Brotherly Love (Season 25, Episode 6)
Premise: When a restaurateur who employed Riley’s paroled brother is shot dead, the case against the poker-game boss he owed hinges on Matt Riley’s word, until someone tries to stop him from testifying.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 25, Episode 6
- Detectives
- Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Ryan Eggold as Matt Riley, Tobias Truvillion as Shane Willis, Neil Dawson as Declan Dell, Jerimiyah Dunbar as Andre Walker, Kelsey Lea Jones as Lindsey Fisher
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“Brotherly Love” opens with Det. Vincent Riley having dinner with his brother, Matt, recently paroled from Otisville and now a waiter for restaurateur Declan Dell, who stops by and covers their bill. Hours later Dell is shot once in the back of the head on a Manhattan street, a switchblade beside him and his wallet and phone untouched.
Dell looked prosperous, but he had cut Rob Carson, who pitched him the idea, out of a supper-club deal and was sleeping with Lindsey Fisher, the wife of an elderly casino owner. She ended it when he kept asking her for money and says he got a death threat by phone days earlier; the call traces to a burner. His records show enormous credit card charges for private jets, overdrawn bank accounts and losing gambling accounts.
Matt reluctantly admits he played in an illegal high-stakes poker game, a parole violation, and saw a man shove Dell and threaten to kill him unless he paid. Basketball player Andre Walker, who broke up the scuffle, names the man as Shane Willis, who runs the game and lends players money. Shane’s photos placing him at a Harlem bar prove false, street video shows a man resembling him running from the area and tossing what looks like a gun into a dumpster, and he is arrested.
The Trial
Price is wary of relying on Matt, who once lied to Riley, but the other players deny seeing anything, and DA Nicholas Baxter tells Price to stop pressuring them. Testimony shows Shane’s image was inserted into the bar photos with artificial intelligence, but on cross-examination Riley concedes the dumpster was searched and no gun turned up.
Matt tells his brother a man has been following him, and Riley, suspecting another excuse, orders him to show up. Matt misses his court date because he has been stabbed three times in the chest while out for coffee. The judge pauses the trial for a week over the defense’s objection that the link to Shane rests only on the attacker’s race. Camera footage leads to the attacker, Riley has to be pulled off him during the arrest, and the man refuses to talk. Fighting an infection, Matt insists on testifying, describes the threat he heard and rejects the defense’s suggestion that his brother pushed him to lie.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Shane Willis of second-degree murder, and he protests angrily as officers restrain him. Riley then learns that complications from the infection have forced doctors to put Matt into a medically induced coma, with a grim outlook. The episode ends with Riley at his brother’s bedside telling him he did well; whether Matt survives is left unresolved.
Why it stands out
- Ryan Eggold returns as Matt Riley, the detective’s troubled younger brother, first seen in Season 24’s “Big Brother.”
- It is the last episode before David Ajala joins the cast as Det. Theo Walker, Riley’s new partner, in the next episode, “Guardian.”