Perception – Faces: Part 3

“Faces” is episode one of season one of Perception and this article continues covering the episode where the previous one left off.

Lewicki approaches Daniel – not about the dean’s meeting – but because Moretti called, wanting Daniel to help ID the suspect. Daniel tells Lewicki to get the car and heads to his office. There is a strange man there who greets him. He says that he can help Daniel, as friendly advice costs nothing. It would be better for Daniel if he didn’t help the FBI on this case. Daniel asks how the man knows he is helping and the man replies that they have friends in many places. Including inside the FBI. Daniel asks if they have a mole and the man says they are not the KGB. But yes. And Daniel is a smart man so will know that it is not healthy to work for these people. Or he might disappear.

At the FBI Frank is ID’ing the loan shark and Daniel is asked if the he will stand by in court that the ID is solid despite visual impairment. Daniel is currently distracted by a woman fiddling with an Orthodox cross, but says he will stand by it. Kate interview Yuri and says he has priors and has been fingered at the person who threatened to abduct Frank’s wife. Who disappeared and is now dead. Yuri’s response is to offer Kate a job working for him. Kate tells him that murder during the commission of a felony is a death sentence and she for one will not cry at Yuri’s funeral. But perhaps Yuri didn’t mean to kill Olena. Perhaps it was involuntary manslaughter, which will get Yuri out in 18 months.

Yuri asks if Kate is offering him a deal because she’s sweet on him. She replies that Yuri is too small for her. Probably in more ways than one. Kate wants something bigger – Alexi Topaloff. Yuri replies that if he rats out Topaloff he might as well get the death penalty. Kate tells him that they already have him for multiple counts of extortion, at five years a time. Outside, Probert asks if Yuri committed the murder. It would help if there was something to tie Yuri to the crime scene but he doesn’t own a blue Camaro.

Daniel is listening to his music when the woman with the cross asks him if he’s alright. He mentions her cross, saying that Yuri has one just like it. The woman replies that she grew up with a lot of the guys in Topaloff’s crew, which is why she was picked for the taskforce. And that some friends would be very grateful if Daniel didn’t help Moretti pin Olena’s murder on Yuri. Daniel says that she is the mole but the woman says not her – but there is one. Then Kate calls and it turns out Daniel has been talking to someone who wasn’t there again.

Daniel is talking to Natalie at home later on – and it turned out at the end of “Pilot” that she also isn’t real. Nat asks Daniel why he didn’t mention the Russian who threatened him to Kate. He replies that it’s because the Russian was probably another hallucination, just like the female agent. Natalie wants to know why, if Daniel is so convinced the man wasn’t real, is he constantly looking out the window. He replies because he might be wrong. Natalie tells him that being threatened by a criminal conspiracy is straight out of a spy novel and a classic schizophrenic delusion. Which is more plausible; a plot or Daniel imagining it?

Natalie tells Daniel that the hallucinations are a manifestation over his anxiety at working the cases, because a disruption to his routine increases the chance of episodes. And the last time Daniel checked into a hospital, he didn’t tell anyone. He ‘disappeared.’ Natalie also says that the mole is not an agent. So what is a mole. Daniel lists some and Natalie mentions the real mole, which lives underground. And is blind.

So Daniel goes and wakes Kate up at, she checks the clock, 3:18 AM. He tells her Yuri is not the killer. Kate asks if he is accusing her of forcing a confession from an innocent man. Daniel replies that Yuri is not innocent – he is just not the killer. Daniel suggests Frank – he is face blind and perhaps killed Olena without recognising her. Kate points out that Frank passed the polygraph and Daniel said face blind people recognise others in certain ways. Daniel suggests a disguise. And a bunch of other ways that don’t match the facts. He tells Kate to go back to bed but she says she is awake already so let’s go. Once she is dressed. Daniel tells Kate her apartment is nice.

The live-in housekeeper, who also appears to be blonde, attractive and Ukrainian just like Olena, is packing Olena’s things to send to her family. She says she was hired as a translator as Olena spoke little English. Things get more than a little complicated with quite a few twists, which is not a great surprise when dealing with a man who is perfectly capable of not recognising his own wife. Daniel’s hallucinations often seem to be his subconscious trying to tell him things.