begs TFK to kill her instead of Sophia.
In Eye candy's season 1 finale, Lindy will have to decide whether to accept TFK's help in finding her sister or setting him up somehow for the police
- In "AMA", TFK deliberately sets out to destroy Lindy's trust in the CCU - and does a very good job. Given that the bracelet he sent Lindy has not only the identifier of her case file and the words we'll find her on it, it seems pretty clear that he's setting himself up as Lindy's only option for actually finding her sister. Not to mention, it's fairly likely that Sara's pic on Babylon isn't going to lead anywhere, given how old it it (perhaps because TFK just stole it from Sara's boyfriend at the time? she was never on Babylon in the first place?). Not only did Lindy accept TFK's help in the climax of "ICU"; but in the "AMA" flashback when Lindy gets the job offer from Bubonic, her attitude switches from 'I'll never work for someone like you' to 'okay, I'll do it' like a switch, as soon as Bubonic offers her info about her sister. So in the finale, Lindy will have to weigh her obsession with finding her sister against the dozen or so lives TFK has taken, including Ben.
- mostly busted. TFK uses the prospect of finding out whether Sara is buried on Hart's Island (NYC's Potter's Field) to lure her away from all her potential protectors, and out of contact with anyone who could reveal his double identity to her.
Captain Shaw's pursuit of Bubonic is personal, and she's dangerously obsessed. She's just better at hiding her obsession than Lindy.
In both "IRL" and "AMA", it was very heavily hinted that Bubonic's girlfriend committed suicide in police custody, which should have triggered an internal investigation, at the very least. The "AMA" flashbacks also show Shaw setting out to deliberately entrap Lindy for possible accessory after the fact to all of Bubonic's crimes, and some fairly severe charges on her own (remember, the job Bubonic was trying to recruit Lindy for was Shaw's creation). In addition, if Shaw does know something about Sara's disappearance, not telling missing persons (and by extension, Lindy) qualifies as interfering with an ongoing police investigation (by missing persons), and given Sara was 15 when she disappeared and a minor, there's possibly a child endangerment charge in there too. These are not good things for a cop's reputation, especially someone of a rank like Captain. This is way above and beyond the sort of tactics generally used to catch thieves and even a non-serial murderer.This is probably justified by Bubonic being a grade-A cyber-terrorist; both CCU and Lindy (in the job offer flashback) acts as if this is true. However, given the 'terrorist' part of the equation, shouldn't Bubonic be beyond NYPD jurisdiction? I'm not very familiar with US law, but isn't 'terrorism' the purview of Homeland Security, or even the NSA? Meaning Shaw is pulling strings or outright covering things up in order to keep the Bubonic investigation in her bailiwick. That sort of action isn't taken unless It's Personal.- Partly confirmed. Shaw does reveal that she has misappropriated police resources to track down her niece. Thus, it is not out of the bounds of probability that she has a similar attitude about tracking down Bubonic.
- maybe the reason Shaw went after Bubonic so hard is she thought Bubonic had some kind of connection or intel on the people who kidnapped and enslaved her niece? Catherine does say that the perps were never found - by the time Mary led anyone back to the animal shelter, it was empty of all evidence except for the captured girls themselves.
