By Brandon Nolta

Let the opening scenes of this week’s K-VILLE be a lesson to you folks out there who work in fields that require you to set a schedule: If you make an appointment, keep that appointment, and don’t break it without damn good reason. This week’s victim is a plastic surgeon who blew off his afternoon appointments, and the next thing you know, he’s dead. I don’t know that those two states are connected, but it’s a valuable lesson nonetheless.

Anyway, as Boulet (Anthony Anderson) and Cobb (Cole Hauser) investigate, things stop adding up. At first, it looks like a robbery-homicide, as interviews reveal the doc had a briefcase that wasn’t with his corpse. However, Cobb and Boulet follow some tracks to a trio of kids who found the briefcase—and the corpse—and are industriously trying to open the case. Cobb, being of a more subtle turn of mind, gets it open to find $50,000 in cash, begging the question of why the murderer didn’t take the case and the money. Following on the heels of that question is the wondering of what the hell the good doc was doing with $50,000 in cash. Even with tip, you’d be hard-pressed to find a lunch that costs that much.

And things just keep getting weirder: It turns out that the cash was intended to pay off a fellow from Dallas, the biological father of the doctor’s little girl. The girl’s mother died in Katrina, and the girl was lost and thought dead, but thanks to a chance viewing of a Web site, the biological father discovered his little girl was still alive. However, when Boulet and Cobb pull the guy in, he claims he was kidnapped and locked in a cage inside a truck that smelled of garlic. WTF? But, a little checking comes up with animal control, and sure enough, they find a guy meeting the father’s description. The boys show up, the suspect rabbits, and now the case makes even less sense.


A lot of investigative work is following paper, running through the trails of bureaucracy to find the one piece of information needed to have the puzzle make sense. When Boulet and Cobb follow the paper, the trail leads back to the adoption worker who set the girl up with her adoptive family, and who connects the biological father, the adoptive family and the running suspect (who got himself run over and so has no further lines in the episode). Is there infidelity and bribery involved? Oh, hell yes; this is N’Awlins, after all, and everything in the Big Easy is more funky than anywhere else.

K-VILLE started strong as a series, and it continues to improve; the relationship between Cobb and Boulet broadens with every scene, and the insights into their characters keep underlining and defining the show’s milieu in new and complex ways. I’d probably watch Anderson and Hauser read the phonebook in character, that’s how good they are together. The secondary characters are also shaping up to be entertaining; this was the first episode where Glue Boy (Blake Shields) and Love Tap (Tawny Cypress) seemed like they could be as interesting as the stars. Overall, there’s a rhythm and intensity that most shows in the genre seem to lack, and it’s worth your Monday night to get a taste.