INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON TWO

• Review of Season Two Premiere, Episode 16: A Man Underground

  A little bit more joy for the show from CBC this week, though not much, and the ratings sure show it. We get previews for next week's ep at the halfway mark. That's new, and thank God that we didn't have to suffer through nearly as many ads for The Tudors as before. But I swear, if I see any more of those inane ads for Viagra, I am going to need an airsick bag.

  Possibly the biggest news of the ep, in all of this going back and forth, is Sweet's new condition. In the middle of Ronnie having to go off to take care of business, she walks up to him on the street and tells him she has something important to tell him. Ronnie starts to run off at the mouth about being up to his neck in trouble when she stops him cold with a quiet, "I'm pregnant." Ronnie's reaction is nice--he's thrilled. Though a player, he's always wanted a child. Suddenly, Sweet has become the woman for him. It's interesting, therefore, that now she's got exactly what she's wanted all along, Sweet's feelings are clearly mixed. I liked this. Sweet threatened to be a bit of a calculating femme fatale at times last season. This season, we see much more of her motivations and this has made her seem more human, far more sympathetic. Should be interesting to see how this pregnancy changes the dynamic between them.

  Raids continue this week, this time on Mike's bar, the 25, and (offscreen) on the shipping office (where the heck is Maxine this season?). The raids are more realistic this week, which is good. While this episode eases up on the action, it's a well-played plot. Jimmy is literally underground in the basement of the Chickadee, keeping whackjob Lorna at arm's length; Ronnie is sweeping the sidewalk and having the club swept for bugs; Mike (growing out his buzzcut and looking rough) is coming increasing unglued; and Francine is faking coming increasingly unglued in order to try to get in to see Jimmy.

  Meanwhile, Mary has discovered the interesting fact about Jimmy's gun that until now, only the audience and the DEA knew--it could never have been fired. She also gets Martin to go down and interview Alex Morgan the rat, who tells him that George gave him the gun. "Nobody needs to know where you're going," she tells Martin. "Just badge your way in." However, Martin gets thrown out before he can make it official and Morgan the rat suffers a convenient fatal heart attack (offscreen) in police custody before Phil Coombs, doing leg work for Mary on Jimmy's behalf, can interview him officially. But then Mary finds the guy who gave the gun to George, one of George's rats. Ooops. Mary just about purrs when she imparts this information to Weathers. Weathers tries to bluster and threaten her, but Mary has the home team advantage. By the end of the episode, Weathers has to back down in a big way and leaves Canada without his man.

  Up until now this season, the law enforcement baddies, especially the Americans, have had everything their way, planting their jackboots all over Vancouver. But the tide is turning against them, and fast. Ted seems to be set to come out on top at first--Mary informs him early in the ep that she's decided to make him acting director of the OCU, what he has wanted all along. But just as Ted starts to savor his new height, he begins to realize that he has a noose around his neck that will make any fall fatal. Mary also tells him about the gun and Martin mentions (after the fact) that Mary sent him down south to interview the rat. Ted tries to blow off George to get some distance, but that goes sour, too. George shows up in Vancouver, looking puffy and desperate, determined to "flush out Reardon". George declares that the FBI is going to hang everything on him (since it was his operation, that seems only fair). There's a good bit of karma when George tries to get Ted to tell him where Jimmy's family is so that he can use them to force Jimmy out of hiding. Ted tried to have Stella kidnapped in the pilot to blackmail Jimmy, after all. George tries to twist Ted's arm by threatening to drag Ted down with him. But Ted recoils at the idea and instead, rats George out to Mary, saying that he must be having a nervous breakdown.

  Mary and Weathers have a little chat with George at his hotel's bar. George denies everything, and keeps insisting that he's the victim, that he lost a man. It's clear that neither Mary nor Weathers are convinced. Nor should they be, since this is the first time that George has shown any feeling for the death of his man, and doesn't even bother to mention the homeless guy shot in the back. Weathers tells him to go back home and get a good lawyer. The next morning, Ted has the hotel manager let him into George's room when George doesn't answer the door. Big no surprise, George is dead in a chair, having shot himself during the night. There's a nice reprise of that old theme from Da Vinci's "Bury My Bones" (the one that plays as Mick is discovering the bodies in the house) as a freaked out Ted rifles through George's coat and takes what looks like a wallet. Ted starts to look relieved by the end of the ep, but somehow, I'm thinking this will come back to bite him.

  RIP Alex Morgan and George Williams. They're really weeding out the part-time characters here.

  Needless to say, with George and Morgan discredited and gone, Jimmy's murder charges go bye-bye. The FBI keeps the other charges (like racketeering) on the books, but it's bravado and everyone knows it. In the very last scene, Jimmy is back in the Chickadee, triumphant, having Stella pass out champagne. Poor Stella had a rough ep, since she was kicked out of school (off screen) and all of her friends were forbidden from speaking to her, all because her dad was an accused cop killer and gangster. I can see that coming up later on. Meanwhile, her dad and mom suck face (oy) and Francine sweetly apologizes to Ronnie (who doesn't buy it). Even more priceless is that at the same time, Bob is kicking out Lorna. And Lorna's not going quietly, though no one can hear her above the music. Francine isn't fooled when she notices Lorna come in and Jimmy claims that she's Bob's girlfriend. "She looks young," Francine says suspiciously, no doubt remembering her own youth when she first met Jimmy.

  This requires backing up a bit. At the beginning of the ep, Lorna is walking down the street toward the Chickadee, carrying two coffees. She goes into the apartment next door, which is empty, then through a closet with a false wall down into the apartment in the cellar. Jimmy is there. His demeanor has changed. Never especially enthusiastic about her (Jimmy so far has shown little enthusiasm in his sex life, probably because of his terrible taste in women), he's now downright off her by now. He scolds Lorna for bringing in two coffees--the police have the club under close surveillance. Lorna chirpily blows him off and hands him a copy of the Metro (a local free daily paper) with his face plastered all over it ("COP KILLER STILL AT LARGE"). If this weren't already an indication that the lights are on but everyone's off to the movies, she then goes over the bed and flops onto it suggestively. You're leaving today," she announces (since Jimmy still intends to flee to Costa Rica at this point). "I just wanted to say goodbye." Oh. That old chestnut. Jimmy gets a "lie back and think of Canada" look on his face as he closes the door. His thinking seems to be that as long as he's in Canada and on the run, he has to keep her sweet so that she won't rat him out. But man, picking up yet another whackjob as a lover can't be a good idea.

  Later, Ronnie nearly surprises him and Lorna while they're kissing and half-dressed. Jimmy goes to the door where he and Ronnie discuss Dante. Then Ronnie tells him to ditch Lorna: "You gotta get rid of the girl next door." "It's done," Jimmy agrees--knowing full well that Lorna is listening and that Ronnie doesn't know that. Oooh, Jimmy. That's cold. She's gonna make you pay for that. We get an idea of just how much she might make him pay when Bob rides up to her on the street later to drive her to the ferry and she not only refuses, but runs away from him. This girl has "bunny boiler" tattooed all over here. I have a bad feeling that Bob's going to get caught in the crossfire.

  The tense situation with Dante gets increasingly tangled this episode. The raid on the 25 is just as well; Mike has just bought some guns and two Disciples have just come into the bar, possibly precipitating a confrontation, when everything is interrupted by the raid. Later, Jimmy urges Ronnie to meet with Dante: "You gotta run things now. Things have changed; you gotta step up." Ronnie agrees, but he really isn't up to the job. This shows when he and Jimmy have to work out how to put money in the cash machines. Ronnie scrapes up 3 million, but this disappears in the raid on the shipping offices. Jimmy then works out a deal with Dante--they'll give him all of the machines if he supplies a loan of money to them and also funnels his money through the offshore bank that they're still setting up. This puts them both in bed and in debt with Dante. Ouch. Ronnie is the one who has to go tell Dante, since Jimmy is still in hiding at the time. Double ouch.

  There is a funny scene where Ted visits Dante and tries to cut a deal with him to give Jimmy up. By God, I do believe Ted is trying to recruit him as a rat. Dante bats his eyes at Ted and denies all knowledge of Jimmy's whereabouts. All he'll say is that he's heard "rumors", and then he blandly quotes the news to Ted, including the rumor that Jimmy was shot by the cops. Ted leaves in disgust. It's difficult to tell whether he realizes just how perilous his visit was.

  A lot of board-clearing this episode. Though undoubtedly dictated by CBC, it's not a bad idea, either. DEA guy George Williams is gone, as is (apparently) his snitch Alex Morgan. Winston the drug snitch and Mary's mole Kristina are so far MIA this season. But don't count them out forever--Jimmy and Ronnie think they have another rat. And since they never uncovered either Winston or Kristina, it could be one of them. Or it could be nutty Lorna. But my money is on the guy who swept the club for bugs. He seemed a little dodgy, a little too eager to chat with Ronnie about how things were going.

  And boy, does Jimmy owe Mary now. If his reluctance to meet with her so far this season is any indication, he's going to really resent paying her back, too.

  ---

  Next week: A Man and a Woman Betrayed: Jimmy struggles to get things back on track while Mary finds herself in an uncomfortable spot.

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This page was last updated on 10/16/2007