Jay Singletary is following up the phone call he got from Jimmy Lee, Fauna's adopted mother about Dr Hodel. His editor Peter Sullivan wants nothing to do with it. The first investigation ruined a lot of journalists reputations and sent Jay spiralling down the gutter.
As Sullivan tells him the game is fixed and the cops are crooked. We see the cops beating some black people up after a black lady was refused to board a bus.
This is the era of LA Confidential, the cops are not straight, Sullivan knows this and people like Hodel can buy protection.
In Los Angeles, Fauna stays with Jimmy Lee's family. She knows she is still being followed and her grandfather stands her up when she goes to a creepy mansion. Dr Hodel does not seem to be too far away.
The mainstay of the episode is when Fauna meets her step grandmother Corinna Hodel (Connie Nielsen) a daughter of a famous artist. Corinna has a imperious air about her with a faux part English and Southern accent. She seemingly spins lies and struggles to hide her disdain of Fauna. Look at the way she corrects Fauna's eating manners at a dinner in a restaurant, showing her superiority.
Fauna gets bad news about her real mother from Corinna who also tells Fauna that she is not black at all, her father was a French ballet dancer. Fauna runs away from her disbelievingly. Unknowingly Jay has spotted her as he has been staking out Corinna.
There is certainly something surreal and deceitful with the scenes between Corinna and Fauna with Dr Hodel hovering somewhere.
The episode has great period detail, director Patty Jenkins seems to have been heavily influenced by the movie LA Confidential. The story does slow down as they fill the story up with character interactions and paint the characters.
Jay meets an old flame, a drug addict just like him. No wonder he wants to grab at a chance of redemption, to prove to the world he was right all along.
