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The Good Cop season 1, episode 9 recap: ‘Why Kill a Busboy?’

By Bethany Lewis

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As Tony struggles to keep his new restaurant afloat, TJ and the team investigate a bizarre robbery turned murder on The Good Cop.

Tony takes his new girlfriend out to his favorite restaurant, Romanelli’s, an iconic New York institution that was once a favorite of Frank Sinatra and other influential celebrities and gangsters.

In the middle of dinner, two suspicious men enter the restaurant who Tony immediately clocks as robbers. They hold the diners at gunpoint and pass a bag around for wallets and jewelry on this episode of The Good Cop.

When one of the robbers get aggressive toward a busboy, the other robber tells him “not that one, the other one”, implying they are there looking for a specific person. They take the other busboy in the back and execute him.

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When TJ arrives, Tony has already given Cora the best statement she’s ever had from a witness, including time, positions, descriptions, tattoos, and scars. Something is fishy with the crime scene from the beginning, especially considering the robbers never touched the cash register or the busboy’s wallet.

Meanwhile, the owner of Romanelli’s is selling the restaurant and has given Tony a special offer. He spends the rest of the evening trying to convince TJ to co-sign a loan to buy it. Despite his reservations, TJ eventually agrees and goes into business with his father.

Opening night at Romanelli’s sees Tony running around schmoozing with the diners, talking up family recipes, and cracking jokes. He’s practically the happiest TJ has ever seen him, which makes him terrified. He’s already having to admonish his father for committing infractions and is horrified to receive a citation from the health department.

Tony tells him he has everything under control, but when TJ emails the health department to ask for an extension the health inspector Tony had bribed is replaced with a clean health inspector. When TJ examines the accounts he decides that they have enough money to make the necessary changes to pass inspection, until Tony reveals the un-doctored accounts.

Meanwhile, things are at a standstill with the investigation. The stolen items are found dumped a few blocks away, suggesting that the robbers were actually hitmen hired to kill the busboy, but no one can think of a motive.

Ryan suggests its a case of mistaken identity, like in Terminator, and that the hitmen killed the wrong Porifiro Santini. Everyone thinks this is stupid until an attempt is made on another man named Porfiro Santini.

He’s scared to death and almost impossible to get a statement from, but it turns out that he’s just a paranoid schizophrenic who believed he was being targeted. His assault was likely another distraction.

At the restaurant, just when things seem hopeless, Chuck Everett, a hedge fund manager who works across the street, offers to invest $800,000 to keep them in business, saying he can’t live without the mushroom ravioli.

The truth is, he’s partnered with Jocelyn the hostess, the microphone at the Sinatra table is bugged, and he can’t afford to lose all his insider trading tips. The busboy found out and they had to have him killed. They picked up on the Terminator theory through the bugged microphone and decided to use it.

One night, Tony recognizes a necklace that Jocelyn is wearing from the night of the robbery. He starts putting the pieces together and finds the bug at the Sinatra table.

Tony wants to ignore it so that he can keep his restaurant, but he knows turning in Jocelyn and Chuck is the right thing to do. They lure the hitmen to the restaurant when Tony pretends to call the SEC. They arrest the hitmen and Jocelyn and Chuck, and Tony and TJ end up selling the restaurant.

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Its really funny for someone in the food and beverage industry to watch this, because when TJ performs a health and safety audit of the kitchen it only takes a glance to see that there’s a lot wrong.

When produce is being stored next to raw beef at room temperature on a bottom shelf less than six inches from the floor, you’ve got a kitchen run by some really strange and disorganized chefs.

I also really love the dynamic between Tony and TJ in this episode, especially when TJ says that he loves his dad and wants him to be a better man. Tony gets mad because Connie used to say stuff like that to him and suddenly he looks at TJ and is reminded of her.

And there’s obviously nothing TJ can do about that, having half her DNA, but Tony somehow feels its intentional. I never thought about what it must be like for Tony, looking at TJ every day and seeing his dead wife in his face and mannerisms.

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