TV Recap: “Will Trent” – “Pilot” – Meet ABC’s New Detective, and his Little Dog, Too!

Atlanta is the setting of ABC’s new mystery series Will Trent, which premiered tonight. He’s not your average investigative detective, and I’ll be along for the ride, recapping every case, no matter how twisty. Are you ready to meet Will? Well, hold your horses because first, we have to set up the case. Here’s a recap of the pilot episode of Will Trent.

A woman named Abigail Campano (Jennifer Morrison) races home from tennis practice, screaming at her husband Paul Campano (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) over the phone through her AirPods. She just found out that her husband, owner of Campano Motors, has been having an affair with his personal trainer and she plans to leave him. “What are you gonna tell Emma?”, he asks, concerned about how his teenage daughter will react. “That her father can’t keep it in his pants,” Abigail scolds as she parks outside their luxurious house, walking towards the front door when she notices that a glass panel next to the front door is broken, shards of glass on the porch. “Somebody broke into the house,” she tells Paul, who begs Abigail not to go inside while he calls the police. She doesn’t listen, removing her AirPods and dropping them on the ground as she steps inside. The sight of a bloody footprint on the stairs makes Abigail drop her tennis racket. She quietly calls for Emma, proceeding up the stairs slowly. There’s no response. When she reaches the landing, she sees the door to her daughter’s bedroom is open. A blonde teenager lies face down on the floor in a pool of blood. And then a boy stumbles out of the room with blood all over his shirt holding a knife! He grabs Abigail, who fights to get him off of her. In the skirmish, they tumble down the stairs together, the knife knocked from the boy’s hand. He begins to reach for it as Abigail overpowers him, grabbing her tennis racket and using the handle to restrict his air until his body goes limp.

Two receptionists at a local animal shelter Teenager (Lynne Ashe and Zarah Spalding) are dealing with a man who is trying to surrender a chihuahua named Betty who belonged to a recently deceased neighbor. The man doesn’t understand why he has to fill out paperwork as the dog wasn’t his and he’s simply trying to do the right thing. They suggest that the man keep the dog as he seems nice. “Tolerant is not the same as nice,” he corrects. Writing down his name, they see that he is Special Agent Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) and one of the women quickly searches his name on her computer, commenting about how admirable it is that he took down a ring of corrupt cops. They do everything in their power not to accept the adorable dog in their care, suggesting that his spouse or significant other take care of the animal. Alas, he is determined to surrender Betty, signing his name and starting to walk away. “This is a no-kill shelter, right?”, Will asks. “Mostly,” is the response. He doubles back, and next we see him driving his yellow car, a happy Betty sitting in his lap, tongue flapping in the breeze. His car has been vandalized, with graffiti on the side that reads “Rat Snitch Traitor.”

Will Trent’s yellow car pulls up to his blue house, and he exits, carrying Betty in his left hand, a bag of dog kibble, and a plush dog bed in his right. A black SUV pulls up, and the window rolls down. “What’s up with the dog?”, Will’s boss Deputy Director Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) asks. “And what happened with your car?” Will tells her he adopted Betty and that his car was obviously vandalized. “That’s what you get for turning on your own,” Amanda responds, which frustrates Will because she assigned him the case. “You could’ve said no,” she rationalizes, asking him to join her to look at a body that was called in by the Atlanta Police Department (APD). As they drive, Will asks Amanda why the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) is getting involved in a homicide investigation. She tells him it’s a courtesy to the victim’s grandfather, one of the richest men in Georgia and he comments about how she, too, has an unreasonable boss. “I told him I’d bring my best,” she says, “I just need you to read the crime scene, Will.” As they arrive at the house, all of the cops direct their attention at Will Trent, glaring at him.

As he walks into the home, one even mutters “scumbag” loud enough for Will to hear. Another says “rat punk” as Will examines the broken window. The APD detective on the case (Danny Berstein) points out the obvious fact that the window was broken to unlock the door as Will pulls out a tape recorder and comments that the method of access does not match the APD’s conclusion. A teenage boy lies dead in the foyer, his shirt covered in blood. The detective tells Will that this case is self-explanatory. That the boy broke in, killed Emma, was interrupted by Abigail coming home, tried to kill her, but was ultimately thwarted. The detective lewdly describes the victim’s mother and Will seems to question how a 100-pound woman would have overpowered the athletic boy. Will asks for the boy’s identity and the APD is still working on that. Will points to the broken window and asks how the boy’s arm could’ve reached the door handle through it, since the distance is too far apart. He goes to the stairs and examines the bloody footprint, which is only on one step, and is pointing up the stairs rather than down.

Will is given a few other facts about the case. He learns that Emma was inseparable with a friend named Kayla, whom her father didn’t like. “Where is the father?”, Will asks. “Should be here any minute. He’s Paul Campano, the car guy.” Will draws a handkerchief out of his suit pocket and begins to wring it in his hands, looking at family photos on a desk and seeming to recognize Paul. Meanwhile, Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson) enters the foyer after trying to get a statement from Abigail. Amanda introduces Faith to Will and surprises both of them by announcing that Amanda will help Will with this case. The first thing Will says to her is to ask if girls typically cut class with friends or alone. “I never cut class,” Faith sternly says. Will glances at two pairs of shoes by the front door and Faith takes the initiative to go check the sizes. Just then, Paul comes home, hollering at the cops and demanding to be let in. “I’ll take him up,” Will says. Paul seems to recognize Will, a look of surprise on his face at finding him in his foyer.

Paul begins to cry as Will brings him upstairs, seeing bloody smears on the wall. He rambles about Emma’s friend Kayla, calling her a bad influence and citing the fact that Emma got her naval pierced just like her friends’. “You’re trash can, right?”, Paul says, suddenly changing the subject. “It’s been a while,” Will nods solemnly. “They called you that because they found you in a trash can?”, Paul asks. “It was actually a dumpster,” Will corrects, “trash can had a better ring to it, I guess.” Will notices that the dead girl’s feet are bare and clean, no blood on the soles, so the footprint on the stairs isn’t hers. “Paul, I’m gonna need you to identify the body,” Will says. He brings Paul closer, who sniffles as he gets closer. His eyes are drawn to the girl’s right hand. “It’s not her,” he shouts with exuberance. “That’s Kayla! Emma has a birthmark on her wrist.”

Chaos erupts downstairs as Abigail hears Paul confirm that it’s not their daughter. The detective tries to defend himself while Abigail yells at him for not allowing her upstairs. Will goes downstairs, asking Abigail to recount the events. Paul wants to call the school, thinking that’s where Emma is, but Abigail tells him she was with Kayla. She talks Will through what happened when she came home, and he stops her when she tells him the boy came towards her with a knife. He asks if the knife was raised and she can’t remember. He asks if the boy said anything, she says he was just making noises. Will bends down over the boy's body, pressing his abdomen at the center of the blood stain. Blood begins to leak from a wound beneath the fabric. Will says the boy had been stabbed, likely had a collapsed lung, and was drowning when Abigail arrived. “And then I killed him?”, she asks, beginning to freak out. Paul snaps at her to stop talking. “Where the hell is Emma?”, he asks Will. We see inside Will’s mind – the murderer carrying a bound Emma down the stairs, her bare feet red with the blood of her friend’s. The suspect lost his balance and one of Emma’s feet touched a step accidentally on the way out. Will asks for an amber alert to be put out. “This is a kidnapping.”

Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) meets Franklin (Kevin Daniels) for breakfast at a diner. He wants to know how her substance abuse meetings have been going, but she’s distracted by the news report on the TV of a double homicide. She recognizes Paul Campano, and when Franklin tells her the GBI has been called in, she asks who. “Who do you think?” He confirms it’s Will Trent. Franklin tells Angie not to think about the case too much as she’s been undercover for two months. He asks her again about the meetings, and she confirms that she’s been going to daily meetings. But it doesn’t really matter because she might die today. She tells him that she’s been doing small buys at a pawn shop, but today she’s doing a big buy that is luring out the ringleader of this drug ring. “Then the fox can leave the hen house and bring me lots of relief?”, Franklin asks. Angie says yes, getting up to leave. We see her arrive at the pawn shop with a plastic bag full of cash, passing it to Kyle (Justin Kucsulain) behind the counter. She will have to wait for the dealer to arrive, but he passes her a “freebie,” and she opens the Fentanyl patch, putting it on and looking conflicted.

In the Campano home, the boy’s body has been identified as Adam, an Atlanta City Tech student on a scholarship. Emma’s white BMW is missing, and Will presumes that she was abducted with her own car. Going up to the bedroom, he gets a whiff of ammonia from the closet and crawls inside to inspect it, imagining Emma inside, full of fear as she watches Kayla get murdered. Amanda breaks his concentration when she opens the slatted closet door and he tells her his theory. She asks him to take Faith with him, but Will wants her to go to the college to see what they can find out about Adam. Amanda tells him she has already dispatched the APD to look into it. “No partners, that was our agreement,” Will reminds his boss. She reminds him that he’s never worked on a kidnapping case before. “If this case goes sideways, I’m out,” she reveals. “And if I’m out, who is gonna protect you?”

Angie watches the news from the pawn shop where another woman enters wearing sunglasses and holding a bag of fast food. As the reporter mentions that the suspect is driving a white BMW and rattles off the license plate number, Jules (Kate Kovach) tells Angie that she just saw it. “That car’s in the alley across the street.” Jules asks Angie if they should call the police. Angie tells her how stupid that would be, given that they’re in a pawn shop full of drugs. Angie checks out Jules’ glasses and then sees the bruise on her left eye. “Jewels, hurry up, I’m starving,” Kyle calls from the back room. Angie announces that she’s going outside to smoke, but really she goes to check out the white BMW, looking inside and knocking on the trunk to listen for any noises in response. She calls Will Trent to tell him where it is. “So, Paul Campano, that’s crazy,” she tells Will, asking him if he’s ok. “I can take care of myself, detective,” he replies. Angie asks him to be subtle when coming for the car so as not to interrupt her takedown. “I’ll do my best, but APD is on the defense, they’re gonna wanna put on a show,” he warns her.

APD Detective Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) enters the Campano home in frustration, approaching Amanda and asking why she took one of his officers, Faith, off an active homicide case for a “trust fund runaway” (he says this in front of Abigail). Will comes downstairs and asks Faith to drive them, exiting the home. Faith looks at Amanda as if unsure of what to do. “Go,” Amanda instructs Faith. “He’s your partner. You’re GBI today. Congratulations.”

“Emma was in here,” Faith declares after examining the trunk of the BMW. Will looks at an oil stain in a parking spot next to the abandoned car, then looks up at the building and sees a security camera. Will and Faith go upstairs, where an engineer named Warren (Brandon Stanley) scrubs through the video in a recording studio. The footage is blurry, but they’re able to see the BMW park, a figure get out, open the trunk, remove Emma (Aline O’Neill), whose arms and legs are bound, and put her into the trunk of a maroon car, which then drives away without the driver of the BMW getting in. That figure runs away on foot. Will notices that the engineering board has pictures under the sliders instead of words. He asks Warren for a copy of the tape before Faith tells him that Amanda called asking for an update. “Have her meet us at GBI,” he advises.

Michael goes to the dorm rooms with another officer named Ken (Darryl Dillard), who searches Adam’s dorm as Michael interrogates his roommate Gabe (Darrius Phillip Thomas). He’s unnecessarily rough with Gabe, who has never heard of Kayla. When Ken exits the dorm with a bag of Adderall, Michael presses Gabe against the wall, causing a group of students to yell at him, pulling out their phones and recording the scene. Ken tries to clear them away, asking for space, but he suddenly collapses. Michael rushes to his side, asking for an ambulance.

Inside the pawn shop, Angie is told that the dealer will not be coming because of the cops and Kyle will text her on What’s App when he has another day available. Before she leaves, Angie hears Kyle invite Jewels over. “I’ve got my kid tonight,” she tells him. “Have somebody watch him, don’t leave me hanging,” Kyle says sternly, retreating to the back room. Whispering, Angie asks Jules why Kyle gave her a black eye. “He was taking money, I walked in on him,” she shares, revealing that he’s also been stealing drugs from the shop. Jules doesn’t have any money saved up, and she’s afraid. Angie asks what kind of car Kyle drives. Outside, we see Angie bash in one of Kyle’s tail lights. Shortly after, we see Kyle’s car getting pulled over for his broken tail light, but Angie clearly called in the tip.

Faith is frustrated with the downtown traffic, but Will is calm in the passenger seat with headphones in, listening to a playback of his audio notes. He stares at the duct tape keeping Faith’s glovebox closed, and when he reaches for it, Faith tries to stop him. “He’s dyslexic,” Will says as he pulls on the tape anyway, with the glove box popping open to reveal some unpaid parking tickets. Faith asks how he knows that, and he tells her about the pictures on the music-mixing console. Faith’s phone rings and she answers on speakerphone. It’s her son Jeremy, who is in college and tells his mom that he dropped his laptop over a banister and it’s broken. As she talks, Will pulls out a pocket knife and uses it to fix the latch on the glove box. He chimes in on the call, telling Jeremy to just bring his laptop to the GBI lab and they can recover the hard drive. Faith snaps at Will for offering that, saying her son needs to learn about consequences. Will mentions that he’s surprised that Faith is old enough to have a son in college. This makes her angry, and Will says they need to be polite to each other to get through this case. “What my name, Trent?,” she asks. “You missed it, Huh? Wasn’t relative to the case? It’s Faith Mitchell.” Will’s face goes white. “I investigated your mother,” he realizes aloud. “No, you ended her thirty-year highly decorated law enforcement career,” Faith snaps back. Will puts his headphones back in.

Waiting for the elevator up to the GBI, Faith tells Will that she can handle interrogating Paul, but Will says he has a good handle on him. Before the elevator arrives, Angie and Michael arrive, sharing the ride. Michael tells the group about Ken, who had a stroke and is in the hospital. He blames the GBI for taking Faith from him, which is why Ken joined him. They arrive at the floor for the APD, with Angie and Michel exiting. Before they reach the 5th floor, Will pushes the emergency stop button and turns to Faith. He demands to know why she wants to interview Paul instead of him. She claims that Will has an alienating personality, but also mentions something from earlier that day. “I tried to talk to Abigail this morning, and he did not like it; He’s afraid of what she'll say.” Will releases the emergency stop and they reach the 5th floor. “Alright,” he says, “let’s throw a grenade and see what happens.”

Paul is furious that he’s been called to come to the GBI when his daughter is missing, Abigail rushing behind him. “I’m going to need a DNA sample from you,” Will announces. “And why is that, Trash?”, Paul demands. “Kayla Alexander had sexual intercourse this morning, I need to rule you out,” Will says, eliciting a slap from Paul. Will responds with a full punch to Paul’s face, which turns into a brawl in the middle of the GBI. Other investigators rush to pull the two men apart. “Get off me, trash can!”, Paul shouts, confusing Abigail. “You two know each other?”, she looks confused. “Paul and I grew up together in the children’s home,” Will reveals. Abigail had no clue that her husband spent time in an orphanage, calling him a psychopath for keeping this from her. She turns to Faith and spills the tea. She found out this morning that Paul has been sleeping with his personal trainer, pulling out her phone to show Faith a photo of her. “She’s 22, but she looks 16.” Abigail cries as she says she looks just like Kayla. Before she leaves, Abigail warns Paul not to call her. She’s going to stay with her parents.

Inside the APD, Angie interrogates Kyle. When the police went to raid the pawn shop, it had already been cleaned out. However, they have the drugs and cash they found in his trunk. She brings up Jewels. “You’re thinking she’ll never say anything because she is too scared,” Angie says. “You smacked her around enough, she’ll stay in line, right? But wait a sec, Kyle, how did I know what was in the trunk of your car?”

Amanda gives Faith a GBI badge for the Campano case. “And after that?”, she asks. “Find your girl, we’ll go from there.” Amanda tells Faith that she has high expectations for her and that Will Trent can help her get to the next level of her career. “He can teach you to be surgical, to see things that no one else does. You can thank me when you’re ready.” Faith nods her head and says “Yes, ma’am.”

Angie’s boss, Captain Dennis Heller (Todd Allen Durkin), tells her what a disaster this pawn shop bust has been. She doesn’t see it that way, confident that Kyle will flip and lead them to the ringleaders. She’s off the case, and he is reassigning her to work with Michael. “I don’t work homicide anymore,” Angie reminds him. But Dennis turns to Franklin and asks his opinion on whether Angie should keep working undercover drug busts or be Michael’s partner. “Maybe a change of scene would be good,” Franklin says to Angie’s dismay. From his desk, Michael grins at Angie.

Will watches Paul get swabbed for his DNA sample, remembering how Paul bullied him as a child at the group home. “Looking back, it was hard to be angry,” he says into his tape recorder. “There were rumors that Paul was sexually abused by a foster parent. Was that the one part of our childhood he wasn’t able to outrun?” He is interrupted by a phone call from Faith. Gabe wants to share what he knows about his roommate Adam, he just didn’t feel comfortable talking to Michael. Adam begged him not to talk, but Adam was dating Emma. “Some guy was threatening Adam, telling him to stay away from Emma,” Gabe reveals. “We didn’t know who it was, but he’d leave notes on his car and under our door when we woke up.” He brought with him the last note he received and Faith notices that all of the ‘E’s and ‘K’s are backward. Will asks her to get a trace on Warren’s phone.

Will and Faith return to the recording studio, seeing Warren in the studio playing the drums to a track that includes other instruments that were already recorded. The door to the studio is locked, and Warren can’t hear them, but Faith finds a ring of keys and begins trying them out. Will moves some of the sliders on the console down, and suddenly all that can be heard is Warren’s drumming. Will calls through a microphone and Warren turns around. Will sees an empty bottle of pills and asks Warren how many he took. “I took all of it,” he says, “I just want this day to be over.” Will asks Warren about his day while Faith continues to try the keys in the lock. “I didn’t mean to kill anybody, man,” he says, yelling that he doesn’t know where Emma is. “He told me I need to kill myself,” Warren declares. Will tries to stop him while Faith keeps cycling through keys that won’t unlock the door. Will tells Warren he will help him find a way out of this. “Why would I want to?”, he asks. “For Emma,” Will calls out. Warren unplugs the microphone and suddenly puts a gun to his own head, pulling the trigger. Faith hears the gunshot and looks over at Will’s horrified face. She stops trying the keys.

Getting some fresh air outside of the studio, Faith notices that Will is twisting his handkerchief and asks him about this habit. He talks about Mrs. Flannery, the woman who ran the group home he grew up in. She taught all of the kids how to do their own laundry and iron their shirts. She had all of the children carry handkerchiefs, and he’s never let go of that habit. “Thank you for telling me that,” Faith acknowledges. She asks him to let her be more involved in the case and offers Will a ride home.

Michael visits Angie at her desk to congratulate her. Kyle flipped just like she thought he would. He is looking forward to working with her again, saying he was sad about the way things ended last time. “Maybe we can do better, huh?”, he asks. “Go home to your wife, Ormewood”, she says as she gets up to leave. Michael looks hurt.

“That’s right, I have a dog,” Will says aloud as he enters his house to find Betty’s tail wagging, waiting for him next to her food bowl, which is still full. He picks up a piece of kibble and hand-feeds it to her. He tells Betty he will take her out in a minute, but when he opens the door to his sitting room, he finds that the couch is occupied. “You still have a key?”, he asks the woman sitting on his couch. “Do you want it back?”, Angie asks. “No, but it’s been a while since you dropped by,” Will smiles, sitting down on the couch next to Angie. “The dog is ridiculous.” she says about Betty. “Rescue; Tried to take her to a shelter but I couldn’t do it,” Will confesses. Angie asks about Paul. “He still calls me trashcan,” Will reveals, telling Angie about the fistfight they had at the GBI. “You’re not the only one who picked up a stray today,” Angies says, “Heller put me on homicide. Ormewood is my partner now.” Will asks what that means, undoing the buttons on his vest. However, his hands are quickly swatted away by Angie, who has crawled into his lap and begins to undo the buttons on his shirt. “I missed you,” she says as they start to make out. As her hands begin to open his shirt, Will tries to stop her. She reminds him it’s her and he relents. As she peels his shirt down, we see that Will Trent’s body is covered in scars. Some look like bullet wounds, others like knife wounds. Their romantic moment is interrupted by Betty, who barks at them from the couch. Will tells Betty to go away, but she instead moves closer, causing Will and Angie to laugh.

In the middle of the night, Will uses a transparent blue strip to read a document. His eyes are going blurry, it’s hard to make out the individual letters to form each word. In anger, he tosses the document on the ground and Angie wakes up, asking what’s going on. He received some of Emma’s school files from the APD and wanted to read them. “I forgot I’m an idiot and it takes an hour to read a damn sentence,” he says in frustration. Angie asks Will not to belittle himself, saying he’s too tired to read. “The kid who killed himself today is dyslexic, too,” Will says. “I had him right in front of me and somehow I missed that he was one of our kidnappers. Then he shot himself.” Abigail kisses Will again. We see a scar on the left side of his neck that goes down his shoulder. Angie picks up the essay, snuggles up to Will on the couch, and begins to read it to him. And then they’re interrupted again, not by Betty, but by a knock on the door. Will grabs his gun. “Who is it?”, he calls. “Trash, I really messed up,” Paul’s voice calls. Will opens the door to find Paul looking panicked. His shirt is covered in blood. “I really messed up, I need your help!” Paul shot the man he believes abducted his daughter.

What happens next? We’ll have to wait until Tuesday, January 10th, for the second episode to air on ABC at 10/9c. Until then, I’m curious to know who your favorite character is so far. Obviously, Will Trent will hold the show together, but I’m really drawn to Angie and can’t wait to learn more about her. But unfairly to any human character, I will always have a soft spot for Betty. I leave you with the official description for next week’s episode, titled “I'm a Pretty Observant Guy.”

As the GBI continues its investigation on a missing girl, Will becomes frustrated with the suspect search, and Faith’s frustrations with her new partner reach unprecedented heights. Meanwhile, Angie is forced to evaluate her current relationships as she follows a new case with Ormewood and navigates her complicated history with Will.