Terriers, "Ring-A-Ding-Ding": jewel of denial

Quick Take: Terriers, "Ring-A-Ding-Ding"
I was drunk and it wasn't me, but I knew exactly what I was doing." - Katie

Review: Terriers, "Ring-A-Ding-Ding"
(S0105) I've been holding quite the crush on Laura Allen's character, Katie, for quite some time now.  While she's been something of a one-note character in the early episodes (basically the most perfect, understanding, manic pixie dream girl a former cat burglar could ask for), Allen's played it with an almost overwhelming amount of charm and grace.  But the Katie character simply hasn't had the same emotional depth as Hank or Britt of even Gretchen so far.  That is until "Ring-A-Ding-Ding's" heart-wrenching final scene that Allen shared with Donal Logue. Tonight Katie proved to be as equally troubled as those other characters and all it took was making the biggest mistake of her life.

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While Britt is working with Hank on their most recent case, Katie attends a weekly karaoke night with her veterinary class after blowing it off the past few weeks.  A younger classmate and her hit it off, but she continues to stress her commitment to Britt, even though her classmate almost doubts his existence.  Drinks are poured and eventually Katie is approached by the man in the parking lot where he attempts to kiss her, and even though she seems somewhat interested, she pushes him away.  Just then, their professor shows up to survey the somewhat suspicious scene.  And the next time we see Katie, she is waking up nude next to the professor in bed.

I at first assumed she may have been date-raped.  When she got home and found Britt sleeping on the couch, waiting up for her, she doesn't tell him a thing and instead acts distant.  But in the closing scene, she meets with Hank at a diner and confesses what happen.  Yes, her inhibitions were lowered, but she was very aware that she was purposefully cheating.  Katie knows that a marriage proposal from Britt is around the corner (and from the ring he hid in a pot in their kitchen, it might be closer than she thinks), and she's not sure she even deserves him.  And Hank tells her that she does, but Britt can never know what happened.  And as hard as it was for Katie to admit what she did, that advice seemed just as difficult for Hank to deliver.  

As Hank hears Katie worry about losing Britt, he had to have been thinking about how he lost Gretchen, too. Except while he knows that Katie has to stay quiet to keep Britt, he has to stay quiet to let Gretchen go.  Jason figures out that Hank had been using his credit card numbers and confronts him, not in anger, just in a matter-of-fact way.  He's going to marry Gretchen no matter what because he really truly loves her.  And since Gretchen still wants Hank in her life, Jason is going to extend every olive branch he can.  And to prove this, he doesn't even tell Gretchen about Hank's fraud, instead claiming that he had been conned by a Nigerian credit card scheme and that Hank had actually helped put an end to it.  

But Jason needs Hank needs to grow up, plain and simple.  And while Hank seems capable of doing that currently, as the wedding gets closer, things could change drastically.

And with all of this heartache occurring among the main characters, Hank and Britt's "Case-of-the-Week" had its fair share as well.  Like some of their previous, non-Lindus-related cases, this one started off somewhat silly (well, at least as silly as fulfilling a dying woman's wish can be).  A sapphire ring has gone missing and the owners, a couple who could be two potential clients for Maggie, want it back so that the wife, Beth, can leave it to her son after she passes.  

The husband, Dale, suspects their maid's brother might be the culprit, but once his wife is out of earshot, he admits the real truth.  He had in fact been having an affair (which has since ended) with a Latina hairdresser and had given her the ring.  Hank and Britt are appropriately disgusted, but a job is a job so they approach the hairdresser for details under the guise of Hank getting the ol' shampoo and cut combo.  But when Hank starts asking too many questions, she kicks them out while the shampoo is still in his hair, and Hank is hilariously forced to use a gas station hose to rinse it out -- with a car tire air hose used as a blow dryer.

It turns out the mistress sold the ring to an Ethiopian jewelry dealer.  What follows is a pretty standard investigation procedural segment as Brank follow the rings whereabouts from the Ethiopian woman, to her pothead customer, to his legal-on-paper weed dealer, and finally back to Beth herself.  When the confront her, she admits that she had the ring the whole time, but she wanted to confirm her suspicions of her husband's infidelity.  And she wants the mistresses name.  Reluctantly, Hank gives it up.  Paola.

Beth also wants the duo to physically bring the ring to her from where she hid it in her house, as she doesn't trust her husband.  She also drops the tidbit that despite Dale's suspected appraisal of the ring's value being about $5,000, it's actually worth upwards of $300,000.  That sapphire ain't no sapphire.  It's a blue diamond.

Britt is able to snatch is pretty easily with Hank providing a distraction for Dale at the front door, but when the hospital calls Dale to tell him his wife had vanished, they all realize that she has confronted Paola, who had been her wig stylist for years.  And after everyone arrives at the hair salon to see the confrontation, matters are made depressingly worse by the revelation that Dale had fathered a daughter with Paola.  In the end, this will probably allow for Beth to get her wish of a clean divorce from her husband before she dies, but it doesn't make the sting any less painful.  

"Ring-A-Ding-Ding" was a painful episode to watch in general.  The only characters that come out unscathed are Britt and Gretchen and only because they are blissfully ignorant to the mistakes being made around them.  And mistakes can stay hidden for a long time, but the truly terrible ones can never remain that way forever.

A few more bits about "Ring-A-Ding-Ding":