| Who Shot Jay Arnstein? | |
| Season 1, Episode 5 | |
 | |
| Air date | June 29, 2008 |
| Written by | Matt Ward |
| Directed by | Tricia Brock |
| Episode Guide | |
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Who Shot Jay Arnstein? is the fifth episode of the first season of the first season of In Plain Sight.
Summary[]
When Jay and Marci Arnstein go into the witness program, Mary is put in a dilemma when Jay brings his mistress Kay along as well. Although she objects to the mistress being brought into the program, Mary's job is to protect Jay and those around him. During an art show, everything comes undone when Jay is shot. Mary's job is to figure out who did it and why, but moral contradictions come into play.
Witnesses[]
- Marci and Jay Arnstein (was Allen)
- Kay Swensen (was Sweeny)
Things of Note[]
Full Recap[]
The Feds make a lot of promises in exchange for testimony, not all of them moral, and it's the Marshals who are stuck with the consequences. This is possibly Mary's least favorite part of the job. She's got enough problems with the witnesses who deserve her protection.
When New York City art dealer Jay Arnstein goes into the Witness Protection Program, he asks that his wife, Marci, be moved with him. Typically, this wouldn't be an unusual request but in this case, it was Marci who ratted out Jay to the FBI for his illegal art dealings. But Marci is looking as entering WITSEC as a chance to start over-an optimistic attitude if there ever was one. But what has really stuck in Mary's craw is that Jay made a separate deal with the Department of Justice to bring along his mistress, Kay, for the ride. On top of that, the rules of the Program force Mary to keep this detail from Marci, a very sweet woman of whom she has grown quite fond (a rare yet occasional occurrence).
Things might have gone on like that forever-until Kay shows up at Jay's new gallery opening, sending Marci into a bit of a tailspin, since she was under the impression that she and Jay had rekindled their romance making their marriage better than ever. This would've been a mess for Jay to deal with-his idea for which is to break up with Kay and have Mary ship her off to another location-but when he is shot later that night, it becomes Mary's responsibility to clean up.
Mary's also got a bit of a complicated situation on the home front herself: Raphael has torn his ACL and is not only back home from Florida, but on Mary's couch recuperating until the swelling goes down and he can be more mobile. But instead of Mary becoming Raph's nursemaid, it's Brandi who takes on the Florence Nightingale role-though it's unclear who is more surprised by that particular development.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
Guest Cast[]
Mary's Voice Over[]
If there's one thing working in Witness Protection has taught me, it's that people hate change. And we all say we want to change. Get thinner. Quit smoking. Learn to speak Portuguese. But we don't. For better or worse, our habits define us. We turn the pages of the same tattered script over and over. Clinging to our well-rehearsed routines like barnacles. And nothing rankles us more than having to learn new lines.
When something bad happens to a witness, the first thing every WITSEC inspector does is look for how he or she might have screwed up. Was I somehow responsible? Could I have prevented it? If it turned out Marci Arnstein shot her husband, I was pretty sure the answer was staring me in the face.
The first rule of police work is, "When in doubt, review the crime scene. " Okay, truth is, I have no idea what the first rule of police work is. But if memory serves, it has something to do with keeping your shoes polished to a glossy sheen.
Newton's first law of motion states, "Objects in motion tend to remain in motion." We are all objects in motion, unwavering from our course until acted upon by external forces.
And it was that same Marshall, an agent of universal order with uncommon insight into human frailty, that blasted Kay Swensen off her lifelong self-involved path and out of the Witness Protection Program.
As for Jay Arnstein, he was an amoral user of people, a heartless cad, a chiseler, a skinflint. And then a remarkable thing happened. Jay Arnstein was hit with the stark, graphic realization that he had caused the one true, pure, constant in his life, his North Star, the thing that allowed him to see the good in himself, to stray from her path. It was Marci's infidelity that made Jay so determined to change, to be a better man. And in the strange, twisty way of cause and effect, it was the shared secret Jay and Marci kept from each other of her infidelity that opened Marci's heart to forgiveness, and allowed them to move on together to another city and another second chance. And for others, it will take more than a bullet or infidelity or financial ruin to effect change.