Eli Stone: Kiss Me Katie

In case it’s been a few weeks since you’ve watched ABC, Tuesday night Katie Holmes returned to television on Eli Stone.  And boy did she hit a hot note.

Jogging through the park with his brother, Eli is struck by his first vision since the return of his aneurysm.  A tall, sexy brunette with va-va-voom hair and black leotard appears in a cloud of smoke, and with a sultry voice and some silky moves, entrances Eli with a Duke Ellington song (“Hit Me with a Hot Note,” to be exact).  And who is this spellbinding seductress?  None other than Mrs. Tom Cruise herself, proving that while her Broadway play reviews were less than great, she’d be right at home in a big stage musical.  It was quite the performance and left Eli gaga for this mystery brunette.

But back at the office of Wethersby, Posner & Klein, Eli’s got other troubles.  First off, Jordan Wethersby – fresh from being crushed in a bank last week – has decided that he’s taking the firm in a more honorable direction.  He now wants all their clients to take a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.  I’m a little unsure as to why they’d need lawyers then, and the firm’s fellow partners are equally baffled.  They’re so baffled that they file a motion to freeze Jordan’s decision-making abilities pending a full psychological work-up.  Eli blames himself for these troubles – and is helped in no small part by his former-fiancée Taylor, who blames him as well.

And if this wasn’t enough, Eli has a client with a very unpopular case: a father who doesn’t want his soldier son given a military funeral.  The father says it’s because it was what his son, Daniel, wanted.  He never wanted to be a soldier, but his father was one, and when he joined ROTC, it was the first time his father said he was proud of him.  You can just imagine how Mom felt about this.  Well, Daniel’s mother wants him to have a military funeral to give some meaning to what happened to him.  But Daniel didn’t die in battle in Iraq but from a congenital heart defect that caused him to drop dead suddenly on a trip back to camp.

The parents battle it out in court, but after the mother shows a video of Daniel in Iraq, boasting about how they built a swimming pool, Eli’s at a loss.  The kid seems to be proud to be in uniform.  What isn’t his father telling him?  And does it have something to do with a Sergeant Ellington?  The father is shocked that Eli has figured out that there’s something up with Ellington (visions come in handy, huh?), and finally reveals that Ellington helped him get Daniel into the army after he failed his first medical exam.  Daniel’s father knew about the heart condition all along.  He then read Eli a note (one some groups are sure to find controversial) in which Daniel describes how he had to tear children away from their Iraqi parents on a recent mission.  He wrote that he wished his own father cared enough to want to protect him, that he is not a soldier like his father, and that every time he puts on his uniform he feels a bit sicker.  The judge decides that Daniel really didn’t want a military funeral, and his mother leaves his father for hiding Daniel’s condition from her.

It sounds like a tough week for Eli, but luckily he had something bright to cheer him up (sort of).  At a baseball game Nate dragged him to, Eli was bemoaning the rowdy crowds when a raucous breaks out behind him.  A young woman has dropped her hot dog and now her drink on a fan, and the crowds are getting hostile.  Eli instantly recognizes the woman from his vision and creates his own scene, by yelling that the home team sucks.  He’s instantly bombarded with popcorn, slushie, and some cough syrup.  Grateful to her hero, mystery brunette helps clean Eli up (she carries seltzer with her and is a full-time klutz unlike her singing, dancing vision persona).  Her name is Grace, she works for Lawyers without Limits, and she’s sweet.  Eli wonders what he’s supposed to do for this girl since he’s usually supposed to help the people in his visions.  But his guru, Dr. Chen, suggests that maybe she’s here to help him.  After all, Dr. Chen tells him, “grace” is defined as “a spirit that exists for the sole purpose of providing strength.”

Eli’s not sure about it, but luckily the next day, Grace calls.  She wants to know if he sent her the ticket with the note “you are not alone.”  Eli’s confused, but no, he didn’t send it.  Grace gets embarrassed, Eli asks her to lunch, and she says she’s going to Kenya and hangs up.  Not done yet, Eli shows up at Grace’s office with hot dogs in hand (12, “like roses, only smellier”) and they share a walk.  Grace won’t reveal why she changed jobs from bankruptcy lawyer to world-hopping legal aid, but does say why she went to the game on the mystery ticket.  She’s always travelling but never gets to partake in any of those magic “airport moments.”  She was just hoping for a little magic in her life.

Smitten by this kitten, Eli persuades Grace to go to dinner with him – he knows a great jazz place.  Grace wants to know how he knew she liked jazz, and he says he’ll tell her at dinner.

And so they dine, she sets her menu on fire, and they dance to “Hit Me with a Hot Note.”  Finally Eli reveals that he had a vision of her, dancing in that very restaurant, before he met her, and she believes him.  But she won’t let him kiss her, because she’s leaving tomorrow.

Morning comes and Eli returns to the office.  He wins/loses his case, yells a bit (unfairly at Maggie), and realizes that it must have been Nate who sent the note to Grace.  And it was Nate!  But how did he know?  Nate reveals that he found their father’s diary (Papa Stone also had the aneurysm and visions).  And all of the notes in the journal are about Eli, including an entry on Grace Fuller complete with name, home address, and the real reason Grace switched jobs.  Eli reads it and runs off to the airport.

He finds Grace and tells her he knows about her heart condition.  It’s the same one Daniel had, and it means that she could drop dead, without warning, at any moment.  Eli (with his aneurysm) and Grace just have so much in common.  But she still has to catch her flight.  So what was it all for, Eli wants to know?  It was because they needed a reminder that they’re not alone, says Grace.  And, she adds, because she finally got her airport moment.  With that, she kisses him, wipes a tear, and off she goes.

Will Grace return?  I don’t know.  Unlike Eli Stone, I can’t see the future.  But I hope so, because Katie hit a hot note with a hot kiss on Tuesday night.  She even made me forget that she’s married to what’s-his-name.  Now that’s a job well done.

Season 2, Episode 2: Grace (originally aired October 21, 2008)

For more on Eli Stone, click here.

Tuesdays at 10/9C on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC