Episode 4: "Family Affair"
Credits :: Screen Captures :: Video Clips
In this episode, Cody is hired by a young girl to look for her father, a seemingly simple enough job that leads to a lot of trouble. The show opens with a man in his forties who gets stopped by two street hoods. They try to mug him. He pretends to give them a jewel brooch, but when they try to take it, he snatches it back and with some fancy moves, takes 'em both down. We find out later who this guy is.
Back at Cody's office, Gina informs him that her mom is visiting and that she needs Cody to pose as her significant other. Her mom wants her to give up acting and marry a nice man back home, and Gina's hoping seeing her with Cody will satisfy her mom to a degree. He agrees.
A sixteen-year-old prep school girl named Maya walks in with a case for Cody. She wants him to find her real dad. Although she's never been told so, she believes she's adopted. She hands him a brooch - the same brooch from the intro segment - and says for the last few birthdays, she's gotten mysterious postcards and jewels in the mail with cryptic messages like "You don't have to live like a refugee." Since she's nothing like the guy who she is currently calling dad, she's convinced it's her real dad who's sending her these things. Cody starts to refuse, but when he sees how upset she gets, he reluctantly agrees.
Cody takes the brooch to a local pawn shop where his friend, an ex-con who's trying to go straight, takes a look at it. He says it's the real deal, very expensive. Cody leaves it with him and tells him to look into it.
Cody goes and looks up Maya's birth certificate - it says the people she lives with are really her parents. He picks her up from school and tells her, and they go together to the pawn shop to pick up her brooch. When they get there, however, Lt. Frank Vargas is there asking the pawn shop owner a lot of questions. After he leaves, the shop owner angrily asks Cody why he dumped a stolen jewel on him! Uh-oh, all is not as it seems. Cody decides the investigation isn't over yet.
That night, Cody does some more research on his laptop (perhaps the rebuilt one Merlin mentions procuring for him in Episode 2). Maya's parents are wealthy. The father, Kyle, is a businessman and the mother, Nicole, is an ex-singer. They know for sure that Nicole's the mother, so they go to her to try and find out more.
Cody and Ziggy pose as a magazine reporter and photographer doing a story on the rock music scene in the mid-70s. They "interview" Nicole in her home with both Kyle and Maya watching closely, for their own reasons. Cody is barely able to get more than the name of a producer she worked with before he is hustled out by Kyle.
The story takes a darker turn when Cody gets a call that his friend the pawn shop owner has been killed. Cody realizes there's a high probability it's because of the stolen jewel from the brooch - someone thought the guy was asking too many questions. After some more investigation, Cody discovers that the jewel is from a set of jewels stolen by a world-class thief - and that's Maya's real father. When Cody tells this to Maya, instead of seeming dismayed, she seems excited. Her dad's like a Cary Grant character in the movies! Ziggy then takes Maya back to school. While he walks her to class, a man sneaks up and takes Ziggy's ID and pulls out "his" card (it's actually Cody's card, with Cody's named scratched out and Ziggy's written in over it!) Uh-oh, he knows who they are now!
While Ziggy's with Maya, Cody goes to talk to the producer Nicole mentioned and asks about her. He hears how great she was and also that she had a girlfriend to whom she confided everything. He goes off to talk to her next. She's at another studio, still singing backup. She tells Cody that the guy Nicole cheated on Kyle with was rich and flashy, but nothing more. What she doesn't realize is that Cody has her phone bugged. When she calls a realty company to report that Cody has been asking questions, Cody and Ziggy know where they need to go to get some answers.
Ziggy poses as a rap star interested in purchasing a mansion from the realty company, and Cody poses as his manager - Irving Geffington! When the realtor walks out, we see it's the same guy from the opening! Cody acts like he recognizes the guy from the "music scene" back in the mid-70s and asks him about it. The guy gets suspicious and Cody backs off, leaving with Ziggy, but promising to come back.
Meanwhile, Gina's showing her mom around L.A. and trying to get her to understand why she's no longer interested in going back home. The mom quizzes her about Cody and thinks they must be in love. Unfortunately, Cody doesn't show up at dinner like he's supposed to, making Gina's mom cluck her disapproval and Gina squirm.
Just as Cody remembers to go, he gets a call from Nicole. Maya is gone, but she left behind Cody's card. Nicole demands Cody find her daughter. Having once more forgotten Gina and her mom, Cody runs off to get Ziggy and start searching. They drive around to all the "joints rich kids go to" including the local Starbucks-type establishments, but no luck. When they get back home, they find her on Cody's couch! She begs them not to call her mom. Cody grumpily agrees to at least feed her first. While he's making her a sandwich, she starts to talk to Ziggy about her mom and his mom, and about wishing she never had to grow up. When Cody comes back in with her food, he decides to give her a little talk. He puts on a tape with her mom singing and tells her that her mom chose to grow up - ie give up her Hollywood lifestyle - so that Maya wouldn't have to grow up too soon. Maya asks why, and Cody answers, "I think they call it love." Maya finally understands that her mom's not so bad after all.
The next morning, Gina and her mom come into the office. When Cody tries to apologize, Gina pretends to "break up" with him in front of her mom so she can look strong and in control. Poor Cody just takes it until the mom marches off. Then they get a fax from Scotland Yard - a picture of the jewel thief. Just as Cody suspected, it's the realtor. They go to get him but he's figured out they're onto him. They have a car chase through Beverly Hills until the guy gets cornered in a cul-de-sac.
Cody brings him in and they discover Maya's dad killed Cody's friend, the pawn shop owner. He's even worse than we thought. But before the thief gets taken away, Cody asks his friend Det. Frank if he can talk to the guy, and if Maya can talk to him afterwards. Frank agrees.
Cody walks into the room where they're keeping the thief and tells him that if he truly loves his daughter, he'll deny being her father. Apparently this robber and murderer has a conscience to some degree. He takes Cody's advice and tells Maya he's not her father.
To wind up the episode, Gina takes her mom back to the airport, and the mom says she understands why Gina wants to stay in L.A. When Gina tries to confess about Cody, her mom admits she could tell Gina was faking it as soon as she saw her "fight" with Cody. They hug and Mrs. Weston returns to the midwest.
Astonishingly, after Cody has gone to so much trouble to get the thief to deny Maya is his daughter, her mother goes ahead and tells her everything! (So much for protecting her from thinking she "came from dirt" as Cody told the father.) Nicole tells Maya that her real dad was all flash and no substance. After he got her pregnant, Kyle loved her enough to take her back and claim Maya as his own. Maya realizes that someone who does that is a lot more of a dad than her loser jewel thief, murdering father could ever be.
That night, Cody and Ziggy relax back at his place, satisfied with their day of crime fighting and domestic healing. Feeling sentimental, Cody calls his own dad, too. Aw.