INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON ONE

• Review of Episode 12: Dante's Inferno

  [Well, I suppose that title just had to eventually crop up with a villain named "Dante" who's the head of a gang called "The Disciples".] Just in case you were wondering, the guy in the car from last week was Phan's cousin Johnny and he gets two bullets in the back of the head within the first ten minutes this week. So, gee, that was quick. What else can we do now? Quite a bit, as it turns out.

  The theme of this week (aside from More Turns of the Screws on Jimmy and Mary) is determining who is loyal to whom. As such, many weird associations are made and broken. Jimmy and Mary get mad at each other and take each other off their respective speed-dials. Both live to regret this. First, Jimmy frantically calls Mary to get a cop car out to save Johnny. Mary is distracted by other issues (more on that later) and doesn't respond right away. By the time she does and gets out on the road looking for Johnny (who is being taken down Hastings Street on a one-way ticket of torture by Dante and his skinhead boy riding shotgun), Johnny is pretty much history. Again, it's hard to feel much sympathy for Johnny when he was urging Phan last week to stand back and let Jimmy and Dante take each other out over a situation that Phan and his buddies created in the first place. "What goes around comes around," as Jimmy always likes to say. But neither Jimmy nor Mary knows this, of course, so as far as they know, a fairly innocent man has just been killed.

  Let me add that it is also rather difficult to take Dante seriously, for all his sneering and snarling, when it appears that he is driving around in a car with an automatic transmission. What self-respecting biker drives an automatic? Sure, he's been a "psychopath" most of his life, as Ronnie puts it later, but still...

  Jimmy and Ronnie stop long enough to make sure that Johnny is beyond their help, then roar off. Mary tries to get info out of Jimmy to help with the investigation, but Jimmy is furious with Mary and changes his number. At the end of the ep, she has to call him at the Chickadee from the street outside with "very bad news". He's even less happy when he comes out and she tells him that "a senior intel officer" is threatening to expose him. He demands to know who it is, promising, "You give me his name; I'll sort it out." Exposure as an informant is his worst nightmare: "If this happens, my house will be burned to the ground. My friends and my family, they'll all be killed. Jesus Christ, just give me his fucking name!" But she refuses. She's clearly tempted, but she still refuses because she knows how Jimmy would take care of it. At any rate, she thinks she knows and he hasn't given her any indication to the contrary.

  Who is this senior officer? None other than Richard Royden. Royden calls Ted in and tells him if he's a good boy and gives him all of the OCU's informant files, he will get Mary's position. Since Mallaby tried to pull the same shell game with Mary, I find it difficult to believe that Royden's promise to Ted is real. Ted, however, seems to think it's real, eagerly promising to do exactly what Royden wants without thinking through how this will put him in a stronger position. To cover his bases, he tells Mary a partial version of Royden's offer, unaware that Mary is telling him nothing at all in return. Meanwhile, he's scrambling to wrap up and cover up his investigation by pushing George to get Jimmy down south (something that appears to be a go this week), yet doesn't notice the young hustler from last week keeping an eye on him in the bar, cell phone in hand. Ted really is not too bright, is he?

  As it turns out, Ted can't deliver the files because as he's talking to Royden, Mary is sending Martin into his office to shred all of the informant files. This is what distracts her while Jimmy is calling her for help in saving Johnny. When Ted finds out and reports the disappearance of the files to Royden the next morning, a furious Royden stomps into Mary's office and threatens to expose Jimmy to the world as Mary's informant if Mary doesn't turn over the files. Mary, naturally, won't be doing that. After all, Katarina is in those files and Katarina is seducing Royden for Mary. You can see now why she might be tempted to tell Jimmy the full story and let him weigh in with his own contribution. To her credit, she resists the temptation, even though a furtive meeting with Don spells out that her back is against the wall. Don, bless him, is supportive even then.

  Speaking of Martin and Katarina, they both step right up to the plate in this ep, which is more than you can say for Mary's contact in Ottawa, the senator. The senator's henchwoman shows up and threatens to get Mary ousted if she doesn't back off on calling the senator warning about Royden. Seems the senator is all bark and no bite, claiming that she's content to see a deep-cover American mole take over a major position in CSIS in the hopes that he can be turned later. Mary agrees with Martin's assessment that Royden is essentially unturnable and tells the henchwoman so. She even threatens to go to the press, "'cause that can happen, too." When the henchwoman gets nasty, Mary is unimpressed: "You can tell the senator that if she wants to stop me, she can come on down here and do it herself. Quit sending her peons to do her business."

  But Martin is solidly loyal and Katarina, who had possibly been playing both sides against the middle until now, is now confirmed as a stand-up gal pal to Mary. She seduces Royden with great ease (making Royden think he's making all the first moves), even getting his cell phone for Mary. "If I can't get a man up to his hotel room, I shouldn't be in this business anymore," Katarina purrs to Mary as she puts on clear lip gloss. Later, Royden rifles through Katarina's wallet while she's gone, but turns up only a photo of her daughter before she gets back, apparently unaware that Katarina has "borrowed" his phone and handed it off to Mary. Mary gets a great deal of info off the phone, including emails. The emails in particular are stunners, clearly marking Royden down as an American spy. Too bad she's been turned into the local intelligence community's version of a Cassandra, but she still has some aces in her pocket, namely Katarina. Katarina overhears Royden talking about Mary: "Don't worry. She won't survive the week." The look on Katarina's face says it all--she's horrified on Mary's behalf and calls her as soon as possible. It's mainly confirmation of an ugly situation at this point, but Katarina is still Mary's mole in Royden's camp. A mole that Mary cannot afford to expose by turning over her informant files. It may come down to sacrificing Jimmy to keep Katarina safe and in place. A very nasty dilemma. No surprise, then, that the previews for two weeks from now show Jimmy with a gun in his hands and someone in his sights.

  Jimmy has other things on his mind--namely, Dante. Jimmy and Ronnie break the news to Phan in the club office. Phan, needless to say, wants Dante's head on a platter. Jimmy puts Bob on making sure that Phan doesn't go off half-cocked on a quest for revenge. In the process, we learn a little more about Bob, that he was in the special forces in reconnaissance. He and Jimmy also have a discussion in the car about spirits and the afterlife that could have been partly adlibbed by the actors. Bob is a spiritual guy who occasionally sees people, including old mentors, who have "passed on". Jimmy admits to having a dream the night that his grandfather died in which his grandfather appeared to him and told him that his death "was all a hoax; he wasn't really dead."

  Later, Jimmy goes to Dante to try to smooth things over and spots the Homicide detective investigating Johnny's death in the process--the Homicide detective who was trying to get the name of the witness to Johnny's killing, Mary's star informant, out of her (that would be Jimmy). Ooops. Dante comes across as not the sharpest knife in the drawer when he doesn't really pay much attention to the uneasy interaction. Further cracks in the power base of the Disciples appear when one of them goes to the 25 and tries to intimidate Mike and his partner--nearly getting a bat upside the head for his trouble. Seems there are limits to the intimidation game.

  Gender roles make a big appearance here, and not just with Mary's people. Jimmy also has female allies, bringing them into play and showing up another weakness in the Disciples: they don't let the women in their "family" have any power. This does not stop Ronnie getting Sweet to talk up Dante's sister (played by Gabrielle Miller, hopefully not in her last appearance) in an attempt to make peace. Jimmy also makes a surprise move when he asks Francine to take care of Stella until things blow over. Francine, being a Class-A manipulative bitch, parlays this into staying at the house again, even though Jimmy insists that it's just temporary until things blow over. Right now, of course, she's sweet as pie. People like her always are in this kind of situation; the problem is that they can't (and don't want to) maintain it and eventually revert to type. Jimmy comes to bed to find a naked Francine in it, apparently asleep, and uneasily lies down next to her while we see her smile, unseen by him. Jimmy, hon, the word is c-o-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-c-e. Get some therapy and find out what it means and how to avoid it.

  Even Stella is surprised to wake up the next morning and see her parents playing house (though Jimmy is definitely drawing the line at any sex). "Is that...Mom?" she says, as Francine appears in the courtyard below. When Jimmy admits that it is, Stella says, "Okay. Now, I'm confused." The audience hears ya, girl. There are some nice scenes between father and daughter (including one where he covers her with a blanket while she's sleeping) that makes it clear season two really should have more father-daughter episodes, not fewer. Ronnie is even less pleased to hear that Francine is back swanning around Jimmy's house and gives Jimmy a little speech about a glass of water with poison in it--before tossing the water in Jimmy's face. Funny, I could have sworn that just a few weeks ago, Ronnie was urging Jimmy to "make peace" with Francine. Make up your mind, Ronnie!

  ---

  Next week: Eps 13: In two weeks (because there's hockey next week), we get the season finale. The preview promises us that a major character will die ("game over"). I doubt it will be Jimmy, but it could be Jimmy who pulls the trigger, either setting things off or in revenge for whoever dies.

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This page was last updated on 1/17/2007