The joy of a show like Elsbeth is that every episode has a special guest star on it. Which now includes Billy Magnussen playing a very rich man who wants to find something that makes him feel alive.
Rod (Magnussen) has been rich his entire life. At one point during the episode, his childhood friend even says that Rod never had to want for anything and it made him feel hollow. So we get to see Rod realize that one thing he wants to do to feel alive is kill someone and get away with it. The issue is that he killed a diplomat and didn’t realize it.
Now this isn’t exactly unique for Elsbeth, the murderer’s that Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) has to try and find often is rich and privileged and think they can get away with it. But what makes Rod so fascinating to me is that he really is just Patrick Bateman in a different font. A rich white man who wants to feel alive and does that through murder? My kind of fictional character to unpack!
Magnussen plays the slightly deranged in a pretty fascinating way. We saw it on his show Made With Love and now his role as Rod is pushing that kind of character even further. He literally just a man who has never had to work for anything and that turned into him being the monster that Elsbeth had to meet with.
All he needed was a walk-man
Another rich white man who never wanted for anything in his life is Patrick Bateman. And we all know what he ended up doing. But the difference between these two is that Rod didn’t kill someone because he was disgusted by them. He killed someone to feel “alive.” Patrick Bateman wanted to just kill because he felt a certain way about people.
But I do think it is interesting that we have characters like this in media. We have white men who are so rich that they don’t know how to make themselves feel alive. Rod is so lost in his own feelings that he literally didn’t even know what he needed until he accidentally almost shot his friend and then he was suddenly convinced he needed to commit a murder.
The episode as a whole as fun because watching Magnussen run around any television show is a joy to us all but I really love to see him lean into that Patrick Bateman side.
(featured image: CBS)
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