Though it started with the standard cop show premise that one of our officers is accused of murdering a criminal, the new interpretation was fresh and unexpected. You see, when Theresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and her team found the body of a child molester she had previously sent to jail, and her fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, she could not remember whether or not she was guilty.
She mentioned in her therapy sessions that sometimes her father had blackouts caused by drinking, and we later learn that she has no memory of what she did the previous Tuesday night. (We did have an amusing moment when she claimed she watched a cooking show...the one with the man...the angry man). You don't really believe that she could have killed him, but she has doubts. After all, he was a child molester, a very bad man...and cops have killed criminals before.
After failing a polygraph test, she asks Jane (Simon Baker) to hypnotize her, and while we learn that she thinks the mail guy is hot and Van Pelt will make a great officer if she manages not to sleep with Rigsby, the hypnosis does not clear her memory.
Distressed by her inability to know the truth, she starts going over the edge. A very different Lisbon than the person we are used to, she yells at everyone in the building and eventually throws a chair through a window. Completely out of control, we find her at home with scotch and a bunch of pills, dancing and imbalanced. When her therapist arrives, brought by the concern of her boss and Jane, Lisbon pulls out her gun, not being at all careful with it. Her therapist tells her it was okay for her to kill the bad bad molester. She saved people and he deserved to die.
As he reveals to her what she ought to remember, Jane appears - the entire thing was a ploy. Jane figured out that the therapist was drugging her so that she would forget. He is arrested for the murder.
Now, why did he commit it? Another brilliant change. Lisbon would soon testify against a man, and he, wanting to discredit her, orchestrated a murder that he had no personal reason to want to commit.
Gotta love when the hit them out of the park.
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