While the case in The Irrational season 2, episode 13 was interesting, the episode was actually more about getting to know Phoebe better. Let’s take a look at the events of the episode.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for The Irrational season 2, episode 13.
The new episode of The Irrational brought us an unusual murder. At first, it looked like a horse had killed his rider, only those who knew Zeus the best knew that he was a gentle soul. There was something affecting him, but Alec was in a race against time to prevent the horse being euthanized.
I did love the way Alec perked up hearing that there was an animal behavioralist around. He shows his respect and admiration for other people’s work by watching the animal behavioralist do his thing. It’s also a chance to learn more about horses.
The murder wasn’t really the main point of The Irrational season 2, episode 13
There was a big storyline involving Zeus and his actions. It turned out that someone had put a bug in his reins, causing pain when he wore them. It’s no wonder he suddenly acted out.
Then there was a story about how his swimmers weren’t that great. Only, there was something bigger going on. The initial lab ran the semen tests fine and Zeus was still a good stud. It was only when they got into other hands that suddenly the lab results were bad. Yes, there was a big storyline involving money, divorce, and reputation.
Honestly, the murder storyline wasn’t all that interesting. That’s not a bad thing for the series, though, because there was another reason to be fully engrossed in this storyline. It was all about Phoebe.
Phoebe shares why she stopped horseback riding in The Irrational
I’m not sure any of us knew that Phoebe was once a horseback rider. She shares at the top of the episode that she quit because she wasn’t at a professional level. She didn’t wan tit getting in the way of her academics.
However, Alec knows Phoebe well. He also knows human behavior. One thing I have always loved about Alec is that he doesn’t push people close to him to share anything. He pushes when it comes to investigations, but not when it comes to people opening up about personal things. So, he allows Phoebe time to share the real reason she stopped horseback riding.
It was all linked to her mom. Horse riding was always something she did with her mom, and after her mom’s death, it hurt to do it. She didn’t want to share that part of her life with anyone without her mom around. However, being around Zeus and defending him so much and getting to hang out with Seb again made her rethink her own actions.
Getting to see character growth is important. We can’t just see the main characters grow, but we also need to see the supporting characters get more time on screen and figure out who they are and their behaviors of the past. None of us can grow without looking inward.
Was there any point to Marisa’s case?
The one part of the story that I just didn’t care about at all was Marisa’s side story with her son. They were in a deposition against each other, and after initially declaring a potential conflict of interest, they went to work. Marisa needed to prove that the FBI was right, while her son needed to prove that his client was unlawfully searched.
In the end, Marisa realized that what the FBI did was wrong. Others in the department agreed with her.
I think this storyline was supposed to set up the potential conflict between Marisa and her newly-found son, but it didn’t really drive them apart. They are both professionals, and Marisa worried about too much for the sake of it. She nearly allowed her personal feelings to get in the way. We never saw the way her son was acting outside of the deposition to really see if there would be conflict afterward.
Marisa was more focused on looking like a bad person in the eyes of her son. The only point of Kylie in the episode was to give Marisa a little bit of advice on handling it, which underutilizes Kylie in a big way. I’ll let the writers off for that considering there was so much about Phoebe.
I did worry about how the writers were going to use Marisa’s son once he came into the story. Right now, The Irrational is confirming my fears in him being shoe-horned in and affecting Marisa’s ability to do her job.
The Irrational airs on Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC.
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