Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 17) - "Avenging Angel
Once again, it has been confirmed. The Metro Police are investigating a brutal homicide here tonight at this shelter for battered women, this safe house, though it hardly seems appropriate to call it that now. Show's over. Excuse me. We are working here.
Reporter:So am I. The location of this facility is strictly confident. We have a right to be here. This is news.
Nick:You're all done, dear. There's nothing more to see. It's what you call a wrap.
Reporter:Let's go. It's a wrap.
Rachel:Hi. I'm Rachel.
Matt:And I'm Matt.
Rachel:And this is Come in 81 kilo.
Matt:A forever night podcast.
Rachel:Welcome back, friends. It's time for another episode of Forever Knight episode, Forever Knight season 3, episode 17, avenging angel. A small
Matt:Yet another AA episode.
Rachel:What was the last AA f oh.
Matt:The fix or no. Not fix. Feeding the beast. Yeah.
Rachel:A small disclaimer before we get started. This episode, you've probably watched it, but just so you know, deals heavily with, domestic abuse. And as usual, there will probably be some laughs. We will probably pick apart the episode and have a really good time doing it. Be aware what we are making fun of is always the content of the episode and not the theme of the episode.
Rachel:So we are not making light of domestic abuse. We are making light of the utter ridiculousness that sometimes pops up in nineties television shows. I just wanted to go ahead and get that out there. This is going to be a slightly, tiptoe through the tulips episode, because once again, we are dealing with a really heavy theme.
Matt:In the second half of season 3.
Rachel:Yes. So Maria helpfully commented and said I was correct. They found out that they were not getting renewed, episode 10.
Matt:Thank you, Maria.
Rachel:Thank you, Maria. I'm glad that they were able to finish out the last part of the season. Sometimes when you got canceled, you just cut flat fucking canceled. They were like, nope. Numbers aren't great.
Rachel:You're done. That is why the first season of Buffy is so short because you would have shows waiting in the wing to take over for a show that just was not working. So they must have felt like, okay, you guys can finish the season, but you don't get another. And they were like, oh, okay then. All bets are off and let's Throttle
Matt:wide open.
Rachel:Yeah. Throttle wide open. Fuck vampire dog. We're done with that shit. This isn't we aren't we aren't trying to be palatable anymore.
Rachel:We're we're just gonna we're gonna fucking go. So we just had our check it out y'all. Jeanette's human. Site ain't human anymore. And somebody commented on one of our YouTube videos, how come I didn't mention the fact that she could have died in the fire?
Rachel:And I know that this was like a fan thing for a while was, did she die in the fire or did he turn into a vampire? And I remember watching it the first time and thinking, wow. They left the ending open. Like, we don't know whether she died in the fire or whether she got turned into a vampire. And then I watched it this time, and I was like, it's really clear she got turned into a vampire.
Rachel:Who else would have murdered the dudes?
Matt:Right. Somebody murdered somebody at the station. Yeah. Whatever bus station or train station where the locker was.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:And Jeanette was the only one that had a stake in what was in the locker.
Rachel:And she brought the painting back. And LaCroix gets the line, I have lost a daughter but gained a son because Nick is now Jeanette's sire. I didn't feel like it was ambiguous. That's why I didn't say it was ambiguous. I felt like it was really well, like, really clearly spelled out.
Rachel:Unless you think Nick killed those dudes and vindicated Bob posthumously.
Matt:It was Lacroix, and Lacroix brought the painting back just to fuck with Nick.
Rachel:Yeah. He's like, oh, maybe she didn't die in that fire. Maybe she spontaneously turned back into a vampire. No. I don't know.
Rachel:That's why I didn't talk about it because I didn't think it was ambiguous. I felt like it was pretty clear. So if you feel like it's ambiguous, that's fine. Let go off. You you want you wanna think that?
Rachel:That's great. But, I don't think so. I think it's pretty clear she got turned into a vampire unless the painting walked itself back over, which maybe I don't know. If if I was Jeanette
Matt:was always there.
Rachel:Like, we know ghosts exist.
Matt:It was always there, but Jeanette had put a, like, mind compulsion on him Yeah. To not notice it. That and that compulsion would disappear as soon as she died.
Rachel:Well, he gave it back to her.
Matt:Right. And then she put it in his apartment and said, you will remember this when I die. Like, you will start noticing this painting.
Rachel:Listen. We know ghosts are real. If I were Jennette, I would haunt his ass so hard.
Matt:Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Rachel:Yeah. Especially for that move at the end where they find out or, like, the whole house is on fire, and he's like, Jeanette, I'll save you. And she's like, save the child, you son of a bitch. Go over there and save the little kid. He's your actual son.
Rachel:Get him off of this set. Yeah. That was quite the moment. I mean, we are on the downside, and we continue on our downside. Nick's long long, drawn out, protracted downside back into vampire ness in this episode, but we don't find that out till the very end.
Rachel:So I guess we'll just get started. We open in a women's shelter, and it is a woman getting patched up by someone who is not Christina Noble from dead air, but is in fact Laura Stone.
Matt:Just a chance lookalike.
Rachel:Mentally, I like to think this is the exact same character, and she just changed her name. Because I like to think
Matt:That's possible.
Rachel:That she went through all of that in dead air, and she realized that hosting a tawdry romance, a tawdry radio program was not the way to go, and so she quit. And that's the time slot that the nightcrawler took over. So, anyway, that's
Matt:a little whole lot of headcanon.
Rachel:See, anyway, that's fan canon now. So there you go. Fan canon doesn't have to be right. It just has to be mine, and it is.
Matt:And fun.
Rachel:And fun. And it is. Because, you know, how much better is this episode if you're like, oh, except she would be like, oh, where's your partner?
Matt:And Nick would be like, you look familiar.
Rachel:Oh, funny story. My partner died in a flaming plane explosion. Remember when that happened? Nope. Nobody does.
Rachel:So anyway, she's talking to this lady and she's like, listen. Cut all ties with him, you know, your person for 3 weeks with the person who is abusing you. No visits. No calls. She says this is a cooling off period.
Rachel:And I thought it was interesting that she doesn't just say your boyfriend slash your husband. She says, whoever is abusing you. Yeah. Which I know they were trying to be, like, could also be a parent, but it just feels inclusive, I guess, to not just be, like, your husband. Like, there's a lot of relationships that can result in abuse, and it's not always spousal.
Rachel:It just tends to be. So it's interesting that they were like, oh, anyone, whoever it is, whatever person laid hands on you nonconsensually, don't call them for at least 3 weeks. And then she's walking out. She's taking her first aid kit out, and she hears a woman screaming no down the hallway. So she boogies on down the hallway to the room where the woman is screaming no.
Rachel:She tries to get in. She's like, Julie. And she tries to get in. The door is locked. And she says, Julie, unlock this door.
Rachel:She ends up unlocking the door and going in, and there is a girl cowering on a pile of stuffed animals and a woman stabbed to death on the floor and a broken window.
Matt:Stage set.
Rachel:Game set match. We are ready to go, because here comes the intro. Badam. Badam. Right across in 12/28.
Rachel:And then we come back, and we don't come back to them at the crime scene for the first time in, like, a long time. You know what else we get this episode? A flashback. We haven't had a flashback.
Matt:We don't get this episode?
Rachel:Vashon. Are you counting? This is the 4th episode of Vashon.
Matt:Nick using any vampire powers.
Rachel:Oh, he hypnotizes that.
Matt:Oh, he does.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Yeah. I was thinking this episode could just be a normal police officer, but, nope, he hypnotizes the reporter right away.
Rachel:Yeah. He
Matt:does. Than that, it's it's mundane.
Rachel:Yeah. In the In fact in the supernatural forces. Does not use any of his vampire powers.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. But Tracy is at home, and she's getting ready for work, and the doorbell rings. And she opens the door, and it's her little blonde mama. She's like, mom.
Matt:What a surprise. Hi.
Rachel:Yes. Great you're here. And her mom goes, oh, I just wanted to surprise you while I was in town. I tried to get a hotel room, but there's a convention or something, and Tracy goes, yeah. That's that's the film festival, Bob.
Rachel:Like, the Toronto Film Festival is a big deal. And, of course, there's no hotel rooms, and her mom should have known that there were
Matt:Pay attention. Does that coincide with StratFest?
Rachel:I don't know. I Strat StratFest is, like, half the it, like, runs for a really long time.
Matt:So probably there's an overlap.
Rachel:There's probably an actually, I don't know how I don't know why I just spoke authoritatively about how long Strapfest is. I know that the the play that Garris in this year is opening in August, and then I think they run through, like, October. So it's like August, September. It was only 3 months. It's part of the year.
Rachel:It's just part of the year.
Matt:I don't know.
Rachel:Okay. Yeah. She goes, yeah. That's the film festival mom. And then they do this hug.
Rachel:Like, oh, hi.
Matt:Very awkward hug.
Rachel:It's like, no. Like, you know what? Actually, just fist bump.
Matt:There you go.
Rachel:There you go.
Matt:Universal greeting.
Rachel:Yeah. And the universal greeting.
Matt:Respect knuckles.
Rachel:Yeah. Speck knuckles. And then
Rachel:they do the afterwards. And Tracy's mom is like, oh, yeah. Well, I have business in town, and I kinda thought we can hang out. And Tracy's, like, well, I'm actually, like, going to work. I work for a living, but maybe we could hang out Saturday.
Rachel:And then Tracy gets a call, and she's like, mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Does my partner know? Mhmm.
Rachel:Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. And then she jots down some notes, hangs up the phone, and she's like, oh, god. I gotta go, mom.
Rachel:Like, I just got called out. But the couch folds out, and I have satellite hookup now. So you can watch a lot of movies.
Matt:High-tech.
Rachel:Does she have a satellite on the outside of her apartment, or did the apartment satellite?
Matt:She probably probably there's one satellite dish for the whole building.
Rachel:One of the big fucking ones, Like, the giant well, they're, like, 6 foot across ones.
Matt:One of the ones that was in our neighbor's yard
Matt:Yeah. That got taken down.
Rachel:There's a movie where they get one, and they get, like, a 1000 channels, and it ends up getting struck by lightning, and then they can, like it becomes a portal into the TV world. And it only works because the thing's so fucking huge because they used to be so fucking huge. And you're mad when you move into a house now and they've got a satellite on the outside that's, like, 18 inches. But these these fuckers are, like, 6 foot across, and they would be, like, cemented into your yard.
Matt:Oh, yeah.
Rachel:Like, the poor neighbors had 1, and then somebody bought their house, and they tried to take it down, and they only succeeded in ripping the dish off the pole.
Matt:And so the pole pole is still there. There's a 10 foot metal pole sticking out of the ground that they can't get out. I know. I guess they just haven't tried hard enough.
Rachel:I mean well, I don't know. How deep does it go? Is it is it turtles all the
Matt:way down?
Nick:Get a shovel.
Rachel:I'm not going to find out. So, anyway, she tells her mom, you can watch a lot of movies. Gotta go buy beast, and so she leaves. Oh, actually, she doesn't
Matt:quite get it. Is logged in. Yeah. Watch whatever you want.
Rachel:Right. I've already got to be set up. You're You're good to go. And her mom tells her, be careful. And she goes, yeah, mom.
Rachel:I'm always careful. And then we go back to the shelter, and there's a news reporter outside. And he's like, it has been confirmed tonight that the police are investigating a brutal murder at this shelter for battered women. This safe house, though it hardly it seems appropriate to call it that now. And Laura is kinda coming down the stairs just as Nick is walking up, and he actually stops the broadcast.
Rachel:He's like, you done.
Matt:GTFO.
Rachel:Yeah. And the guy's like, we're we're the freedom of the press. We're allowed to be here. And he's like, and this is the only vampire power pretty much that he uses this whole entire episode, and it's to be, like, get the fuck out of here. And the guy's, like, okay.
Rachel:And he goes, that is, as you call it, a wrap. He doesn't tell them don't air the footage. He doesn't tell them don't come back. He doesn't give them any others he doesn't stop the cameraman from recording him.
Matt:Yes. In my head, the cameraman is is still recording
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:And has a recording of Nick hypnotizing this guy.
Rachel:Yeah. But, honestly, I don't think Nick gives a shit. I am kind of here for Nick's slow descent into vampire doesn't give a fuck in the last half of season 3.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:I realized that most of my favorite episodes are last half of season 3, and this is probably why. Because he's walking that fine line that he's normally walking, but he is definitely, every once in a while, slipping his foot off the one side, and it ain't the right side. And I kinda wish we'd gone back and gotten some more play with the fact that Tracy knows about vampires, but doesn't know that Nick is a vampire, it feels a little bit like a wasted opportunity.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Especially when we just got human factor where she covered for his lying ass and was like, just tell me this isn't gonna haunt us. And he's like, sure. I'll tell you it's not gonna haunt us. I don't know that. I have no guarantee.
Rachel:I literally don't care what I say to you. And we could have played with that so much because it was such a it felt like such a turning point for Nick because he makes no attempt to stay within the lines. He's just like, oh, sure, Jeanette. Well, I'll cover this murder up with you. Oh, you have a good reason?
Rachel:Well, I mean, that's beside the point. I'd do it anyway.
Matt:Yeah. Where are the enforcers now?
Rachel:Right. We forgot about them. Just hope we forgot about that shot for the last 4 episodes. But the most important part about this scene, honestly, is Nick is in light wash jeans. And I didn't notice.
Rachel:Did you not? God, I fucking love light wash jeans, and I am so glad they are back. But he tells him, show's over. This facility is strictly confidential. You're all done here.
Rachel:There's nothing more to see. This is, as you say, a wrap. And then the reporter leaves. He's like, okay. Cool, mister guy who hypnotized me on.
Rachel:Hopefully, this wasn't a live broadcast. I'm leaving now. And then we come in to find out Reese is on the scene, which makes me still feel like he's on they're on an improvement plan because Reese has been in on every one of
Matt:our best decisions. On this field activity.
Rachel:Right. And so Reese is on the scene, and he is actually talking to one of the uniforms. And he's like, can check the broken glass out in the alley since there's a lot more of it out there than there is in the room? And astute viewers, at this point, will realize that the window was broken from the inside out because, honestly, why did we include that information so close the beginning if we didn't want people to figure it out sooner? I guess we're supposed to feel slightly unsettled in her story the whole time.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Because that's such a weird detail to include because literally any police officer who's ever worked a crime scene where a window has been broken should be able to go, oh, that one was broken from the inside or that one was broken from the outside. Because spoiler alert, when you throw something like a body through a window, there's a big fucking hole and then all the glass goes out the way that the body went. So, like, you can't somehow jump out a window and have all the glass in the room. I don't know. This I know this is nitpicky, but the fact that we don't pick that neither Tracy nor Nick picks this up sooner it kind of always bothers me.
Rachel:But you know what's supposed to be, I think, is that we are so fixated on the bad guy is the bad guy that we want to be the bad guy. I
Matt:was looking at Glass Breaking Forensics.
Rachel:Oh, okay. Glass one way, glass the other way.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. Because I remember something counterintuitive about, determining the direction that glass was broken. I think for big plate glass, if it's a small thing, you actually get, like, a bounce back. Like, the window flexes and comes back, and there might be more actual glass on the inside.
Matt:But I think that was from, like, a gun shooting through a big piece of plate glass. Uh-huh. And so they were the forensics person was explaining that it's it's like if you if you break a piece of spaghetti
Rachel:Yeah. And the center flies out.
Matt:It it actually breaks it rebounds and breaks again. Yeah. It was something about that. But, yeah, for bigger holes, they're like Yeah. Just you look, the broken glass will be on the opposite side of where the break originated from.
Matt:But if there's no hole, you can actually tell by the radial pattern.
Rachel:Yeah. It'd be like walking into your kid's room and finding a baseball and some broken glass in on the floor and your kid going, yeah. My friend came over, and he threw the baseball through the window, and that's how it got broke. Like, he he
Matt:We were throwing the baseball in the room.
Rachel:In my room, and it got thrown through the window. And that's how it got broken, and you're like, cool. Because your friend's an asshole, and I want him to be the bad guy. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:That's a kind of I mean, basically, it's because the bad guy is an abusive spouse and an abusive father, and he's a very easy bad guy. It's kind of like undue process if if there was ever any doubt as to who was guilty in undue process. The one where Natalie loses her goddaughter because that guy kidnaps her and kills her. A little bit like that. We just knew who the bad we just know who's the bad guy because he's gross, and he's bald, and you can tell he's the bad guy.
Rachel:And, we're probably not gonna get into it because this is such a multilayered conversation to have about the fact that this man was guilty of, domestic abuse. He was guilty of child abuse. He has, in the narrative of this story, gotten help and gotten better and is no longer drinking and has sought, like, treatment, has done the work. And he comes back to apologize to his wife, and his wife wants to apologize wants him to apologize to their daughter and wants their daughter to forgive him. And this is a really complicated narrative because it gets into the nature of, do we owe anyone reconciliation?
Rachel:How much how far does one have to go before you are irredeemable? Right. And does the fact that you have committed what could easily be perceived as an irredeemable crime make you just, in general, guilty? Does he deserve what happens to him at the end or not? And I actually watched an episode of the dead zone because it's on Tubi, and it has Reese in it.
Rachel:It has Blue Mancun in it. And so I was like, oh, yeah. I won't like that one. So I watched it, and it's really good. And,
Matt:I I knew you were gonna bring up
Rachel:Well, that's episode of that's good. Relevant. It feels relevant because, John Smith
Matt:guy isn't actually a bad guy. He did commit a crime, but not this crime.
Rachel:This crime. So John Smith ends up being on the jury. And if you don't know what the dead zone is, this guy gets into a car accident. When he wakes up, he's psychic, basically. He can touch things, and he can see things about it.
Rachel:Sometimes it's the future. Sometimes it's the past. And he's a well known
Matt:Sometimes it's metaphorical.
Rachel:He's a well known psychic. He doesn't hide it. And he ends up on this jury, and he knows that this guy is not guilty. He doesn't know who did it, but he knows that the man on trial is not guilty. And one of the jury members is Joe Rees, aka blue man Kuma.
Rachel:And so I watched it. That's why I watched it. But the interesting thing I thought about this episode, and one of the reasons it stuck with me for a long time, is the guy who is on trial is not a good dude. He is not a good guy. He is guilty of other crimes, but not the crime that he is currently being tried for.
Rachel:And so they end up acquitting him through a series of events where they find more evidence, and they come up with a reasonable doubt. And they keep saying, like, well, that doesn't prove anything. It doesn't prove he didn't do it. And they keep repeating, it doesn't matter. We don't have to prove who did it.
Rachel:We just have to have a reasonable doubt that he's not the one who did it. He can only be guilty if we believe beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. And it's relevant to what we're talking about here because is this man guilty? Correct.
Matt:All the circumstantial evidence and the claims that they have point to this guy is guilty.
Rachel:Well and he has done things in the past that would make you consider him a guilty man, but he is not guilty of this particular crime.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:And this particular crime is the only thing they are actually investigating. Should be the only thing they are actually investigating.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:So I think that they very quickly lose sight of that because they become very emotionally caught up in this. And even Tracy says that. She goes, I know we're supposed to be we're supposed to be impartial. Like, we're supposed to reserve judgment. And I'm really struggling that with that this time.
Rachel:And yet at no point does anybody recuse themselves from the investigation because they think they're too emotional about it. So there's a lot happening here, and not a whole lot of it feels real, good. Feels real real clean, if you wanna for a lack of a better word. In fact, Tracy even gets metaphorically and literally dirty at one point, but we'll get there. So, of course, we're at the crime scene.
Rachel:So Natalie is just standing by the body waiting for someone to walk in with in radius so she can announce the cause of death and then leave the scene. So Nick walks over, and Natalie goes, I stopped counting it 20 stab wounds. I don't know what kind it what kind of knife it is except that it's sharp. And then she just leaves, and she sounds so pissed. She sounds so pissed, and I don't know if it's because
Matt:the last episode just
Rachel:well, no. The last episode just happened. I mean, come on. He brought his vampire girlfriend in for her to patch up. And then he was like, oh, no.
Rachel:No. We're not gonna have to worry about her anymore. And then Natalie is like, oh, aren't we? And it turns out the body sitting right in front of her was killed by a vampire. So Natalie has a pretty good leg to stand on for being really, really pissed off at him right now.
Rachel:But then she walks out of the room and she actually walks by Tracy without even acknowledging her. They just, like, pass. Natalie walks out. Tracy walks in. Tracy says that there's an APB out, and everyone in the Western Hemisphere has this guy's picture.
Rachel:And Nick takes the
Matt:sheet. Manhunt.
Rachel:Nick takes the sheet. He just glances at it, and he goes, he has 3 priors for spousal abuse, and he had a fine community service and counseling. Did a lot of good.
Matt:And it actually did.
Rachel:I mean, I,
Matt:I mean, from from the premise that in our I guess, one premise of the Western criminal justice system is that everyone should get a second chance. Yeah. A chance to redeem themselves. And I guess part of, like, western society philosophical premise.
Rachel:Rehabilitation. Yeah.
Matt:Yeah. You get a 4th chance? I don't know.
Rachel:See, this is when it gets real murky.
Matt:Right. Because this guy
Rachel:This is when the whole justice system gets real murky. If you have a repeat offender, no matter how many times
Matt:you are the person that did it. If you believe that you actually have an opportunity to improve yourself and, like, become a better person again
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:That that's possible, then some people actually do it. Yeah. But it doesn't obligate anybody to forgive you.
Rachel:No. And then you end up in a situation like this guy where because of the things that he has done in his past and because of the record that he will carry with him for the rest of his life, he does immediately get assumed guilty. They are not trying to figure out who did it. They are just trying to prove that this guy did it. Mhmm.
Rachel:And that is actually wildly unfair to him because he paid his debt. There is no obvious I mean, besides the the baggage that would indicate he I mean, of course, your your first thought is gonna be, oh, this guy probably did it because it's something that he's done in the past. Mhmm. But if he is this is where we get into the murky. If do we have repeat offenders because they actually repeat offend or because once you are convicted once, twice, 3 times, you're more likely to be convicted the 4th, 5th, and 6th time because everyone already assumes you're guilty, and that's why he runs, which again doesn't help.
Rachel:Like, if they found him in the room standing over her body, what are they gonna assume? That he killed her. And he runs, so what do they assume? That he killed her. He didn't have a lot of choices.
Rachel:He Right. He did what he thought was the best thing to do in that moment. And that was save his ass. Jump out the window, keep his daughter from killing him, because, of course, we find out that she's the bad guy or she's the the murderer at the end. And it we even kinda talk about it in the later in the episode when we get the prosecutor, where the prosecutor is like, she's an unreliable witness.
Rachel:She has drug. She has a history of drug abuse.
Matt:Reminds me of the episode where the it was, like, the pop star lady who was in therapy, and she was getting brainwashed, like, manipulated into killing all the people that she perceived that had wronged her Yeah. Including wasn't it wasn't she gonna kill her parents too?
Rachel:I think their parents were gone. She was gonna Or
Matt:she was gonna kill her brother. Herself. Herself.
Rachel:She killed her brother.
Matt:She
Rachel:killed her press agent. She was going to kill herself. Oh, she killed her mother too. That was the first person she killed. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. It's except she didn't know she was doing it. And, ultimately, they don't even think she's even though she straight up murdered 4 people, they they accused the psychiatrist because
Matt:he's the one who like coercing her.
Rachel:Of coercing her.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. And yet in this one, they're immediately like, oh, it was that the dude. It was the dad, which, I mean, you can see where they're coming from, but, also, the purpose of the police in that moment should be, no. We're going to find the person who did it. He is a suspect.
Rachel:He is a good suspect, but he is just a suspect. He's not the murderer until we prove he's the murderer.
Reporter:Right.
Rachel:Which is what Laura's Laura gets caught up in. Yeah. And it's that this guy is the bad guy. Clearly, he's the bad guy to the point where she kinda trauma shames Julie Julie a little bit, and it gets a little there is a lot happening in this episode, and I don't know whether this episode is intentionally murky like this. I kinda hope it is because I love episodes like this where you don't know who's doing the right thing, and it really makes you think about the situation and about what's happening.
Rachel:Because Tracy isn't really doing the right thing, She puts her gun on that guy's head and tells him, you know, give me a reason, you son of a bitch.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:And Nick allows this guy to die. He knows he knows that Laura is going after him with a gun because he found that bullet. And then he hears, oh, shots fired outside this hotel, and he knows where he was staying because he sent the he sent the people there, the technicians there to go process his room. Yep. So he's fully aware that that's that guy, and he doesn't do anything about it.
Rachel:So nobody was really there was no white knights in this episode. And I think if we'd had more of these
Matt:Well, there was one white knight.
Rachel:Not Caucasian Nicholas. I'm talking about, like, a good guy. You know? There was no, like, I'm the I'm the good guy in this episode, and I love it. And I feel like if we'd had 22 episodes like this, we might have forever night season.
Rachel:It could have been supernatural. It could
Matt:still be going. 30 years later.
Rachel:Why did we lead with Vampire Dog? Vampire Dog should be what came after we found out we were canceled, not not AIDS, domestic abuse, fraud, like, all of the things we've been covering up until now. But, anyway, I know we kinda went off, but, really, this this is what I'm talking about. This episode invites a lot of discussion because of the subject matter, because of the way it's handled, and I really like that there are no solutions. Nobody solves anything in this episode.
Rachel:Mhmm. It would feel cheap if there was one quick, clean solution to domestic abuse. If we knew what that was, we'd have already done it. So I love that there isn't one. It's just sort of like everybody thought that they were doing what they should be doing, and in the end, nobody did the right thing.
Rachel:Julie didn't do the right thing by killing her mother. Her dad didn't do the right thing by running away. Laura doesn't do the right thing by killing the guy who wasn't actually the murderer. Nick doesn't do the right thing by letting her kill him and then coming back to the precinct and immediately finding out that it he was not the bad guy. The only person who doesn't actually actively fuck it up this episode is Natalie.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. So so Nick takes this sheet from Tracy, and he's like, yeah. Fine community service counseling. And then he just leaves.
Rachel:Like, he's not a reformed serial killer himself who got none of these things.
Matt:Yeah. This should be a microcosm of Nick's journey for
Rachel:Journey of redemption?
Matt:Redemption. That's the word I was looking for.
Rachel:I think season 1 and season season 3, Nick, is like, fuck it. We're all guilty. Everybody's guilty. I hate myself. I hate you.
Rachel:I hate that guy.
Matt:I can't even change. That's why I'm drinking human blood again.
Rachel:Yeah. All change is temporary. I fucking hate everybody. I mean, that's this is cynical end of season 3, Nick. I'm I'm sort of here for it, so it's fine.
Rachel:Yeah. It just feels like this was a moment for him to be like, yo, come on. We don't need to judge everybody. But instead, he's like, oh, I'm judging. I'm judging all over the place.
Rachel:I'm just gonna take my judge a big scoop of judgment, and I'm just gonna smear it all over everybody is what he does. And then Laura comes up to Nick, and she does thank him for telling the cameras to fuck off. She watched him hypnotize this guy into leaving, but maybe it just looked like they had a real intense conversation. I mean, if you don't hear the heartbeat sound, it really looks like you looked at him and was like, that's a wrap. And the guy's like, fucking fine and leaves.
Rachel:So to be fair from the outside, it doesn't always look like hypnotism, which is why he sometimes gets away with it.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:It would be better if he could do it like LaCroix does it where he's like, hi. Let me put something very persuasively, and you're just gonna agree. Yeah.
Matt:It's not what Nick does it like the spell command in d and d where you make an explicit statement as a, like, magical suggestion to the other person. And then Leclerc comes along, and he's like,
Matt:oh. It's more like charm. Yes. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. Nick casts command. Lacroix casts charm. And charm is far more effective because it makes the other person want to agree with you, and command is just success or failure. Either you either they wrote succeed in a wisdom check and they don't believe you and they don't do what you say or they fail their wisdom check and they do it.
Matt:And I think command, the person knows that you commanded them, and charm, there's a chance that they don't even notice that you charmed them.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually the most accurate description I could think of. Because once command wears off, you know it happened.
Rachel:Like, you know you did something you didn't wanna do at, like, in, close call when Skanky is like, wait a minute. I did see somebody flying. Why did I say I didn't? That's really weird. But Tracy says she's gonna take Julie to the ER to get her checked out, and then she's gonna take her to the station.
Rachel:And Nick suggests to Laura that she can come too, because if Julie's gonna make a statement, she's probably gonna want somebody there to support her just to be a safe space for her while she's there, which is a good suggestion, so she takes it. And Laura's like, yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I guess you're I this you know, you never
Matt:that there's a a uniform assigned to the Yeah. The building. So Laura has a little bit more confidence that, oh, if I go, there's there's still a police officer here.
Rachel:Right. But the police officer isn't a counselor. The police officer isn't a psychiatrist. The police officer isn't the female point of contact that all of these abused women have been seeing.
Matt:And the police officer walks down the street to the corner shop. No.
Rachel:No. No. The lady does. The lady does. The police officer is still standing there, but the lady walks
Matt:Oh, no. I mean, later when the other person attacks.
Rachel:Oh, he's not at the corner store. The lady goes to the corner store. You're talking about later when that lady gets attacked.
Matt:Yeah. And
Matt:they say, well, other than what they
Matt:were doing. There.
Rachel:Yeah. No. The woman left and went to the corner store and got beaten up. At the corner store? Yeah.
Rachel:Or got followed back home?
Matt:No. Because she got I think the uniform went down to the corner store
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:And the person broke into the building.
Rachel:Look. Mistakes were made.
Matt:Yes.
Rachel:Okay? Somewhere along the also, the police officer
Matt:was misled into feeling confident about leaving the building.
Rachel:Yeah. Also, the police officer standing outside the front door like, hey. If you weren't sure which one the address was,
Matt:it's this one y'all.
Rachel:It's this one y'all. And they could have left a female uniform. I feel like that would have been a little bit more sensitive. But this is the nineties, and they're doing their best. So anyway, we'll cover that later when Laura's like, no.
Rachel:I don't think I need to go back. I think I need to sit here with this one specific person, not the, like, half a dozen other women that are in my shelter right now who I also have an equal responsibility to.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:It's fine. But she asks Nick, I guess you're used to this. And he goes, actually, you know what? You never get used to it. And then we use
Matt:Even as a perpetrator.
Rachel:Oof. I know. Nick doesn't yeah. I mean, that's a it's a slippery slope is what that discussion is. And so we get a flashback right here, and it's like a cockfighting ring.
Rachel:For some reason, Nick and I love how Nick is always like, I fucking hate you, and I never wanna be with you. And then in all the flashbacks, they're hanging out and doing shit together.
Matt:Yeah. They're just casually socializing. Yeah. Going out on the town together.
Rachel:Yeah. It's like he hates him, and then Lacroix calls up, and he's like, hey. You wanna go to this cockfighting thing? And Nick is like, fine.
Matt:You're my only friend.
Rachel:You're my only friend. I guess we'll go. I have been lonely. So they go to this cockfighting ring, and for god's sake, we walk around with these roosters forever. They're like it's like 20 minutes of, like, walking the rooster around, gently lowering it into the pit, pulling it back out so we can hold it and roll, like, hold it around again.
Rachel:And having had personal experiences with a rooster, I feel differently about cockfighting than when I had never met a rooster. Those dudes are assholes. Roosters are fucking assholes. I don't think cockfighting's great. I don't endorse cockfighting at all, but, also, I absolutely believe that these roosters are into this and wanna do this.
Rachel:If you've met a rooster, you know what I'm talking about. Unless you're Matt and the rooster is so intimidated by you, it almost breaks its neck on a chain link fence.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. I I have a certain effect. You you have On poultry.
Rachel:Listen. We all have skills.
Matt:Put that on your resume. It it knows how I feel about bone in chicken.
Rachel:Matt hates bone in chicken. Too many years cleaning bone in chicken for restaurants.
Matt:It's it's a sense of disgust.
Rachel:Yeah. Not hate. They're at this cockfighting ring, and Lacroix is like, oh, yeah. I got some money on that one. Like, this is gonna be good because Nick is like, this is barbaric.
Rachel:And he goes, it's better that they die a warrior's death in the ring than die at the butcher's hand.
Matt:To Valhalla. What what does what does chicken Valhalla look like?
Rachel:Just endless open fields, sand pits to dig holes and Hands. Chicken bath.
Matt:Hens abound.
Rachel:Hens about hens that don't pack you when
Matt:you try to cook.
Matt:Heterosexual hens.
Rachel:My mom has chickens. I don't know. I feel like maybe we need to explain our we we have we have chickens effectively because my mom has chickens, and therefore, we have chickens. And we raised these chickens and put them in this little coop, and there is one rooster. And, normally, you have to have an excessive number of hens to roosters because roosters are amorous little fuckers, literally.
Matt:And And they wear the feathers off the back of theirs.
Rachel:Wear the feathers off the back of a hen because they are insatiable. I mean, they've they have 2 jobs, and it's to die for their hands, and it's to fuck their hands at every opportunity. And they do both with glorious relish. So, normally, you have to have
Matt:Unless I go into the yard. Normally,
Rachel:it was like, I can't I can't compete. You won the cock fight, honey. So, normally, you have to have, like, 9 hens. My mom has, like, 5 hens because or 4 hens because none of them will let the rooster one one will let the rooster do his business. The rest are like, don't fucking touch me.
Rachel:So I've taken to calling them lesbian hens, and my mom calls them lesbian hens because they're like, sorry, but I'm not into that.
Matt:You're not my type.
Rachel:You're not my type. So they peck him and he runs off like, I had to shoot my shot. You understand? You know, it's biological. Anyway, back to the actual episode.
Rachel:LaCroix is like, you know, warrior's death, chicken Valhalla. There we go. So Nick is like, mhmm. Okay. Well, I don't really agree with you.
Rachel:Then they hear a woman screaming and he's like, now I am invested in this event. So he runs after where the woman is screaming and she's getting pushed around by her quote master because she's a concubine, and this is in China. And we get some awkward Mandarin slash whatever. I don't know. I can't hear the difference between the dialects.
Rachel:So we get some awkward Chinese dialect, including from Nick, which is mercifully brief, because then he switches to English. And he's like, honestly, if you hurt this lady again, I'll fucking kill you. And LaCroix goes, trust me. He means what he says. So this must be greater than a 100 years ago.
Rachel:Oh, wait. Actually, I think we forgot about that.
Matt:Yeah. We're not we're not holding that.
Rachel:Yeah. We're not holding that. So Nick tries to hypnotize the woman into protecting herself, because the guy runs off. And he's like, if you don't have anywhere to go, you can come stay with me. I'm way safer than that, dude.
Rachel:And she's like she's like, no. No. I think I really need to go back. And he's he, you know, hypnotizes her into, don't go back. Stay with me.
Rachel:I'll keep you safe. And she's like, no. He lose he fit she she succeeds at her wisdom check.
Matt:She
Rachel:doesn't stay with him. And LaCroix is like, your powers of suggestion need honing and your gallantry is misplaced. And he goes, she has nothing without him and she knows it. In fact, she'd have more rights to freedom if she were his dog. Can we go back to watching the fight now?
Rachel:He does not care. Anyway, the most important part of this flashback is their outfits. They're, like, fancy Victorian outfits. At least they are not in, like, period and location specific costume.
Matt:Well, I'm I got the impression that this was more like a Chinatown in the US.
Rachel:Oh, it could have been. Let's go with that. Let's go with that.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:But we come back to the station, and they're interviewing Julie because they've got Julie to the station now. And I love her cardigan. I'm just gonna say it. Her, like, oversized cardigan, I would totally wear that. And she's giving her her story, which is that she tried to get her mother to leave her dad as soon as she could talk, because her first memory is watching him beat her unconscious.
Rachel:And she goes, yep. Just one big happy family. And they're like, okay. So can you tell us specifically what happened today? And she says that her dad followed her mom when she came to drop off some clothes at the shelter because she left her house in a hurry.
Rachel:She didn't get a chance to take anything with her, And so she needed somebody to bring her some extra stuff. And Tracy is like, oh, was he coming back to beat you again? And she goes, no to rape me. And of course we have the like, Oh, I mean, of course we do because that's a, this is a heavy episode. We get into some pretty heavy themes and we don't really sugarcoat it, and we don't couch it.
Rachel:Like, we don't offset it with any humor. It's all dark. And after we have
Matt:the The the b story is Tracy's alcoholic mother is getting divorced from her father, and that's our that's our relief from the main story line.
Rachel:Yes. Correct. That's that that's our, like this is the where we should have a skanky subplot Mhmm. Where he's slightly dealing with what's happening, but also, like, we get a cute Myra story
Matt:Right.
Rachel:About, like, a healthy relationship. This would be the moment for that, but instead, it's like, y'all, every relationship is fucked up.
Matt:Look. May maybe this could have been offset by Vashon requiring Tracy to help him with something goofy.
Rachel:I don't know. I don't even think Vashon could make this episode lighthearted, and I don't think it needs to be. I think it's okay to let us live in this
Reporter:Yeah.
Rachel:This mire of
Matt:I was just thinking what would be the season 3 version of a skanky subplot, and
Rachel:It would be.
Matt:I jumped to a Veshaun.
Rachel:It'd be Veshaun and Erz getting up to shenanigans. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. Maybe Veshaun's off mourning because his best friend died.
Rachel:His best friend for, like, 400 years died. Screed? Yeah. Screed? Yeah.
Rachel:That guy. He died, like, 4 episodes ago the last time we saw Vashon, actually. So after we have that revelation, we go to see Laura, and she's in that cinder block room that's outside the the the room of consequence, the room where we have all of our deep and meeting meaningful discussions, the cinder block room. And Laura's like, you know, as long as he's out there, as long as her dad is out there, Julie is in danger. And Nick is like, well, we could put her under protective custody until he's found.
Rachel:And Reese says, if he's the one who did this to her, and Laura responds, you don't think he's the one who did it? And so Reece says, well, jury's still out. He's actually innocent until proven guilty. So I mean, which is all accurate and true.
Nick:Yeah. We could put her under protective custody until he's found. If he's the one we're looking for.
Matt:You don't believe he did this, do you?
Nick:Jury's still out in this
Matt:stuff. Did you look at his record?
Nick:Yes. I did. We got a long way to go before we can make a case against Jack Henderson. You know the law in these areas as well as anyone, miss Stone.
Rachel:And I have to wonder, like, I think partly this is a budget issue. Like, we didn't wanna budget for a safe house. I mean, at this point, we're canceled. We got the money we got. Right?
Rachel:Which is probably why we haven't had a flashback in 2 episodes because we had that flashback where they had, like, fake columns, and they had the trunk hose, and they had the bed and the fire and the I mean, we had a pretty big budget flashback, and then we sorta offset it by having no flashback for 2 episodes.
Nick:Yeah.
Rachel:Because there's actually no reason why they couldn't release her with a security detail and then call her back in when they wanna talk to her again.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Because really all Reese wants to do is make sure somebody keeps an eye on her, and a security detail would be an effective means of keeping an eye on her. And, honestly, they could sell that this guy is a potentially dangerous suspect and that she should be protected because he does have prior convictions for assault, which would give them reasonable cause to ensure her safety. And they aren't specifically protecting her from him. They are protecting her from whoever harmed her mother.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:So, I mean, they have reason to believe that whoever harmed her mother may also wanna they like, there's literally no reason why they couldn't give her a security detail and let this woman go sleep.
Matt:Right. Or or even just put a cot in the room.
Rachel:Yeah. Oh, they don't send her down to lock up. Nothing.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Yeah. I don't know. It I mean, it's fine. It works just fine. It ends up making it feel like she's a suspect the whole time, which she kind of is from Reese's point of view.
Rachel:But it just sort of I don't know. Reese's immediate, Skepticism. Skepticism and the way that he treats not just a skeptic like, I'm I appreciate his skepticism because he's literally the the only skeptical person. He's the only one who's like, well, the facts aren't really there. I mean, what she's saying is fine, but, like, the we don't have a lot of evidence that backs up what she's saying.
Rachel:So he's the only one who's immediately, like, well, I don't think we should just believe this woman, like, wholesale. We should probably investigate the crime. But he also immediately treats her like she is also a suspect by keeping her in the room? Like, do they not interrogate anybody else ever? Like, she sleeps in the room.
Rachel:She's in that room the whole
Matt:time.
Matt:They have more than one room. And if this is during the night shift, maybe it doesn't get used much at night.
Rachel:Yeah. Because this is this doesn't take very long. This is another episode that takes place over, like, one shift.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he felt like he could justify keeping her there for one whole shift. And then maybe
Matt:12 hours ish.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. Just while they looked into things. And Laura's like, did you look at his record? Did you not see how bad this dude is?
Rachel:And Reese is like, yeah. No. I looked at it, but it's just a record. It's not what he did this time. And he goes, yeah.
Rachel:We still need a case. Like, we still need evidence. We still need all of these things to point to the fact that he's the bad guy, which is, again, accurate. And so Laura does this thing where she goes in the interrogation room, and she forces Julie to relive some pretty serious trauma in front of Everybody. A group of strangers.
Rachel:And this is one of the reasons why we kind of no longer require children to testify against their abusers because you are forcing them to relive their trauma in front of the person who traumatized them. And granted her dad isn't there, but also these people she doesn't know. And Laura doesn't even really ask her. She's like, come on, Laura. Come on, Julie.
Rachel:We're gonna do this. Like, they need to understand. She's not like, Julie, are you okay with me sharing this story? No. She's just like, so here's the sitch.
Rachel:Here's some tea. When Julie was 14, she was repeatedly raped by her dad. And when she told her mom, this resulted in them having to go to the hospital. And then she pulls back her sweater, and she's got this scarred shoulder. And she's like, this is what he left her with as her own punishment.
Rachel:And I know this is
Matt:For tattling.
Rachel:Yeah. For for telling. And I don't know how this would have looked out of CRT TV, but it kind of isn't really visible. I don't know if that's the way it upscaled for the DVD we were watching, but it's supposed to be like she was harmed so badly. She has like a mangled shoulder.
Rachel:And, I mean, I get where Laura's going. She's trying to elicit sympathy. But, again, this is not evidence for the current investigation. It's not really. I mean, it's relevant in that we get an understanding of what he has done to her, but it's not so relevant that I felt like it warranted her sharing.
Rachel:Plus, she is supposed to be these people's safe space. She is supposed to be the kind of person you can tell something in confidence, and she will she will keep it to herself. Mhmm. And yet, she's like, oh, y'all check out this shit. Look what he did to Julie.
Matt:It's her it's her history as a a radio host.
Rachel:I guess. Her her radio host.
Matt:She can't resist. Compulsion
Rachel:to just To to sell a
Matt:good story. Loud. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. It makes to me, it cheapens her character because her character is supposed to be wholly on Julie's side.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:And she's supposed to seem wholly on her side by doing this because it's supposed to be like she is willing to do anything to get them to go after the dad, but they're already going after the dad. They're already attempting to find him. What she wants for them to say is, yeah. He's the bad guy. We're gonna catch him for you, but they can't say that because they don't have the evidence to say
Matt:that. Right. Because they have rules to follow.
Rachel:Because they have rules. And she working in the position that she's working in, she should be working closely with people who deal with the law day in and day out. Whether she's working with, like, legal aid or she's working with the police, she's likely involved in cases similar to this all the time and should be well aware of the fact that they aren't being incompetent. They are actually for once being competent. They are actually for once waiting for evidence.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:And I think that's the part that bothers me the most is because she literally abandons everybody else at her shelter to stay with Julie this whole time knowing that her shelter has been compromised and she should probably be getting people out and getting them temporary shelter. I mean, a dude broke in and murdered somebody in there, and she was just like, well, y'all, lock the door. I'll see you later. There's a police officer outside. Don't worry about it.
Rachel:Drop the fucking ball, Laura. You dropped the ball. That's that's all I'm gonna say. Under the guise of being overly protective of one person. Like, this is enmeshment.
Rachel:She's too close to this case. Everyone is too close to this case except Reese, ironically. And Nick does tell her, like, sorry. Yeah. Reese is right.
Rachel:We can't. We can't say that this guy is the bad guy. We can't say any guy is the bad guy yet because we do actually need proof. You should have seen how many clues I had in the last case, and still nobody believed me. Like Yeah.
Rachel:I had a skull. I had a pie I had a knife. I had a I had an hourglass. I had a truncheon, a safety code, all kinds of shit. Oh, do you want my VR rig?
Rachel:You can play that while I'm waiting. Oh, no. Sorry. Natalie burned it. He's like, no.
Rachel:I can't. Like, we can't. We literally are our hands are tied. We are bound by the law to actually wait to find out if this guy is guilty. And then meanwhile, Tracy is actually on the phone with her dad because, of course, our subplot is that her mom has shown up, and now her dad is calling her to ask about why her mom is there.
Rachel:And she's like, I'm just trying to stay out of my parents' messy ass divorce. Like, they're having a messy divorce, and they're involving her to a degree, which is really inappropriate. And I love how she's sitting there talking to him and tearing apart this piece of paper into these tiny like, she's so like, she needs an outlet Yeah. While she's talking to him. And then we got to Reese, and he's actually watching a tape of Julie's confession because something
Matt:isn't sitting right
Matt:with him. Something's something seems fishy.
Rachel:Yes. And he's saying ain't jiving the way he wants it to jive. And she's saying, yeah. He was like a madman. He just went at her.
Rachel:He pulled out a knife knife and started stabbing her. And Tracy, off camera, is like, well, did you try to stop him? And she's like, yes. I tried to stop him. And that's the part that Reese rewinds because Tracy feeds her the line, and she feeds it right back.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Yeah. And Nick actually walks into Reese's office, and Reese is like, I wanna keep her here. I'll tell them it's for her protection since we've got no murder weapon and the suspect is still at large, but I don't want her leaving. Like, I'm not comfortable sending her out there. I think there's something more to this.
Rachel:And Nick does this little hip lean on the captain's desk, which in his light wash jeans and his little blazer and his little turtleneck. And he's like, I am, settled here so I can tell you something important. And he has, like, a folder and he rests it on his desk. And Reese goes, you know, I'm not letting her go until I absolutely have to. And Nick is actually there to tell Reese that Jack Henderson, her dad, was for sure in that room because they found his fingerprints.
Rachel:And there's blood that matches his type in the room. And Reese goes, okay. Mixed with the victims? And he's like, no. You would expect it mixed with the victims with this number of stab wounds because, unless you're really, really good at using a knife, often when you stab that hard, your hand will slip down and you actually injure your own hand stabbing that many times, so you expect there to be blood mixed together, which is surprising they don't check Julie's hands because theoretically, she would have harmed herself.
Rachel:Or may maybe she didn't. I don't know. This this blade that they end up finding has quite the cross guard, so maybe she was fine.
Matt:Yeah. And in the scene later where we get her perspective of actually holding the knife, she doesn't have any blood on her hands.
Rachel:Right.
Matt:And she doesn't have any blood on her shirt at all. I was surprised the actress just holding this knife that's, like, basically dripping blood Yeah. Wearing a white sweater.
Rachel:Yeah. There's not enough blood.
Matt:She didn't
Matt:get any blood on her shirt.
Rachel:There's definitely not enough blood in this crime scene For this woman to have been stabbed so hard, the tip broke off in her sternum.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. This should have been a bloodbath. This is when we need Dexter. Because I loved when that was my favorite part of Dexter when we talked about the different kinds of blood spray where you'd be like, oh, this is the kind that you get when you shoot somebody. This is the kind you get when you use a hammer.
Rachel:Yeah. That I'm that was my favorite part of Dexter. And he says, okay. So do we have DNA like proof, DNA proof? And Nick goes, meh.
Rachel:DNA is not done yet. You know, I just shipped that off. It's the nineties. That shit ain't automatic. It's gotta come back couple weeks probably.
Rachel:And then Tracy's still on the phone with her dad, and she's like, I don't know if she was drunk. I'm not gonna do a field sobriety check-in my living room. And she's like, dad, the divorce is your business. The settlement is your business. No, dad.
Rachel:I'm not taking sides. I feel for Tracy. I feel for Tracy so hard in this moment because I feel like this is something my mom would absolutely do. Not the drunk part, but the calling to to involve me in all the decision making.
Matt:Implying that you're enabling the other party. Yeah.
Rachel:And her dad also tells her to be careful, actually. He's like, can you just speak? He don't hear his voice, but she goes, I will be careful, dad. So both her mom and her dad tell her to be careful. And then they get a call because there's a neighborhood clinic that is called to say they think they have Henderson, because they got a fax.
Rachel:He looks like the guy in the fax, and he's all sliced up. So they hop in the car, Nick's car, and they're headed to the clinic. And this is when Tracy is inspecting and reinspecting her gun. She keeps pulling it out and checking to make sure it's loaded.
Matt:Right. Because they're going to a place where there's somebody that might be armed and dangerous.
Rachel:Right. And so Nick looks over at her, and he's like, Tracy, I think it's loaded. I think you're fine. It's the same as it was the last 6 times you checked it. And Tracy goes, you know, you're lucky you don't have a family.
Rachel:Oh, okay.
Matt:I don't think she's I don't think she's nervous about the the violent or, like, armed and dangerous suspect.
Rachel:Possibly not. And she goes, I mean, I know it must be a drag around the holidays, but trust me, family is not all it's cracked up to be. Poor Tracy. And Nick is like, I mean, yeah. I get family complications.
Rachel:I mean, I don't technically have family, but I just did turn my sister wife into my daughter and that kinda made it really complicated. I don't know I don't I don't know what what what card do I get her now? Just, like, is she gonna get me a Father's Day card? Is she gonna get me a spouse card? I don't know what's gonna happen.
Rachel:And Tracy goes, I don't know if I'm supposed to be a daughter or a referee. Aw, poor Tracy. This is such a we don't ever come back to their divorce, but you get the sense that this divorce is because her mom's already moved out of the city and living somewhere else. And her dad must live here if he's the police commissioner. And you just feel like, ugh, this has to be ongoing and nasty and obnoxious.
Rachel:And then we go back to Laura at the station, and Julie's sleeping in the interrogation room. And she goes in and wakes her up, and she's like, oh, you know, are you tired? And she's like, yeah. This is Julie says, yeah. This is awful.
Rachel:Why are they not letting me go? I don't get it. Like, I'm not the bad guy here. They know that. And Laura's like, oh, they're so like, she's just so mean to the police this whole time.
Rachel:I get feeling frustrated, but they're just doing their jobs. And she's the one who's not doing her job. So, honestly, who's the one who everybody should be frustrated at? Nick invited her to keep Julie comfortable and to be a safe person for her, and instead, she, like, becomes her it's I don't know. It's really it's difficult to watch.
Rachel:So Laura goes, it's cool. Like, you're safe here, and I'm gonna stay with you the whole time. Don't worry about it. And your dad isn't going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves.
Rachel:A little bit of foreshadowing for you. And then we come back to the clinic, and we meet Jack for the first time. This is the first time we've actually encountered her dad in person, and he is stoically menacing. This actor is doing a very good job of being, hateable.
Matt:Yeah. Definitely.
Rachel:Yeah. He would definitely feel like he is on the verge of violence the entire time you're around him. And he's appropriately asshole ish as the doctor is, like, stalling him. So she's, like, gently wiping his arm. She's making chit chat, and then she kinda sees commotion out front.
Rachel:And she's like, you know what? Actually, I'm gonna go get more bandages, and she leaves. And this is when Nick and Tracy arrive at the clinic outside. And Nick's like, I'll take the front, and Tracy voluntarily says she'll run around the side. So she runs around the side.
Rachel:Nick goes in the front, and we get this interesting shot through the window of Nick showing his badge to the people. Like, we don't actually hear him say anything
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Because we're seeing it as if it's happening from inside the ops like, inside the clinic room, and everybody leaves. He just kinda pulls his badge out, and all the extras are like, doo doo doo, walk into the other room. And then he comes in to find that Jack is missing. He's not in the
Matt:The exam room.
Rachel:Yeah. The triage room. And then we cut to Tracy in the alley, and Jack actually opens a side door and jumps out at her and knocks her into a conveniently placed mattress and some empty boxes. And she ends up tackling Jack, and this is when she puts her gun against his head. And she's like, go ahead, you son of a bitch.
Rachel:Give me a reason. Officer, don't you move. Go ahead, you son of a bitch. Give me a reason.
Matt:Well, to be fair, he attacked her.
Rachel:Well, he kinda came out and, like yeah. I guess he tackled her. It was sort of like a reaction. It doesn't feel like he set out to attack her. It's like I'm trying to get away, and I just need you incapacitated so I can flee.
Rachel:Because he knocks her down, and then he runs off. He does not stay to hurt her.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:And Nick actually has to talk Tracy down. He's like, it's okay, Tracy. We I think we got him. Like, we're good. We got him now.
Rachel:And then he's the one who cuffs Jack. He ends up straddling this guy and cuffing him, and then he gets up. And for some this must be to play with the camera, like, to play to the camera. Because every time Nick is going in for, like, a comforting gesture, he goes around behind a woman and grabs her elbows. This would freak me out more than anything.
Rachel:Just like a guy being like, it's okay. Gonk and, like, grab your elbow and pull you back against him. And in fact, when we met Kathy, he said she said that that was a like a move he would do where he, like, goes behind you and grabs your elbow like a
Matt:So it's a Gare thing.
Rachel:I think and I think it's so both of them are face first to the camera.
Matt:And it
Matt:may be a stage acting thing too.
Rachel:Yeah. So you're always playing to the audience. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely could be.
Rachel:Because, if you look at some of the pro like, there's one of the one of the books. I think it's Intimations of Mortality that isn't available. You can't buy it anywhere, but it's free online. And she put up her cover art, and her cover art is Nick and Natalie. And Nick is doing this to Natalie on the cover.
Rachel:He's standing behind her, and he's got her elbows. And he's, like, yoinked her back. It's hard to get out of an elbow grab, so that's kind of a scary move, not a comforting move, and yet it's his go to, like, I'm trying to make you feel better move. And we find out that Jack was staying in a hotel because Nick's like, oh, fresh from his pockets, and he has this, like, plastic folder, the kind of plastic folder that has a string that you pull down and you wrap it around the, like, circle of paper that's on the bottom part. And he says he's already called in a warrant and sent the lab boys over to check out the place.
Rachel:And Tracy goes, what are the odds we're gonna find the weapon there? And Nick's like, honestly, he probably ditched it somewhere, and we're never gonna find it. He's had plenty of time. So yeah. And Tracy is actually
Matt:done well at at dodging convictions in the past.
Rachel:Yeah. He this isn't his first rodeo. It's not even his second rodeo. It is in fact his 4th rodeo. So he has had a sufficient number of rodeos to figure out what to do.
Rachel:And Tracy is actually all dirty. So she's dirty from falling into this mattress, which is I can't. Like, dirty textiles. It's just like a horror story. It's more scary than anything that's ever happened in this show.
Rachel:But at this point, she's actually literally and metaphorically a little bit dirty. Yeah? Yeah. And she goes, you know, I'll I'll go home and clean up later because Nick says, it works for you. Mud works for you.
Matt:And she goes, I'll go home and
Rachel:clean up later. Like, I wanna make sure we pin this guy. Like, I wanna make sure we skewer him, and I wanna be there when we do it. So they head back to the precinct and oh, actually, this is when she tells him, you know, I'm having a hard time not being emotionally involved in this one. Like, I'm really having I'm having a difficult time maintaining distance, and Nick agrees.
Rachel:He's like, yep. This one is really hard because you feel for the victim and you absolutely feel like this guy is guilty, but we don't have any evidence that he's guilty. So it's challenging. It this is a challenging one, and they acknowledge it. And then they go back to the precinct, and they go in to tell Julie that they caught her dad.
Rachel:And Reese says, yeah. We caught your dad. Good news. But I kinda just wanna go over your statement one more time before we take it to the crown. And then he looks at Laura, and he's like, so are are you gonna stay here?
Rachel:And she's like, yeah. Yeah. I can stay a while. The whole time, I don't know if I can stay the whole time. And then
Matt:so Reese and Tracy are kind of, alternating different lines of questioning.
Rachel:Well, this is later. Right now, it's just this is when they've actually taken Julie out of the interrogation room, and she's sitting at the table. And Reese comes over and because, Nick and Tracy are interrogating Jack. Because remember, this is the scene where he's like, you've been playing hard and fast with the truth this entire time. And, like, actually, he hasn't.
Rachel:He's mostly been telling you the truth. We are alternating between Reese talking to Julie and Nick and Tracy talking to Jack. Because every time Julie says something, Jack confirms it. And Jack goes, actually, Julie talks first, and she says, you know, my dad moved to Collingwood a few months ago, and he just came back for some stuff. But as soon as he came back, things just started right up again.
Rachel:And I knew I had to get out. And then we cut to Jack, and he's like, she's lying. That's not how it went down. And Nick's like, oh, okay. Cool.
Rachel:How did you kill your wife then? I love how they're bad cop and bad cop.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:They're like bad cop and worst cop.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:And Tracy goes, where's the knife? Where'd you put the knife, Jack? And Jack goes, why don't you ask Julie? Because he's actually telling the truth. Or, I mean, not poor Jack, but also poor Jack.
Rachel:Right? I don't know this man's story. I don't know how actually healed he is. I don't know what he's put into being a better guy, whether he has or whether he hasn't, but he gets no BOD. He gets no benefit of the doubt from pretty much anybody but Reese.
Rachel:And Nick actually fires back. Oh, Julie killed your wife? Come on. And then Jack says, I mean, yeah. Honestly, Gloria, my wife, took me over there to make peace with Julie.
Rachel:It was totally Gloria's idea, and then Nick almost slips into his flashback. He has that, like, intrusive flashback thought, and then he's just like, oh, no. No. No. Because he sees himself picking up the woman that he saved earlier, but now she's dead.
Matt:Right. Yes. Because her her guy killed her.
Rachel:Yeah. Her quote master. And then Nick comes back, and he's like, right. Right. Yeah.
Rachel:No. You've beaten Gloria for years, but killing her, that wasn't on you. And Jack goes, you know what? I'm not the guy I was before. I used to drink human blood.
Rachel:Just kidding. I used to drink, and I had a problem. And I did things that I'm ashamed of, but I got help and I changed. Does that sound is I got help and I changed also in the room with us right now? Is is anyone else in the room with does that describe anyone else in the room with us right now?
Rachel:But Nick is not hearing it. I think because he's seeing Jack as a mirror.
Matt:And he doesn't like it.
Rachel:He doesn't like it. Oh, and it just he can't. Like, he hates Jack for the same reasons that he hates himself.
Matt:Yeah. He's rejecting the reflection.
Rachel:Right. Because it he's like, ugh. That's fucking me. That's me, and I hate it. And would I have killed the woman?
Rachel:Yeah. Probably. So he's seeing his own guilt.
Matt:Projecting.
Rachel:Yeah. He's projecting. We don't need other planets. We need mirrors. That's a Solaris reference.
Rachel:Go listen to Strange and Beautiful Book Club. So then Nick says, okay. Okay. Fine. You didn't kill your wife, so why did you run?
Rachel:And Tracy goes, running suggests guilt, mister Henderson. And he says, you know what? I know who I am. I know what this looks like. I knew you'd blame me.
Rachel:Also, I ran because she, Julie, was coming after me. I ran before she could kill me. How come Laura didn't hear the window breaking?
Matt:I don't know if she was panicking.
Rachel:Because we hear the no no scream. She runs over. She's banging on the window. That would have been the moment for Jack to jump out the window and run off.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:So she should have heard the window breaking unless it was like a tissue paper window, but it isn't because he's bleeding to death from all the lacerations from the glass. That's a plot hole, but it's fine. It's fine. But no one's going to listen to my side of the story, he says. She was mad at her mother for even suggesting we could be a family again, which is fair.
Rachel:Julie is totally justified in being angry that her mother brought the dad that she was fleeing to the place where she felt the most safe. Now this isn't even a safe place because her dad knows where it is. And then her mom is saying, forgive him for everything that he did for you. This doesn't justify murder, but Julie is well within her rights to be upset about this. Not so upset she stabs her mom 20 sometimes.
Rachel:Right. But that's a lot of there's a lot of back trauma. There's a there's a suitcase full of trauma there, and you can't unpack that overnight, and you can't show up apparently in the middle of the night because Nick was able to arrive at the crime scene.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Yeah. You will you show up at midnight with your dad and be like, oh, he's changed. Forgive him.
Matt:Yeah. The end of a stressful day. Yeah. And you just wanna relax, and then your mom shows up with your abuser.
Rachel:Yeah. That's what this is a this is a this is a dark episode even without all the vampire stuff. And the tech ends up arriving with a knife. She shows up in the interrogation room, and she's like, here's this knife that we found in his hotel room and look, it's covered in blood. And Nick's like, look familiar?
Rachel:And he goes, nope. And they're like, well, it was in your room. And he's like, alright. Fine. It was mine.
Rachel:But I used it to to cut off my clothes when I was bleeding to death. I mean, I get it, but this feels like the opposite of the kind of knife or anything that I would use to cut my clothes off.
Matt:If it's the only knife he had.
Rachel:Was he carrying it with him?
Matt:Well, he went back to his hotel room. It may have been in his room.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:I mean, like, if he packed that in his suitcase, he's like, I need my stabbing knife, my pair of stabbing knives. Alright. Fine. It's fine. Whatever.
Rachel:Because Julie stabs her mother with something that Natalie says is probably from the same set. So does he have, like, 2 throwing knives on his hip at all times? Or
Matt:Didn't Julie have the knife with her?
Rachel:We don't talk about where she got the knife from. But she must have had it
Matt:at the from her dad.
Rachel:Yeah. And took it for I mean, yeah. Took it for protection. Yeah. And Jack says, why will you not consider that I might be telling the truth?
Rachel:Like, why are you treating me like I'm the bad guy right off the bat here? This feels a little, this feels a little like you've already decided that I'm guilty, and you're just trying to get me to slip up. And I'm not going to because I'm telling the truth. And Nick actually says because you've been playing hard and fast with the truth with since you got here, which he's lied once. He He lied about the knife.
Rachel:And you can kinda understand why he lied about the knife because And
Matt:then he immediately corrected.
Rachel:Yeah. As soon as they're like, that's a lie. He's like, yeah. That was a lie. It was a lie.
Rachel:And Nick goes, you're in deep Henderson, way over your head. And then he just drops the mic and leaves. And I'm like, I mean, he's he's not in deep or way over his head. That's just your perception of what's happening. He's literally been in this position before.
Rachel:This isn't even again, this is his 4th rodeo. He's like a professional rodeo person. Okay? So he's been here before. He's telling you the truth.
Rachel:The only people who are in deep and way over their head is Nick and Tracy.
Matt:Or Julie.
Rachel:And Julie. And Laura. The only person who's actually coming at this from a place of, like, objective truth is Jack Henderson and Reese.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. So Tracy ends up going home, and this is when we get our mom's an alcoholic scene. God. This episode is just, like, relentless because she goes home and her mom's drinking some liquor that Tracy has in her room or in her house. And she's like, mom, I thought you stopped drinking.
Rachel:And she's like, oh, I like to have a drink on special occasions. And Tracy goes, oh, you mean, like, Wednesday? Oof.
Matt:Yeah. Burn. Burn.
Matt:And the mom goes,
Rachel:I don't appreciate your sarcasm, Tracy. I don't need your sarcasm. I need your help. Oh, wait. That was last episode.
Rachel:And then they fight about drinking and the divorce and the fact that Tracy's mom won't stop telling her stuff that really isn't her business, like her dad's infidelity. She's like, oh, did he trip and fall into all of those people that he he cheated on me with? Mhmm. Mhmm. And Tracy's like, can you not fucking talk to me about this?
Rachel:I have asked you to keep me out of this. I am I am fucking Switzerland, and you guys need to let me be Switzerland. And her mom goes, try to imagine how much it must hurt to be alone every night worrying about your father. Like, every night your dad goes off, and I don't know if he's coming back alive. Try to imagine what that was like for me.
Rachel:And Tracy goes, this is an old argument, mom. You won't win it. I'm a cop because I wanna be a cop. I mean, in the blind no. In the Blackwing episode, she talked about how she tried a whole bunch of other careers.
Rachel:And in the end, she was like, no. I wanna be a cop. So Tracy did try other things, and this is what she decided she was best at. She even had an out not that long ago where she got transferred to a cushy desk job where she could have had a lot of upward mobility and made a lot more money, and she ends up going back. That's in strings.
Matt:Yep.
Rachel:So clearly, she does want to be where she is. And her mom goes, I wanted something better for you. You wait until you're as lonely as I am, and make no mistake, you're headed that way. And this is when Tracy slaps her, which kind of fair. That was a that was a low blow mom, but also
Matt:Bit of a line.
Rachel:We use our words. We don't use our hands. Yeah. And But you have to imagine this isn't the first time this has come up between them. And Tracy has had a long and stressful night, and she comes home to find her alcoholic mom drinking after I had getting a phone call from her dad.
Rachel:And this is this is a lot for Tracy. She gets momentarily overwhelmed. She immediately regrets her actions, and she ends up leaving pretty soon after that. She cleans up, she changes her jacket, and her mom goes, oh, you think you are so independent, but you're not. You and your you are your father's person, and that's why you're a cop, because he made you what he wanted you to be.
Rachel:And I love the removal of Tracy's agency completely from this discussion. And I feel like maybe, both of them needed some parenting tips because you don't tell people who they are. You let people tell you who they are. And this is an impossible argument because Tracy cannot fight back. What is she going to say?
Rachel:She either has to call herself a liar or she has to call her mom a liar.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:And there's no way out of that. So she just leaves. Her mom storms out. Tracy storms out. Everybody storms out.
Rachel:And her mom's like, you know what? I'm sorry I came here, but I had nowhere else to go.
Matt:I forgot that film festival was happening this week.
Rachel:I know. Whoopsies. I should have made an appointment with my lawyer another time. The lawyer could have been like, hey. There's the film festival.
Rachel:I don't know if you're gonna be able to get a hotel room. Why don't we postpone this a couple of weeks? But maybe it's already been long and drawn out and messy.
Matt:Or I know a I know a detective. You could stay at his place.
Rachel:Yeah. He's pretty he's pretty free with that. I wonder wonder if Nick has any investments. Like, does he own any apartment buildings or anything? 1 of the Toronto ghost hotels and he Airbnb's everything in it, and then he completely forgets to put the keys anywhere where anybody can get them and also forgets that you have to buzz your way in.
Rachel:And then
Matt:The guy handling his blood money probably has some property investments,
Rachel:but Nick
Matt:is ignorant of
Rachel:I wonder who
Matt:he oblivious to all
Matt:of them.
Rachel:Who he reinvested with.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. E trades or something. He's like, I need
Matt:to because he'd have to come up with
Rachel:a whole new arrangement because his previous arrangement was, like, 50 years old.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:So you'd
Matt:have to come up with
Rachel:a whole new he'd have to vet somebody. He'd have to move that money there. Maybe it's just in his savings account until he gets around to it. Mhmm. And then we go back to Nick and Natalie at the morgue, and Natalie's like, sorry.
Rachel:This knife ain't the murder weapon. All the blood on it is Jack's blood, and I found the tip of the knife embedded in her breastbone. That is a lot. That's a lot of force. So the actual murder knife is missing the tip.
Rachel:And she says they're similar in composition, could be a matching set, ala Blackwing. They could even both be his, but there's still a reasonable doubt that he's the one who wielded it. And Nick goes, Natalie or Nat says, actually, I would hate for this creep to walk away because of a technicality. Like, I hate these kinds of cases. And it goes, yeah.
Rachel:I mean, everybody does. It's kind of an old story, and it doesn't wanna end. And then we go back to the flashback, and this is when the clause like,
Matt:Are you gonna eat that?
Rachel:He goes, you could have done something and you didn't. Like, you had your moment to act and you fucked it up, so just let it go, man. Like, try better next time. I don't know what to tell you. And he's like, can we please go watch the fight?
Rachel:I have money on this. And Nick is just about to go back and check on her. He's like, fine. You watch the fight. I'm just gonna go make sure she's okay.
Rachel:And then we hear a scream, and he finds her dead. And he's like, oh, hell no. And so he looks up all vampire y with his eyes green, and then I love how he leaves. He's like, oh, I'm a go get that guy, and LaCroix's like, He's like, oh, look at what I found. 5 second roll.
Rachel:5 second roll. Then he ends up eating this poor woman. He He doesn't even really look around. He's just like, everybody's watching the fight. This is fine.
Rachel:Because he's just that she's just on the floor in amongst a bunch of people. And he's like, well
Matt:Can't let good food go to waste.
Matt:I
Rachel:didn't know they had concessions here. This is probably the only funny moment in the whole episode. So we have to linger here for a minute. Okay? Is her heart still beating?
Rachel:Because otherwise, nothing is bringing additional blood to her neck unless he pumps her chest. Well, you could do that. Anyway, on that gruesome note, we come back to the present and the police are all watching the news. Like, all the police are watching the news, kinda like we all watched that porn video in false witness, except you don't get a skanky wrap up at the end. And it's actually the news reporting at this women's shelter, which you wanna do a fucking tasteless reporting at the shelter with the address not blurred out or anything.
Rachel:Just, hey, guys. Here's where all your women are staying, and it's absolutely exposing the location of the shelter. And Reese calls Nick over because Nick is like, god, you're fucking kidding me. I should have said don't come back. Goddamn it.
Rachel:Missed opportunity again. And so Nick calls Reese oh, sorry. Reese calls Nick over, and he's like, yeah. So here's a prosecutor from, from the city, and he says that we didn't actually wait for the warrant to be finalized before we searched the hotel room. And now all the evidence that we found in there is, in a word, inadmissible.
Matt:Not that they found anything.
Rachel:Yeah. And they're all, like, butthurt about this, but they didn't find anything. Like, nothing that they found in there everything that they found in there actually exonerates him. Right. So okay.
Rachel:So they have jack shit now, basically. And the prosecutor's like, yeah. At this point, honestly, you'd need, like, a video recording of the murder, or you'd need a signed confession. Like, we need a slam dunk because he says, your witness is a compromised the witness is a compromised witness because she has a history of drug abuse because, yeah, she went through a fuck ton of shit. She's got trauma, and she has resulting things on her record from the trauma she experienced and then from not receiving the, like, any kind of help.
Rachel:And then he says, she's a walking catalog of teenage angst. The fuck you mean by that?
Matt:Projection again.
Rachel:Well, what the fuck does that mean? She's a walking catalog of teenage angst. Oh, I can't believe she's still all mad that she got raped when she was 14. Fuck you. What is he talking about?
Rachel:That line gets me every time I watch this episode because here's 3 middle class older dudes, not all white dudes, but the 2 the one white dude who has probably never encountered a moment of difficulty in his entire life is like, she's just so hysterical. She's so moody because she's a teenager. Oh, yeah. It's because she's a teenager. Yeah.
Rachel:Thank you. No. What the fuck is wrong with you? You are a public defender. You probably see these cases all the time.
Rachel:Get it together. I just needed a moment to process that, but thank you for come thank you for staying here with me. I feel like probably the types of people that get his position and stay in his position are the I am better than everyone, and so, like, this just reinforces my superiority. Otherwise, if you're the type of person who's empathetic enough to care about these people, you wouldn't last long.
Matt:Yeah. It wear you down.
Rachel:It wear you down. It would wear me down. And Nick is like, yeah. But Henderson did it, and we all know it. Oh, okay.
Rachel:I mean, you don't have a case. You don't have evidence. Every piece of evidence you found has actually confirmed his story and made Julie's story suspect, but sure. Sure. Sure.
Rachel:We all know that. And the prosecutor is like, okay. Well, that maybe, but you still actually need a case. And this is when Laura walks into the conversation and they just turn and tell her everything that they were just talking about about how they fumbled the evidence. She's a random bystander.
Rachel:She is not a police officer. She is not a lawyer. She is not legally involved in this except that it happened on her property. If she's not she could be if she's the owner of the house, it's her property. She could be staff.
Rachel:There could be someone who owns the shelter, and she runs it.
Matt:Right. So Nick made a a statement about how the the address of this place is confidential. Yeah. And so I get the feeling that this shelter is operating as some kind of organization that cooperates with the the city and law enforcement. And so she may have some type of relationship, like, official relationship with the city law enforcement.
Matt:And even if So maybe that's why they feel like they can tell her, like, details about an ongoing investigation that you normally are supposed to not tell anybody about?
Rachel:Even if this is a privately owned, massive apartment building that she owns, unless she's independently wealthy, she's asking for grants and financial assistance from the city and from other charity organizations. And so she would have to be organized in such a way that, like, she's transparent to the city.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:And that would imply, yeah, that they have some kind of working relationship. She may not have a working relationship specifically with that precinct or, with specifically those people, but she would have a working relationship with because she's probably not the first time she's called the police.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Because of, you know, not every woman is going to abide by her rule to not contact people. I mean, abuse and abusive relationships are always complicated and always tricky. And from the outside looking in, it's super easy to say, why don't you just leave? Why don't they just leave? But it's never that simple, and it's never that cut and dry.
Rachel:And the shit she would deal with day in and day out working with this population, yeah, she absolutely would have a working relationship. Not to the point where she could walk in and stand and watch an interrogation and then get told every detail of the case simply because she's present and accounted for at this police precinct for, like, 12 hours.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Maybe they forgot she doesn't work there. I don't know. But after they tell her all about how they fumbled this and how
Matt:she's a vampire, and she's been hypnotizing them.
Rachel:Oh, could be. Maybe she's like LaQuad. She just does whatever she wants. I don't think so. Unless she's super no.
Rachel:No. Because she'd have killed the bad guy with her teeth, and she doesn't. So then a uniform shows up and tells Laura, I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's been an attack at your shelter, which kinda reinforces the belief that she's had prior dealings with them. And Nick goes, well, I thought the place was covered by a uniform. And this is when either the police officer or the lady went down to the corner store, and the husband spotted her.
Rachel:That's why I was thinking it was the lady because the husband spots her at the corner store and follows her back. Still, he got in. How did he get in?
Matt:Right.
Rachel:I don't know. But, Laura ends up having to rush back to the shelter for, like, 15 fucking minutes.
Matt:She's got 15 minutes to spare. Already broken window.
Rachel:Maybe that she didn't board up because she wasn't there.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. She's got 15 minutes to spare, and then she's gotta get back to Julie. So she can go take care of these other women for, like, a hot minute. So she runs back long enough to say she's got to evacuate the shelter because it's not safe and that she's gotta get everybody find everybody a place to go. And then she looks at Nick and Tracy, and she's like, how do you people sleep at night?
Rachel:How do you rationalize your own incompetence? I'm they're not the people that did not anticipate that this would be a media frenzy and that the location of their shelter would be compromised and that they were not at the shelter to protect anybody. I'm sorry, but who's incompetent right now? Yes. They fumbled the warrant thing, but they didn't lose any crucial evidence.
Matt:That was the forensic technicians that fumbled the warrant, not Nick or Tracy.
Rachel:The only thing that they're doing is refusing to go on record saying this man is guilty without having any kind of record any kind of evidence supporting that he's guilty. So, honestly, this is the most police work they've done in, like, 6 episodes. You need to calm the fuck down.
Matt:Even if they did have evidence, they can't outright say, yes. He's guilty because their job is to just hand it over to the court.
Rachel:Yeah. Exactly. They just make the case, arrest the guy, and then go. You decide. In my notes, I said, well, they actually aren't doing that bad of a job.
Rachel:It's actually just because there really is no case. And Jack is actually being released because, again, they have no case. And so Reese
Matt:only evidence that they found has supported Jack's story.
Rachel:Right. And now they don't even have that evidence. And so Reese tells him, sorry. Your car is impounded. It might take a while to get back to it.
Rachel:They're, they're kinda slow down there, and he's like, whatever. Keep it. It's a rental. And then Reese is trying to be intimidating. He's like, make sure you don't leave town.
Rachel:And he's like, oh, I'll give you the name and phone number and address and everything for the place where I'm staying and the place where I live. You can have me tailed if you want to. And Reese goes, maybe I'll do it myself. I mean, okay. But, like, there's this is when Jack is like, you don't know it yet, captain, but you're doing the right thing.
Rachel:And true, truer words. You don't know it yet, captain, but this is actually the correct course of action because Jack didn't actually do this. And Reese goes, yeah. Yeah. Keep in touch.
Matt:Right. And I don't think it's unreasonable for Reese to be very suspicious of this guy
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Because of his record. It's like, oh, you are actually a child rapist?
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Okay.
Rachel:Oh, no.
Matt:We're not we're not investigating that right now. Yes. I don't like you, and I don't trust you. And I'm gonna keep an eye on you.
Rachel:I'm not saying Reese needs to be cordial to this fellow.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:And I'm not saying he's out of line being intimidating, and I don't think they're out of line by having suspicions that he might be guilty. It's everyone else's automatic assumption that he is the one that murdered his wife and then failure to thoroughly investigate Julie as a result. I don't mind Reese's I don't mind Reese in this at all because he is the only one.
Matt:Right. He's playing it by the book.
Rachel:He's own the I mean, everybody's kinda by the book, but, also, like, we're just trying to find evidence to make sure he's guilty.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:He is the only one that's like, have we entertained? There's 2 people in that room. There were 2 people in that room. There is every reason to suspect that Julie might have been. We already know from the prosecutor that she's a catalog of teenage angst.
Rachel:There's every reason to believe that she could have been the one that did it, and yet, Reese is the only one saying that. This is why when we talked earlier about the idea of being guilty in isolation from being guilty of this particular crime.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Jack Henderson is not a good dude.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:He has put in the work. We don't know how much. He has stated he's put in the work and that he's changed, and he's no longer drinking and that he's not doing the things that he was doing. So at what point does a person earn the benefit of the doubt? And that's the question we're asking and
Matt:that we they've hypnotized their way into becoming a police detective.
Rachel:Correct. And that's the
Matt:centuries of murder.
Rachel:And that's the question that we're asking in this episode and that I love we don't get a clear answer to. Mhmm. Yeah. Because in life, there is no clear answer to this. Because can a person do something that is unforgivable that you can never clear from your conscience, that you can never you can never expect anyone to overlook.
Rachel:And I feel like if there's a line, child rapist is probably right up there. I mean, that feels like a good line for me. I don't like Jack Henderson. I don't think Jack Henderson is a good I don't think this character is good in any sense of the imagination. I just don't think he's guilty at this particular crime and because he isn't, because we find that out at the end.
Rachel:And I think it's really, really interesting that this show chose to tackle a theme like this. But Jack ends up leaving, and he turns around and he has one last thing to say to Reese, and he's like, look, if it means anything, I'm sorry about what happened to my ex wife, and I'd stay for the funeral, but Gloria's family wouldn't want me. And, like, fair. I also would not want my daughter's ex husband who beat her and raped her child and may have gone to prison and served the time for that to come to her funeral. Because even if he is not directly responsible for Gloria's murder, he didn't hold the knife.
Rachel:What he did to Julie and the trauma he inflicted she's
Matt:also responsible for the things that she did to
Rachel:her mother. She's also responsible for things. She also made the choice. I wonder how they justified holding holding Julie, like, keeping Julie here for 12 hours and then letting Jack go.
Matt:Maybe Jack actually brought a lawyer in?
Rachel:Well, I think he wanted to leave. Julie hasn't been like, I wanna go. I you you can't hold me. What are you holding
Matt:me for? Julie just wants
Matt:a safe place to stay.
Rachel:Laura is there, and Laura could be like, they don't actually have any authority to hold you.
Matt:Well, and I don't think Laura has a an alternative place for her to go.
Rachel:Well, her apartment, which is where she sends her ultimately.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:But I don't know. It's just it's fine. Of all the nitpicks in this episode, like, it's the tiniest of tiniest nitpicks. And this is when Nick says, you know, I'm gonna go back to the shelter and check it out. Just gonna make sure shit's alright, and I'm gonna see if I can find anything.
Rachel:And Reese says, you know what? Do that. And I'm also putting a uniform on Jack while he's in town, so he's gonna be followed. So we're gonna get no we're gonna know where he is, so do what you need to do. And this is when Reese asks Tracy to sit with him while they talk to Julie.
Rachel:But, actually, her mom just showed up. And so she's like, cool. I'll do my job in a minute. Can I go talk to my mom? And Reese is like, cool.
Matt:My mom's here. She's mom. Bringing my drama to my job.
Rachel:I mean, they but they needed to have this. Tracy just slapped her in the face. And they've had a cooling off moment, and now they gotta have a chat. And so then we go to Laura, and Laura is at the shelter. And Laura is kind of having, like, a breakdown.
Rachel:Everything has fallen apart. Her shelter has been compromised. Everyone's had to leave. She's all by herself there. Julie clearly, Julie isn't getting the justice that Laura perceives Julie should be getting.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:And so she feels like this is her moment to make sure that Jack gets what he deserves. And this is when Laura calls Julie at the station. And why is there a phone in the interrogation room that has a line to the outside that you leave people in for a long period.
Matt:Because that that line is tapped. So I
Rachel:mean, that's true.
Matt:If you
Matt:leave somebody in the interrogation room and they call up their buddy, hey. Get rid of all the stuff. It's at this address.
Rachel:Yeah. They just have a sign that says free phone calls a couple of times. Yeah. I mean, sure. Because he just sets it first of all, we don't show the back of the phone probably because there's actually no line in
Matt:the back. User license agreement on the back in tiny print. It's, like, 10 10 full pages of text in tiny print on the back that says, by picking up this phone, you agree to the terms and agreements listed below, which means we can we can record Yeah. You consent to being recorded, and this, and anything recorded is admissible in court as evidence.
Rachel:Yeah. How about the good old US of A or our state anyway, where it's a one party? One party One
Matt:party consent.
Rachel:As long as I'm aware I'm recording you, I can record you, and it's perfectly fine.
Matt:Which may or may not have happened with, with bureaucratic individuals.
Rachel:Yeah. With, and that's fine. That's a whole other podcast. So, anyway Literally. Literally.
Rachel:Literally. So, yeah, he's like, Laura's on line 3, and he leaves. And so Julie picks up the phone, and Laura gives her this, like, cryptic, like, I can't come back to take care of you. I've decided to actually go back to doing my job. Psych.
Rachel:No. I haven't. I haven't I haven't decided to go back to my job. No. No.
Rachel:I've I've abandoned my job at this point. But, actually, you can go to my apartment. You know where I hide the key. It's fine. I've got something important to do, and then she breaks the news to Julie that they let her father go, which is why you don't tell people that kind of information.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Because she immediately tells Julie. She's like, they let your father go because they can't make a case. They, quote, screwed up the evidence. You mean they didn't plant a knife? I don't what are you talking about?
Rachel:They screwed up the evidence. And then she says, Julie, this is important. Where was your father staying while he was in town? And then she goes through these photos of herself.
Matt:Is this where we see the the more advanced, like, forensics technicians at the shelter?
Rachel:That was slightly earlier.
Matt:Okay.
Rachel:But, yeah, the, like, 6 foot tall black guy wearing sunglasses?
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. Inside at night?
Rachel:Inside at night. Yeah. The I'm absolutely also a vampire in the police force guy.
Matt:He's so official.
Rachel:Oh, yeah. He he, like, looks at her. He doesn't even talk to her. He's just like, so because I'm I'm I'm doing I'm dusting fingerprints in an official capacity over here. But Laura's looking at pictures, and this one that's, like, pictures of her, pictures of her with children.
Matt:On the topic of advanced crime scene technicians, we all know how handsy Nick is. Yeah. His hands are all over everything.
Rachel:Yeah. They just have his fingerprints on file. They just
Matt:like, 80% of every fingerprint that they pick up on every crime scene, they're like, goddamn it.
Matt:Goddamn it.
Matt:Goddamn it. Had his hands all over this stuff. Wait. Detective Knight wasn't even assigned to this case. Why?
Matt:His hands all over.
Rachel:Every year for Christmas, they just give him boxes of gloves, and he was like, great, guys. What are these for? And they're like, god.
Matt:You forgot again? Yeah. We know.
Rachel:We puts them on the hands, Nick. We okay. When when do I put them on the hands? When you go to crime scenes. Why?
Rachel:What?
Matt:Is that a is that it's my fingerprints haven't been found at crime scenes before. Like, nobody's ever mentioned it to me.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:No. We we literally mentioned it to you every week, and it it's a problem.
Rachel:Plot plot twist?
Matt:You're making a lot of
Rachel:Cases from, like, the forties show up, and they're like, the fuck? How's he on those 2? So, secretly, every advanced crime scene techno nation knows Nick is has been a police officer since, like, 1960, but they all collectively just don't talk about it.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:I love the what if literally everybody knows that Nick is not human?
Matt:And they just go along with it because he closes cases.
Rachel:Yeah. They're like there's just like a when you when you sign on to the 96th precinct or whatever precinct he's working on, there's like an extra form that's like, I will encounter a detective who is currently calling himself Nicholas Knight. I will not ask him probing questions. I will not look into his backstory. I will not
Matt:This humanoid entity may or may not be human.
Rachel:If he tells me to go around, I will understand that this is code, and I should just I should stop all recording devices, turn off my body camera, and forget what I've seen for the next half an hour.
Matt:Just walk away. Just walk away. And wait for him to call you.
Rachel:Yeah. He may or may not also be known as the Toronto moth man. Tell no one sign sign here. And you have to sign in blood. Like Yeah.
Rachel:I got a little I got a little mothman plushie. I'm so happy because I was like, oh, look. It's the mothman.
Matt:Next time we go to Toronto, we need to get one of those little
Rachel:I'm taking them off, man.
Matt:Infant, like, infant shirts. Yeah. The, like, souvenir, like, Toronto shirts. And put it on the moth man.
Rachel:Take pictures of it.
Matt:Cut little wig holes in the back.
Rachel:I'm doing it. I'm fucking doing it. The Toronto Mothman visits Toronto. Yeah. Oh, I'm I'm here for this.
Matt:Richard's home.
Rachel:He's going on a pilgrimage back to the homeland. So, anyway, Tracy is talking to her mom, and she's like, listen, mom. You can stay in the apartment. It's fine. You know?
Rachel:It's fine. And Tracy's mom goes, no. I'm gonna go home. I'm sorry I got you involved. Good.
Rachel:You should be. Really, I did wanna see you. And Tracy goes, mom, I want you to say I wanna work this out. And her mom's like, you know what? This isn't the thing that we work out tonight.
Rachel:This isn't the thing we work out right now. We may work this out eventually, and we probably will, but this isn't something that we solve right now.
Matt:Right. Her mom's finally like, this isn't something that you need to get yourself involved in. Yeah. Even though I'm dragging you into this.
Rachel:Yeah. You need to tell me no. You need to learn how to tell me no, Tracy.
Matt:You need to reinforce your boundaries. You need to establish those.
Rachel:Right. No. She doesn't.
Matt:You need
Rachel:to be the adult.
Matt:Well, and she does she does need to enforce boundaries.
Rachel:She may not know what she can tell her mom no, Especially if her mom is unstable. Yeah. Yeah. And Tracy ends up apologizing for the slap. And her mom's like, it only hurt my pride.
Rachel:I'll live. Reese and Tracy are now in the interrogation room. Because once she's done talking to mommy, it's time to go talk to Julie. And they're like, okay. Just to be clear, she came by to drop off stuff for you, And Julie's like, yeah.
Rachel:I needed some of my stuff. I told you I left in a hurry. And they're like, okay. Did she bring it in a bag? Did she bring it in a suitcase?
Rachel:What did she bring it in? And she's like, a bag. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Rachel:No. She brought it in a bag. And they're like, how did she how did Jack, your dad, get in the room, Julie? Because Laura said she's real tight about security except when she's not there, and then she just leaves the door unlocked.
Matt:It's Right.
Matt:And there's literally nobody there. Like, the camera follows Gloria and Jack in, like, in that flashback.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:There's no like, they walk through. They walk in the front door, and they go up the stairs. There's nobody, like, there, like, waiting, like, monitoring. Oh, okay. These people entered at this time.
Matt:Yeah. There's no, like, electronic system on the door Yeah. To, like, log when the door opens and closes. What does she mean? Like, you have to get a pass to get in.
Matt:There was nobody there handing out passes. Yeah. There was nobody there keeping a list. Yeah. How can they say she's good on security?
Rachel:Yeah. Correct. All correct. She also left everybody alone. Just fucked off.
Rachel:I can't
Matt:believe her. Other doors.
Rachel:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Stay in the just stay inside y'all. It's fine. The reporters are gonna come here.
Rachel:They're gonna reveal the ad we've already gone over this, but just the negligence here, on Laura's part is probably one of the most infuriating parts of this episode because she focuses so strongly on Julie, and she focuses so strongly on this guilt of Jack, which is actually just a reflection of what happened to her, which is totally fine. Projection is totally it's a trauma response. It happens, But she allows herself to be swept away with by this. And it it gives you the sense that she has not put in the work.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:And if she has not put in the work to come back from the place where her abuser put her, then how can she be expected to help other people put
Matt:her on?
Matt:She gets she gets so caught up with Julie that she ends up doing things that effectively make her abandon all of the other women that are in her care.
Rachel:Oh, she scuttles her entire mission. Yeah. Everything that she's worked for, she gives up. Yeah. Because now she's a convicted murderer.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Like, first degree murder, like, premeditated murder.
Reporter:Yeah.
Rachel:Not cry yeah. Just of an innocent man.
Matt:Well, she's not punishing him for the murder of the mom of Gloria. She's punishing him retroactively for all the other things that he hasn't been convicted
Matt:of.
Rachel:Is where it just gets super murky. So we're just gonna keep going because they're still talking to Julie and Julie's like, well, he smashed through the window. He was in a rage. And, Reese is like, Julie, there was no bag of clothes in your room, and they found your father's fingerprints on the outside of your door and the window was broken from the inside out. And then we cut to Nick and Nick is at the shelter and this is when Fred pulls out some stops and we get some reverb synth music.
Rachel:It's like Yes. It's fairly pensive. I mean, I get it.
Matt:He prewrote just a bunch of, like, canned background music. And then they'd used it all, and they were like, okay. Here's the last, like, prewritten one we have.
Rachel:I think it's supposed to feel like suspenseful, pensive, and I think it achieves that.
Matt:Okay. And I've it felt this is, like, the first, like, synthesizer, like, just background music I've noticed Yeah. In the whole show.
Rachel:Except for the elephants in the son of Billio. The
Matt:Well yeah. Yeah. Yes. So
Matt:it Yeah. It didn't quite fit
Rachel:Right. For me. Yeah. And then in Let No Man Tear Us Under, there's the scene at the beginning when we get the, like, fast paced synthesizer music. Mhmm.
Matt:We
Rachel:get the, like, fast paced synthesizer music because he's going to get ink, and he gets hit over the head or whatever. But this was, yeah, this was so atypical. It stands out, which is why I like it because it forces you to, like, listen to it. It doesn't blend into the background. And he goes into Laura's room, and he's like, Laura?
Rachel:And then he looks around, and he finds a bullet on the ground. And he chooses to tell no one.
Matt:Yep.
Rachel:He does not warn anyone that Jack might be in danger. He knows there is a uniformed cop following Jack around, and he chooses not to tell anyone. They could have told that uniform. They could have taken him into protective custody knowing Laura was out there, knowing that his life was in danger.
Matt:Could have saved Jack and prevented Laura from, like, ruining her life.
Rachel:Yeah. He could have saved Laura by saving Jack, and he chooses not to. And then we get a shot of Jack leaving his hotel and getting into a cab, and this is when Laura gets out and shoots him like a bunch.
Matt:A bunch.
Rachel:And then we hear LaCroix because LaCroix is like, I smell drama. I feel like I need a podcast about this. And he's like, I hear something familiar on the wind tonight. And I kept it. There's a song where it's like, I can feel it coming on the wind tonight.
Rachel:That's all I can think. I can feel it coming in the air anyway. Yeah. And he's like a lonely woman's cry for justice from beyond death.
Reporter:I hear something familiar on the wind tonight. A lonely woman's cry for justice from beyond death. And what justice is sweeter than that exacted by those who've been wronged? What law more perfect than that exercised manadvocate who moves swiftly and with resolve? Only you who've practiced it know what I'm talking about.
Reporter:A man that studyeth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
Rachel:And this is when we get this is when we get, like, a mix in of Nick's flashback of him killing the guy who kills the woman.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Unless she wasn't actually dead and LaCroix is the one who killed her. I don't know. We're just gonna leave that like that, which this feels real I didn't I did not like the placement of this. I wanna live in this present time moment with Nick making this awful choice
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:And Laura making this choice and everybody making choices that, feel a little bit dark, and yet we get this we even change the music back to the standard flashback music.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:That's why I don't like it. It just feels like, whoop, it pulls you out, and you're like, oh, damn it. I wanted to live. I wanted to live in this moment. But we get Nick killing the guy.
Matt:Big vigilante vibes
Rachel:at the end. So we're like, Nick has done this before. But when Nick did it, he just fades back into the shadows. It changes nothing. When Laura does it, it
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:She's not gonna get grants. She's not gonna get she can't set up the system again. She doesn't get that back.
Matt:Right. Although she could convincingly say, hey. If you come stay with me, I will protect you.
Rachel:An underground shelter?
Matt:I will avenge you.
Rachel:I guess that's why this episode's avenging angel. And Lacroix continues, like, what justice is sweeter than that exacted by those who have been wronged? Only you who have done it will understand. A man that studyeth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which is a Francis Bacon quote. Yep.
Rachel:Green as in fresh. Yeah. I think so. Either green as in fresh or green as in gangrenous. Like
Matt:Green as in fresh and growing.
Rachel:Yeah. And worsening.
Reporter:Yeah.
Rachel:Like, when you when you study it revenge, your wounds don't heal. Yeah. Yeah. So then we come back. Nick comes back from his flashback, and he hears the radio calling for him because he's like they're like, there's shots fired at this hotel.
Rachel:81 kilo. Please respond. And Nick does not answer. And then we fade to black and we get this long black moment with, like, a heartbeat sound. And then when we come back, Nick is rushing into the precinct like, oh, guys, what happened?
Rachel:Woah. What's going on? And he goes, where are they? Talking about Reese and Tracy and Julie. And a uniform tells him that Tracy and Reese are in the interrogation room.
Rachel:They've been in there for hours talking to Julie, and this is when he walks into the room of all consequence, the the cinder block room. And Julie is confessing to the murder. She says, I hated that he tried to keep us together. Natalie's in there watching this because it's the end of her shift. I guess she came to go check-in on everybody, check on Nick, see how he was handling this.
Rachel:And he actually as soon as he hears that she's confessing, he turns around like, oh my god. What did I do? And Natalie puts a hand on him like she knows. She doesn't know. She's just comforting him at random.
Rachel:Right. Julie continues, like, my mom brought my dad over that night to apologize. And I don't know what happened. I just snapped. And I was so angry that my mom would betray me like that.
Rachel:And she I don't know how many times I stabbed her. And then my dad jumped out the window to get away with get away from me. Like, you were right. I was the murderer. And that's when they're like, Julie, where'd you hide the where'd you hide the murder weapon?
Rachel:And we see it. Like, we see the flashback of her sticking it in the grate. Mhmm. And then we just go straight to the end credits.
Matt:Boom. Done.
Rachel:Boom. Done. And that's it. That's the end of that fucking episode. And this is a good episode of television.
Rachel:This is like this lingers for a long time, and it should because we don't solve anything. Everybody gets their hands dirty.
Matt:Yeah. And Except for Reese.
Rachel:Except for Reese and Natalie. Although even Natalie is like, damn, I I hate to think this guy is gonna get away. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot. How did you feel how did you feel going from so we did all of season 1, which was mostly just shenanigans.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:And then season 2, which was safe shenanigans, and then the opening of season 3, which was, like, vampire doc and, underground organ sellers and just you know? And then all of a sudden, safe is out the window, and we are doing some really difficult episodes. So how do you feel about this episode in context with all of the rest of forever night that we've watched?
Matt:And I I like the deeper, darker themes, but it's this what the contrast between this episode and the previous episode is a little much.
Rachel:Oh, you mean, human factor? Or you mean previous episodes as in, like, the just what what is
Matt:the vampires play.
Rachel:Yeah. Exact yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We really go from, like, woo hoo hoo, vampire stuff to, like, guys, sometimes there's no right answer.
Rachel:Right.
Matt:Like, this felt this felt a lot like a an episode of Law and Order SVU.
Rachel:I think yeah. You know what? I think, the procedural drama the procedural drama formula had advanced a lot since we came out in 93, 92 and 93. And I think this is like an arms race. Everybody's trying to keep up with, the drama.
Matt:Yeah. Because we've we barely got any vampire stuff in this episode.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. This is not about him being a vampire. And then if it is, it's only marginally. It's about, like, the nature of guilt and the nature of forgiveness.
Rachel:And where does your duty lie in, you know, in the in, you know, the carrying out of justice? And what is justice? Does is it justified that this man dies? Because even though he wasn't guilty of this particular crime, he was certainly guilty of a lot. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. And end credits. That's it. And it certainly makes it hard to talk about. This feels a little bit like last act where Nick was contemplating suicide the whole episode.
Rachel:And, like, how do you talk about that in a way that feels sensitive and understanding? And how do you I can't even imagine contemplating making an episode about this and putting it out into the universe to exist in perpetuity. Like Yeah. Creating this original episode, writing the script, and then being like, sure. Yeah.
Rachel:That feels like it thematically follows Vampire Dog. Yeah. Let's cure MS with vampirism, and then let's let's tackle, an existential fucking crisis, which is what Nick is going through. Nick is going through an existential crisis, and this is absolutely a step in the Lacroix direction.
Matt:And, I guess, looking forward, we can really go only go up in mood Can we? For for the next episode.
Rachel:Let me look at what the next episode is.
Matt:18?
Rachel:Correct. Yes. Thank you.
Matt:We can only go up numerically for
Rachel:We can only go up numerically. I don't think we go up tone wise for all. Really? Oh, fallen idol. Hey.
Rachel:We're finally at the Hayden Christensen episode. Oh, good. I've been promising you forever.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:Does it go up in tone?
Matt:This feels like a low point.
Rachel:Oh, does it?
Matt:But not at a local minimum, not a global minimum.
Rachel:I'm trying. Spoiler free life is what I'm doing. So we're not gonna discuss this anymore. And then in 4 episodes, when we hit the seed series finale, we will talk about whether this episode is actually a low point or not.
Matt:A local minimum, not a global minimum.
Rachel:Oh, okay.
Matt:I think it's gonna go back up and then down again.
Rachel:Okay. Alright. Well, I have that prediction on record, so we'll find out. What we do need to do is plan our live watch along
Matt:For
Matt:the finale.
Rachel:For the finale appropriately titled Last Night, because I feel like that's something everyone should share in. So that'll probably be something we do on the Discord. So if you are not already a member of our Patreon, you can join our Patreon. $5 a month gets you access to the discord where we have a lot of fun. Currently, we're discussing Dune 2 and some book recommendations and a couple other things, and it's fun.
Rachel:And I'm usually on there. So if you send me messages elsewhere, I may or may not get them, and I may or may not respond, but I'm generally on the Discord. And $5 a month is a coffee, so buy us a coffee once a month. That doesn't that's not so bad. Or you can join for just a dollar.
Rachel:You don't get Discord, but you do get the satisfaction of knowing that you have supported our content. We've had a lot of we've had a general upswing in listeners, so maybe nobody's heard me say it, which is why I'm saying it again. If you find me on Instagram, I generally post all of our our whole network episodes on there so you can keep up with what episodes I'm posting on the network. I also post on threads. I'm a little more chatty on threads, just because it's fun and because the format lends itself to being very chatty, so that's generally what I do.
Rachel:And, also, we have a website, which is strangeandbeautiful.club, which I just updated with all of our current, podcast offerings. And there is a link on there for one time donations if you feel like supporting us, but also Patreon if you wanna join Patreon and our YouTube channel if you wanna follow us on YouTube, which guess what? It looks exactly the same as this except for the still photo because I don't like taking videos of myself and putting them on the Internet. So, yeah, if you enjoy our content, do consider going to support us. If you can't financially afford the $5 right now, which, fuck, we've been there, so I totally get it.
Rachel:A 5 star review on any of podcast app that you use also helps us out and telling your friends. So I just wanna do a little PSA about how to help. If you enjoy our content and you want us to keep making it, that's a good way to support us. So 5 star review or join our Patreon. You can join our Patreon for free.
Rachel:I do update it periodically. I'm trying to get better. I'm gonna get better.
Matt:But you've been you've been posting, books.
Rachel:Yeah. I post book reviews on there. I I wanna figure out content that feels network specific. And I don't know. We have a suggestion form on our If you have something you think you want to see included on the Patreon, what would tempt you into joining the Patreon?
Rachel:Feel free to contact me there, or you can email me at, the hosts at strangeandbeautiful.club. And I think that's a good place to leave it. Till next time, friends.
Matt:Bye.
Rachel:Please respond. 81, please respond.
