- Title: Perception – Shiver
- wiki: link
While attempting to avoid a visit from his estranged father (Peter Coyote), Daniel Pierce (Eric McCormack) attempts to help the FBI locate a bank robber by interviewing their best witness to the crime – a trusting young boy (Cole Sand) suffering from Williams syndrome who was temporarily kidnapped by the robber to make good his escape. Based on the kid’s description of the masked man and his sick partner (Brian Letscher) who is dying of a rare and incurable degenerative disease (or so he believes), Moretti is able to track down and arrest one of their suspects in a case more complicated, and tragic, than it initially appears.
With one suspect in custody Moretti begins looking for the man’s partner, a college friend who has been out of the country for 17 years who later turns up shot and burned to death in his car. While enlisting the suspect’s father (Max Gail) to find the missing bank robber Daniel learns about the medical diagnosis of his own father from his stepmother (Jo Anderson) who has become increasing concerned about her husband’s forgetful behavior. Despite a tender moment between the two men the episode chooses wisely not to immediately patch up the relationship as Daniel’s father has the same trouble admitting the truth of his own illness as he did with his first wife’s cancer and Daniel’s schizophrenia.
The theme of memories, both those that can’t be remembered and those you wish to forget, is the common thread of the episode book-ended with Pierce’s lectures on the subject to his students. With the help of a hallucinatory real estate agent (Brooke Lyons), Pierce is able to find his missing father and solve the case of the murdered man (Rohan Nichol) and the mystery of thousands in burnt U.S. currency and the guilt behind why it was stolen. And despite a few hurdles, which Kate seems more bothered by than Donnie (Scott Wolf), the pair’s second wedding appears to be still on (at least for the time being).
