But I am just talking to myself here, as usual. As soon as Marshall’s statement that he was not in THE VIDEO is officially added to the testimony, it automatically becomes Phoenix’s job to argue otherwise. I take some comfort in the fact that Phoenix has pulled his head out of his (or Edgeworth’s) ass in order to display some of his rare competence: “But that video is next to useless! It’s full of blind spots!” He goes on to explain that anyone familiar enough with the camera’s movements and lack of coverage would be able to avoid showing up in the footage. I am not completely on board with this, since it involves a silly amount of choreography and practice, but I’ll allow it. What I will not allow is the endless looping of the video during Phoenix’s speculation. As always, Edgeworth demands hard proof to show that Phoenix isn’t just making shit up. And now, against all my protests, Phoenix must prove that Marshall was in THE VIDEO. Fuck it.
This, of course, involves me fast-forwarding through THE VIDEO for the fiftieth time to get to the evidence in question. I really wanted to provide all of you with an authentic recapping experience, including torturing myself with the Blue Badger theme during this endless number of playbacks. In the end, I just couldn’t survive without the mute button. Sorry for ruining your fun. So remember way back about five hundred pages ago where Phoenix found the white cloth hanging out of what we now know is Marshall’s locker? Turns out that cloth is not present at the beginning of THE VIDEO and only appears near the end, proving that Marshall opened his locker sometime after Meekins’s attack while the camera was pointed the other way. Furthermore, it should go without saying that Marshall is the mysterious stranger dressed as Bruce Niceguy, because come on. That means we have to wait for everyone to catch up to that fact, so let’s just focus on the magical appearance of the white cloth first.
Oh my God, there is so much talking here. That’s not as bad as Phoenix demonstrating his point by showing the “relevant” portions of THE VIDEO again. And then re-explaining again the meaning of the fucking white cloth. Make it stop. As the Judge tries to calm down the hyperventilating peanut gallery, Marshall cuts him off. He’s all, “Yeah, so the murderer [yes, murderer, because we’re still on that] chose my locker at random! Not my fault!” During his claim of innocence, Phoenix, Edgeworth, and the Judge just stare at him, speechless. Yes, it’s been hammered into our skulls that Marshall did not know about the fingerprint locks, but said locks have also been mentioned several times in front of Marshall already, so it’s especially dumb that he still doesn’t know this.
He’s talking about his penis.
Cripes, and then Phoenix has to use evidence to prove to Marshall that no one else could open that locker. Really, he can’t just say what everyone besides Marshall already knows? I comfort myself by imagining Phoenix hurling the actual locker at Marshall’s head, which would also make him look totally buff and muscular in front of Edgeworth. What actually happens is that Phoenix explains the concept of fingerprint sensors and I’m forced to sit through an necessary flashback where Gumshoe mentions that some cops don’t know about the them. NO SHIT. By now, Marshall has stopped drinking and shaving, and he is sweating like Phoenix while also holding and fellating a stick of meat, again like Phoenix. Finally, the many, many explanations of fingerprint locks sink in and everyone gets to enjoy Marshall breaking down on the stand. Which really isn’t all that interesting — I like my lasso strangulation idea a lot better. His poncho just blows outward dramatically and he has a stunned expression on his chiseled face. Yawn.
Okay, so now we have established that Marshall was in the evidence room during THE VIDEO, but despite his meltdown on the stand, he’s not ready to talk yet. “That’s alright, Officer Marshall. I believe we can figure the rest out from here,” Phoenix optimistically assures him. Now comes the overly long part where Phoenix has to prove that this ignorant hick was the Niceguy impersonator. Phoenix uses the floor plans to demonstrate that the evidence room lacks any secret nooks and crannies in which Marshall could hide off camera while jacking it. Since Meekins didn’t mention seeing Marshall, like, lying on the floor out of the camera view — because his testimony was so thorough — there’s only one place Marshall could be. Annoyingly, the positions of Meekins and his attacker are labeled with “K” and “V” like we are still dealing with a killer and murder victim here. For fuck’s sake.
The Judge asks Phoenix to point out the location of Marshall on his fancy floor plans, and the correct choice is the blue circle labeled V, as in the victim Bruce Niceguy who wasn’t actually in the video. “But that’s… That’s where the victim, Detective [Niceguy], was!” the Judge DURRs, making me even sadder. Continuing the trend, Phoenix goes, “Correct… unless the man wasn’t Detective [Niceguy].” WAIT, WHAT? YOU MEAN THAT WASN’T NICEGUY IN THE VIDEO? But things are not done being stupid. When Phoenix presents his correct and obvious theory that Marshall was the Niceguy imposter, Edgeworth objects. “But that’s preposterous!” he huffs. “Officer Meekins witnessed the detective at the crime scene! Once he saw the man’s face, he’d know for sure!” BUT EDGEWORTH WAS THE ONE WHO TRICKED PHOENIX INTO PROVING THAT NICEGUY WASN’T ACTUALLY IN THE VIDEO. AND WE KNOW THAT MEEKINS NEVER SAW THE GUY’S FACE.
Just…this is unacceptable. I can’t do this anymore. Fuck all these people and the writers and their stupid dumb shit.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS
Ugh.
UGH.
To make matters even worse — I KNOW — Phoenix has to flash back to Meekins’s testimony, specifically his description of “Niceguy’s” behavior when he asked for his ID. Phoenix is just now figuring out that hey, the guy in the white coat pulled a knife because his face didn’t match the face on Niceguy’s ID. Not only should Phoenix and everyone else, Edgeworth, have figured this out waaaaaaay earlier, but it still doesn’t prove that Marshall was the guy carrying the ID. So this part is all pointless.
I’m so upset over this, I haven’t even been able to talk about Phoenix and Edgeworth screwing for several paragraphs.
Now that everyone has spent several minutes acting like amnesiac dumbasses, Marshall has recovered some of his composure. “You’re gonna have to do better than that to break a detective. Unless you have hard evidence proving I dressed up as the victim…” he taunts. Phoenix cannot summon up anything hard for this asshole at the moment.
That’s kind of a mean thing to say about her.
This is the point in the testimony where Phoenix is on the right track, but he suddenly loses all ability to function. “This can’t be happening!” he panics inside his tiny brain. “It’s so obvious he’s the one!” Let me remind you that “the one” is “the guy in the video” which, who cares why the fuck Marshall was breaking into Niceguy’s locker? Even the Judge said it had nothing to do with Niceguy’s murder. I mean, everything is related to everything in this fucking case, yes, but there have been plenty of times where “hey, all this shit is connected to SL-9” wasn’t enough to keep the trial going. Anyway, when Phoenix stalls out, someone inevitably comes to his rescue, and since Ema — remember her? — is still off somewhere having a breakdown or whatever, it’s up to Phoenix’s boyfriend and Phoenix’s dead boss to bail him out here.
“Hmph,” Edgeworth scoffs, making fuck-me eyes at his opponent. “It looks like your lack of experience has finally been exposed.” Ouch! Phoenix is going to make him pay for that as soon as he can regain an erection. Edgeworth passes along some advice about “return[ing] to the basics” which Phoenix follows up with a hallucination of Mia telling him to “think outside the box.” That never stops being funny. As Phoenix blue-fonts about turning the evidence upside-down or whatever, Edgeworth uses his words to more coherently describe the situation: “There’s no reason for Officer Marshall to open his locker at the time of the crime. Yet he did, despite the chance that it might be discovered later as it has been.” Still unable to say things out loud, Phoenix deduces that Marshall “didn’t originally plan to open his locker.” Technically, none of these Einsteins know Marshall’s motive for playing dress-up and plundering Niceguy’s locker, so for all they know, Marshall’s locker was part of the plan. But fuck it, I want this over with, so I will not argue this point any further.
The Judge describes the sequence of events with Marshall’s locker for some dude in the peanut gallery who just returned from a long bathroom break, which Edgeworth follows up by theorizing that the reason Marshall opened the locker was to stuff that strange white cloth inside. Again, for all he knows, the cloth could have already been in there and gotten stuck when Marshall stuffed some other object in the locker, but of course Edgeworth is right. And now, the exact nature of this piece of cloth must be determined. “Perhaps the video is the key to all our unanswered questions,” Phoenix suggests because he wants me to suffer. And he’s just bluffing, which makes his behavior even worse.
This nonconsensually leads to another examination of THE FUCKING DICKFACE VIDEO, where Phoenix must point out the reason Marshall had to open his locker. The answer is that the white piece of cloth is from his ridiculous Niceguy trenchcoat, which became splattered with Meekins’s blood during the knife fight. It would have looked suspicious to wander around in public with bloodstains all over his clothing — he’s not von Karma, after all — so he panicked and hid the coat in his locker. He managed this in record time, too, in spite of bobbing and weaving to avoid the cameras. And then Marshall presumably walked out into the security entrance area wearing only part of his Niceguy costume and I guess changed into one of his tacky western outfits hanging on the makeshift clothesline.
There are still a number of questions surrounding this whole trainwreck, the most obvious being why did Marshall not immediately erase all the footage? So much of what I went through could have been avoided if he had taken the five minutes to do that — another reason why I want to punch him in his smug cowboy balls. At least Marshall finally concedes that he was the fucking dude on THE VIDEO, to the shock and awe of the peanut gallery. I think I would have ended the recap here if I had to go through any of that shit again. Not that this signals an end to shit in general, since there’s still another testimony. But not before Marshall gets in a meaningful dig at Edgeworth: “Two years ago… if you were only half as persistent then as you are today, we all wouldn’t have to be here, now would we?” Oh man, is this really all Edgeworth’s fault? Do I have to hate him now?
Oh my goodness, look at all that appropriate font coloring!
The testimony, titled “Marshall’s Confession,” is mostly just Marshall admitting to his actions in the evidence room that we’ve already determined a bunch of times already. His goal, however, was to “take out the evidence” because he “couldn’t just stand by and let it die.” This is just vague enough that it’s going to take a lot of unnecessary dialogue during the cross-examination to pry it out of him. Edgeworth is confused about that giant, wiped bloodstain, though. “If no one was murdered, then how could that be?” he asks, like he really still thinks Meekins killed someone on THE VIDEO and wiped up the bloodstain while he was unconscious. I just don’t know who any of these people are anymore. Marshall thinks the bloodstain was from Meekins, but Phoenix doubts it due to the amount of blood. There are other reasons why it’s unlikely, such as the fact it was wiped up even though the rest of the evidence from the incident (glove, open locker, THE JAR) was left in place.
It seems like this shouldn’t even warrant a cross-examination, since Phoenix isn’t trying to prove anything about who murdered whom, but we can’t mess with the game mechanics. This is mostly Phoenix prying more details out of Marshall, like he’s a curious friend questioning Marshall’s latest vaguebooking status. As Phoenix and the rest of us heard multiple times during the previous day’s investigation, there are those who feel that SL-9 is not over. Marshall feels especially strongly about this, claiming, “I don’t care what anyone says, pardner. That case is mine.” Since it wasn’t technically his case, though, he had no access to the SL-9 evidence. That’s why orchestrated his entire silly plan of assembling a Bruce Niceguy costume and stealing his ID in order to get his hands on the evidence before it disappeared forever in the vault under the police station along with the Ark of the Covenant.
Only by the purest chance and thinnest rubber was Marshall actually able to open the locker. Phoenix suddenly realizes that “[Niceguy] must have opened the locker before Officer Marshall” like it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that the owner of the locker opened it at some point in the past. He probably means on the day of the incident, but it’s never clarified. Regarding the security footage, Marshall just assumed that the tape would get erased after six hours anyway, so maybe he has no control over what happens to the footage? That’s never explained either. At the very least, he should have been able to control whether the stupid camera was recording at all. Nothing I come up with to give the game designers the benefit of the doubt is going to make this any less dumb. So then the thing with Meekins happened and spoiled Marshall’s perfect plan. Even if Meekins had just minded his own fucking business and left him alone, it seems like a bad idea in general to carry out evidence theft on the same day that people are going in and out of the evidence room. He couldn’t have done this on any other day, given that he has constant, unrestricted access? And after all that, his actions were pointless because the locker, as Marshall describes it, was empty. This can’t be true — apart from the glove, which I guess he could have missed, there was THE JAR. If it was already on the floor when Marshall entered the room, he probably would have noticed it. I figured he took it out before Meekins accosted him, but who the fuck knows.