‘Trophy Wine’ Recap. L&O: Criminal Intent S10 E5

Can we be up to the 5th installment of the last season of CI already? Yes, alas, we’re getting down to the home stretch with only 3 episodes to go when Goren’s shrink touches a nerve. Does he love Eames? Maybe a few years ago, that would have been a worthy subplot, but with 3 episodes to go, we can’t see any happily ever afters for Bobby Goren and Alexandra Eames or their fans!

In “Trophy Wife” (6/5/11) our cast includes a super wealthy wine importer, Bing Cullman (Michael Cumpsty); the archetypal long-suffering wife, ad exec, Avery (Andrea Roth).

Then we’ve got Shane (Scott Evans), a male model and part-time gigolo; Emily (Kay Copeland), a call girl from an escort service who’s really into her client; the butler, Loy (Juan Luis Acevedo); Ev Dilahunt (Munson Hicks), wine broker and auctioneer, and a few other folks incidental to the ultimate solution.

In a movie-like opening, a highly valuable shipment of wine arrives via armored car to Bing Cullman, who gives his wife Avery an anniversary gift. He tells her to open it after she finishes her photo shoot. Bing has a little wine tasting party, then we see Avery finishing her photo shoot. She opens her gift to find a key on a chain. Model Shane gives Avery a hard time for being gone for an hour. She asks him for a ride home. Bing meantime is having an argument with someone. Everyone leaves and Bing keeps on tasting wine and starts to become sick. Down in his wine cellar, he opens the safe while getting sicker by the second. The cellar door slams shut. He’s locked in. He bangs on the doors, screaming to be let out.

The next time we see him, he’s a corpse and Goren and Eames have to figure out how that happened because he’s a wealthy corpse. “A millionaire’s death is never simple,” and these things don’t look good: the safe is not only open, it’s empty. Bing’s pinky knuckles are scraped and there are nail marks in his palms, indicating he was banging on the door pretty darned hard with clenched fists. Did someone intentionally lock him in? Yup, it was easily opened from the inside.

Avery tells the detectives she came home at 11 and assumed Bing was in the cellar. She went to bed. Loy the butler, found Bing dead. Their marriage had it’s up and downs but it was better than most. Bing had the usual health problems for his age and Goren and Eames want a list of his meds. Loy gives them the low-down on who was at the wine tasting: Dilahunt and two other guests.

At Dilahunt’s auction house, he says the wine was special because it belonged to George Washington. The First President’s initials were engraved on all three bottles, the only three bottles in existence. His sommelier, Miss Balon, was at the wine tasting but he can’t reveal any other names. Later, Miss Balon gives that up rather than get deported. But all these leads not only peter out, it turns out the wine was fake and so was Bing. His real name is Arnold Binder. His scam was to buy one real bottle for everyone to taste. then sell fakes. Following up on the other guests leads to info that Avery did not arrive home alone, she had a boy toy in tow, Bing was “the Bernie Madoff of the wine world” and had another apartment for extra-marital fun and games in his real name.

Bing’s autopsy results reveal a blood alcohol content of 1.9, nitrates from his normal meds and traces of Viagra were found in the wine glass. This combo could have caused a fatal heart attack. They also find out Avery has no priors but her mother had a record for drugs and prostitution. Do they really check on people’s parents who weren’t even around in cases like this?

Avery says Loy was the only one in the cellar with Bing and when taken into the station, the butler admits he robbed the safe when he saw Bing dead. He manages to convince them the butler didn’t do it, although they didn’t forget to put the line in.

The handsome young man is the male model Shane, and we’re back to suspecting the wife Avery when she goes to Shane’s apartment and tells him it’s done — Bing is dead — following up with a passionate smooch.

But before our aha! can be satisfied, Goren and Eames find yet another possible suspect, Emily, and get some info out of her about Bing’s open marriage and how on the night he died, he had already taken nitro so he would not have taken Viagra, too.

They confront old Avery with what they’ve got and make her admit that her marriage was far from happy. Avery confesses and says she’s glad Bing is dead. This confession must have been too quick for their taste so they uncover yet another “love nest” – Shane and Avery’s. They think she’s covering up for Shane and when they head over to his place, who’s there but Emily. Now they think Emily and Shane are in cahoots, but more pieces of puzzle fall in place through Emily’s interrogation.

Spoiler: Who really did it

Shane’s interrogation reveals he was really working for Bing to help him have evidence that would leave Avery out in the cold for infidelity, according to the terms of her prenup. As Avery watches through the one way glass, Shane says he never had sex with cougar Avery anyway and made faces as she watched, showing he really thought she was gross. She probably wanted to murder him, too, after that.

Goren realizes Avery cleverly set the murder up to make it look like she was confessing to protect Shane. He breaks her down gently by leading her through the humiliating and emotionally devastating 10 years she was married to Bing. She protests that she loved Bing and it was never about the money. Goren gets his results when he suggests that Bing sadistically tormented Avery over her mother’s shady past. The tears finally come, as Avery says Bing told her the prenup was a million dollars over 10 years which comes out to $300 a night, “just enough for a whore like you.” She gives it all up and says she’s not a whore. “No,” Goren agrees, “You’re a murderer.”

Recap of Season 10, Episode 6 (June 13, 2011) “Cadaver”