Eli Stone: 2.01 ‘The Path’ Recap

Original Air Date: October 14, 2008

On the season opener of Eli Stone, Eli is back, alive, and in a pretty foul funk. It’s been six months since the Season One-ending brain surgery on his aneurysm, and although the operation appears to have worked, removing all traces of the medical problem and the accompanying divine visions, Eli has clearly lost his “faith and prophecy” mojo as a result.

The episode begins with a stark change for Eli. As he walks down the street, he hears music for the first time since before his surgery. It’s Patti belting out Martha and the Vandellas’ classic party tune “Dancing in the Streets,” while every pedestrian in the vicinity provides backup dancing and harmonizing. Uh-oh — that’s not supposed to be happening.

Eli has been seeing seeing a therapist (Sigourney Weaver) weekly for the last three months. However, their relationship is far from smooth, as Eli repeatedly asks her to sign his “permission slip” — the recertification form for his law license — and she repeatedly ignores that request in favor of asking more deep questions and making more biting observations.

She claims the therapy sessions are not just about Eli’s competency to practice law, and even if they were, a slip of paper and his law license still wouldn’t fill the void in his life. Though Eli refuses to concede her point, she’s certain he misses having a sense of the divine in his everyday life and that the only thing crazy about him is that he doesn’t seem to realize it.

Eli doesn’t care what the the therapist thinks. He only wants his signed recertification form, but after she finally obliges, everything starts to go downhill instead of up. Back at the office, Jordan has an obvious disdain for the firm’s bread-and-butter devious clients and a new enthusiasm for pro bono work, thanks to Eli’s many pre-operation crusades. And, in the past, Eli would have jumped at the chance to help with one of the pro bono cases that Maggie currently spends most of her time on; now he’s simply not interested.

The one thing that finally gets through to Eli is his brother Nate, who experiences his first ever divine vision when he walks into a patient’s room at the hospital and suddenly finds himself in a bank with Jordan, just before a crane crashes through the ceiling. When Nate shares the unsettling event with Eli, his younger brother is more than eager to believe, especially after Jordan, at Credit Dauphin for a meeting, is trapped inside the bank after “a huge ass crane” falls on top of it.

Once this disaster occurs, the episode takes off. On top of worrying that Nate has developed an aneurysm after he has this vision and then collapses later with his head in pain, Eli has to find a way to convince Taylor and Jordan’s wife Ellen (Eureka’s Debrah Farentino) of one thing: that Jordan is trapped in a stairwell, not the conference room where the search and rescue team is concentrating its effort.

Ellen is easy enough to persuade, but Taylor’s not buying it, possibly because of her lingering animosity about their broken engagement. Whatever the reason, Eli is forced to go to court to seek an injunction requiring the rescue team to redirect its efforts to the stairwell, a dangerous option because the building is highly unstable. Eli loses, though; the judge has to base her decision on what can be proved.

Of course, Nate’s vision is accurate and Jordan is ultimately located where the doctor says he would be, but to convince Taylor, Eli has to first own up to his previous visions in public, as well as admit that he wants his divine inspiration back. The last also means accepting the returned hereditary subarachnoid aneurysm that goes along with the visions. If that will save his brother, who’s about to move in with Beth and her daughter, Eli is ready.

The therapist helps him reach that stage when he finally notices that the signed recertification form isn’t signed at all. Eli returns to her office to find it abandoned, until he steps inside and she suddenly reappears for another chat. That’s right: after leading us to believe that Eli has been vision-free for six months, it turns out he’s been seeing things, or at least the therapist, for the last half of that period.

Logically, Eli suspects she’s God, but she’ll only admit to being a “fiduciary of God” after reminding Eli he wanted his normal life back and that’s what he got. If the visions are returned, however, this time Eli must lead instead of standing around waiting to be led.

I guess that will be the focus of the second season, as Eli copes with Taylor hooking up with his rival Matt Dowd, his brother Nate hooking up with the woman he lost his virginity to in college, Maggie hooking up with and marrying this dude Scott, and acupuncturist Frank Chen continuing to ride him hard about his responsibilities as a divine interventionist.

Taken with Jordan’s final cliffhanger revelation to Eli that he was coming to see him after leaving the bank because he knows what they have to do now, it sounds like good times are ahead on this series. I just hope more people watch during the sophomore run so we fans will get another season afterwards.