THE FINDER: “Swing and a Miss”

Paragraph C of the friends with benefits pact. It all comes down to that. From the first episode of The Finder, the nature of Walter and Isabel’s relationship has been a bit of a curiosity. Hinted at, but never quite addressed. Now we know. They are friends with benefits.

Isabel has a new boyfriend and wants to invoke said paragraph C of her pact with Walter, which suspends the pact when either party embarks on a sexual relationship with a third party. Isabel is working on her law degree at night, and the existence of the pact makes a lot more sense once you know that. She leaves Walter voice mail notification, but before she has a chance to move forward with her new baseball star boyfriend, Frankie Heywood, they walk in on a robbery at his house. Badass as Isabel is, the perp gets away. She suggests Walter can help Frankie retrieve the things that were stolen, but Walter doesn’t take to the guy at first. He thinks he’s hiding something. Even before he learns about the nature of Isabel’s relationship with Frankie, he already has a problem with him. Seeing that Isabel really likes the guy, Walter eventually agrees to take the case.

Willa wants to tag along as Walter and Leo work on the case. Walter thinks she might come in handy if they need to steal something, so he’s cool with it. Leo is appalled, however, even though she swears to him she would only steal from thieves. Instead, she is left to run the bar. Leo and Walter go to a sports memorabilia store, searching for answers from a less than scrupulous store manager with connections. At first he doesn’t want to talk, but when Walter starts destroying fake merchandise, his desire to save his inventory eventually puts them on the trail of the Twins, a couple of crazy smash and grab guys.

The twins, well, don’t look anything alike. A white guy and a black guy, which will be important later. They’re both twins, just not with each other. Walter would rather be stabbed than listen to them explain their nickname anymore, so he starts a scuffle, during which one of their crates is ripped open to reveal a shipment of stuffed animals. They were sent on a bogus trail. The twins seethe as they leave, vowing vengeance.

Isabel makes out with her new squeeze, but he breaks it off to talk. Uh oh, he wants to talk. He tells her about his religious faith and his St. Christopher medal, which he attributes to his success on the field. She promises Walter will find it, and says she’s fine with his religious faith. She oversells it, because it starts sounding like Isabel isn’t as cool with it as she claims to be. The making out resumes, but as one would expect of Walter, he interrupts. He picked the lock and walked right in. He thinks it was an amateur who robbed him, because he picked the lock with a simple pin, but the robber used a crowbar. Walter suspects Frankie had steroids and they stolen. Isabel asks if he’s being blackmailed. Frankie doesn’t like that Isabel seems to side with Walter, so he asks both to leave. He thinks the two of them were made for each other (hint, hint).

Isabel goes to Leo with her suspicion that Walter sabotaged her relationship with the perfect man. She is still denying too much that Frank’s religion is a problem for her. She wonders if Leo thinks she’s too ambitious. Leo insists he respects her ambitions, and that she feels she needs an appropriate man beside her. Walter isn’t exactly appropriate. She thinks Frank is, though, and Leo gives pause for thought when he asks her why she isn’t with him then. He leaves her with that and goes to meet Walter at Frankie’s estate.

The two try to reenact the robbers escape path from Frankie’s house. Walter thinks he might have stashed the bag of loot along the way. While Walter searches a culvert that looks promising, Leo lies on the ground to relax as he waits…and spots the bag in a tree. They retrieve it and return is to Frankie at the stadium, where he’s struggling without his good luck St. Christopher medallion. Walter withholds it from him, suspecting Frankie still isn’t telling something, that it wasn’t the necklace he really wanted to find. Frankie’s teammate is getting a little overly protective over questioning. He ends up punching Walter, and sending him into a dream state. Walter has a “Field of Dreams” type dream, he’s playing baseball. When he struggles, multiple Willa’s approach to talk to him about his bad pitches. He still thinks Frankie is lying, and the Willa’s tell him people lie for a lot of reasons, some good. Baseball is a game of superstitions, and every ballplayer has one. That seems to give Walter what he needs, when he wakes up, he knows the questions to ask. Frankie is there, and Walter knows there was nothing illegal in that bag. He wanted his luck back, so Walter wants to know what Frankie was really looking for. He seems embarrassed by it, but he finally admits to Walter it’s his socks. He doesn’t even wash them, and the only other person who knows about them is his aunt. Walter is onboard with him now, he’ll find his socks.

Willa is taking care of things at the End of the Earth when the Twins show up to take some vengeance. They threaten her, and want to know where Leo is. They show interest when she tells them Leo is out looking for something valuable for Frankie Heywood. She promises she will call them when Leo shows up.

Willa relays exactly what happened to Leo and he’s visibly upset. They broke his jukebox and busted some things up, but Leo is most worried about Willa. As Walter had suggested earlier, Leo thinks they should keep Willa close, so she gets to tag along on the case. Walter thinks the thief is someone who wanted Frank’s team to lose. Willa takes it further, it’s someone wants Frankie to lose, but they want to be the only one who knows he’s going to lose. They go back to see the sports memorabilia store owner. Willa’s criminal instincts surface, inquiring about bets against Frankie. They decide to use Willa’s family connections to try and find who they are looking for. She learns about an illegal gambling facility run by a guy named Nix. Her plan is to go inside herself and retrieve the socks. While Walter and Leo argue about the wisdom of the plan, she sneaks away and manages to talk her way inside.

Inside the casino, Willa is having a great time gambling. Nix is hanging all over her. Walter and Leo wait outside, with Leo very antsy about what’s going on. Walter tells Leo that Willa will never live by the rules…nature and nurture conspire against it ever happening. Leo still believes in her. He won’t let her get hurt for a pair of socks. Willa asks Nix about a room that seems off limits. He tells her it’s his private area. She points out that one of his card dealers is dealing off the bottom of the deck, and when he goes to take care of it she texts her team to request a distraction. There’s a reason Walter is a finder and not a pitcher, his throw misses the satellite dish. Leo yanks the dish down by it’s cables, and all the TV screens in the building go out. Willa bumps into Nix and lifts his keys, then takes off to his private room while he deals with the commotion caused by lost TV signals.

It doesn’t take long for Willa to find what she’s looking for, but Nix is right behind her, and he has a gun. Leo goes in after her, taking out anyone who gets in his way. He and Walter make it to the room, where Nix has a gun pointed at Willa’s head. Leo offers him a chance to walk away, he balks and reminds Leo he has a gun. While they negotiate, Willa kicks gets proactive and kicks his butt herself. The kid is growing on me. They run for the door, but the Twins are in the casino waiting for them. Willa insists she didn’t call them, but they know they have something of Frankie’s and want it handed over. Walter tosses the bag to them, just as Nix fires his gun and hits one of the Twins. He kills them, and one of them manages to hit him. Walter and team walk away, realizing that when it’s reported that a white guy and a black guy tore up the place, the Twins are going to fit the description and be their scapegoats. Walter leaves the socks behind. Willa wonders if it’s because Frankie is sleeping with Isabel. She gets right to the point. Good job, Willa. Walter says he left them because they weren’t the right socks. Walter noticed all the signs of wear on the socks, and for one thing, whomever they belonged to wears out his socks in the toes. Like….a catcher.

Frankie’s overly protective teammate happens to be a catcher. And he came up with Frank through the minor leagues. He knows about his lucky socks. He tries to defend himself, he owed Nix $100,000, and was promised the slate would be clean if they lost one game. The socks are in his locker. He’ll give them back, let Nix break his kneecaps. It’s better than breaking Frankie’s heart. Walter tells him Nix is dead, so his kneecaps will stay intact. Leo, big guy with a big heart, tells Walter maybe they could give them back and not tell Frankie exactly where they found them.

Walter lets Isabel know he found the socks, but won’t tell her where. She deduces someone Frank cares about stole them, but Walter won’t confirm. He gives the socks to her to return. She realizes Walter feels bad about coming between her and Frank, that’s why he wants her to be the one to return them. He’s being selfless because he cares about her.

Walter watches Isabel and her perfect man talking. He tells Leo that he’s okay with Isabel’s new relationship. The guy is perfect, after all. Who can begrudge that? Frankie leaves, and Isabel asks Leo to give her a moment with Walter. She tells Walter that Frank broke up with her. She says he was freaked out by paragraph C, then continues with how glad she is to be rid of him because of his superstition over the socks. Walter thinks maybe the two of them should opt for a more conventional arrangement than paragraph C. She wants to hear more. He believes maybe they should be monogamous, no paragraph C. Isabel appears to give it serious thought as they head back inside the Ends of the Earth.

The first question that came to my mind was, did Frankie really break up with Isabel? Or did Walter’s selfless act help her to she realize that what she thought was the perfect man for her didn’t compare? This episode provided more information about Isabel than we had seen in the previous three episodes of the season. Her ambition had been hinted at, but this is the first time it really felt clear that she didn’t think Walter was an appropriate mate for her. Even so, it seems like she wants to be with him, as she was trying very hard to convince herself that Frankie was the kind of guy (on paper) that she should be with.

The Finder airs Thursdays at 9/8c on Fox.