Eli Stone: The Path (Episode 201)

Visionary. The teaser is literally a wicked tease this week. Eli tells an unseen person that he was on his way to work that morning like normal—pre-aneurysm removal—when it happened. He walked straight into a dance number. And I was so excited about this dance number, you guys. I saw Johnny Lee Miller dancing in the commercials, and I was so happy. And now Patti’s singing “Dancing in the Streets,” and Eli is working the group choreography as he’s never done, and it is beautiful, but then Sigourney Weaver interrupts to tell us that Eli is totally making this up and lying.

For real, I am sad that was not a real vision, because I am all for singing and dancing at any given moment. Anyway. Dr. Sigourney exposits that Eli’s been coming to see her for three months to get his recertification to practice; everything’s been vision-free and rosy. Eli insists that he’s not depressed, just bored. He wants to do his job. He tells Dr. Sigourney that he’s been back at the office a week, where Patti’s trying to get him to predict the winning super-lotto numbers for her. He’s annoyed: “Whatever I was,” he says, “I’m not anymore.” Patti, saddened, gives him a welcome back present, an MP3 player. “So you can hear music whenever you want,” she says. Eli says he works better in the quiet. Dr. Sigourney thinks it’s interesting that someone who got annoyed by Eli’s “auditory hallucinations” wishes he still had them. She asks if anything else has changed, and we get to sit in on a WPK meeting in which it’s announced one of their biggest, lost clients, Mather Young Financial, to return to the firm; W’s disenchanted, given that the company regularly hands out fraudulent mortgages. How timely. Maggie’s heading up the pro bono department, but her cases are far less engaging than Eli’s and more, how can I put this?, mundane. She and W try to tempt Eli back into it, but he says he still doesn’t have his license. Dr. Sigourney asks about Eli’s feelings for Maggie, which he claims are nonexistent. He says that the only thing going back to work has done is remind him how much he misses it. He yells about how much he misses being an advocate and being the only one his clients trust, and Dr. Sig’s look speaks volumes. All called “Full of Crap.”

She asks about Nate, who it turns out is moving in with Beth. Eli is so cool with this that he’s “arctic.” They joke like brothers, and Nate tells Eli that eventually he’ll find someone to share his life with, too. So, he says, everything is fine. Dr. Sig calls his bluff and signs the form; she tells him practicing law won’t fill the void she knows he’s feeling. He’s like, we’ll see. Before he leaves, he asks her what he’s missing. A sense of the divine in every day life, she says. “I think you’re less happy now than when your life was occasionally upended by the fantastic. I think that grace fulfilled you in a way you didn’t even know you needed. And the only thing crazy about you is the fact that you don’t even seem to realize it,” she says. He thanks her for signing off on him, and she tells him serenely that she’ll see him soon.

Nate’s at the hospital when he steps into not a patient’s room, like he should, but a bank lobby. He looks around, confused, and then a giant crane falls through the bank’s roof and directly on him. He comes to, cowering on the floor of a patient’s room. Not good. He immediately heads for the expert on these things, his little brother Eli. He says he’s realized that he never asked what it was like when Eli was having his visions. “Was it like you were walking into a room and then suddenly, you were some place else?” Eli asks what happened, and Nate tells him he was one place, then another. He was in a bank, but he wasn’t. He asks what Eli thinks. Eli gapes a moment before replying, “I think a huge ass crane is gonna fall on top of a bank.” Nate thinks this is crazy, but Eli thinks it’s a sign. Nate leaves, insisting he’s fine.

Taylor tells W she’s concerned about him. I’m concerned about the relative immobility of her forehead. Basically, before Eli’s aneurysm, W didn’t realize how much he needed the craziness and excitement of idealistic cases. And now that he’s back and he’s not the same Eli, W is sad. Taylor reminds him that the Eli there now is the same one she was prepared to marry, not the broken one who dumped her. W says they should take a lesson and just stay away from him.

Eli goes to see Chen, who’s peddling ginseng smoothies. It’s been four months since they’ve seen each other, so this is new to Eli. Chen explains that in a declining economy, people stop paying to get poked with needles. “It’s all about diversification,” he says. Like being a prophet and a lawyer, which is so crazy. Eli tells him to break out the straight jacket. Chen, all hopeful, asks if Eli had a vision. Eli: “Not exactly.” He explains about Nate. Chen scoffs, and Eli asks if he doesn’t want to believe it. Chen poetically talks about the last time he saw the Grateful Dead, when he felt like he was part of something huge and beautiful and magical, but the next morning, it was over. All he has is the memory, which isn’t as good. Eli apologizes for the surgery. Chen says he’s not judging, but Eli has to understand that he wasn’t the only one affected by the vision. Everyone was touched by it in some way; the more Eli changed his life, the more he made it possible for others to change, too. The surgery had consequences for lots of people, and it took something from everyone who had been touched. Elsewhere, Jordan enters the bank of Nate’s vision. Eli says he didn’t realize how much would change. Chen says that maybe Eli is someone who doesn’t realize something is missing until it’s gone. And then the crane falls.

Everyone watches the coverage at WPK; the crane fell on Credit Dauphine. Which is relatively brilliant, because that is where Jack Bristow (Victor Garber, who is Jordan, and who is awesome) worked as part of his cover for SD6. I cackled at that. Eli sips a Chen-smoothie as Keith tells him W was inside. Eli hurries out to see Taylor and W’s wife (who may or may not be Taylor’s mom, I don’t know). Matt Dowd comforts Taylor as she and Mrs. W fret over not being in touch with Jordan. Matt tells Eli to stay away from Taylor; he upsets her too much. Nate arrives and asks what’s happening to him. Eli takes him straight to Chen.

Nate is not exactly on board with the whole acupuncture thing, but he goes along with it because it’s two against one, Chen and Eli advocating the needle. Nate falls straight into a vision of W pulling out of the deal with Mather Young and their predatory mortgages. He tells them all they’re insipid pond scum. He leaves, and so anxious is he to get where he’s going, he skips the elevator and heads for the stairwell. The crane falls, frightening Nate out of his vision. He says Jordan’s still in the bank, but not the conference room.

The rescue team is not willing to listen. The lead firefighter tells Eli that people don’t take the stairs when there are elevators, and even if they did, with the way the building collapsed, anyone in that stairwell is toast. Taylor and Matt come over while Eli is negotiating. Eli tries to tell her he just knows that Jordan’s in the stairwell, the same way he knew about the earthquake last year. Taylor freaks out for him to get away from her.

Back at WPK, Nate says he knows why their dad drank so much. Eli says he drank because he couldn’t do anything about the visions he had. He’s frustrated that he can’t take this to court and get an injunction for the rescue team to search somewhere else, given how he doesn’t have a client. Nate says he’ll figure it out; he always does. Maggie arrives just then with Mrs. W, who asks if he can really get a jnduge to side with him. Eli says he can try, and he chases Maggie down to ask what she said to Mrs. W. Maggie told her how Eli saved Scott’s life from the earthquake and that she never said thank you. Eli accepts this and asks Patti to call in a favor for him to get Judge Phelps. Posner interrupts, and when he finds out what Eli’s doing, thinks Eli’s even more nuts than ever. He asks Patti to get Taylor on the phone.

Eli’s before the judge when the entire firm, practically, arrives to argue on behalf of the city. They argue pointlessly until Maggie, as she often does, shows up with something Eli needs: this time, a structural engineer. Matt objects, and Phelps bangs in a recess. In the hall, Taylor berates Eli some more for being unstable and weird and having visions. Eli says he’s just someone who knows more than he possibly can. Nonplussed, Taylor thinks he should take that to the judge, because it proves that he’s lost it. And then behind them, Nate collapses.

At the hospital, Eli tries to talk Nate down from the aneurysm edge. Eli’s like, dude, you’ll be fine, and if you have an aneurysm, you’ll probably be the first person in history to operate on his own head. Nate asks if he can sue himself for botching it. Eli’s like, no, I got it. Just then he gets a call from his state-mandated shrink, who tells him he hasn’t gotten the clear to be in court yet. It is not Dr. Sigourney. Eli says he got the all-clear, but has to check the form for the doctor’s name. But the signature line is just blank. He immediately heads for the office, which has been vacant for three months and, when Eli steps inside, is deserted and in disarray. “I am officially losing it,” he tells himself. He turns to leave, but Dr. Sigourney speaks from the void and when he turns around, the office is as we saw it in the teaser.

Dr. Sigourney drinks some tea while Eli tries to get his bearings. He realizes that he doesn’t know her name. She stares at him impassively. He shows her the empty form. Dr. Sigourney asks why he would take the time to come talk to her. He asks if she’s nothing but a vision. She is enigmatic. He asks if she’s… She says God is such a limiting term. She’s more a fiduciary. This is the deal: Eli returned the vision package, but he’s meant for something more. He’s someone for whom normal is “a failure of potential.” He asks if he’s being punished, with Jordan having a crane fall on him and Nate with the aneurysm. “That’s not the way of things,” he’s told. Dr. God says she would like to see him have such passion for his own life. What’s happened to Jordan isn’t punishment, but as for Nate… it was him or Eli. Eli begs for his brother, since Nate has everything going for him, with Beth and Sam and his whole life. Eli cries, saying he’ll take it back. Nate is better than him. Dr. God tells Eli that he has to be ready to lead. He blinks, and she’s gone.

Taylor excoriates Eli’s witness on the stand. Eli arrives just as Phelps is ready to make her judgment against him. Eli asks to make a closing statement. Taylor’s like, remember how he’s nuts? Eli basically says, yes, but my visions have saved lives. God talks to me, but I make things happen. He says he knows that faith isn’t what matters in court. Courts do acknowledge the existence of a higher power, so why not the possibility of a prophetic lawyer? He says he believes that Jordan’s going to die unless Phelps rules against the city. He believes so much he’s risking his career. Phelps says that part of her believes him, and she wants to, but belief isn’t what she’s sworn to rule by.

In the hall, Eli approaches Taylor one more time. He thinks she’s scared that he’s for real. He says he used to be, too, but he’s not afraid anymore. Taylor can believe him. Taylor wavers, and Eli says she has more pull than he does with the search and rescue. Posner’s like, your ass is grass, Eli, but Taylor’s ready to give it a try: she believes Eli.

At the rescue site, the lieutenant tells Taylor and Mrs. W that Jordan’s safe. The EMTs say that he’s concussed, but it seems someone was looking out for him. His women climb into the ambulance to ride with him. Eli, watching, gets a call from Nate, who says that his MRI was clean. No aneurysm. Eli says they need another one, but for him.

Sure enough, there’s the aneurysm. It’s grown back, seemingly overnight. “It’s okay,” Eli says.

Nate marvels that Eli knew. Eli just says he has to go see Jordan. Outside his room, Taylor says she should have listened to him the first time, when the visions started; Eli says she’s listening now. Matt: “You had a good day.” He sort of apologizes, but only sort of. Eli goes in to see Jordan, who says he feels like he just got pulled out of a building. He was on his way to see Eli when the building came down around him. “I needed to tell you… I know what we have to do now,” he says.

A bit of editorial here: I don’t know how I feel about Eli confronting his higher power face to face, but I think I like that at least this time, he made the choice to carry that aneurysm and everything that comes with it. Even if he only made it to save his brother, it was his choice to make. And he didn’t make it for himself; he made it for everybody else.