- Title: Perception – Blindness
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“All it took was a six-foot knife-wielding alligator.”
After being called in to consult on a case of a judge found dead in his chambers with a mentally-impaired janitor (Del Zamora) holding the murder weapons over the body, Daniel spins a wild theory about change blindness where Donnie (Scott Wolf) and the rest of the courtroom actually saw the killer standing in for the judge but failed to notice it was a different man. Although he can’t convince Donnie of his theory, when the killer strikes again by committing murder in front of 200 witnesses, none of whom saw it happen, the Assistant District Attorney is forced to pay a little more attention to the FBI’s consultant and his wild theories, although Daniel has troubling playing nice with the FBI profiler (Sundra Oakley) Donnie brings in on the case.
Although Daniel is unable to find a connection between the victims, he does find a former police officer (Nick Chinlund) recently released from prison whose argument of cognitive blindness didn’t help him in the judge’s courtroom five years ago. When FBI arrests another man who fits the other expert’s profile exactly, and who confesses to both murders, the professor begins to acting a little more crazy than usual but that doesn’t stop Kate (Rachael Leigh Cook) from having his back and continuing to look into other suspects including both the cop and the doctor (Jonathan Goldstein) who was called in as an expert witness in the trial and was ruined for trying to convince the jury of cognitive blindness. A little more investigation into the doctor turns up the fact that several of the man’s enemies, including the FBI’s recent pair of murders, have all met with mysterious deaths involving witnesses who apparently saw nothing.
“Blindness” presents the opportunity to showcase how someone with Daniel’s knowledge could use it for horrific and misguided ends. Although the doctor’s message was sound, if a little hamfistedly delivered, the manner in which he racked up a body count was less than ideal (and more than a little self-serving, which proves to be the man’s downfall in the end as Daniel traps the killer into confessing on-camera). The episode also stands out for Lewicki (Arjay Smith) finally being allowed to teach a class in Daniel’s absence and Donnie pointing out the the professor that Kate is still carrying a torch for her former teacher. Although Daniel seems at peace with the first, we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the second as Kate’s obvious affections may not be entirely in Daniel’s blind spot anymore. And, not of least importance, “Blindness” offers the most amusing hallucination of Daniel’s yet – a six-foot mute alligator mascot with a gift for miming clues for Daniel to follow-up on.
