Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 16.

Less is more, as they say, but what happens when someone takes it as far as their relationship? That’s what happens on this week’s Elsbeth, which sees the famously maximalist Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) go head-to-head with minimalism consultant Freya Frostad (Mary-Louise Parker), after the latter’s husband is found dead in their hot tub. The episode also forces everyone, not just Elsbeth, to take stock of everything they’re holding onto in their lives, from belongings to relationships. It’s an awful lot to consider all at once, but consider it we shall!

Mary-Louise Parker Declutters Her Marriage in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 16

The episode begins with Freya, her husband Axel (Will Swenson), and their partner Taylor (Jess Darrow) looking over their shared calendar, a large handwritten, magnetic number, which I guess makes for better TV than a Google Calendar. Freya is upset because, though the three of them are a throuple who makes time for a lot of one-on-one time as well, she feels left out, as the calendar skews heavily towards just Axel/Taylor. Taylor points out that Freya is always welcome to join them; as their time consists mostly of sitting in the hot tub, Freya declines, as said hot tub grosses her out. Taylor concedes the point and says they’ll make more time for the three of them together, but Freya asks instead if she can spend time with Taylor one-on-one the next day, and Taylor agrees to that as well.

With the calendar resolved, Freya gives Taylor a gift from herself and Axel to celebrate six months of Taylor being a part of their relationship. The gift turns out to be a pretty storage box, though Freya tells Taylor that in order to keep the box, she needs to give up one of her possessions to maintain her “44 items.” We’ll learn shortly that Freya is a decluttering guru whose whole philosophy is about minimalism, and how a person only needs to keep 44 items, but looking around their house, I have to wonder if that extends to things like furniture as well? I count 44 items in that room alone, and surely they all have things like changes of clothes and underwear, right? Freya never goes into that, but as a person who both enjoys collecting, and also regularly declutters her space, I just have to wonder what the rules really are. That night, Axel and Taylor have their one-on-one time in the hot tub, where Axel gives her her real anniversary gift just from him: a gold pendant. And she didn’t even have to give anything up for it. Unfortunately, this exchange does not go unmissed by Freya, who is furious. Whether because of the intimacy the two clearly share, or because Taylor now has 45 items, is unclear. With the other two asleep, she takes the pendant and a clump of Axel’s hair and heads over to the hot tub.

The next night, Freya and Taylor are having their one-on-one night at a hotel. Taylor suggests they go out and do something, but Freya says they should stay in instead and wins over Taylor with the promise of sex. Back at home, Axel is in the hot tub by himself, which seems dangerous under the best of circumstances, but is even more dangerous when Freya clearly has it in for him. She monitors the tub’s status using a phone app, just as Axel looks down and spots a clogged drain full of both his hair and the pendant. He tries to pull the clog free by diving underwater, but his hair gets sucked into the second drain. As soon as Freya gets the notification that both drains are clogged, she sets the little Sopa cleaner — a not-Roomba, if you will — to start its cleaning sequence, and it heads right for the cover switch on the hot tub and hits it, trapping Axel inside. Freya and Taylor return home the next day, looking for Axel, and Taylor notices something is wrong when Axel’s phone is just left on the side table. She pops open the hot tub and is horrified to find him dead inside.

The police arrive shortly after, and with them comes Elsbeth, holding a large box of black and white cookies, ostensibly to give to Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson) for her first full case as detective that the two will be solving together. Unfortunately for her, the detective on the case is actually Detective Edwards (Micaela Diamond), who catches Elsbeth up on the case. Given that injury and death from suction-related injuries in a hot tub are not uncommon, Edwards suggests that the case is fairly cut and dry, and tells Elsbeth she’s going to wrap it up. Despite Edwards’ requests to the contrary, Elsbeth “does her thing” and goes over to speak to Freya and Taylor. Freya notes with horror that Elsbeth did not put shoe coverings on like everyone else, and that she’s trailing crumbs on the floor, and it’s telling that this has her more upset than the death of her husband. They tell Elsbeth who they are and how they knew Axel just as Edwards returns with the pendant and asks if either of them recognizes it. They both deny it for reasons of their own, which in itself is suspicious, but Freya derails the investigation by zeroing in on the fact that Elsbeth is carrying four tote bags. The idea of four bags of stuff is stressful enough for her that she offers to send Elsbeth a copy of her book to help her declutter. Elsbeth denies the offer, as she likes her things, but Freya can’t let it go and tells her to start by getting rid of one bag before ushering Taylor away to grieve privately.

Elsbeth Has a Hard Time Letting Go in Season 2 Episode 16

At the precinct, Elsbeth is sorting through her bags to pick one to get rid of when she sees Blanke passing by and calls her in for her opinion. Elsbeth then spots the case file Blanke is holding, and offers to brainstorm with her, and offers her one of the cookies she brought as well. Blanke turns both offers down, telling Elsbeth she’s cutting back on sugar, and that while she also misses working with her, she likes the challenge of solving her cases on her own. Blanke leaves just as Edwards arrives with a stack of files, which turn out to be Axel’s medical records. She says he’s gone to urgent care several times for GI distress, and that, combined with electrocution and increasingly implausible slip-and-falls, makes Axel either extremely unlucky or the repeated target of a murder attempt. It seems it’s not as cut-and-dry as she first believed.

The next day, at Elsbeth’s place, Teddy (Ben Levi Ross) returns from taking Gonzo for a walk, and tells her he doesn’t mind sticking around to help with the case, as Roy (Hayward Leach) has been given equipment to record his podcast at home — home being a studio apartment so small that Teddy sneezing once threw the whole thing off. He blows past Elsbeth’s attempts to talk about his relationship, asking instead what’s on her mind that has her stumped. She says that the case has left her with two questions: why kill someone instead of breaking up with them, and can a person get everything they need in a relationship from just one person? Teddy points out that Elsbeth must have thought the second was possible, since she married his dad, and she agrees that she did, even though they grew apart, because they got Teddy out of it, which made the divorce worth it. Teddy still seems unsure about the status of his own relationship, but stops himself from sharing too much with his mother by pivoting instead to her fling with Angus (Ioan Gruffudd), the thought of which still makes her smile. With these questions still hanging, she heads out for the day, tote bags somehow even more packed than usual.

Dr. Cameron Clayden (Sullivan Jones), the ME as well as Blanke’s tenant/boyfriend, presents his findings to Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce), noting that the evidence shows that he drowned, but also says that there was broken skin on Axel’s knuckles, indicating a fight. Wagner suggests that he got into the fight, at which point he fell into the hot tub, got his hair stuck and drowned, but Elsbeth points out that there was no blood at the crime scene, so that doesn’t quite line up, and Edwards adds that by all accounts he was alone that night. Wagner sends her and Elsbeth back to the scene to see what they missed. Blanke arrives, needing Wagner’s eyes on something for one of her cases. Elsbeth offers again to look things over, but this time it’s Wagner who turns her down, reminding her that Blanke is more than capable of doing it on her own. Elsbeth uses the moment to her advantage and pulls Cameron aside to walk him through her ideas for Blanke’s birthday. Lucky Elsbeth has ideas given Cameron’s backlog of work, because he didn’t even know his girlfriend’s birthday was coming up. Elsbeth assures him she’s got it all taken care of.

She and Edwards head back to Freya’s place, where they inspect the hot tub along with a representative from Tub Top (April Matthis), who is there to answer any questions they may have about the system. They tell her that because of his bloody knuckles, they wonder if he tried to punch his way out of the tub, but the representative says it’s not possible to do so. While they consult some information on Elsbeth’s phone, Taylor joins Freya around the corner where she’s eavesdropping, to see if there are any updates. Freya says she doesn’t have any updates yet, but will keep Taylor posted, to which Taylor replies that she may no longer be in the house when she does, as without Axel around, the two of them are just a couple, which is not something she’s interested in. Taylor seems ready to end things completely but Freya — despite her professional “let it go” philosophy — can’t let go of Taylor and tells her that they’ll bring in a third ASAP, even though that doesn’t seem to be what she’s interested in.

Elsbeth and Edwards Get Along for a Change in Season 2 Episode 16

Elsbeth and Edwards find what they were looking for, notably photo evidence that Axel did manage to pull himself free of the drain, and bloodied his knuckles trying to punch through the top of the tub. But given that he was alone, it was unlikely he’d close the lid on himself. The representative notes that their hot tub system had a motion detection system put in place, and if it detected no movement for 30 minutes, the lid closed automatically. Since Axel was definitely moving, that rules that out, but she adds that there are two overrides — one via the Tub Top app, which is connected to the Wi-Fi, and which is also impossible since Axel didn’t have his phone on him, and the second via the manual switch, which Elsbeth finds at the base of the tub. The representative says that the placement so close to water is an electrical code violation, and also voids their warranty and liability for Axel’s death. Despite hearing this, Freya enters and maintains that that was the only place to put it where she wouldn’t have to see it. She tries again to get them to leave, but Elsbeth explains that they’re just trying to figure out how the lid could have closed on its own, trapping Axel inside. Freya covertly activates the Sopa, and it bumps the switch again, moving the cover. Freya then bursts into fake tears, distraught that she “accidentally” killed her husband by activating the cleaner when she thought he would be out of the tub.

They take the Sopa to the precinct, where they’re joined by a representative (Paco Lozano) from that company as well, who explains that they won’t be liable for the death either. Edwards clears both companies as the issue comes down to user error in both cases, but Elsbeth reminds Wagner that Freya was only too happy to take the fall for the errors in the use of the devices, and doesn’t believe his “accidents happen” reasoning. Elsbeth suggests they test the clump of hair they found in the drain, as that much hair would have to be the result of several months of build-up, which is unlikely for someone as clean-obsessed as Freya. Wagner agrees once Tub Top agrees to cover the costs of the test, and the representatives are dismissed. With them gone, Edwards tells Wagner that she actually agrees with Elsbeth’s assessment that there’s something else going on, because Axel’s health records are too fishy to just be an accident, and Elsbeth maintains that Freya was behind his death somehow.

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Wagner admits to not getting the whole idea of throuples, sounding very judgmental in the process. Elsbeth attempts to explain the dynamic of Freya, Taylor and Axel’s relationship from a studied point of view, showing where it may have gone wrong with the different energies between the dyad’s within the triad, saying that Axel and Taylor had a lot of alone time that might have thrown things off, and Edwards backs her up from lived experiences. I don’t think Edwards should have been forced to disclose personal matters at work if she didn’t want to for the sole reason of getting her boss to listen to her, particularly if he’s as judgy as Wagner is, but at least Elsbeth puts him in his place once Edwards leaves.

Elsbeth returns to Freya’s to return the Sopa, and when she can’t find it right away in her totes, Freya can’t stand it anymore and tells Elsbeth to empty her bags so they can declutter her totes. I know this doesn’t make for good TV, but Elsbeth is so much more patient than I am, because this is where a well-placed, firm “no” would come in very handy. But she humors Freya — after asking where Taylor is, and realizing for all her control, Freya does seem to really love her — and empties out all her bags on the sofa to examine the contents. 67 items later, and I have to wonder why Elsbeth needs to have all these things on her person at any given time. She tries to get Freya to connect the clarity that comes from decluttering with the clarity she needs to solve Axel’s murder, but Freya keeps her on track, and they sort through all her things. Afterward, she assures her it’s not the strangest assortment she’s ever seen, as she once cleaned out a carriage house in the West Village that had 147 gold-plated deviled egg dishes. She says that people hold onto things because of the way it makes them feel, but argues that the value isn’t in the object, but rather the memory of it. I have never agreed with a person less, but I’m not sure we’re supposed to agree with her, in fairness. Elsbeth asks if this ability to just let things go helped Freya in her polyamorous relationship, and while Freya does try to make a case for not needing just one person, Elsbeth hits the nail on the head when she suggests that things are less “cluttered” with Axel gone. Freya brings their session to an end, telling Elsbeth she’ll dispose of the things she let go of for her.

Meanwhile, Teddy has taken Gonzo for another walk, this time with Roy, and he becomes increasingly uncomfortable at how close his boyfriend and his mother are. For him, this is too much, and a sign that the relationship is moving too fast. Roy points out that they were together a whole six months before Teddy even told his mom he was seeing anyone, but Teddy’s bigger issue seems to be coming from the idea that he can’t imagine only being with one person for the rest of his life. I’ll never relate to the fear of giving up being hit on by random strangers to instead be with a partner who loves you and wants a commitment, but what do I know? Roy gives Teddy an ultimatum: either they commit, or they end things. He agrees that things will change, and they can change with them, and if a time comes when either of them wants to move on, then the other will let them go, and it’s as simple as that. He tells Teddy he has until the end of his visit to decide what he wants to do.

Decluttering Gives Elsbeth Clarity in Season 2 Episode 16

Meanwhile, at the precinct, Cameron returns with the test results for the clump of hair they found. He confirms that it was Axel’s hair, but adds that it was only Axel’s hair, which is a problem because they should have found traces of Taylor’s hair too, given that they both used the hot tub. Beyond that, the hair was much older than the samples pulled from his body, and they found traces of arsenic in the hair as well, which Elsbeth notes is suspicious when combined with his near-constant health issues. Edwards agrees that it’s suspicious, but while Elsbeth thinks Freya was trying to kill Axel, Edwards believes it was Taylor wanting Freya all to herself. Perhaps in an attempt to patch things up with Edwards, Wagner tells them to pursue Taylor first. He then asks Edwards to wait and apologizes to her outright for his comments about her relationship, saying that his not knowing something was not only not an excuse to judge, but was also the moment for him to listen instead. If only the real world worked so smoothly, but then this has always been what I like so much about this show.

In Elsbeth’s office, she presents Cameron with a folder of ideas she’s come up with for Kaya’s birthday, and he tells her he’s come up with a list of his own. But before he can share any of that with her, Kaya joins them to see what they’re up to, and they don’t manage to ease her suspicions in the slightest, as their lie about looking at Elsbeth’s real estate investments sounds shady to say the least. She doesn’t pry, though, and once she’s gone, Cameron tries to get back to planning her birthday with Elsbeth, but in a sign that maybe she, too, is learning to let things go, Elsbeth turns her folder over to Cameron and assures him whatever he plans will be perfect. With Cameron gone too, Elsbeth returns to examining the real estate on her screen. Specifically, a West Village carriage house…

Edwards brings Taylor in for questioning, and specifically asks about why it was Taylor who was always present at the hospital when Axel had his accidents, which only started once she joined the relationship. Taylor insists she was only there because Freya was freaked out by hospital germs, and adds that while Axel and Freya fought, and agrees that Freya is intense, the relationship dynamic worked for them. As an example, she says that Axel would train them at the gym, she led them in meditation, and then Freya would make each of them a customized soothing beverage. As if that wasn’t enough to tip Elsbeth and Edwards off, Taylor also says that she tried Axel’s custom drink once, and it was bitter to the point of being disgusting.

With Freya now looking like the most likely suspect, Edwards asks Taylor about a recurring charge on Freya’s account labeled “Self.” Taylor isn’t sure what it could be, speculating it’s something to do with self-care, but both Elsbeth and Edwards caution her to be careful around Freya, as it’s looking more and more likely that she’s a killer. Taylor agrees to keep it quiet, but it’s obviously haunting her. As she and Freya interview a potential third, Broc (Sean Boyle-Johnson), she’s unable to lie about what happened to their previous third, and blurts out that he drowned in the hot tub mysteriously. Brock very quickly scrambles out of there — can’t say I blame him — and Freya asks Taylor what’s gotten into her. Taylor plays it off as just trying to be honest, but it’s clear she’s freaked out. She becomes even more freaked out when Freya tries to pin some of the blame on her for leaving her “extraneous” necklace lying around, and excuses herself to go for a walk.

At Elsbeth’s place, she’s sorting through her belongings with Teddy’s help, and gives him something for himself and something for Roy, which leads him to unintentionally admit that they had “The Talk,” and that Roy gave him an ultimatum. He speculates that some of the problem is that Elsbeth loves Roy so much, and he’s afraid of making the wrong choice, like his parents did. Elsbeth reminds him that wrong choices happen, and what matters is that he is the one making them. She tells him to stop pinning his anxieties on her and his father and to instead be an adult about it. It’s the toughest love we’ve seen Elsbeth give so far, and honestly, I’m here for it. With that resolved, she tries to give more of her things to Teddy, but he asks her to stop, saying he doesn’t have room for them all and, at this rate, will need to get a self-storage unit. And just like that, the whole case clicks for Elsbeth. A recurring charge to something called “self” could very well be a self-storage unit, though it would be ironic for a self-professed decluttering guru.

Following her brain wave, Elsbeth takes another box of belongings to Freya’s, claiming she picked more things to get rid of, and asks her to dispose of it for her as she doesn’t have the heart. Freya looks like she was expecting someone else, so Taylor likely hasn’t come back yet, and though she’s disappointed, her habit wins out, and she agrees to take Elsbeth’s box… all the way down to her self-storage unit, which is filled with all the things she ostensibly helped people get rid of, including 147 golden deviled egg plates. While it’s not theft for her to keep things that people willingly discarded, Elsbeth explains that they put it all together when they realized the West Village carriage house was owned by the same family for generations. A family that made their fortune in pest control, meaning they had a large supply of 1800s fly paper, from which it’s very easy to soak off the arsenic to use in poisoning attempts. Freya is taken away by the police, maintaining that she may have lost all her things, but she hasn’t lost Taylor. I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure how she went from being annoyed at her husband to wanting to kill him, because divorce was always an option, unless it’s just that she didn’t understand Taylor enough to know that monogamy wouldn’t work for her? Either way, the motive for murder feels a little fuzzy this week.

The episode wraps up with a sweet montage, kicking off with Taylor sitting alone at a café, reading, until a couple about her age sees her from across the room and really digs her vibe, inviting her to join them. Teddy gets over his anxieties enough to agree to commit to Roy, and moves more of his stuff into his place. Cameron pulls Kaya’s birthday off beautifully. And finally, Elsbeth is delighted to be reunited with all of her beloved tchotchke, but more importantly, we see that she and Angus have still kept up their relationship long-distance, as he video calls her, and by the look on her face, this was not an unexpected surprise. I know we already know which former guest stars will appear in the Season 2 finale, but is it too much to hope that Angus makes a surprise return, too?

New episodes of Elsbeth Season 2 premiere Thursdays on CBS.

Elsbeth

Elsbeth clashes with a decluttering coach and everyone is forced to evaluate their relationships in Season 2 Episode 16.

Release Date

February 29, 2024

Network

CBS

Pros & Cons

• I love when TV shows focus so much on interpersonal relationships, it’s my favorite part.
• Sad we saw less of Kaya this week, but excited to see Elsbeth’s dynamics with the other detectives without the buffer.

• For the first time in a long time, the murderer’s motives feel unclear.