Perception - Bolero

In a reversal of the show's regular formula Daniel Pierce (Eric McCormack) brings what he believes was a cleverly disguised murder to the attention of Kate (Rachael Leigh Cook) and the FBI. After witnessing the death of an art gallery owner whose photosensitive epilepsy was taken advantage of leading to his untimely death, Pierce and Kate also discover someone cleverly used the disruption of the man's epileptic seizure (which wouldn't have been life-threatening if he hadn't hit his head on a bench on his fall to the ground) by replacing one one of the paintings in the gallery with a well-made forgery.

Suspects in the case involve the struggling gallery owner's husband (Rod Hallett) and the paining's original model, Josephine Carswell (Louise Lombard), who had a legal claim to the paintings which were sold to a private collector (Sachin Joab). The FBI finds both the hacker whose video led to the seizure (who turns up dead and didn't have the skills to create the forgery) and the forger (Brad Hunt) responsible for the fake painting (who doesn't have the cognitive awareness to pull off the complicated heist), but neither turn out to be their killer. Properly diagosing the forger's FTD leads to the professor helping the man lead them to a killer (Adam Godley) although it also leads to troubling news which Daniel will have to deal with before the episode ends.

With his shrink offering advice for Daniel to try and ignore Natalie (Kelly Rowan) for the time being, and being a bit smitten with the former art model, Pierce begins to hallucinate the woman's younger self (Francesca Eastwood) both to help him work through the case and for companionship until Natalie encourages to try and spend some time with the real thing. Pierce discovers the real thing to be even better than the fantasy, but the relationship is short-lived once he deduces she knew more about the heist than she's been letting on.

I'm sad to see Josephine, both young and old depart so quickly, as the obvious chemistry between McCormack and Lombard would have been fun to see played out over a larger arc. Still, Josephine's introduction and quick exit aren't the only thing which make "Bolero" stand-out among this season's episodes. However short (or painful) relationship with Josephine turned out to be, it does give Daniel the strength to say farewell to Natalie (at least for now) perhaps foreshadowing more changes as the show reaches the halfway point of its Third Season.