Stalker -- No One Is Safe From A Stalker

Teen Hanna is talking on the phone with her friend when she thinks she hears someone in the house. Her friend teases Hanna suggesting she's making up stuff again, like the stuff about someone stalking her. The friend won't believe her, proclaiming only famous people get stalked. But then she does believe her when she tells her to call 911 because there is someone in the house. Then Hanna grabs her little brother and runs out the door after seeing someone in a hoodie in her house.

Beth and Jack are called in. Hanna tells them she thought someone was stalking her but no one would believe her. They find a large footprint outside the house and suspect that the stalker was watching the house from the old tree house. They also discover there's a sex offender living in the neighborhood. When they go to his house to question him they find a bunch of pictures of young girls Hanna's age on his computer. He claims he only looks but he doesn't touch now.

When Jack uses his unique perspective as as stalker, himself, to get into the head of Hanna's stalker, he realizes that there was no way the stalker could have been watching Hanna. Her bedroom is on the other side of the house. That's when Beth realizes Hanna isn't the target, her little brother is. That the stalker had gotten in the house to snatch Thomas that night, not go after Hanna. Beth calls up Hanna's mother to warn her not to let Thomas out of her sight, but when she goes to the living room where he'd been watching TV she finds him gone.

Beth and Jack discover one of the neighbors was lying about her name and impersonating her sister. Further digging into the woman's background unearths some very disturbing information. Her ex-husband admits he suspected her of killing their son, because their son died right after he filed for divorce from her. In short, she killed her own child thinking that would save her marriage and blaming her son for the problems in her marriage. Meanwhile the woman, Judith Ann Wilson, opens the trunk of her car where she's keeping Thomas. She's convinced that he's her son. She's also convinced a woman's house is her house, and she attacks the woman when she tells Judith to get out of her house.

Jack and Beth track her and Thomas down in the nick of time. The woman is about to get all homicidal. She's got a knife in her hand and spewing at Thomas how he always ruins everything. The handcuffs are slapped on her and she's hopefully put in a nice padded cell somewhere she can get help. As crazy Judith sits in the back of the police car she watches as Thomas runs into his mother's loving arms.

As this case proved, anyone can be stalked. Even an innocent child by a psychotic woman who killed her own child and then thinks the child is her son come back to life. The sad part about Judith's fantasy is that she would have ended up killing Thomas like she killed her own son. So is there any kind of treatment and cure for someone like her. It would be one thing to kill your child accidentally and want a second chance to make it right and be a good mother to your psuedo-child, but Judith was going to do it all over again. The woman is a cold-blooded murderess who killed her own child because she thought that would save her marriage. It's just too bad no one could see what a sicko she truly was before her son had to pay the price.

In other matters, team mate Janice asks Jack out for coffee. He turns her down, claiming he doesn't want them to get involved in case things don't work out. The real truth is there's only one woman he's interested in and that's the one he's stalking.

Speaking of his stalking victim, she's fit to be tied when she comes to drop some files off to Beth and gets introduced to Jack. Amanda is the D.A. He claims it's just a coincidence and he didn't know she covered these cases. She's not buying it and she's had enough of this. She tells Jack if he doesn't resign and go away, she's going to tell Beth what she knows about him. Jack, once again, makes a bid to see his son, but she sees he's not worthy to have anything to do with her son.

So I guess the question is just who Jack is stalking. There are pictures on his wall of Amanda and their son together and I could swear one of her alone. So is he stalking his son or Amanda or both.

Meanwhile Perry is still stalking Beth, which she seems completely unaware of. He watches as she councils a former stalking victim she helped. Then he makes a really bold move and approaches Beth at the police station claiming he doesn't know why he does what he does and he wants help to stop himself from what he's doing. She gives him the name of a good psychiatrist. But at the end of the hour we see him cozying up to the woman Beth had been watching Beth council earlier. So it seems the whole thing about wanting help was just another salvo in his stalking campaign against Beth. Now he's going to start talking people connected to her.

I will have to say that already the show is redefining who we think of as victims of stalking. Generally, it's a love object someone is obsessed with or a celebrity. But in Perry's case he's stalking Beth because she stopped him from stalking his room mate. It seems Perry is stalking Beth out of revenge for daring to take him on. While Judith was stalking a child she saw as a replacement for her own child.