One morning, Kirsten gets back from her run and brings in the mail, which includes an anonymously sent copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Curiosity piqued as to who this mysterious sender could be, Kirsten doesn’t allow Camille to take the copy of the book, even though the two’s boundaries have been growing wider recently.
At the lab, the two find out that today’s stitch is Justin, a food truck vendor who had a heart attack while at work. The reason they’re even stitching this guy, despite the fact that he wasn’t murdered? He’s a conspiracy theorist blogger with ex-CIA credentials. Justin got too close to spilling some important government secrets in his writing, thereby ruffling the feathers of the biggest agencies in Washington, and after claiming to have received classified documents that would expose one of the agencies, he was found dead a few short hours later. The team’s mission for Justin is to find out who gave him the documents and how he got them in the first place. When Kirsten bounces in, though, she’s surrounded by words from Justin’s blogs and has to get Linus to filter them out so she can get her bearings. Even then, Kirsten starts feeling more paranoid the longer she’s in the stitch, with the details coming too fast for her to hold onto, so Cameron uses a Wizard of Oz reference to ground her in the stitch. It does help and she finds that Justin is living in the food truck he worked from.
More importantly, Kirsten sees Justin use a pair of jumper cables to bring up a secret compartment filled with files in the truck. After taking Cameron and Fisher to the food truck, Kirsten grabs one of the folders from the extensively filed mass of information and helps her friends escape before the truck blows up after catching fire. Once they return to the lab, though, Kirsten and Cameron find out that one of the disks they found in the folder is so outdated that the lab doesn’t have the tech necessary to read what’s on it. Maggie pushes the team to do whatever it takes in order to extract the information from disk and following the staff meeting, Kirsten inquires to Cameron about the images she’s seeing that are bleeding over into various stitches. She caught Peter’s teddy bear in Justin’s stitch, but Cameron tells her that that memory doesn’t belong to either memory – it belongs to her, with her own memory possibly improving via the stimulation that comes from stitching.
After receiving a confusing, anonymous text message that looks like spam, Kirsten remembers that Ed had a few old computers when she was little and that one of those computers could help her read the disk. It turns out that Ed’s computer is helpful and after putting in work late into the night, Kirsten discovers that the disk contains the algorithm for the stitchers program. She takes this new information over to Cameron’s and when he accuses her of simply taking the hard copy from the office, Kirsten sideswipes him with the knowledge that this was in Justin’s possession before accusing him of being behind the leak. The two go back and forth, Kirsten needing to do her due diligence and Cameron thinking that this is residual emotion from Justin’s stitch, before Cameron agrees to let Kirsten check his phone tracker to see where he was when the information was delivered to Justin. And as luck would have it, he was at home when the hand off occurred, thereby clearing him of any wrongdoing.
Next on Kirsten’s list is Linus, as she hacks into his system while Cameron watches. Reluctantly, Cameron gives up his friend’s password and Kirsten ends up clearing Linus, vindicating that decision; Linus was busy playing games when Justin received the algorithm. When Linus calls after kicking Kirsten out of his network, he’s nervous and awkward when Camille’s name is mentioned as a possible suspect in the leak. After Kirsten notices he’s wearing her sweatshirt, she pieces together that Camille is there with Linus, meaning they’d been caught post-hook up. Camille was also with Linus when Justin got the algorithm, so the only person with access to the codes remaining is Maggie. But Cameron isn’t thinking about Maggie right now. He’s more amazed at two adult co-workers getting together like it’s nothing, a concept he can’t wrap his mind around due to the awkwardness of the morning/days after. Kirsten, though, doesn’t have a problem with co-workers hooking up.
When the group returns to the lab, they head to the garage to find Maggie getting out of her car and getting shot in the shoulder immediately after. Kirsten and Cameron chase after the suspect to no avail and when Maggie refuses Camille’s offer to call 911, she gets Ayo to patch her up as best she can. Yet Kirsten won’t allow her boss a moment to recuperate before presenting her with the printed-out algorithm and asking her if she was the leak. Maggie goes on a tear, ripping into the pasts of Linus (who answered an ad in the paper to get his job), Cameron (who found a sense of purpose after being born with a silver spoon), and Camille (who was able to stay in grad school due to the program) while telling Kirsten that she’s put too much into the program to bring it all down by leaking the algorithm. The morning Justin received the algorithm, she was having lunch with program director Leslie Turner, so Maggie sends her team away with orders to find out who shot her.
Though Camille and Linus engage in a talk about their status (she only wants to be friends), they’re interrupted by Cameron and Kirsten, who report that no one inside the program was responsible for the leak. Every alibi checks out, but since the algorithm is only available in hard copy, it makes figuring out who was responsible for the leak that much more difficult. Cameron then gets Kirsten to use her disorder in order to slow down her memory of the stitch and pick out moments/items that could have a deeper meaning. She stumbles across a butterfly tattoo on the wrist of a woman at the food truck, a tattoo that matches the one on Marta’s wrist. Once Camille confirms that Marta was discharged almost a week ago, the team finds out that she also hadn’t shown up for a follow-up with her doctor, nor had she been in touch with any friends or family members. Kirsten then grills Cameron about his relationship with Marta (getting more serious before the accident) and why she was recruited in the first place; Marta was a highly recommended candidate from the NSA that, while not having temporal dysplasia like Kirsten, passed every component of the test with flying colors. Except one – her protective instinct was a bit too high, which ultimately resulted in her coma.
Kirsten also learns that Marta’s specialty was cryptography, so she gets the copy of Catcher in the Rye and the two strange texts she received and unscrambles the latter. Marta had sent her a message telling her that she was in danger and that she shouldn’t trust anyone; Kirsten then texts her back and meets her in Chinatown before heading back to Echo Park. When Marta realizes that Kirsten’s house isn’t bugged, she implores the newest stitchee to get her things packed and get out of town, away from those in the program. As Kirsten secretly calls Cameron and allows 
him to listen to the conversation, Marta rants about the stitchers program being evil, how she was the one who leaked the algorithm to Justin, and how she was the one who shot “lying bitch” Maggie in the parking lot. To Maggie, Cameron was responsible for what happened to her, while the program itself is only around to use people like her for greater purposes. They turn the stitchees into grave robbers and use those who volunteer their mind as lab rats.
Just then, Cameron arrives in the house, which causes Marta to tearfully pull a gun. She wants to protect Kirsten so badly from the type of betrayal she felt she received, yet Marta soon finds herself under pressure from the police cars outside the house. But once she receives a phone call from someone mysterious, Marta gives up the fight. After telling Kirsten that she was going to be safe now and thanking Cameron for the flowers, Marta walks outside with gun in hand and promptly gets gunned down by the police officers outside. Cameron, of course, is guilty beyond belief, his faith in the program shaken by what happened; Kirsten, on the other hand, believes that Maggie was behind the phone call that led Marta to her death. Maggie denies it and implores that they don’t stitch into Marta for Cameron’s emotional well-being.
Back at the lab, Kirsten unsuccessfully tries to comfort Cameron, who assures her that he’s okay for now. He might not be okay in the future, but not being okay after something like this is a sign that he’s human and that he’s not been fully swallowed up by the program. He still envies her, though, as Kirsten is able to process trauma much more readily and doesn’t feel the weight of the emotional baggage that comes from the non-stitching aspects of being in the program. Out in the garage, Maggie meets with Leslie, who was behind the phone call to Marta. He told the former agent that if she were to pull back the curtain on the program, those currently involved would meet an untimely end at her hand. Rather than have blood on her hands, Marta gave up her life in order to keep Kirsten safe.
But that’s not all, as Leslie was also behind Justin’s death. He needed Justin dead in order to stitch into him and find out who was responsible for giving him the algorithm. There was no other way to get this information, not when Justin was former CIA and not when the program could have been ruined if he published the algorithm. The real purpose of the $8 billion program cannot be known to anyone outside the bureaucracy’s uppermost levels and Leslie is willing to do anything he can in order to preserve that secrecy.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Hey, can I borrow your shirt for a date I had last night?”
-“When we first met, you pretended to be an anal jerk, only to cover that you were a slightly less anal jerk.”
-“Someone leaked the algorithm for the stitch lab to Justin.” “Our stitch lab?” “No, the other stitch lab.”
-Episodes of procedurals that have heavily mythology fascinate me on a storytelling/narrative/structural level and I think that Stitchers did a pretty solid job with “Stitcher in the Rye”. On the one hand, Oded Fehr! On the other, I’m a little nervous that the show will be swallowed up by the mythology. Stitchers has done well at pacing itself and delivering answers that produce additional questions, but it feels like a show that shouldn’t lose its procedural-ness just yet.
-Artisanal toast is apparently a thing. Personally, I just prefer my toast with a little peanut butter, but hey, that’s just me.
-Having Kirsten bounce into Justin’s memory and be surrounded by words was a nifty way of representing a writer’s brain. The stitches are the show’s chance to go a little kooky with creativity, given that there’s a pre-set structure to every episode, and the show has certainly kept me on my toes with the curve balls it’s thrown at Kirsten. So, kudos.
-Okay, how exactly did Cameron’s phone being at his house in the morning validate his innocence? Because he could have very easily left without his phone, gave the algorithm to Justin, and made it back to his place without anyone at work being the wiser.
-It’s a sign of Kirsten’s emotional development that she was upset Cameron hadn’t shared a whole lot about himself with her. I really don’t think the Kirsten of the pilot would have cared about people sharing things with her. Progress! Character development! Residual emotion!
-Ed’s old computer was very Halt and Catch Fire. I dig it. Also, I think it would be cool if Kirsten’s slowly regained memories from her past (e.g. the memory about Ed’s computer) could help her uncover the truth about her present (e.g. that computer helping point her in the right direction in sussing out the leaker). Kind of a snowballing of brain stimulation that leads to a better understanding of the program, with Kirsten’s continued participation in the program opening up new avenues in her mind that had been closed off for years.
-I loved the delivery of “You hooked up with Camille.” from Kirsten. The disappointment and judgment were delicious and very funny. Also delicious and funny: Marta asking how that “lying bitch” Maggie was.
-The show talked about Marta’s application into the program, but I’m very curious what she was doing before she became a stitchee. I kind of assumed that she had more experience with the feds than Kirsten did before she joined and that she had the type of weapons training that made the shot on Maggie’s shoulder pretty curious. But I could be wrong.
-Camille wanting to be friends after hooking up with Linus again: emotionally manipulative (using his obvious feelings for her for her own personal gain) or surprisingly sensitive for her (telling him that them being FWBs wouldn’t be enough for him)?
-Am I too sleepy when writing this or did Cameron call Kirsten “Kristen” while she was out at her house with Marta?
-You can take a cryptography course at the University of Maryland. Somebody do that and report back.
-I like how a super secret government agency with all the resources in the world loses track of somebody in a coma. I mean, I get that they understandably didn’t view Marta as a threat and that Cameron couldn’t exactly live at the hospital, but you would think that they would have gotten wind of her discharge earlier than they did.
-What do you think the real purpose of the program is, if it’s not to solve potential cold cases? My first thought was that it could be used by the defense department (e.g. kill someone on the other side, stitch into them, find out secrets that could win a war), but I don’t know if this is the type of show that would do something like that.
-I thought that Marta was going to kill herself in front of Cameron, as “revenge” for what she perceived as his role in her condition and as a way to show the relationship they had before the incident, which would have been super dark for ABC Family. In a way, I guess she did kill herself – she just let the police do it for her in order to protect the program, which might be the most chilling/unnerving aspect of the show so far. Nonetheless, her end was sad for the way she went out and for the loss of an interesting character and a very good actress in Tiffany Hines.
-I do understand that a character like Marta doesn’t have a long shelf life, though. Those in charge of the program wouldn’t let someone like her live for long and she at least got to shake Kirsten’s belief in the program before she left. I’m just left wondering if the show could’ve gotten more out of the character than they did.
-Next week on Stitchers: The stitchers investigate a mysterious car accident, while Kirsten enlists Linus to help her decipher a clue left by Ed.
