The Equalizer airs tonight on CBS with an all-new Sunday, March 6, 2022, season 2 episode 11 called “Chinatown” and we have your The Equalizer recap below. On tonight’s The Equalizer episode as per the CW synopsis, “McCall and Mel work with a jaded ex-cop to find the killers of a beloved Chinese American restaurant owner, who was the victim of a hate crime masked to look like an accidental electrical fire.”
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It was cassoulet day! It was a special dish that Aunt Vi made for the family every year. It was a complicated dish and Vi often spent most of the day inside of a hot kitchen. But this year, Delilah offered to help. She said she’d help make the dish and they were all set to do it until the teenager got a better offer. Her friend asked her to go shopping. Delilah decided to do that instead of making a family dish and so Vi decided to not make the dish at all. She hadn’t wanted to force Delilah to stay. She knew that if she did that she would be stuck inside with a sullen teenager all day and that Delilah’s mother wouldn’t be much help either and it’s true. McCall’s first instinct was to force Delilah to spend time with her great aunt.
But Delilah would have resented them both for it. There was also the fact that McCall’s job didn’t come with regular hours and she and her team caught a new case. A young Asian woman by the name of Chloe came to her because she thought a member of her community had been killed. The police didn’t take Chloe’s concerns seriously because the victim died in a supposed electric fire and the fire was ruled accidental. The police completely ignored the fact that Ms. Li’s new bakery was being targeted by racists to her lead up to death. It got so bad that Chloe escorted her every time she left her bakery.
The one time that Chloe didn’t – Ms. Li died. It was too much of a coincidence. It had to be murder and the more that McCall and her team learned was the more they became sure of the murder angle. First, there were the racists targeting. Ms. Li’s bakery was so popular that she opened a second bakery that was doing really well until the fire happened. But someone left Yelp reviews on the new bakery saying heinous things. Harry traced those messages back to a rival bakery called Castelli’s. It wasn’t the proprietor behind it. It was actually his nephew. He felt bad that his uncle was going under while Ms. Li’s franchise was growing and so he went, full racist.
The nephew had an alibi for the night of the fire. He was in upstate New York for a wedding with his whole family and so he wasn’t behind Ms. Li’s death, but he might have instigated it with his comments. The second biggest clue that Ms. Li was murdered was the fact there was a witness to some of it. Some guy in the neighborhood had stopped by for some late-night pork buns. He was there when he heard some guys breaking the window to get in and he ran off rather than call for help or stay to personally assist the woman who has always looked out for him. And so Robyn tracked this guy down using security footage.
His name is Frank. The security footage cut out after the windows were broken. But Frank wasn’t much help in detailing what happened next. McCall stopped him from getting beaten up by someone else who was also investigating the murder. His name is Ray. He was a former cop and he roughed up Frank once he saw that Frank was there the night Ms. Li died and did nothing. Frank was pretty useless. Ray, on the other hand, was not. Ray was Ms. Li’s equal. He knew information that Chloe didn’t know and so he gave it to McCall. Ms. Li’s shop was broken into. Someone sprayed paint some horrible things on her walls.
Ms. Li chased them down. She roughed them up and she got one of them in the eye with her keys. Ray tried to follow up by checking on everyone who went to the hospital with similar injuries to the eyes, but he got nowhere and so the team got lucky when they found out Ms. Li wasn’t the only victim. Another Asian business was attacked. They had the same thing and they tried to tell the police but the police ignored them because they didn’t bother looking for an interpreter for the witness. The same witness saw the men fleeing and get into a van. Harry tracked down that van. It led to an electrical supply store and that meant their racists worked there. They would know how to stage an electrical fire.
McCall couldn’t go to the store. She had a prior obligation with Kisha. The young woman was helping and so Mel went instead. Mel got close to the van. She even got close to a man sporting an injury to his eye and she grabbed DNA before she was able to escape. It turns out the DNA sample they later collected from the men hadn’t connected to the cigarette bud they found at the scene. It was connected to someone else. It was connected to Frank. Frank had apparently known the guys that attacked Ms. Li. They grew up on the same street and so it wasn’t a coincidence that Frank was there that night. He was the diversion.
Frank created the distraction by wanting a late-night snack. His friends broke into the back and so Frank was in on them killing a woman who has only ever been nice to them. Detective Dante later tried getting Frank to admit it, but he lawyered up and so Ray snapped. Ray was upset over Ms. Li’s death. It especially galled him when he heard that police could have captured the people responsible two weeks ago and before Ms. Li’s death if they had only done their jobs by following the earlier complaint. Ray went to the electrical store. He confronted the racists. And he was wearing a wire the whole time.
Ray was willing to risk his own life as long as he got a recording of them admitting to murdering Ms. Li. It worked and Mel saved him before he died. The racists were going to prison for murder and the Asian community in Chinatown was getting justice.
Dante wished he could do more and he heard it from Ray who knew his father that often the police let down people of color, but it was up to good people like Dante to continue doing the work.
THE END
