Stitchers - Friends in Low Places - Review

This week Stitchers settles in and starts to find its feet. We started to get to know these characters better and how they will fit in the big picture.

Camille makes dinner for Kirsten in an attempt to apologize for getting her put on academic suspension. Unfortunately, Kirsten doesn’t recognize it as an apology. Once that’s clarified, Kirsten makes it clear she doesn’t accept it. (Personally, I don’t blame her. The academic suspension could have cost Kirsten everything. I’d expect more groveling.)

Later at the Stitchers Central, Kirsten is ready to get down to the job of finding out what happened to Ed. Cameron is worried about Kirsten’s safety. He’s concerned that something may be wrong with the system. Kirsten wasn’t supposed to be able to touch anything in the previous Stitch, because nothing is solid or touchable in a Stitch. He doesn’t want her in there until he’s certain she’ll be safe. Nice moment to illustrate that he may like to call out Star Trek dialog as he’s running a Stitch, but he does know it’s not a game and what’s at stake. But because he has no evidence that whatever happened to Marta will definitely happen to Kirsten, she climbs into her seat and is ready to go. Before the system boots up, it powers down.

Maggie announces that Ed can wait. At this moment I decided that Maggie is one of the bad guys. An 18-year-old, whom we later find out is the daughter of a judge, died of a drug overdose. This drug is, apparently, so bad that they can’t afford to let it into LA. This case is top priority.

Kirsten doesn’t see the point in putting the 18-year-old first. Her sample is fresh; Ed’s isn’t, so Ed should go first. The writers seem to have settled on who Kirsten is and what makes her character different from the others. Kirsten is blunt. There’s no stopping to think how someone will react to her words or choosing her words more carefully to, for example, to soften someone up so she can get her way. She just says what she’s thinking and I love it.

Meanwhile, Detective Fischer is back. He’s trying to figure out why Kirsten has the juice to avoid being taken into custody. He is told to let it go and is then handed the same case that Kirsten and the team were just assigned. In other shows where the police and the special team don’t know they’re on the same case, the police usually get a case that doesn’t appear to be related. I like the fact that both teams are, literally, working the same case. I was immediately looking forward to any and all scenes where the two teams would show up at the same location.

Kirsten is in a rush to finish this assignment. It is her only roadblock to Stitching into Ed. No one holds her up though, and finally she’s able to Stitch into the dead girl’s mind.

There’s no repeat of any technical issues, but, because Lisa died from a drug overdose, the Stitch is a little trippy. (Liked Kirsten yelling into everyone’s headset because she’s in a room with really loud music.) Kirsten tries to process what she’s seeing but it’s difficult because of the drugs. People turn into monsters. Just before Kirsten bounces out, she sees someone forcing the drugs into Lisa’s mouth. They now know that Lisa was murdered.

During the post Stitch meeting, Kristen informs everyone that Lisa was trying to protect someone. She mentions the issues she had with the Stitch because the drugs made everyone look like monsters. This led to an interesting flashback of Ed looking under Kirsten’s bed when she was a little girl. I found it really interesting that Kirsten, a woman with real difficulty connecting to people, would have such a normal childhood fear. It intrigued me. It also made me really like Ed and has me convinced that there is a really interesting back story here.

The last half of this scene had me distrusting every character involved. Unfortunately I’m not entirely convinced that was intentional on the writers’ part. First she’s told that she can’t Stitch into Ed until this case is completed. She asks to Stitch back into Lisa to get more information and close this case as quickly as possible. Cameron announces that it’s impossible because of something called an Absolute Refractory Period that lasts 5-12 hours. Because the drug case is officially on hold, she asks again to Stitch into Ed. But nnnooooo, that still can’t happen because the system can only be calibrated to one subject at a time. It all feels artificial and conspiratorial. I wish we’d been given this information in a manner that felt more organic to the story. As it is, it feels to me that the writers are trying to find a way to hold off on solving the mystery surrounding Kirsten’s father and guardian. Which is okay. I just wish they had been more subtle.

Kirsten smoothly cons Cameron into taking her out for a bit of field work. Cameron is hurt that he’s been lied to by a teammate. He feels they need to trust each other. (The previous scene left me feeling distrustful of Cameron, so I chuckled when he said that.) Kirsten informs him that she is NOT a member of his team. She’s paying the price required to allow her to Stitch into Ed. She tries to apologize to Cameron for hurting his feelings. Apparently, she’s as bad at giving apologies as she is at accepting them.

They get the name of another potential witness and determine they have to go to a rave. Kirsten’s roommate invites herself along. Linus joins them. At the rave they find the girl they’re looking for and try to convince her to come with them. She takes off with her boyfriend. They try to follow, but run into Detective Fischer in the parking lot. Armed with a taser, he orders them to the ground.

Kirsten, who it appears has not been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, has no patience for this. She tells the Detective everything. She even takes him (and Camille) to Stitchers headquarters. I knew their confrontation was going to be fun and I was NOT disappointed.


Maggie is so upset by this that she outs Camille as a spy. Camille received tuition and expenses in exchange for reports on Kirsten. This explains the academic suspension that made no sense to me in the pilot. Maggie needed Kirsten in a vulnerable position, so she had Camille file the charges. Kirsten, logical woman that she is, accepts that the deal Camille got was indeed really good, but the betrayal of trust is a pretty big one.

Maggie offers Detective Fischer a job. A cop could be useful. As soon as Kirsten identifies the killer (Surprise! The Refactory period was real and not a stalling tactic.), Maggie demands Fischer get them a search warrant. They get their man and his computer records and finish Lisa’s goal of rescuing Denise.

When the team returns to Stitcher Central, Kirsten is set to Stitch into Ed. Linus stops them. He hands Cameron the data leaving it to him to break the news to Kirsten. Smart move on Linus’ part. Kirsten is not happy at all. But she doesn’t take it out on the messenger. She, rightly IMHO, goes straight to Maggie. Maggie tries to turn it back on Kirsten by telling her it’s her fault because it took her too long to solve Lisa’s murder.

I’ve officially filed Maggie under the heading ‘villain’. I think Kirsten is right. There is something Maggie doesn’t want her to know. Instead of answering Kirsten’s questions, Maggie offers to send all of Ed’s belongings to Kirsten. It’s a start. Maggie gives everyone a pep talk about the good they did with this case. Kirsten has another flashback to Ed checking under her bed for monsters. She informs Maggie that she hates monsters and signs on. (I’m thinking a non-disclosure agreement is in Kirsten’s near future, so Maggie can stop Kirsten telling people about the Stitchers program every time she needs to get past a roadblock.)

In the final scene we get an answer to what happened to Marta. Cameron pays her a visit in her hospital room. She’s in a coma. Does this bode ill for Kirsten, or are the differences in her brain the thing that allows her to survive the procedure? Is this the reason Maggie needed Kirsten on the project?

This is the first real episode of the series, and it was all the fun that the last half of the pilot promised. I am starting to like Linus and Cameron together. They’re a bantering team. Camille won me over as well. I would have loved to watch the scene where Camille coaxed Kirsten into her rave appropriate outfit.

ABCFamily seems to like shows with hidden mysteries. With a couple of the network’s canceled series, it seemed as though the bulk of the potential audience wasn’t as willing as I to wait for the clues and answers to be revealed. That trend (the slow reveal) seems present here as well. We’ve only gotten small clues so far and I am intrigued. I hope the audience finds the crime solving aspect of the show as much fun as I do and that the series stays on the air long enough for us to get all of the answers promised.

Favorite moment: Maggie outing Camille by accusing Camille of outing herself.

About the Author - Prpleight

Prpleight is a screenwriter and senior software engineer with solid geek cred. When not writing code, screenplays, or watching TV (sometimes she does all three at the same time), she uses her broadsword Bessie to battle evil. She's been a frequent contributor to the SpoilerTV discussion boards for several years now. Currently, she's reviewing Stitchers and Major Crimes.

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