Lethal Weapon Season 1 Episode 16: Unnecessary Roughness Review

If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.

Synopsis: A murder involving a high school football star draws Riggs and Murtaugh into the lucrative and corrupt world of college football recruiting. Murtaugh considers a change in his professional life. Riggs spends more time with Karen Palmer. (TV Calendar)

Writers: Laura Putney and Margaret Easley

Director: Bethany Rooney

Rating: TV-14

Running Time: 45mins

We were due for a letdown episode but it wasn’t bad by any means. Over the course of the season, we’ve learned more and more about these characters and enjoyed their little quirks but sometimes there can be too much, surprisingly.

The cases of the week usually relate to either Riggs or Murtaugh with the majority of them being Riggs but this week it was Murtaugh’s turn. The case of the week involved the murder of the cousin named Steven Raines (Myles Grier) of a rising football star named Jessie Raines (Chris Tavarez). Injured in the incident, Jessie could never play football again. This brought back Murtaugh’s short college football career which seemed to echo Jessie’s. They bonded seeing that Murtaugh saw a little bit of himself in Jessie.

Riggs had some new perspective of his own being sober but that didn’t quite last long. He and Palmer have gotten very close recently which was made clear by Riggs waking up in a hotel room near the beginning of the episode, right after Palmer left him a thank you note with his breakfast. Riggs looked happy but that was all for naught since he still wasn’t over Miranda. What didn’t help was him lashing out at Cahill for remarking that he looked happy which didn’t make much sense. Riggs of course was regretting being with Palmer since he started drinking from a secret stash. He was acting different for the first half of the episode but it was then that he became the normal Riggs. Regardless of how he may have felt, he still ended up with Palmer by the end (who did not appear onscreen in the episode).

The episode explored the other side of college football and because of Murtaugh’s connection, he appeared to be the only one who was able to see things clearly, thinking more about Jessie than the impact on the local college football team. This led to some forced comedy between Avery and Murtaugh that just didn’t work.

In this episode, Murtaugh was reminded by Riana that he was the only provider in the household with Trish quitting and she crunched the numbers, determining that he would have to stay on the force a lot longer than he had probably anticipated. Perhaps this new interest came along out of fear that her lifestyle may be under attack due to her parents’ current situation but it still made Murtaugh think about his and his family’s future.

Murtaugh and Riggs’ investigation led them to the college’s head of security, Mike Ramos (Michael Harney), who happened to know Murtaugh. He knew Murtaugh from the college and he was a former police officer. He gushed about how great his job was and when Murtaugh told him of his situation, Ramos told him he was retiring and recommending Murtaugh to replace him. This job would have set him for life but that was obviously not going to happen.

The actual investigation came off as a little too convoluted as a bunch of different parties thought Steven was just getting in the way of them being able to take advantage of Jessie and his impending career and all the money he was going to make. With that, it ended up not being any of them who was responsible. During his time with Jessie, Murtaugh convinced him that he could still make something out of his life despite his injury, like he did, and the episode ended with them sending him off to college.

Overall, this episode was a little too convoluted to me, featuring Riggs’ different behavior and his and Murtaugh’s problems along with a lackluster case. It’s still fun to watch Murtaugh and Riggs together but not every episode can be great.
 
Score: 7/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.