Cross – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

What Happens At Ramsey’s

Episode 5 of Cross begins with Ed Ramsay preparing a big dinner. He gets his bible back allowing him to continue on with Shannon. He forces her mouth open so he can get a mould of her teeth.

Of course, his public persona is very different to the one in private. He’s charismatic and brings in a whole bunch of influential people for his birthday party. Plenty of people are here, including Chief Anderson, Elle, and even Senator Caitlin too.

Alex Cross shows up and it’s immediately clear that business is about to kick off. Before they do though, we cut back 3 days back to see how Ed managed to reach this point. The pair decide to dig into Ed’s past, finding any weaknesses they can exploit. Thankfully, Elle’s invitation to his birthday is just the opening Cross needed to interrogate him and get inside the guy’s head without the need of a lawyer.

John does his background and speaks to a guy called Dex Notrale. He’s Ed’s old neighbour and he admits he always knew there was something not quite right with Ed.

Now, Dex offers up another name too – White Mike. It would appear that Ed’s mum is also still alive too. They haven’t spoken in 25 years though, but given the lies, Ed deduces that this was all a ploy for him to give out the tortured artist persona he’s been clinging to. This also suggests that he has mummy issues, and that she has power over him.

Alex tasks John with digging into this and speaking to the woman about Ed’s past, believing this is just the link they need to get through to him.

All of this, of course, feeds into Alex Cross’ criminal profile, which he brings to Ed’s birthday. When the attention turns to the serial killer, Alex hits the nail on the head and hammers home with his assessment.

Ed smiles thinly through this, while Alex finds an opportune moment to slip away and begin looking through Ed’s stuff. He snaps photos in the office and finds bloodstained letters that link back to Ed’s past.

Well, Ed catches up with Alex in the office and the pair have an awkward and tense toast together. He has Ed’s favourite whiskey and as they drink together, on his birthday he wants to know more about the criminal profile.

Alex Cross works well to get under his skin, and even brings up the Fanboy name too. However, Ed reciprocates later on, as he brings up a new story at the dinner table. He goes into meticulous detail about Alex’s backstory and home life, including Nana Mama and his kids.

Elle is not happy when she finds out, believing Alex is lying and keeping the truth from her. When she walks away from Alex, Ed approaches and tries to squeeze the truth out of Elle. It doesn’t work though and she doesn’t reveal the truth, thankfully.

Instead, Elle finds herself in a tricky position. Faced with a big businessman in Lawrence Buckley, she squirms when he asks difficult questions about her attending police protests, which she of course has. Ed stands up for her and points out that she’s dating Alex Cross. Now, Lawrence is in the process of pledging 250k to the Somewhere Foundation, but Elle is rattled over everything taking place. She cant think clearly in the wake of Ed being the serial killer.

Alex eventually confronts Ed in secret and brings up that he’s onto him. He shows off the footage of Ed with his mother, and he uses this against him. Everything is hanging on this moment, and Ed eventually messages someone, telling them that it’s time to “do it now”.

He didn’t expect Shannon to break free from her binds though and she makes it out the room and rushes through the house to the locked back door. Senator Caitlin is there and she watches in shock as she realizes that Ed is the killer. Given the blackmail material he has over her though, he forces her to keep quiet. Through all of this, Ed manages to subdue Shannon. However, he also ends up with a nasty deep cut right across his side as well.

When the party continues again there’s a big problem. Footage of Alex Cross has been leaked from a year back. This is the footage that got him kicked out the force in the first place and everybody in the room receives this. Alex hurriedly reveals that Ed is the Fanboy killer, while he’s backed into the corner. Naturally, nobody believes him and Chief Anderson is not happy. She refuses to listen to any of this. In fact, she demands he head home and phone his union rep.

The Episode Review

So Cross returns with another slice of cat and mouse drama, this time with Alex closing in on Ed and trying to play him at his own game. Unfortunately, that completely backfires and what begins as a simple game of psychological warfare, soon escalates to Alex being thrown into the obligatory “main character loses their job but gets it back at the last second” angle.

This really has been tick-box affair of cliches so far but the characterisation is at least strong enough to keep this one watchable for the time being. To be fair, these later episodes have been better than the earlier ones and I’m just hoping we really dive in deep to the craziness angle and pick up the thrills going into the final three chapters.