Episode 1 of Black Bird starts in Chicago 1996.
After a brief introduction to the Butterfly Effect (how seemingly unrelated incidents
can be connected) Jimmy Keene’s life is about to be changed forever thanks to a girl
on a bike and a business deal.
Meeting his contact, Rog, everything goes sour.
Jimmy’s friend from first grade, and fellow drug dealer, has sold them out.
He’s stolen drugs and Rog grabs a shotgun, looking to make him pay.
Although Jimmy manages to talk him down and save Dany’s life, it’s the beginning of
the end.
In the morning, Jimmy’s house is stormed by FBI agents who handcuff and arrest him.
Jimmy has stacks of cash, illegal firearms and drugs across the table.
Even worse, his prosecutor for this case wants to make an example of him.
However, if Jimmy takes the plea offering, he’ll get 2 years but because of the guns
he’ll have to do the midrange – which means he’ll have to serve 5 years and be
out after 4 on good behaviour.
This appears to be the only solution.
Before court, Jimmy pleads guilty but unfortunately he gets 10 years, not the 5 he was hoping
for.
Seven months later, Jimmy is still in prison but called in to a meeting.
There, he meets Special Agent Lauren McCauley accompanied by Mr Beaumont, the guy who convinced
him to plead guilty in the first place.
Anyway, Lauren admires the fact Jimmy is thriving in prison.
He gets along with everyone and has even set up a side-gig hustle, giving out 30 minute
blocks for renting out porno mags.
With Jimmy’s charisma and skills, the officers want to put him to work.
Specifically, they want Jimmy to befriend another inmate and get him to reveal the location
of a dead body.
You see, the man in question has actually killed 14 women but they only know the location
for 1.
In order to conduct this mission, Jimmy will need to move across to a maximum security
prison specializing in the criminally insane, all the way out in Missouri.
If he can get the inmate to open up and reveal the location for the bodies, Jimmy is going
to be granted his freedom.
We then cut back 4 years earlier.
A woman named Jessica Roach is found deceased in Indiana having earlier gone missing on
July 20th.
This girl happens to be the one from the bike we heard about earlier in the episode.
This is how she’s connected to Jimmy’s case.
The van in the middle of this whole mess happens to be owned by a guy called Lawrence D. Hall.
Police are all over this, fronted by Chris Drydale and Sherriff Brian Miller who begin
sniffing around and asking questions.
Now, we already know that Lawrence has been arrested but there could be doubts around
whether he’s really the killer.
Larry is apparently a serial confessor and apparently harmless, at least according to
Chris Drydale.
Brian is not so sure.
Brian heads up and meets Larry.
Now, the guy is known to be involved with military re-enactments and given there was
a Revolutionary Re-enactment a day before Jessica Roach’s disappearance, it’s clear
that Brian is trying to connect the dots.
Larry also owns an 82′ Dodge van which he was driving around.
He also had words with a couple of girls then whom he claims were “pretty rude” to him.
Compounding these worries further, Larry admits that he’s been having dreams about killing
women lately.
Back with Jimmy, he discusses his options with his father.
Jimmy’s dad believes moving to Springfield for this operation is a death sentence, and
there’s no guarantee that he’ll even be able to get the information from Larry.
Jimmy’s mum shows up in prison some time later though and informs Jimmy that his father
is sick.
In his current state, he doesn’t have 10 years so Jimmy is likely to take the deal.
Jimmy lets Lauren know as much, but apparently it’s not a done deal.
There are other applicants they’re looking at too.
Jimmy isn’t exactly happy but Lauren encourages him to “do his homework” and continue
looking into the case file.
And he does just that, reading through the details of the file that night.
The first episode of Black Bird gets off to a decent start, introducing these two timelines
as we jump back and forth between Jimmy and Brian Miller.
That works reasonably well to get a feel for the case in question and it’s clear this
is going to take on more of a Mindhunter edge from here on out as Jimmy works to try and
get the truth from Larry.
It’s an interesting case and the show definitely has a lot of promise from its opening episode.
There’s a decent pacing to all this as well and the various characters, and the idea of
two seemingly unrelated incidents being drawn together, could well be a foreshadowed hint
that Larry isn’t necessarily guilty of these murders.
Episode 2 of Black Bird starts with us in the past, following Tricia Reitler as she
heads home.
However, she’s stalked by a guy in a van.
This is on March 29th 1993 and it would appear Larry is the snatcher.
We also cut back to the timeline involving Brian questioning Larry.
He claims that his dreams about women is more of an out of body experience than him actually
doing these deeds.
When Brian shows Larry a picture of Jessica though, he gets riled up and wants to go home.
Brian’s questioning is a dud, so as a result he’s encouraged to head home and build a
case so he can bring that against Larry.
Brian does no such thing.
Brian sticks around as Larry is questioned by police.
The latter refuses to take a polygraph test too, believing he wouldn’t pass it.
When he’s shown a picture of Jessica, Larry asks to touch it.
He claims she’s a nice girl but she got sad when she was in his van.
Larry continues on, claiming there is someone else “taking the credit” for what he’s
done.
He also brings up a very specific act in this case – folding the clothes.
Now, none of this is public knowledge and the clothes were all folded at the crime scene
– it would appear they’ve got their man.
The confessional statement takes what Larry has said in the interview room and twists
it into a big scenario involving rape and throwing the girl in his van.
When Larry is presented this confession to sign, surrounded by officers, he’s shocked
and claims he didn’t do this.
The officers are adamant he did.
Larry scoffs incredulously, “No wonder I couldn’t sleep at night.”
He signs.
Brian heads out to Larry’s abode with the other FBI agents and pores over the details.
Lauren takes Brian outside where they check out the vans.
One is full of gear while the other is completely bare.
According to the ERT guy, it smells like three things: Chemical cleanser, Armor All and denatured
alcohol.
The one thing that the usually messy Larry Hall (given the state of his van and house)
keeps clean.
In the present, Jimmy is questioned by Lauren over girls and, in particular, what he likes
about them.
In the middle of this, Jimmy perks up and believes Lauren is playing him.
He’s convinced there’s no one else they’ve chosen for this task.
Only… that’s false.
Lauren spins her laptop screen around to reveal another candidate, a guy who used to be a
Ranger for the Desert Storm whom they’ve had their eyes on.
Beaumont wants to pick him.
Remember what we said earlier about the van being kept clean?
When Lauren speaks to Jimmy again, she brings up how Hall was a competent cleaner.
According to the three office buildings he worked on as a janitor, the bosses of those
places claim they’ve never met anyone who cleans half as well as Larry.
Not only that, but Larry also has a twin called Gary, who has all the looks and charm.
Larry has always been desperate for attention and is impressionable, which could explain
why he’s admitting to this crime, even if he hasn’t necessarily done it.
When Larry is transferred, in the back of Brian’s car no less, he talks about how
the confession was coerced.
He’s got himself a lawyer, courtesy of Gary.
Brian doesn’t seem too bothered though.
Anyway, Lauren wants Jimmy to be like Gary, letting Larry confide in him like a brother
when he’s transferred into the prison.
Given he adopts many of the same attributes, including being cocky and athletically fit,
it makes sense that he’s chosen for this job.
And he passes the test too.
Jimmy is immediately transferred out and across to Springfield.
He’s nervous, concerned about what’s to come as Jimmy approaches the foreboding building.
Now, time is of the essence with this case.
It turns out the judge has looked over the details of the Larry Hall case and has concerns.
The block letter signature and the fact Brian was “intimidating” are both enough for
a second appeal to be put on the docket.
That means Jimmy needs to speed up his case.
Jimmy heads into Springfield and prepares to get accustomed to this new prison.
It’s far more brutal than the previous one he was in.
That night, Jimmy realizes he’s in a cell adjacent to Larry’s.