Alec and Marisa end up with a case that doesn’t involve murder in The Irrational season 2, episode 9. However, it does involve a lot of human behavior to dissect.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from The Irrational season 2, episode 9.
The new episode starts with a case of mob behavior. Rizwan and Simon head to a store that is supposed to be giving away free Occulus VR sets to the first 100 customers. However, it turns out that the giveaway is a scam, and that turns into mob mentality.
Why would someone set up a mob in The Irrational season 2, episode 9?
We get a chance to understand mob mentality. Alec breaks it down in that people will react out of the ordinary because others around them do. They feed off the energy of others.
It doesn’t help that there’s a sense of entitlement to the free items, even though it wasn’t the store that set up the giveaway. It was all a scam, but that didn’t matter to those who had camped outside overnight. They believed that they were owed the VR sets because of this fake promise, showing their entitlement.
However, this was just a distraction. And it happens again a second time, with us learning that a second time would become more deadly. Mobs get worse the more there are.
Why would someone want to start the mob? It was linked to a museum heist. An artifact was stolen during the first one, but then during the second one, a different museum was robbed with another item stolen. That led to the item from the first museum being placed in that case.
It was a great look at misdirection and forward planning. There was clearly someone with knowledge setting up the heists, but nobody can do all this alone.
Kylie was on the case to find out who sent the emails for the giveaway scams. This led to a couple of college students being caught, but one of those college students shared that someone called Tom had hired them. Tom shared which items needed stealing and how to get into the cases.
This Tom guy new everything. How?
Setting up a plan to catch Tom
Alec and Marisa needed to set Tom up. He was after two bowls that were collector items. Only, it turned out that there was a third bowl. They were all stolen from Nigeria in the past, and there was an aim to get all the pieces back to their rightful place. Tom didn’t want that. He wanted everything for himself, and sure enough, he fell for the trap.
He did try to set up his own trap, and by this point, Phoebe and Rizwan had figured out who Tom was. Tom Fields was the penname for another art collector, Warren Sheffield. When yellow gas is released from a trash can, Phoebe realizes that this was something Warren wrote about in one of his novels. While everyone would believe the yellow gas could be chlorine gas, it was actually just a yellow smoke bomb.
Alec convinced Marisa to stay in the museum. It was all a distraction similar to the mobs. Sure enough, Warren was there trying to steal the last bowl, and Marisa was able to catch him.
Getting the museum items back to their rightful place in The Irrational
There was a much bigger story connected to the museum thefts. For the longest time, it looked like there was a case of advocacy for other nations. It looked like this was an act of activism to get the items back to Nigeria, especially once the museum curator from the first museum turned out to be the one who moved the items out of shot of the cameras.
It did help open a conversation during the episode. As the museum items were all recovered, the authorities could have a discussion about getting the items back to Nigeria, where they belonged. While the series didn’t go into a lot of the details of stolen pieces from the past, it is something that we should be aware of. Some of those items in museums shouldn’t be there, and it doesn’t matter that having them in museums helps to raise exposure to cultures and history. The items still belong with the people who originally owned them if they were stolen from them—it’s different when they’re given to the museums, of course.
The episode also helped to show that two people can have the same want but go about things in different ways. The museum curator wanted to get the items back and was willing to trust a thief in an attempt to do that. His grandson was willing to protest and even potentially break into museums to get the same thing. It’s funny how we can think that we’re right and someone is wrong when we all want the same thing, and it happens a lot in life. Alec was able to help grandfather and grandson find some common ground to help repair their fractured relationship.
Marisa does the right thing to find her son in The Irrational
Throughout the episode, we saw Marisa struggle with this need to find Bean, the name she gave her son she gave up for adoption. The episode starts with her in therapy sharing that she wants to find Bean, and we learn that she asked Rose to look into the boy’s whereabouts.
However, there’s the constant thought of what Marisa actually wants from all this. What does she want for her son. Her therapist raises the question but doesn’t share her own opinions, and I appreciate that. A good therapist will help someone come to their own conclusions about something like this.
Even Alec shares his thoughts but doesn’t judge. He wants to be there for his ex-wife, although he’s certainly shocked to find out that Marisa told Rose everything. Again, I appreciate him being shocked. It means that Rose honored Marisa telling her something from the past. Marisa noted that Alec knew, but this isn’t something for Rose and Alec to talk about. This is Marisa’s past and her feelings, and it needs to be respected. I do come at this knowing how it feels to have things I’ve said to my ex-husband in confidence shared with other people despite me asking him not to say it to anyone. I know that feeling of betrayal, and I’m so glad that despite everything that happened between Alec and Marisa, Alec has her back.
In the end, Marisa realized that she had to respect her son’s wishes. While she wanted to know what he was doing and how he was, she had to leave it to him to contact her. So, when Rose sent details, she deleted the email and signed up to the adoption sites so that her son could find her if he wanted to. This is a smart thing to do. Who knows if the son even knows he was adopted. Some parents choose not to share that because of how hurtful it can be or because they view their adopted child as they would their own flesh and blood.
I’m sure we’ll find out that someone gets in touch with Marisa at some point during The Irrational season 2. I would love for this storyline to be just about behavior and moral compasses, but it’s sure to lead to something bigger.
The Irrational airs on Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.
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