Summary
“Beneath Is Dark, Wooden Crown” gets the investigation underway as it quickly becomes clear that many of the locals have something to hide.
This Capitani season 1, episode 2 recap for the episode titled “Beneath Is Dark, Wooden Crown” contains spoilers.
Capitani episode 2 begins on July 8th, or Day 2, with Capitani running — this will become a regular opening, as we’ll see. While he’s out and about he sees Usch, who seems to be everywhere, and we also learn early on in “Beneath Is Dark, Wooden Crown” that the woman who recognized his name while he was checking into a hotel in the previous episode was Carla. They have a history, obviously, and haven’t seen each other since she left 15 years prior, at which point she was scared and went completely off the grid. Capitani is obviously still a bit put-out about this, but he’s distracted when he’s called about Rob’s suicide.
Elsa, meanwhile, seems rather excited about working the case, even if her mum isn’t exactly keen and is quick to remind her that an old flame, Gilles, is back in town. You know how it is with these small-town folks, they want to keep it that way, but Elsa seems happy with Steve, even if she’s keeping that relationship relatively quiet. It’s going to end in tears, isn’t it?
Anyway, Capitani and Elsa go to investigate Rob’s house in Capitani episode 2, and snoop around the girls’ rooms while they’re there, trying to get a picture of what they had in common and what separated them. When they return to the hospital to speak to Nadine, they find Usch guarding her door. Questions about her relationship with Rob only really reveal more of what we already knew — they didn’t spend much time together anymore. With the town being what it is, it’s only a matter of time until he emerges as the prime suspect. People love to talk.
Somewhat mirroring the decline of Rob and Nadine’s relationship, Jenny and Tanja seemed to have been drifting apart too, at least according to their best friend, Lea, who Capitani and Elsa go to see next. Jenny was often absent from school and Tanja was, apparently, the shot-caller.
It’s also in “Beneath Is Dark, Wooden Crown” that we get our first suggestion of Usch as a potential suspect; Claude, who he lives with, floats the idea to Mick, but Mick is adamant that he isn’t to blame. This is an unusual relationship and will doubtlessly get more focus as we progress.
For now, though, attention turns to the local school and its principal, Mr. Weyrich, who’s suspiciously tight-lipped and handles being questioned by Elsa, a former student, with evident ill grace. Capitani basically demands that she looks through Jenny and Rob’s lockers, but she finds nothing out of the ordinary in either, except perhaps Jenny’s fondness for licorice. Capitani, meanwhile, notices cameras on the school grounds, which apparently weren’t in place when Elsa was there.
Elsa’s search of the lockers gets a bit more suspect when Rob’s glasses are discovered in the woods — she saw them in his locker earlier but didn’t take a photograph, which means she can’t prove it. Nadine insists that while Rob had the same model, she sells them at her organic store and plenty of people have them. When Elsa goes to check the locker again, though, she finds the glasses missing — someone evidently took them, and the camera in the room might reveal who, just so long as she’s able to get hold of the footage.
As Capitani season 1, episode 2 draws to a close, Jenny’s toxicology report reveals that an overdose wasn’t the cause of her death. There’s something sinister afoot, and the locals seem to have found their scapegoat.
