Pilot
Episode 1 of Will Trent Season 1 starts with a couple, Abigail and Paul Campano, arguing on the phone about Paul sleeping with their trainer. Abigail tells Paul not to come home that day. And when he asks what she’s going to tell their daughter, Emma, why Paul hasn’t come from work, Abigail angrily replies that she’ll tell her that her dad can’t keep “it” in his pants.
Paul begins warning Abigail not to turn her daughter against him, and if she wants the situation to get “ugly,” it will. As they are arguing, Abigail reaches her front door and discovers a glass section of their front door is broken, indicating that an intruder has broken into their house. She tells Paul, who instructs her not to go inside the house, but she does anyway because Emma is inside.
Abigail walks in and sees a bloody footprint at the bottom staircase leading up to the rooms upstairs, one of which is Emma’s. While she’s now scared and worried about her daughter, Abigail walks up the stairs to Emma’s room, where she discovers a body (which she assumes is Emma) and a young man with a bloody knife.
A fight erupts between Abigail and the man, and she ends up strangling him with her tennis racket (judging by what she was wearing and the tennis racket, Abigail had just come from playing tennis.)
The next scene cuts to Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s special agent, Will Trent taking his neighbour’s dog (who died three years earlier) to a dog rescue shelter. Upon arriving, the two ladies at the reception seemed more interested in Will Trent than the dog. It turns out Will had become popular for exposing several corrupt police officers in the Atlanta Police Department. The ladies convince Will to adopt the dog, and he eventually agrees.
Will Trent returns to his house, and by the look of things, his car has been vandalized. When he arrives home, his colleague, Amanda Wagner, drives by. He tells her he is adopting the dog and naming her Betty. She also points out that Wills’ car has been vandalized. Amanda then asks Will to get in her car as there has been a homicide in Ansley Park.
Will asks why the Georgia Investigation Bureau (GBI) is involved in a homicide, to which Amanda explains that the governor of Georgia was called by Paul Campano ( it turns out he’s a billionaire who’s in the car business) about this case. The governor asked the GBI to take a look at the crime scene. Since Will is one of the best special agents in the Bureau, Amanda wanted him to have a look at the crime scene.
After arriving at the Campano residence, it’s evident that the police officers there are unhappy with Will because of the corrupt police officers he turned in. They even call him names as he walks in.
Inside the house, Will meets the lead investigator of this case. The lead investigator tells him that this case is easy and he can handle it, but Will thinks that there’s more than what meets the eye.
As the lead investigator explains what transpired, Will points out that the broken glass section of the front door is too far from the doorknob, which changes everything. Will asks where Abigail is, and he replies that she’s being questioned by another investigator, Detective Faith Mitchell.
Like everyone else in APD, Faith isn’t too happy to see Will, but Amanda Wagner orders her to put her feelings aside and work with Will.
Meanwhile, the lead investigator is still updating Will about the Campanos. It turns out Emma had a friend called Kayla Alexander, whom her father never liked. Will asks who the dad is, and the investigator tells him it’s Paul Campano. Amanda had told him earlier that his name was Paul Bentley (Bentley was Abigail’s surname). It turns out Will knows Paul on a more personal level.
Detective Faith Mitchell goes to meet Will, and Will insinuates that Emma and Kayla may have been cut class that day, judging by the two pairs of shoes at the front door. Detective Faith goes to check if they are the same size to rule out whether or not they belong to two people (Emma and Kayla).
Meanwhile, Paul Campano arrives and demands to see his wife and daughter, who he still assumes are upstairs (keep in mind that Abigail hadn’t seen the face of the body lying in Emma’s room.) Will offers to take him to see his daughter, but he is overcome with emotion when he sees the body from a distance. Paul points out that Emma was an exceptional student until she became friends with Kayla.
Paul asks if Will is a “trashcan,” which confirms they know each other personally. Detective Faith confirms that the two pairs of school shoes at the door are not the same size. Will also notices that the body’s sole doesn’t have blood, which indicates that the bloody footprint at the bottom staircase belongs to someone else.
Will asks Paul to identify the body, and he confirms it’s not Emma since the body doesn’t have a birthmark on the right wrist. A heated argument between Abigail and the lead investigator begins. Will asks Abigail to explain to him what transpired, but Paul objects and insists on calling Emma’s school, but Will tells Paul Emma was in the house with Kayla.
Now, it turns out the young man Abigail thought was the intruder who stabbed Emma (now identified as Kayla) was innocent, meaning he wasn’t the intruder and killer. Will then points out that the bloody footprint is facing the wrong way, suggesting the other victim (Emma) was carried downstairs by the killer. Will orders the police to put out an amber alert since Emma has been kidnapped.
Elsewhere, another detective, Angie Polaski (a recovering drug addict), is in a restaurant with another detective, Franklin. Angie has been undercover investigating a group of illegal drug dealers, and she was planning to lure the group’s ring leader with a big drug purchase and arrest him.
Back to the crime scene, where Will tries to make sense of what happened. It turns out the supposed intruder strangled by Abigail was Adam Humphrey, a first-year student at Atlantic City Tech. It also turns out that a neighbour saw Emma’s white BMW parked in the Campanos’ home driveway that morning at 9:30 am, but it was gone by noon, meaning Emma was abducted using her car.
Upon further investigation, Will suspects that Emma might have hidden in her closet in her room when Kayla was being attacked. Amanda then comes into Emma’s room, where Will is, and tells him that detective Faith Mitchell will be his partner.
In the next scene, Angie is in the illegal drug dealers’ cover-up shop, watching the news coverage of the Campanos’ case. A young lady called Jules walks in wearing sunglasses.
She points out that she has seen a white BMW, which resembles Emma’s, that was being announced in the news. She suggests that Angie call the police, but Angie says it’s dangerous because of the illegal drug dealers there. However, it seems Jules wants the police there because she is being physically abused by Kyle, one of the drug dealers, judging by her black eye seen when Angie removes her sunglasses.
Angie then calls Will to tell him that Emma’s BMW is there. She asks Will to tell the police to be subtle when coming to identify the car because she doesn’t want to spook the drug dealers. Judging by how Will and Angie are communicating, it’s clear they have some romantic going on between them.
Back at the crime scene, another detective, Michael Ormewood, arrives and is assigned Emma’s kidnapping case by Amanda. Will and Faith go to take a look at Emma’s BMW. Upon arriving at the car’s location, Will notices a CCTV camera nearby. Faith also notices blood on the car’s trunk, confirming that Emma was inside.
The CCTV belongs to a young man called Warren, who owns a music recording studio. Will and Faith go to the recording studio to view the CCTV footage, which shows Emma being placed in another car with another driver, who they cannot identify in the footage.
Faith then calls detective Michael who went to Adam’s residence and finds Gabe, his roommate, who tells him that Adam knew Emma. Michael suspects that Gabe knows more than what he’s telling him. As he’s confronting Gabe, Michael’s partner collapses.
At the illegal drug dealers’ cover-up shop, Kyle tells Angie that the ringleader won’t show up because of the police. Jules is still there, and it’s clear she’s scared of Kyle. Angie advises Jules to find a way to leave because Kyle is far more dangerous than she thinks.
Will and Faith are heading back to the GBI headquarters, and Will tells her that Warren has dyslexia. Faith gets a call from her son, Jeremy, about his broken computer, and Will advises him to bring it to the GBI headquarters to be fixed. This leads to an argument between them, and Will discovers that one of the corrupt police officers he investigated and arrested was Faith’s mother.
Will and Faith arrive at the GBI headquarters, where they meet detectives Michael and Angie in an elevator. Michael informs them that his partner, whom he went with to Adam’s place to investigate Emma’s kidnapping, had a stroke.
Michael and Angie get off the elevator once they arrive at the APD section, and Faith tells him that there’s something wrong going on with the Campanos. Earlier, while they were in Warren’s studio, Faith told Will that Paul Campano insisted on getting updates regarding Emma’s abduction.
Faith and Will get off the elevator and meet Paul and Abigail. Paul is angry that he had to come to GBI headquarters to get updates on her daughter’s abduction. Will then tells Paul that Kayla had sexual intercourse the morning of her murder and that he needed Paul’s DNA to rule him out.
This causes a fight between them, leading to Will revealing that he and Paul actually grew up in an orphanage together, and Paul never told Abigail. Feeling betrayed and angry, Abigail reveals Paul’s affair with their trainer.
Later, Angie is questioning Kyle. Angie had earlier broken Kyle’s car taillight to get the police to stop him. She had tipped off the police about the drugs in his car’s trunk. Apparently, Jules had earlier told Angie about the drugs, which Kyle didn’t expect her to since she was terrified of him.
Amanda calls Faith to her office and gives her a badge to use while working on the Campano case. Faith then asks Amanda why she is pairing her up with Will, and Amanda tells her that working with Will can take her to the next level in her career.
Meanwhile, Angie’s boss, Captain Dennis Heller tells her she will be released from the drug dealers’ case and transferred to work on homicide cases with detective Michael, and she isn’t happy about that. This is because later, it’s evident that Angie and Michael had an affair, and he is married.
Will is in his office remembering how Paul mistreated him while they were young when he got a call that Gabe had some more information about Adam and Emma. It turns out they had a sexual relationship, and Adam had been receiving threats to leave Emma alone. There were threatening letters left on Adam’s car and at Gabe’s and Adam’s door; fortunately, Gabe kept one and brought it with him.
When Faith took a closer look at the letter, all the letters “e” and “k” were facing backwards, a characteristic dyslexic people have. Will immediately confirmed it was Warren. Faith and Will rushed to Warren’s recording studio and found that he had locked himself in the recording booth.
Warren confessed to killing Kayla and claimed he didn’t mean to. He had feelings for Emma, which is why he threatened Adam to leave her alone. Will tries to talk Warren into telling him where Emma is, but he refuses to do so and ends up shooting himself.
In the next scene, Will is upset by Warren killing himself. He starts telling Faith about the orphanage he grew up in. One of the things Will said that stood out was that the woman who ran the orphanage always ensured they had handkerchiefs. This explains why he and Paul had a handkerchief with them earlier in the crime scene. Faith and Will also have a bonding moment in this scene, which is good.
Will returns to his house and finds Angie confirming they are romantically involved. One thing leads to another, and they begin making out. Bella also shows more of her personality in this scene.
The following morning, Will tries to read Emma’s college essay, which the APD sent with her school files, but he’s struggling. It turns out Will also has dyslexia. Angie helps him read the essay when they hear a knock at the door. It’s Paul, and he tells Will that he has shot the person who took Emma.
The Episode Review
From this first episode, Will Trent has managed to deliver a great police procedural show. The storyline is interesting and you get a sense of what the background of the characters is like from the word go. It makes you want to dig deeper and find out the other layers of these characters.
I am looking forward to what this season has to offer and the way this episode ends, it will definitely keep you hooked for more!
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| Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes! | |
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Episode Rating
(3.5)