The Hardest Thing (Season 24, Episode 11)
Premise: The founder of a DNA-testing company is shot dead at home, and his daughter, arrested for murder, says he begged her to end his life before a fatal dementia took hold, while Price faces his own father’s decline.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 11
- Detectives
- Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Katie Lowes as Victoria Beyer, Jack Cutmore-Scott as Sean Harper, Justin Chatwin as Thomas Price, Zeljko Ivanek as defense attorney Charles Banks, Rena Maliszewski as Dr. Vanessa Lark
- Director
- Michael Pressman
- Writers
- Art Alamo
Summary
The Investigation
“The Hardest Thing” opens with Charles Harper, founder of the DNA-testing company Inherit-Ed, shot once in the back of the head in his brownstone. His daughter, Victoria Beyer, finds the body. A neighbor, Delores Sung, saw someone in a gray logo sweatshirt running off at 11:30 p.m. His late first wife’s diamond ring is missing, but his current wife’s jewelry is untouched, and glass under a broken window looks staged.
Harper’s wife, back from a yoga retreat, says his estate goes to his two children and that his son, Sean, recently accused him of squandering it. Sean is caught fleeing by train. He owes Anthony Niducci, a bar owner who backed his failed app, but a photo gives Sean an alibi and bar cameras clear Niducci. Recovered texts show a scammer posing as a Homeland Security agent talked Harper into wiring $5 million offshore. Harper had also raised his life insurance to $10 million, payable to his children.
Sean then says Victoria planned to have dinner with their father that night and that he spotted the missing ring in her bathroom. Police find the ring and, in her dryer, a matching sweatshirt stained with blood. Victoria is arrested, though her husband, Mark, says she was home with him.
The Trial
Price introduces Maroun to his brother, Thomas. On the stand, Sean recants, claiming he mixed up the date and that the ring turned up in the family’s safe deposit box. Thomas presses Price, their father’s health care proxy, to consider hospice. Bank records show Victoria opened the box the morning after the murder, before reporting the body, and the gun is found inside; the bank manager testifies that no one else opened it afterward.
Victoria then reveals that her father had Pick’s disease, a fatal dementia diagnosed a year earlier, and asked her to kill him. Price rejects talk of a plea and moves to keep assisted suicide out of the trial, but the judge sides with defense attorney Charles Banks. Dr. Vanessa Lark testifies that Harper asked her to help him die and she refused, though she concedes he may have had years left. Victoria says her father bought the gun, begged her repeatedly and planned the fake burglary so the insurance would pay. The prosecution calls it murder and insurance fraud driven by greed.
Spoiler, the ending: Price’s father loses the ability to swallow, and Thomas urges him to let their father go rather than approve a feeding tube. Price then decides to offer a deal, and Baxter approves. Victoria pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter with a recommended five-year sentence, saying she does not regret ending her father’s pain. Afterward, Thomas reminds Price of a meeting at a funeral home the next day.
Why it stands out
- Zeljko Ivanek returns as defense attorney Charles Banks, the role he played in Season 23’s “Balance of Power.”
- The case runs alongside Price’s own family crisis: his brother, Thomas (Justin Chatwin), pushes for hospice care for their father, William (Barry Kolman, credited as Price’s father in Episode 4, “The Meaning of Life”).
- Victoria’s defense rests on New York’s ban on assisted suicide; a doctor testifies that physician-assisted death is legal in ten states, but not New York.