Except Maddie finds out from Adele's doctor that the bruises happened because she was restrained after being told she wouldn't be allowed to attend her mother's funeral. This pivotal misstep over a missing report earns Adele a re-trial.
I knew something was amiss about this case the second I saw Gore Bellows show up at the courthouse. Why would the writers have Bellows put his input in on this particular case if it wasn't going to pay off somehow? Indeed it does. For once, Bellows is right. Adele was actually guilty of the crime and our favorite team of lawyers gets her off the hook!
How did it happen? With the aide of a professor who was in love with Adele and willing to work up a false suspect to mislead Maddie.
The two main suspects they had outside of Adele wound up having air-tight alibis, so when a professor walks in with a just-crazy-enough-to-work theory about a local serial killer, they believe the answer to their problems has fallen into their lap.
To his and Adele's credit, they were quite thorough in their fraudulence. The murder algorithm was compelling and the email evidence appeared legitimate. The team subpoenas the supposed serial killer in question, Carter Leopold, and put him on the stand. He pleads the fifth to one of Maddie's questions and it is enough to drum up reasonable doubt from the jury. They clear Adele of the charges.
I do have a few questions though. Wouldn't Maddie's team have seen Leopold was acquitted of charges before and then ask themselves why that was? I feel like they were too eager to look for an alternative answer they got sloppy this week. Surely they would have dug deeper into the relationship between Adele and the professor to see what the real nature of their relationship was. I mean didn't it all feel too good to be true?
Hopping back to Bellows, Rosemary's Law is not going to be the hot ticket he thought it was going to be. Not after Maddie introduces Esteban to Rosemary's father, who is firmly against the law, and they go negative in an ad speaking out against its creation, implying Bellows is using his daughter's name for political gain.
In retaliation, Bellows intends to drive home the fact Esteban colluded with corrupt Detective Falcone, but to do that, he'll need money. To get money, he's going to have to compromise his principals to get in bed with a man who is selling a super sketchy "appetite suppressant" that is hitting some red tape with the FDA. Bellows will waive all those pesky trials about the drug's safety in exchange for his cash. I can't see this partnership ending well.
Outside the courtroom, Maddie's love life has gone up in smoke. While Dylan didn't actually publish a story about Maddie and her involvment in Rosemary's case, his intel about her suspecting Levi at one point was taken and used in additional story. To say Maddie is pissed would be an understatement. The episode ends with her pounding his face in. I guess you can take the girl out of prison but not the prison out of the girl.
Speaking of Rosemary, Maddie and Levi go to Toby's funeral to pay their respects. (Am I the only one whose skin crawls every time those freakish Stepford-esque Husband couple shows up?) She runs into a former classmate and Heather flunkie, Linda Barrett. From her we learn a little more about an Adderall ring and the truth about Toby. Linda begs Maddie to stop digging into the case before more people wind up dead. Hm, so is there a great conspiracy going on that Rosemary was tied up in?
New episodes of Proven Innocent air Friday nights on FOX.
