Tonight on CBS Elsbeth returns with an all-new Sunday, December 18, 2025, season 3 episode 10 called, “A Hard Nut to Crack,” and we have your weekly Elsbeth recap below.
In tonight’s Elsbeth season 2 episode 10 called “A Hard Nut to Crack,” as per the CBS synopsis, “When an avant-garde choreographer’s “Nutcracker” rehearsal turns deadly, Elsbeth leaps into the cutthroat world of New York ballet.”
So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM ET for our Matlock recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our Matlock recaps, spoilers, news & more, right here!
Tonight’s Elsbeth Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
In tonight’s Elsbeth episode for nearly a century, Midtown Ballet has done a routine of the Nutcracker during Christmas. This year was also supposed to be Noelle’s year. Noelle was the preteen daughter of Manhattanites. She’s been playing every child part in the Nutcracker since she was six and this was going to be the year she got to play Clara.
The lead role. Or it was supposed to be until the director went a different route. The director was some big shot in the theater world. He directed this hit play called “Orphan Girl” and so the Midtown Ballet brought him to appeal their Christmas show to an older crowd.
Donovan turned the simple Nutcracker into a play about the ugliness of growing up. Clara was going to be merged with an adult character to express her way of coming into puberty.
Clara was going to be played by a woman in her forties. Noelle was out and Noelle freaked out about it. She needed an emergency therapy session. Her father Harris Monroe was the one that instilled this dream in her. He wanted her to be a dancer. His husband disagreed. Rich told Harris to fix it because their daughter thought her life was over if she didn’t get to play Clara this year.
Noelle was going to age out by next year. Meaning it really was now or never. Rich just couldn’t let his kid down. He plotted a way to kill Donovan Chase and give himself an alibi.
He went to the doctor’s office. The doctors leave these people in the rooms for nearly an hour before they check on them. Harris had plenty of time to run out and murder a man. He just hadn’t been smart about it. Harris was seen hanging around the studio days before the murder. He knew the operator of the contraption that killed Chase.
Harris may think he did this for his daughter when he hadn’t. He did this for himself. He was a Dance Dad. He used to dance ballet as well and now he was forcing it onto his only child.
He was critical of her. He watched her practicing all the time to tell her where she went wrong. She dances beautifully. It’s selling the part that she struggles with because Harris doesn’t think she was a great actress. He wanted Noelle to achieve what he didn’t. His alibi wasn’t airtight and Elsbeth was on the case.
Elsbeth didn’t fall for any of his diversions tactics. He supposedly went to his old physical therapist when he injured himself. No one in his family knew about the injury. He said he was ice skating at Rockefeller when he fell. He was skating by himself. His family didn’t know because the parents don’t allow Noelle to skate.
She could injure herself and be out of the dance season. Its also why Harris claimed he went to the physical therapist from his old days. He didn’t want his husband to see the insurance claim.
The place he went to was the sort to treat most of Broadway. They were the only ones with a sliding scale for billing. Elsbeth even ran into an old dancer friend there.
She checked around the office and she noticed that Harris’s photo was signed on the wall. Harris was becoming a name in the ballet world until he married rich and became a dance dad. They were a bit like sports moms. They’d do anything to get their child the limelight. Harris was that type as well. He did everything to get Noelle the part.
He even ordered the Clara outfit from Milan last year. Elsbeth found that weirdly confident. She also wondered why he hadn’t the costume once the director was taking them in a different direction. Chase wanted a childfree play. He was Avante garde. He didn’t care for the timeless numbers.
He was a jerk and still that wasn’t reason enough to kill him. There will always be jerks. There will always be one child left off the stage. Harris should have let it go and he didn’t. And Elsbeth knows he didn’t.
Harris tried to pin the murder on his ex-boyfriend. It didn’t work. It also made his husband and Elsbeth even more suspicious of him. The crappy play that Chase was putting on had a lot of fake blood.
It was a proprietary bled. It was also found inside of his doctor’s office. It ties him to the murder scene on the day of. It was enough to arrest him. All that he asked was to see his daughter onstage playing Clara. He got that and then he went to prison.
Elsbeth in meantime was getting close to Mayoral candidate Alec Bloom, but her friends and family wanted to warn her that he was a liar. He was never unhoused. He lived in an apartment with his parents. The doorman recognizes him. He also never slept down in the subway or got free food from a guy named Pete.
The one that Elsbeth’s son had found also had dementia. He didn’t know where he was or what he was saying. Just that Alec was friendly to him when they were introduced by Teddy.
So, who is the real Alec Bloom?
THE END!
