INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON TWO

• Review of Season Two, Episode 20: A Sweetheart Deal with the Devil

  This week, Jimmy Reardon cracks under the pressure, Ted finally gets his Reardon arrest, Mary comes through for Jimmy and Julianna makes herself comfortable in her new role as "secretary" to the Blackmire group.

  First, Jimmy. Hoo boy. Did I say last year that Jimmy Reardon was more stable than Ian Tracey's previous longterm role, Mick Leary? Not anymore, he's not. The episode traverses arguably the worst day of Jimmy's life to date as we see him, in jeans and a long, black coat, growing increasingly greasy and desperate. Yes, I'll say it again: Ian Tracey is an acting god. If you need proof, watch this ep.

  Jimmy wakes early next to a sleeping Francine in Ronnie and Sweet's room in the club, and tries to sneak out. Stella wakes up and wants to go with him. He tells her to get dressed, that he'll go out to breakfast with her in a bit, but he has to do something first. "Something" is getting cleaned up in the washroom. Even this is no guarantee of privacy. He surprises one of the strippers. Her story is that she was thrown out by her boyfriend and spent the night in her dressing room. I immediately thought that she might be a rat, but that went no further, at least in this ep. After a conversation in which she tells Jimmy that everyone at the club is basically rooting for him, she leaves with a cheery "Bye-bye." Alone, Jimmy stares into the mirror, looking old and grey, and says wearily, "Bye, bye."

  The day just gets worse. At the office, Mary is scrambling to keep the Canadian attorney general from signing off on Jimmy's extradition. She's downright dismissive of the puppyish Crown counselor pushing for Jimmy's extradition, telling him that Jimmy is a confidential informant and saying that if he tells anybody else that, she'll burn him. Her legal argument is that the DEA's case is based on smoke and mirrors, the claims of a suborned witness (Morgan, now dead), and procedural abuses and foul-ups of biblical proportions (what did I say about the legality of all that jackbooted crap?). She also argues to her boss (oh, yes, the delicious Inspector General is back for a few brief telephone scenes) that it's ridiculous to extradite Jimmy to the U.S. to serve twenty years for charges that would get him two years, tops, in Canada. But at first, she doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

  Meanwhile, Mary is setting up Julianna for a fairly long-term sting of the Blackmire group. Seems they are buying up water rights all over the world, not just in Canada. Julianna has already made their leader, Brown, so enamored of her that she has wangled a job as his secretary and a trip down to Mexico for another summit meeting. Talk about a real pro. Even Martin is impressed. "Best I've seen in a long time," he tells Mary (Hey! I thought that was Katarina!). He doesn't share Mary's worry that Julianna will disappear once they give her a passport to go to Mexica. He doesn't figure that Julianna will last very long in the role before her new sugar daddy tires of her, but that when she comes back, it will be with plenty of intel.

  But all of this is merely set-up (at least in this episode) for Jimmy's story. Jimmy is at the club, getting increasingly wired by reports from René and unsatisfying calls from Mary. In the latter, his West Coast bravado gradually disintegrates into cornered rage. Meanwhile, the DEA kidnap squad is lurking outside, with a dodgy-Brit character directing the proceedings from a car nearby and an undercover operative on the corner posing as a homeless guy looking for change. René keeps pumping the leader for info and giving disinformation. It's not enough to put them off, or even give poor Jimmy a strategy to avoid being nabbed. But René does discover the critical reveal that the squad is actually a group of bounty hunters with a deadline who have been contracted (like Eddie and Old Spy Guy after Falcone last season) to bring Jimmy across the border.

  Jimmy meets with Dante, which goes relatively well, despite Dante trying to cut a more lucrative deal for himself (you knew that bonhomie of his wouldn't last) and buy Jimmy out. Jimmy then tries to set up a face-to-face meeting with Mary, but he and Bob can't lose their two-car tail and have to return to the club. A quiet breakfast with Stella has her telling him she's fine with going off to boarding school. "I think it would be harder on you than on me," she says, with considerable accuracy.

  Lorna is nowhere to be found in this ep (boy, he ditched her fast). Mike is also missing in action and Francine appears twice, but with no speaking lines. Ronnie, meanwhile, is getting anxious and naggy again. He's looking for houses with Sweet (who still isn't entirely sure that he's on board with settling down, despite his assurances) and trying to speed up his divorce to wife No. 1. He and Bob tell Jimmy that he has to go to the Bahamas and get out of Canada, maybe for a long time. Neither one is happy about the prospect, as they both know (though they dance around the subject with Jimmy) that as soon as Jimmy leaves, everything will fall apart. He is simply irreplaceable.

  At the same time, back at the OCU, Ted and Mary are discussing the same thing--that Jimmy is the linchpin keeping things calm. "With Reardon around, there's relative peace in the valley," Ted says. Without him, the Vancouver drug scene will explode into violence. "When Reardon leaves, it may just be game over for their type of West Coast rounders." Vancouverites will not miss the obvious riff on the currently rising level of drug-gang-related violence in the past few months here, especially among the Asian gangs. Ted is now surprisingly sanguine about the idea of keeping Jimmy in place as an informant. Maybe his investigation of Dante has opened up his eyes to bigger/scarier fish, or maybe his deal with the DEA has put him off Reardon-hunting.

  Jimmy is deeply, deeply depressed by the prospect of leaving everyone and everything that he loves, and it's definitely making him not think straight. Despite his previous assurances to Ronnie and Bob that he could handle jetting off to Costa Rica and starting over--he can't. The extradition proceedings are striking at the very core of his identity. He starts to act out in an increasingly violent way. About halfway through, after his abortive drive to meet Mary, he speaks to her from the club. Mary has not, at this point, discovered a way to keep Jimmy in Canada let alone out of jail, though his importance is all-too-clear to her. She tells him that his options are either to stay and fight the charges and the extradition, and possibly serve his two years in Canada, or flee the country. Well, unless he gives up Dante, which Jimmy absolutely refuses to do.

  These options are precisely the opposite of what Jimmy wants to hear. Freaked out, Jimmy hangs up on her after declaring, "The fucking gloves are off. I'm not letting the DEA take me in my own country!" Bob has previously told him about the plant standing on the corner. Jimmy decides he's going to go outside and beat the crap out of the guy. Bob and Ronnie try to reason with him, but Jimmy strikes out. They're able to bring him down, but only by sitting on him and only because he can't decide whether to lash out at them or go right through them. Later, Ronnie tells him, "You're as crazy as your brother!" and that's not even remotely an exaggeration. As it is, the scene ends with Jimmy on the floor, Ronnie and Bob on top of him, shrieking in Bob's face, "GET OFF!"

  This is even beyond the Jimmy we saw beating up his niece's loser boyfriends in the pilot. Jimmy goes completely berserk. Thank God he doesn't have a gun, or there'd be a very dead pseudo-homeless guy shortly thereafter. As it is, Bob comes out and beats up the guy for Jimmy near the end of the ep. Then, Bob takes the guy's radio and tells his sleazy boss, "You better come pick up your trash off the street there. Next time, you try anything like this, you'll find your guy in the fucking morgue." This is the first time we see Bob genuinely angry, or even upset. Go Bob.

  Mary, meanwhile, has discovered Jimmy's Get Out of Jail Free card--Jimmy's new Irish banker buddy, Evans, is about to use said bank to launder money for the Blackmire group, who need to set up accounts for all their snitches in the Canadian government. Forget Julianna; Jimmy is suddenly at the center of Mary's special investigation. With barely concealed glee, Mary brings this up to the Inspector General and hammers out a deal. There's only one catch--Jimmy isn't answering her calls.

  If we were as yet unsure how Mary felt about Jimmy, this episode pretty much seals it--Mary likes him. I don't mean in a schoolgirl crush sort of way. I mean that she likes him as a human being and feels loyalty to him beyond what their professional relationship should entail. Even before she discovers his central role in the Blackmire group's octopuslike network, she is working hard to keep him safe and in the country. Once she does get the deal together, she immediately calls him. When he refuses to take her calls, she has Ted go down and arrest him, just as he's about to leave on a plane to avoid the kidnap squad, and has him driven to her cage (there's a nice bit where Jimmy drags his feet as Ted takes him in). Yes, Jimmy finally gets to see Mary's special snitch cage. But there's a difference this time round--she has Ted take off the cuffs immediately and leaves the door open both during and after the meeting. When Jimmy says, "I'd like to speak with my lawyer," she tells him, "You're not gonna need a lawyer. I've managed to cut you a deal."

  The deal is that Jimmy will become her informant within the Blackmire group. No more pussyfooting around. He will be genuinely undercover for her, on the books. And he will probably have to testify later on. It is a great irony (which Jimmy may actually realize, if the expression on his face is any indication) that by accepting this deal, Jimmy is taking an even bigger step toward his dreams of legitimacy than he had previously anticipated. But he also has little choice--the stick is that he has to sign a contract with Mary. If he refuses, the Inspector General has instructed her to hold him for extradition. Needless to say, Jimmy signs.

  It's difficult to say how he feels about it all. Obviously, his arm is being twisted, but for a while now, he's been swinging wildly back and forth between blowing Mary off and almost pathetically looking to her for a deus ex machina when all of his other options fall through and his back goes up against the wall. She finally gives him one, but he'll be feeling the price for a long time. His pride has taken a severe blow and he's an alpha male who won't follow along like one of Mary's law enforcement pack. Maybe that's the core of the attraction between the two of them, that they are true equals. We'll see how that goes.

  Finally, Hogarty raises his moronic, drug-addled head once more. He appears at the club, lawyer in tow, while Jimmy is away having his "meeting" with Mary. Seems Hogarty is unhappy with his payoff and wants to renegotiate. At the very end of the ep, Ronnie sends him upstairs to the roof, saying that Jimmy is up there waiting, having dinner with Francine and Stella. "Show some respect," Ronnie calls after him. As a nervous Hogarty disappears through the door onto the roof, one can't help wondering (or hoping) that Jimmy is waiting up there alone with a baseball bat. Hogarty deserves it and Jimmy sure needs to let off the steam.

  ---

  Next week: Flipping the Script: Ian Tracey directs!

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This page was last updated on 11/13/2007