'In the Dark' Season 2 Episode 3: A new IRS agent could get Murphy into trouble in more than one way
Spoiler alert for 'In the Dark' Season 2 Episode 3 'Son of a Gun'
This week's episode of 'In the Dark' on The CW begins with a shot of Murphy Mason (Perry Mattfeld) drinking in sadness. This comes after Murphy was forced to break up with Max Parish (Casey Deidrick) after she realized that her former boyfriend and murderer, Dean Riley (Rich Sommer) was after him.
Any good The CW drama comes with a lot of misdirections and this week's episode was truly a masterclass in bringing that. Quite a bit went down — some potentially good and some not so — as we got more flashforwards of Ben (Chris Perfetti), the new receptionist at Guiding Hope in the present, lying in a pool of blood sometime in the future.
Max is going to stick around
Last week, after Murphy broke up with Max to keep Dean away from him, fans were distraught at Max's supposed one-and-done situation. However, while he's on the run, he realizes his stash of money is missing.
When he ends up sleeping in a parking lot in his car at night, an officer flags him. This sends the information that Max is around to Dean's new partner, Gene Clemens (Matt Murray), who begins their hunt for Max.
Dean gets to Max first and while Max tries to give chase, Dean catches him. Unfortunately, they get stuck in an elevator, and despite being in handcuffs, Max taunts Dean about Tyson's death.
Dean tries to get Max to divulge information about Nia, telling him that Murphy doesn't have Max's best interests at heart. To prove it, Dean says Murphy slept with him the day after Max left, and remarked on a birthmark that she has.
Max finally agrees to Dean's demands and it looks like Dean will let the former go. However, when the elevator starts working again, Gene is at the door with a handful of officers and Max is officially arrested.
IRS officer — thorn or potential love interest?
Murphy has to put aside her grief over sending Max away for a bit after two IRS Criminal Investigation officers come to Guiding Hope to ask a few questions. While Murphy and Jess Damon (Brooke Markham) are nervous about it, the IRS officers seem satisfied and leave.
Later, one of the IRS officers, Josh Wallace (Theodore Bhat) returns and says he wants his dog groomed by Guiding Hope's grooming service. Murphy hands over Josh's dog, Ollie to Jess while keeping Josh company — Josh had insisted on staying on and taking a tour of Guiding Hope.
Murphy grows increasingly suspicious of Josh and believes that he is still investigating them. Later, she concludes that Josh wants to sleep with her and when she says so, Josh gets offended and leaves.
Later, Josh speaks to Murphy and tells her the real reason he was there was because he was going blind and he came using the pretext of his job wondering if it would make it easier.
When we see Josh next, he is at the office when he is handed a bunch of files on Max. It looks like Josh will be staying around and we cannot help but think the whole Murphy-Max-Josh situation could get really messy.
Elsewhere in the episode, we saw Felix Bell (Morgan Krantz), Murphy's and Jess's boss, get a gun to protect himself against drug kingpin Nia Bailey's henchwoman. However, in the flashforwards, we see it is the same gun that potentially kills Ben as an unidentified hand drops it.
Like we said before, a lot happened in this week's episode and we are waiting to see how it all potentially ties up to the end. We are glad Max is sticking around — and props to the writers for finding a way to keep him shirtless for nearly the whole episode.
While Josh is charming, we don't want to see another love triangle. The whole Dean-Murphy-Max thing was troublesome enough and with the addition of Josh as a recurring character, it certainly seems to be headed to another messy situation for Murphy.
'In the Dark' airs on The CW on Thursday nights at 9/8c.