Rosewood - Tree Toxins & Three Stories - Review: “Murder Was the Case That They Gave Me”
2.6 - “Tree Toxins & Three Stories”
Directed by Kenneth Fink
Written By: Marqui Jackson & D. Harrington Miller
Reviewed by Kelly Anne Blount
The show starts out with Rosie and Kayla having breakfast at a diner, if I’m recalling correctly Kayla is Tonya’s teenage daughter. She is playing tough with Rosie. She tells Rosie his gift of tickets to Disney World was a complete fail. Before she leaves, she lets Rosie know that she was just joking around with him and that he is the first of her mother’s boyfriends to ask her to meet solo. Point for Rosie!
Rosie heads over to the station to meet up with Villa. Turns out Villa has turned town Adrian a.k.a. Dr. Webb the coroner multiple times. What the heck, Villa? Rosie has got something going on, your turn to do the same. Right? Villa asks Rosie how he knows about Adrian’s multiple rejects and Rosie gives the best line of all time, he says, “Because that’s what I do, Villa. I wear cool pocket squares and I know things.” I’m so serious, the writers on Rosewood are everything!
So, Villa and Rosie tell the class that they are investigating an old case, but that they have hit a wall. Ooh, could it be Gerald’s case?
Rosie is buddies with the professor of the class, who has called his current students the best and the brightest. I wonder which case Rosie and Villa want help with?
Rosewood tells the class the forensic pathology isn’t just about how people died, it’s also about how they lived. He and Villa share this belief, which helps make them an awesome crime solving team.
Villa recognizes one of the students. She is from the tabloids and Villa calls her a, “Kim Kardashian wannabe.” The student says that she isn’t that person anymore, but Villa isn’t buying it. Villa is hilarious!
One of the plastic surgery students is mouthing off. He wants to leave, because this is just one of his electives. Villa puts his hind parts in place and moves on to the next one. Villa is tough and hilarious. She reminds me of Bones, from season one, only with a whole lot more social know-how. But she has that raw talent, combined with a no nonsense attitude. I like it. I like it a lot.
We have a flashback to a high school soccer team. Elena Santiago, the victim is shown at practice. Rosie tells the class that she had her whole life in front of her, but it was tragically cut short. She was found near the school, in the forest.
Rosie says to continue the case, that they need to exhume Elena’s body. This is going to be difficult, as Elena’s parents, a Panamanian diplomat and his American wife, have said, “No,” to the exhumation of their daughter’s body.
The class as well as Rosie and Villa start to argue. The solution? To split the group into two teams.
Team Villa is looking through all of the old evidence. Team Rosie is looking back through Elena’s body, not literally, but the autopsy results have been scanned in to a computer and have essentially given them a 3-D replica of her body. So far, everyone wants to be on Team Rosie.
Team Rosie figures out that Elena was tortured by being back and forth from the brink of death multiple times. This is helpful information for developing a profile on the killer.
Team Villa found out that the cops missed someone during their investigation. Jody Carvelle, a close friend of Elena’s was abroad during the murder. Rosie and Villa had come to the same conclusion, so went to talk to Jody. Jody is now a soccer coach, to what looks like a high school team. She said that Elena was desperate to spend time with her father and that the only reason she ever started to play soccer was because her father liked the sport.
Villa confronts Jody with the rumor that she, Elena, and the other girls on the soccer team were the school’s mean girls. FYI – I just watched that movie last week, well, I caught the second half of it, and it is sooo good! If you haven’t watched Mean Girls, add it to your list, like yesterday. Anyways, Jody doesn’t take to that info very well. She says that they gave constructive criticism to the girls who needed it. What a brat!
Elena was loved and feared. Turns out Elena had a soft spot for Misty, someone the team normally would have been mean to.
Villa breaks it down. She loves mean girls and ceviche. Why you might ask? Villa likes them, “Served raw.” Dang, Villa!
Flashback to the present, Rosie and Villa ask the class why they think Elena would have let Misty in to her popular circle of friends.
Team Villa found itemized receipts, which included pre-natal vitamins. But, according to the autopsy results, Elena wasn’t pregnant. The pre-natal vitamins must have been for a friend. Could they have belonged to Misty?
Turns out the original autopsy missed something. Elena was pregnant, just not at the time of her death.
Villa says that they have a new person of interest, her old boyfriend.
Rosie and Villa go to talk to the old boyfriend, who’s a trainer on the beach. Elena miscarried. The boyfriend says that two months later, she left him for an older guy. An older guy that Misty also had a thing for… Ooh!
The team wants to know what happened to Rosie and Villa went to talk to Misty. Well, this is where the plot thickens, because Misty is dead too. She was taken two days after Elena’s body was found.
Rosie thinks they might be looking at a serial killer.
*Commercial Break* So, there is some crazy serial killer action in Spartanburg, SC, which is only like an hour away from where I live in Asheville, NC. This guy has admitted to killing multiple people and he has several graves on his 100 acres property. So scary, right? Just Google serial killer and Spartanburg, SC to read more about it.
And we’re back!
TMI and Pippy have a body in the lab. Not just any body, but Misty’s body. As they are getting ready to place the body on the table, Pippy brings up that she has a date and asks TMI to cover for her. I hate this moment the most. TMI and Pippy are meant to be together.
Rosie isn’t answering calls from Misty’s mother. Mrs. Rosewood trying to be supportive of her son. She knows this case is weighing hard on him. Rosie shares that he is thinking a lot about Tonya and her daughter Kayla. He couldn’t imagine how Tonya would feel if this happened to her daughter.
With help from his mom, Rosie gathers the courage to call Lynn Spencer, Misty’s mother. She comes down to the lab, where Rosie gives her an update. She also meets the students that are working on her daughter’s case. They ask her to talk about her daughter. Mrs. Spencer shares that her daughter was very special and that she is grateful that they are trying to solve her murder.
The students are at Rosewood’s lab. They have Misty Spencer on the table. The music in the background reminds me of a mix between Hunger Games and Dead Man Walking.
She has several injuries, but only one injury in common with Elena, they both have ligature marks.
They think that Misty might have temporarily gotten away from her killer, but he or she stabbed her multiple times before she could get away for good. The murderer didn’t have the chance to torture Misty like he/she did to Elena.
TMI says that she’s heading to lunch and that Rosie’s “Rosebuds” have a new theory. I LOVE that the writers have included this into the script tonight!
The two teams have decided to join forces and are now, “Team Rosia.” Ha ha! I love it!
The team concluded that the girls were held in a cabin in the woods. The police had the wrong location. The students point out that the blisters on the victim’s hands were possibly from manchineel trees. A beautiful, but incredibly dangerous tree. One of the students shares that the girls could have gotten blisters on their skin, just from standing under the tree during a rainfall.
They think that Misty received the blisters when she was running away from her killer. Misty also has signs of lead poisoning. The students think this is from an underground bunker, where they both girls may have been held. Turns out there are several abandon bunkers from the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Rosie tells the students that all of this current evidence points to the man who has already been convicted of this crime, the soccer coach, Gerald Kelly. Convicted and sent to prison, Gerald Kelly has already served ten years for these crimes.
It’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Rosie tells the students that his family believes that Gerald Kelly is innocent. He admits that he has lost perspective on the case. He wants the students to help him get it back.
Villa and Rosie go over the evidence which was used to convict Gerald. They examine everything from the type of rope used to strangle the girls to his lack of an alibi. The most damning evidence? A blood stain on Misty’s jeans with a partial match to Gerald. On top of this, the DA told the jurors that Gerald had a history of abusing women from a young age and that this continued throughout his life, culminating in the murders of Elena and Misty. The DA also linked Gerald’s history of violence to the disappears of Michelle Kelly, his daughter. Michelle had a troubled youth, and was in trouble for truancy and petty theft. She ran away six months before the murders and hasn’t been seen since.
Villa and Rosie show the students Gerald Kelly’s booking video. They ask the students to find something that was missed. Before they can dive too deep into the video, Mrs. Rosewood enters the room. Uh oh! I don’t think this is going to go over very well… She tells everyone that she’s observing, “as a close friend to Gerald Kelly.” The students gasp when they hear these words out loud. I would gasp too!
Donna keeps interjecting as they continue to watch the booking video. She’s 100% on team Gerald Kelly.
The future plastic surgery doctor notes that the burns that Gerald Kelly says he received while cooking aren’t burns, they are blisters and they look like they are blisters from a manchineel tree. Rosewood believes the theory. Things are not looking good at the moment for Mrs. Rosewood and her friend Gerald Kelly. Donna Rosewood is upset and starts to leave the room.
Rosewood goes after his mother. He tells her that there isn’t anything left to do. Donna asks him to do one last thing. She says to go talk to Gerald and ask him if he was in the woods that night. She says that if Rosewood isn’t satisfied with Gerald’s answer, that she will never mention his name again. Rosie agrees and says that he’ll do it.
We cut to Rosie and Donna at the prison. Rosewood asks Gerald what he was doing the night Misty was found murdered in the woods. Oh. My. Gosh. Gerald admits to being in the woods that night.
*Commercial Break* My insides are screaming. You can’t leave us on that cliffhanger! 0_0
Rosie asks Gerald why he lied about being in the woods that night. Donna is pissed Gerald lied. He says that he kept the information about him being in the woods that night just made him look incredibly guilty. Well, duh! But so does lying, Gerald!
Rosie asks, “So, why were you there?” Gerald admits that he was in the woods looking for his daughter. He put up posters everywhere that week. Someone called the tip line and said that there was a girl in the park, near the woods, that looked just like his daughter, Michelle.
He admits that he didn’t find Michelle. He tells the Rosewoods that he was blamed for his daughter running away and for the murders of Elena and Misty.
Oh no! This is even more terrible then before! A pretty lady shows up at the lab all dressed up. TMI recognizes her, because they have been out on a date before. TMI thinks that she missed a text message or something and that they are possibly headed out for a date. Negative. The lady is there to go out with Pippy. Awkward!
TMI and Pippy have an even more awkward conversation after the lady leaves to go wait in her car. I want Pippy to skip the date and take TMI out instead!
Uh oh! Someone else is planning a date too! Villa is on the phone talking about dancing circles around who we can only guess is Adrian. It’s official. She asked him on a date. They are going dancing on Saturday.
Rosie tells Villa that he needs her help. They head back to the lab, where the plastic surgery student has had a major change of heart and he has a theory. He doesn’t think that Gerald did it. He thinks that the blood on Misty’s jeans wasn’t Gerald’s blood. Rosie argues that it was a match, to which the plastic surgery student reminds him that it was a partial match. Rosie runs the blood again. They’ve been looking at things all wrong.
Rosie and Villa bring Pippy, Mrs. Rosewood, and TMI together in the lab. The hair sample from Gerald Kelly’s daughter’s missing person file is an exact match the DNA pulled from the blood stain on Misty’s jeans. TMI bluntly states, “Right family, wrong member.”
So, was Gerald Kelly’s daughter another victim or was she the murderer? Rosie isn’t sure, but he does state that he no longer thinks that Gerald Kelly killed his daughter. Rosie said that Gerald was the one who helped convince him of his innocence.
Villa did some super sleuthy detective work. It turns out that Gerald received a call from an unregistered phone number the night that Misty’s body was found in the woods. The call, verified by cell towers, was placed thirty miles away from the woods. They wouldn’t have been able to see Michelle Kelly in the woods. They were too far away. Villa dug ever deeper and found that a call to the police was also made from that same night. The caller alerted the police that there were bodies in the woods. The caller lied to trick Gerald into going to the woods, which was also the murder scene. Rosie is officially a believer. Someone framed Gerald Kelly and Rosie vows to do whatever is necessary to get him out of prison.
Rosie and Kayla, Tonya’s daughter, head to the park. They agree to shoot some hoops and with every basket Kayla makes, she says that Rosie is going to have to answer a question from her. She needs to make sure that he isn’t a big weirdo.
The episode ends with Rosie visiting Gerald. He tells Gerald that, “From now on, all of the Rosewoods are on Team Gerald.” He says that they are going to go through every shred of evidence possible in order to help prove that Gerald isn’t the killer. Rosie says that the killer must have known Gerald and known him very well and had been watching him for a very long time. Rosie vows not to rest until they get Gerald out of prison and bring the real killer to justice.
My Thoughts:
Ooh! I think this is one of the best episodes of Rosewood yet! Talk about intense! Those scenes in the woods? Pure perfection! Hats off to the writers, producers, and the director!
In the beginning, I was pretty convinced that Gerald was guilty. Looks like I was wrong with a capital W! The question is, what did his daughter have to do with the murders? That is the type of stuff that sends an icy feeling down your spine. But, as Deran Sarafian, the executive production and director of Rosewood, said to me, “Without darkness, there is no light.” So, now that the darkness has come, the light must be on the way, right?
I wonder if Gerald will be exonerated? I wonder if he and Donna Rosewood will become more then friends? Will we find out before the end of this season? What do you think?
Also, Morris Chestnut live tweeted during this episode and guess what? Not only did he reply, retweet, and favorite several of my tweets, he also started following me on Twitter. I know right? Pretty much an amazing night from start to finish!
Oh, one more thing, the music on this show is on point. I’ve said it once before and I’m saying it again. Good call on the choice of songs!
Oops! I have one more thing to tell you! Yours truly interviewed Deran Sarafian, Executive Producer and Director, on Rosewood. I have an exclusive interview that I can’t wait to share with you all! I’ll post it soon, so make sure to check out all of my reviews and interviews right here on SpoilerTV!
What did you think of the episode? Leave me a comment below!
