Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Will Trent Season 4, Episode 7.After its intense two-parter that saw the GBI and APD uncover a massive pharmaceutical conspiracy together, Will Trent returns to normalcy this week. The GBI investigates a murder case that takes them on the path of looking into a serial killer team, while the APD’s weekly case is a hilarious one involving a skunk. The episode also sees the return of one of my favorite side characters: Paul Campano (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), a former foster kid who grew up with Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Angie (Erika Christensen).
In Season 4, Episode 7, “Call Paul,” Paul returns for the first time since Season 1 when his neighbor, Joelle Hornbaker – with whom he was having an affair – is murdered with a nail gun. Paul helps Will and Faith (Iantha Richardson) investigate in what is one of the season’s funniest episodes, as well as one of the darkest. After keeping himself distracted for the last handful of episodes, working on a serial case brings up memories of James Ulster (Greg Germann) for Will, causing him to have dissociative episodes.
In ‘Will Trent’ Season 4, Episode 7, A Difficult Serial Killer Case Brings Back Paul Campano – and Memories of James Ulster
While investigating Joelle’s murder, Will finds himself going too deep into the scenarios he usually envisions to solve a murder. He can’t stop picturing himself as the killer in visions where he enjoys it, and where Ulster encourages him to embrace his “true nature” as a killer. Paul was Joelle’s neighbor, and he saw a man leaving her home around the time she was killed, which he shows Will with a hilarious drawing. Paul looks very guilty because he was having an affair with Joelle, and he broke up with her the night before she was killed, but Will knows that he’s innocent. Will and Paul have such a fun and silly dynamic, and it fits perfectly into this episode, especially in contrast to Will’s much darker internal struggle.
The GBI figures out that the nailgun that killed Joelle belonged to a man who was previously brutally murdered with a baseball bat, and clearly by someone he knew. Will goes deep into a vision to investigate these two murders, but it takes a major toll on him, as he starts to feel too closely aligned to the killers. Will is able to figure out that both victims were killed by a team of two killers. A well-meaning but misguided Paul makes an advertisement through his business to search for the killer, but this just makes him a target, and the killer tries to shoot him. To keep Paul safe, Will is tasked with letting him stay at his house. Angie comes over to visit, and the three of them have dinner together, and they look back on their childhoods. During this conversation, Will calls out Paul for bullying him as a kid, but Paul insists Will started it by beating him up first.
‘Will Trent’s Latest Episode Introduces a New Love Interest That Sparks Major Jealousy
The jealousy arc has begun!
Will is called in for another case in the middle of the night while he’s having more intrusive, violent visions. Will realizes that this case is the first victim of these killers, who was murdered with his own hedge clippers. Will gets stuck in a violent dissociative episode where he almost attacks Paul with the hedge clippers, thinking he’s Ulster. Paul handles this really well and is able to calm Will down with help from Betty (Bluebell). Will’s next clue makes him realize that all of the victims were using jugs of water from the same company. The next morning, Will and Paul go to investigate at the water facility. There, Will meets the manager and one of the killers, Blair Anson. The other killer is a GBI crime scene specialist, Travis Nash. Will and Paul wind up in an intense confrontation with the killers, where Will almost kills Travis, but Paul steps in to hit Travis with a water jug, and Will arrests Travis.
Paul Campano is such a great character anyways, but his reappearance this episode is more than just a fun cameo. Because of his history with Will, he’s able to connect with Will and get him to open up in a way that nobody else can. Paul tells Will that Will beat him up as kids after he pointed a toy gun at Will, and Will realizes that this had triggered his PTSD from his former foster home, where he had to shoot his abusive foster father. This was a dissociative episode that Will had forgotten, just like he’d had earlier that day. In a vulnerable moment, Will admits how hard it is for him to “stay on the right path” in spite of his past trauma and dissociations. He tells Paul that he understands the killers, feels a lot of the same rage, and even wanted to kill Travis. Paul tells Will that everyone with their background has the same struggle, and that Will is choosing to use his pain for good. Paul encourages Will to keep fighting it and doing the work anyway, even though he acknowledges how much of a toll this takes on Will.
In ‘Will Trent’ Season 4, Episode 7, The APD Investigates a Murder Involving a Skunk
Angie, Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), and Franklin (Kevin Daniels) investigate the suspicious death of a driver who got into an accident, left his car, and then had an allergic reaction after being pepper-sprayed. All the while, Ormewood and Franklin are stressing about the upcoming department softball game, because they’ll have to replace Angie this year because she’s pregnant. They soon figure out that the driver, Ben, was on Facetime with his girlfriend, Luna, while driving. Because Ben wasn’t paying attention, he hit a skunk with his car – and it was a pet skunk belonging to a woman who calls herself the Skunk Mother online.
The APD brings the Skunk Mother in for an interrogation, and she admits that she broke Ben’s windshield with a rock after he hit her skunk with his car, and then he started angrily coming at her, so she pepper-sprayed him. Angie and Franklin realize that the Skunk Mother didn’t kill Ben and that Luna’s story doesn’t add up. Angie and Franklin bring Luna in, where she admits that she came to the scene of Ben’s death and saw him having an allergic reaction. Instead of helping him, she killed him while he was having a reaction, because he was planning to leave her for someone else. The storyline ends well for everyone: with Luna getting arrested, the Skunk Mother bringing her healing skunk to the APD with thank you cookies, and Ormewood and Franklin finding Angie’s softball replacement in a new rookie named Sam Atkins.
Will Trent airs Tuesdays at 8:00 P.M. EST on ABC.
Will Trent
The best episode so far in an already strong season, with both comedy and a serious character study.
- Release Date
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January 3, 2023
- Directors
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Howard Deutch, Eric Dean Seaton, Holly Dale, Lea Thompson, Patricia Cardoso, Sheree Folkson, Bille Woodruff, Erika Christensen, Gail Mancuso, Geary McLeod, Jason Ensler, Mark Tonderai, Paul McGuigan
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Ramón Rodríguez
Will Trent
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Erika Christensen
Angie Polaski
- This episode brings back Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s Paul Campano for a hilarious storyline that leads to some important conversations between him and Will.
- This episode continues with the deeper character study of Will’s character in the wake of his disturbing conversations with Ulster earlier this season.
- This episode is very funny, with sharp and clever dialogue throughout.