Patience Season 1 Episode 5 Review: My Brother’s Keeper

On Patience Season 1 Episode 5 “My Brother’s Keeper,” Patience’s group therapy leady, Billy, learns that his brother has turned up dead and then gone missing. Yes, in that order.

Anxious about Bea’s birthday party, Patience is seeking advice from Billy when he learns that his brother Paul has died of a heart attack at a company party. Patience views the body for him, but when they return later, the mortician tells them Paul is gone.

Suspicions Paul may somehow be alive heighten when another man is found stabbed and barely alive. They’re confirmed once the mortician admits that, in a drunken stupor, he left the autopsy unfinished after feeding Paul embalming fluid.

It winds up saving his life. Paul’s been poisoned after witnessing evidence against his company and the activated charcoal in the fluid saves his life. After waking and wandering back to his apartment, he stabs a man in a panic, believing him to be his attacker.

Patience tries to persuade Paul to turn himself in when the poisoner holds them both at gunpoint. Bea takes him down, though Patience is still distraught. The man’s confession lessens the charges against Paul and he and Billy reunite.

As the episode ends, Patience gathers the courage to go to the party but stumbles when Jake makes a joke about her gift. Bea tries to stop her before a ping on her phone shows her Alfie’s test results. She sits in silence after opening them.

We’ve only had brief moments to get to know Billy before now, and those have been almost entirely within the setting of Patience’s support group. It’s nice to get more familiar with her inner circle, even under circumstances like these.

Indeed, this case is…a lot. We only get to meet Paul when we believe he’s dead and within scenes he’s suspected of attempted murder. Oh, and only a mortician’s drunkenness keeps him from having his eyes and mouth sewn shut while he’s still alive. Yikes.

The conclusions winds up a bit rushed. We should probably spend a bit more time with Patience’s trauma over being held at gunpoint and what consequences Paul will still face for almost killing someone, even if in believed self-defense.

But of course, we also have to move on to Patience’s trauma over facing her fears at a birthday party, only to have her gift shot down—thankfully not by Bea, but by Jake, who I’m disappointed in. He’d come a long way with Patience before this.

And then there’s Bea herself. Though we don’t see Augie’s test results on screen, her reaction suggests a diagnosis of some kind. What that is and how it will affect the bond that these three characters share is likely to start playing out in the season finale.

Though I doubt anyone is in serious danger, the fact we’re striking so close to home with the case in this penultimate episode does make me nervous for how things will wrap up and what additional tension could arise between characters.

 

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Patience airs Sundays at 8/7c on PBS

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