Chas Speed

Can anybody make any sense out of the first episode of the 2nd season? A kidnapper is making ransom demands over a pay phone and a deaf woman reads his lips. It turns out the kidnapping is a fake and somebody had simply hired someone to kill his wife. Why would the fake kidnapper even bother to make a fake ransom call and why would they have a fake drop off of the money. It also doesn't seem likely that the fake victim would allow Mannix to make the drop off. The "kidnapper" wants to kill Mannix even though Mannix has never seen him, because he said Mannix might go to the police. Why would you stage a fake kidnapping if you were never going to go to the police? Maybe I'm missing something, but the whole episode just seems crazy. This is really the only episode from the first 2 seasons that I didn't like and I have been very impressed by how good the show is.