'Ridley' Recap: Season 2 Episode 2

Ridley airs Sundays at 7:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Farman and Ridley are both upset that Darren executed a warrant and brought Tasha in for questioning after finding a bag of Liam Manley’s clothes in her mother’s home. Darren doesn’t know that Tasha is an undercover cop. Farman is troubled by Tasha’s involvement with Liam, who is becoming ever more of a person of interest in a string of jewelry store robberies as well as the killing of his friend Ryan Stanford in a hit-and-run. Their friend and third robber, Cal Douglas, has been released because the paint found on Ryan’s pants from the car collision doesn’t match Cal’s van.

Farman wants to take Tasha off the case, but Tasha insists that Liam is hiding the stolen merchandise from the most recent heist, and that she will soon find out where.

Ridley convinces Farman to let Tasha continue on the case. He unplugs the recorder in the interrogation room to have a candid conversation with Tasha. When he asks, she tells him she’s not in a relationship with Liam. When he questions her commitment to being a cop, she angrily explains that she left home four years ago on her eighteenth birthday when her dad hit her while she tried to protect her mom from him. She signed up for police training soon after.

Ridley gives Tasha a tracking device to stick on Liam’s car, and tells her to call him first thing in the morning.

Ridley then follows his own leads, going to question Simon Penrose, the wealthy owner of a stud farm where Ryan worked a bit. Simon’s wife Katharine follows Ridley as he leaves to make sure he didn’t tell Simon about Ryan’s phone call to her from police custody soon before he died. The grooms like to gossip that she was having an affair with Ryan, she tells Ridley.

Ridley then heads to the jazz club, where he tells Annie that the police have ruled out her new boyfriend Harry Bentham, the owner of the robbed jewelry store, as a suspect. He apologizes for casting suspicion on Harry, which nearly slowed down Annie’s relationship. But Harry has revealed all his baggage to Annie and given her a bracelet, and he makes her happy – so she’ll continue seeing him. Ridley does still contend that Harry inflated the value of his stolen goods in his insurance claim, however.

Tasha also dives into a relationship – with Liam. She asks him about Terry Sansom, the owner of a trucking business whom the police suspect of organizing the jewelry store robberies, saying that the police mentioned his name when they brought her in. Liam says he’s looking after some things for Terry, but he’ll get rid of them soon.

Liam ends up staying the night with Tasha. He receives a text from Terry in the middle of the night arranging a drop-off of the stolen goods tomorrow – and Tasha sees it.

When she wakes up in the morning, Liam is gone. She texts Ridley about the drop-off and then goes outside, where she finds Liam waiting in his car – and so she ignores Ridley’s phone call. Liam has retrieved the stolen jewelry, and tells her that they’re going to drop it off with Terry, and Tasha can get a cut of the payment. She’s part of this now.

Ridley tells Farman about the drop-off, then visits Tasha’s mom at the pub where they both work. Her mom says that Liam stayed over the previous night, and that Tasha left with him this morning. Ridley is surprised, but Tasha’s mom says the pair were a couple before Tasha left town.

Goodwin reluctantly authorizes a team to go to the drop-off – he’s not entirely confident in Tasha – but says Ridley can’t be among them, given his closeness to Tasha.

Liam pulls over before getting to the drop-off and tells Tasha that he wants to take the jewelry and sell it, and start a new life. But he wants to take vengeance on Terry first for killing Ryan – and he has a gun with which to do it.

He also knows that Tasha is a cop: he found her journal with notes. Tasha surreptitiously activates the tracker Ridley gave her and drops it in the car. Liam makes Tasha get out of the car and walk away from him with her back to him. When she hears the car drive away, she collapses, relieved that he didn’t shoot her.

Liam heads to the drop-off, where he and Terry exchange money and the stolen jewelry. Liam then draws his gun – and an armed squad of police moves in and arrests them both.

With Liam in custody, Ridley tries to get him to talk. Liam admits that he and Cal met Terry when they were painting his house, and Terry offered them bigger money through robberies. They brought on Ryan because they needed help, but when Ryan’s girlfriend Donna got pregnant, he wanted to turn his life around. He had been told his mother didn’t want him – he was raised by his grandparents – and he wanted to be a better parent than her.

The Farmans understand the difficulties of parenting. Geri sees their son Jack get dropped off by a rowdy crew in a revving sports car when he’s supposed to be at soccer practice. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Later, Farman ignores Geri’s phone call to her.

Ridley looks into Ryan’s mother on a hunch. Kat was 17 and addicted to heroin when she got pregnant, and the father wasn’t around. Her parents took custody of her baby in a special court order. Frank, Ryan’s grandfather, tells Ridley that he and his daughter haven’t spoken for years. He heard that she turned her life around and married into money, and is now involved with horses.

Another piece of evidence confirms suspicion of Ryan’s mother, Katharine Penrose – the paint found on Ryan’s pants from being hit by the car that killed him has a match to a silver-white SUV seen on cameras near the crash. It’s registered to the Penroses.

Katharine explains to Ridley and Farman that she turned the stud farm into a front for Terry Sansom because her husband Simon had nearly run it into the ground and they needed extra money. She says being pregnant with Ryan ruined her life, and when he recognized her while dropping off stolen goods at the stud farm, she told him he meant nothing to her. Nevertheless, he threatened to tell Simon about his existence and her past, unless she gave him money. So she ran him over.

Case closed, Tasha will now be just a regular instead of undercover cop, given her involvement with Liam that nearly botched the case. Ridley blames himself in part, thinking he identified Tasha with his deceased daughter and thus was a bad handler for her. She leaves a note for her mom and takes the next train out of town.