Will Trent (Season 1), Episode 8: Episode 8 of Will Trent’s season 1 on ABC, titled “Two Hundred Dollars and a Bus Pass,” has a personal story behind it. “Good people make bad choices.” seems like the central theme that Will constantly struggles to reconcile. The episode’s central plot revolves around a murder that Will and Faith are tasked with solving.
The victim is a foster child, like Will; therefore, he takes it a tad more seriously than he does in other cases. And that says something about how important it is to him. The episode also includes a look into Will and Angie’s past, giving us a better understanding of them both individually and collectively. The dynamic between them has always been somewhat of a mystery, but this episode craftily touches upon it.
Angie and Ormewood give us a peek into the police psyche and why law enforcement officers can get so dark at a moment’s notice. The ending of episode 8 of Will Trent’s debut season is even more shattering and presents a dubious cue for what comes next. We are at hand to explain all of it to you in the piece below.
Will Trent (Season 1), Episode 8 Recap:
“Two Hundred Dollars and a Bus Pass”
Will and Faith investigate Alison Schooner’s Murder
This episode’s case revolves around the death of Alison Schooner, a student who drowned in the river by tying herself to a cinder block. Her body is discovered in the morning in the golf park, and Will and Faith investigate. They find a suicide note too in her backpack. Chancellor Kuo wants to get ahead of the narrative and approaches the detectives. Will clearly believes it is not a case of suicide. Not only does the note itself has all the makings of falsified evidence (it is a torn piece of paper with one line), but the manner of the killing is inconsistent with a suicide.
Will’s suspicion is proved right when he discovered a cut on her neck, probably with a sharp object and the blood that smeared the tree bark where she was standing.
The killer probably thought the water sprinklers in the warning would wash the blood away, but blood is thicker than water. The night before, we saw someone called Jason, who approached her at the door of the university. We could sense some animosity between them, something like a breakup. And we also saw a dog walker wave at Alison before she was killed.
They go to Alison’s house, where she stays with six fellow students. Dwayne Gilbert, a fellow student, entertains the detectives. Will notices the many padlocks in the room and deduces that Alison grew up in foster care. They also discover that the writing on the note is Alison’s when they see the other things labeled in the room. It seems a bit personal to Will as we see him next question Milo Braham, who stumbles outside Alison’s room.
He doesn’t get too far, and Will pushes him up against the wall to ask about a knife he finds in Milo’s backpack. It is a felting knife, but Milo collapses suddenly due to a seizure. Fellow students record the act, and Amanda reprimands Will. Jeremy, Faith’s son, also goes to the same university. At the hospital, the endocrinologist greets her and remembers her from episode 5 when she went in for her diabetes diagnosis. Milo doesn’t have a history of epilepsy, and they have put him in a coma to prevent brain swelling. What caused the seizure, then? The endocrinologist also gives out his personal number to Faith and asks her for dinner.
She seems a little nervous and unprepared and even flustered by the flirtations of Dr. Farhad. Will’s connection to Alison’s circumstance surfaces once again as a voice in Will’s head tells him to negate the coroner’s view that she was a heavy drinker. The coroner speculates the killer was a hunter as he knew exactly how to twist the knife in Alison’s neck. Will also discovers that Alison was part of drug research. Jason was Alison’s former boyfriend and a research assistant on the drug trial. Faith speculates that Jason got Alison into the trial because she needed money, and he thought it would make her grateful to him. But it didn’t happen. While going through her social media, Will also notices that Jason’s family has a cabin in the woods.
Dr. Tilda is heading the research, and Jason is one of her assistants. Will and Faith talk to Darla, the other research assistant. She tells them that the drug is for relieving hypertension. Jason reveals that his brothers hunt, and he doesn’t. He was at the lab the night of the murder and has a solid alibi in the form of Darla. He is genuinely mourning for Alison and doesn’t seem to be the killer. Darla says that Jason is definitely not the killer, but she wasn’t with him the whole night, stepping out occasionally to do stuff.
Farhad informs Faith that Milo’s seizure was due to a drug interaction that is an anti-hypertension drug. It seems like Alison was giving him the drugs from the trial, or perhaps he was sneaking them out of her apartment. But why was he taking them? Will thinks the drugs might have been sold for “recreational purposes.” Faith and Will lure the students in with pizza, and Angie and Ormewood use the same tactic downstairs on the residents from the facility.
The students confirm that the drug was sold illegally, and Milo did buy it. Will recalls the days he was kicked out of foster homes. They would give the outgoing children “$200 and a Bus Pass”. Will concedes he even shoplifted one time for food. But Amanda saved him and showed him a new direction in life. Will feels that phase came for Alison, too, but she wasn’t able to make it. He vows to find the killer.
Chancellor Kuo explains to Will that to get drugs from the research trial, the students need to submit to a blood test. Dr. Tilda was the one signing off on them, and she could easily falsify data too. But why would she be selling the drugs illegally? Faith thinks she recruited Alison to sell them, and the note, “I want it to end,” referred to this arrangement. When they get to the lab, Tilda defends herself. The detectives show a search warrant.
But when they go to the back, they find Darla unconscious and lying in a pool of blood. Somebody has taken all the blood samples. Darla explained that all the blood samples were identical, and Jason was entering them in the names of different people. And then Jason came in and attacked Darla. They find Jason dead, holding a gun in the boiler room, indicating he committed suicide too. But Will questions why Jason would go through the trouble of making the murder look like suicide when he could have just held her underwater.
Angie and Ormewood go to an Old-Age Home
The pair have to solve the murder of Steve Susperio (stage name), a magician who was killed with a knife in his back. There are no signs to deem it a robbery, and they investigate. Ms. Nancy Hernandez, the manager of the facility, Sundine Life, explains that Steve performed every Thursday. The facility looks like an old age home, and we see two patients, Linda and Barry, in wheelchairs, come into the room unfazed and complain about a show. Ormewood finds a tripod stand near the body and figures that someone stole his phone. They search the premises.
While questioning Hernandez, they discover that a few of the residents and an employee, Ernesto, have previous criminal records. Someone pulls the fire alarm to distract them while they search rooms for other residents with records. But Angie says they must push on, and Ormewood agrees. At the station, Leigh, the daughter of a resident, Gus, picks him up from the station. She mentions something about Gus’ expensive spending spree online, but he denies the claims, intriguing Angie. She goes up to Will and asks her for someone in the financial crimes division to pursue this lead.
Will also tells her about Alison and how she was one of them – a foster child. Angie discovers that Steve is actually under investigation for identity theft. He had been siphoning money off the residents at that facility and all over the state. He hypnotized them to get their personal details. Someone poured water all over the computers during the fire drill, according to the information Ormewood received. And Sheila had Steve’s phone.
The phone reveals everything. Nancy and Steve were in a relationship, and he was leaving her to go to the Bahamas. When he called he crazy, she plunged the knife into Steve and killed him. Nancy also confesses that she was Steve’s accomplice in the financial crime.
Will Trent (Season 1), Episode 8 Recap & Ending, Explained:
How does Will figure out the murder of Alison Schooner?
At the hospital, Milo confesses he was buying the drug. He saw who attacked Alison that night because he followed her. Farhad tells them they should allow Milo to rest for the night, and they agree to return in the morning. We see Darla on her side, hearing everything. At night, she goes into his room to kill him but finds that it is a decoy. Will is sitting in the room and says he knew Darla was behind it. A flashback shows her doing exactly what Will deduced.
Darla killed Jason and used the boiler to keep Jason’s body warm to obscure the time of death. She wanted them to believe that Jason was later killed after stabbing her. After that, she entered the room where she was discovered and stabbed herself with a scalpel hidden in one of the vents. The police found the scalpel. Its precision raised doubts in his mind, and that’s how he found out. Darla was supplying the pills, and Alison was selling them. When she wanted to stop, Darla killed her—and tried to frame Jason. Faith arrests her.
Will teases Faith about Dr. Far-hottie, and it seems like she is taking him seriously. Will makes dinner for Nico and Angie at his house. Angie decides to honor Alison at dinner. Will laments the fact that Alison felt lonely and was doing her best to let people in. If things were a little different, she would still be alive.
Why did Angie and Will toast to Alison Schooner at dinner?
“You were seen, known, and remembered.” is an important statement. We saw in the last episode that Angie and Will went through a tumultuous time in their foster care. Angie was raped and yet hesitated to report it as she knew the man would go scot-free. It was Will who went with her to the abortion clinic, risking his own safety to make sure she did not feel alone. Alison went through a similar time as Will investigated more into her case. He felt connected with her circumstance and knew exactly the hardships she faced.
The detectives did not accept her decisions at face value and did not pass judgement on her as they learned more. Angie understood the same feeling and knew how important it was for WIll. That is why she toasted to the memory of Alison. Considering how the show has tried to destigmatize kids from the foster system, it is a bold statement. They are often looked at differently for their different sensibilities, but Will Trent tries hard to defy that narrative.
