The Irrational

The Irrational – Ghost Ship

  • Title: The Irrational – Ghost Ship
  • IMDb: link

Aside from exploring family dynamics of Alec (Jesse L. Martin) with his father (Ron Canada), “Ghost Ship” feels like a story that could have been written for any number of procedurals that was adapted for The Irrational. The idea of unraveling a ship with a missing crew is an interesting setup, but the mystery turns out to be rather straightforward (even if it was fun to see Monk‘s Jason Gray-Stanford, albeit in a mostly thankless role). In terms of psychology, Alec is able to get a key witness to relax enough to provide answers, but the show is largely geared to Alec’s damaged relationship with his father and a necessary first-step to remedy that.

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The Irrational – Now You Don’t

  • Title: The Irrational – Now You Don’t
  • IMDb: link

Love, and magic, is in the air in “Now You Don’t” when Alec (Jesse L. Martin) taking Rose (Karen David) on a date to a magic club ends in murder. The Irrational’s use of psychology is more about explaining magic tricks than solving the case involving a magician friend (Carmel Amit) of Alec’s whose volunteer dies on stage. While I like the magic bits of the episode, including the fun moments from Simon (Max Lloyd-Jones) and Phoebe (Molly Kunz), the writing of the episode (relying mostly on the cops being too dumb to think things through and Alec stumbling into a solution rather than finding it through his talents) leaves something to be desired.

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The Irrational – Another Man’s Treasure

  • Title: The Irrational – Another Man’s Treasure
  • IMDb: link

The case of the week involves someone with a good understanding of psychology and how to manipulate crowds involved in a series of art thefts under the guise of political activism which also gets played out in specific characters fighting for the return of stolen artifacts back to their home country some of who also get manipulated by the mastermind. There are some interesting layers to the case including the FBI dealing with someone using Alec’s (Jesse L. Martin) kind of knowledge against them. Given how well the mystery perpetrator does at the job, I wish they hadn’t wasted the premise on a one-off episode and perhaps teased the possibility of a more morally flexible version of the professor working for the other side popping up causing problems multiple times over the course of the season.

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The Irrational – Lost Souls

  • Title: The Irrational – Lost Souls
  • IMDb: link

With Alec (Jesse L. Martin) stuck in the hospital after emergency surgery, Rose (Karen David) and Marisa (Maahra Hill) head into a national forest searching for a missing tennis player (Davida Williams). The pairing of current and ex proves to be an interesting one. Meanwhile Simon (Max Lloyd-Jones), Owen (Arash DeMaxi), and Phoebe (Molly Kunz) work an experiment to discover how the missing woman might react to getting lost in the woods which proves helpful in finding the missing young woman. However, dangers continue to rise with the addition of a forest fire and the discovery that someone has followed the tennis star into the woods with the intention of doing her harm.

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The Irrational – Stan by Me

  • Title: The Irrational – Stan by Me
  • IMDb: link

Although it provides almost nothing for the assistants to do, other than to laugh at Owen’s (Arash DeMaxi) fandom, I enjoyed the main story of “Stan by Me” featuring Alec (Jesse L. Martin) and Rose (Karen David) working together to solve the murder of a fan one of her former clients, a renown K-pop star (Kirstin Leigh) who becomes the prime suspect. Sadly, I was far less interested in the B-story involving Marisa (Maahra Hill) and her struggle getting along with her new boss at the FBI which, in procedural fashion, fixes itself by the end of the episode and thus turns out to be mostly pointless.

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