INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON TWO

• Review of Season Two, Episode 22: A Woman Inside

  Just in case things weren't moving fast enough for you, this week kicks into warp drive. An attempt by the CIA to shut her Blackmire operation down makes Mary realize she's finally put CSIS on the world intelligence map. In gratitude, she brokers a deal between Jimmy and the CIA. Meanwhile, Jimmy brokers a deal between Dante and Phan, while Francine clears the decks with her ex-husband and daughter before embarking on a scary mission to eliminate her competition. And Haddock pulls a Hitchcock.

  First, the Blackmire operation heats up fast. Mary, whose attitude toward Julianna was ambiguous last week, becomes increasingly concerned this week when Julianna goes off to Mexico with Brown anyway and Mary discovers that Brown is having her investigated. Mary engineers a family emergency (a conveniently dying mother) back in Vancouver to cover Julianna's hasty return home. Then Julianna's apartment is searched by two men from the Blackmire group. Martin cleverly gets rid of them before they can find CSIS' surveillance wire by calling her answering machine and pretending to be maintenance coming up the stairs. The two spies take a powder. But later, Julianna yanks the wire. Mary is on the fence about pulling Julianna out. "I'm not convinced [Julianna] can play the long game," she tells Martin, reversing her previous assessment. The one thing that keeps Julianna in the game is that the reason for Brown's investigation of her past soon becomes clear: Mary's old buddy, hotel security chief David Baker, calls Mary and tells her that Brown is becoming obsessed with Julianna. Brown wants to help Julianna buy herself free of Katarina and then marry her, an offer that Julianna immediately relays to Mary.

  Mary, Martin, and a twitchy, increasingly alcoholic Ted celebrate CSIS' sudden arrival on the world intelligence scene, even as Mary fends off the CIA's increasingly feeble attempts to eliminate her as competition via old-school handler Mallaby (making a return this week). On Cruikshank's behalf, Mallaby tries to bully Mary into dropping the investigation and intimidate Martin into ratting on Mary. Mary steadfastly refuses to drop anything, citing the usual Irrelevant Higher Powers, and Martin shines Mallaby on. A later visit from Cruikshank himself only makes Mary more confident that her placement of operatives in Blackmire is the right move. Near the end of the ep, David Baker comes over for a "nightcap". It's nice to see a tough female cop character on TV get laid as often as a male counterpart. Mary sure is making up for lost time after the end of her marriage.

  I gotta say that Julianna is a fantastically amoral femme fatale and Pascale Hutton does a really fine job of making Julianna look utterly sincere--at the exact same moment that you see how totally she is pulling the wool over her mark's eyes. Check out her snowing of Brown about the imaginary sick mother. You see every step of what Julianna's doing, and yet, there's not a false step in her dramatic performance. Katarina is still my favorite Mata Hari on the show (just as Ona Grauer was also by far my favorite of the three Crossroads Demons in "Supernatural", a show that has a lot of Da Vinci's Inquest and Intelligence alumni among its guest stars), but Julianna is also lots of fun to watch. And part of the fun is that she's probably disposable--I keep expecting to see her get bumped off.

  Mary's relative willingness to pull Julianna out if necessary has other roots besides concerns over exposure and safety. She'd like to keep Julianna in the game, but no longer sees it as absolutely necessary. Why? Because she's now got her favorite operator placed at dead center of the Blackmire group's activities. And that person is, of course, Jimmy Reardon. Mary has a grand plan to make Jimmy's Bahamas bank the first choice for every money launderer in the world. Mary is about to put both herself and Jimmy on the global map. Of course, this is not what Jimmy originally had in mind, at all, especially since he's still distracted by his drug trade and the "DEA" kidnap squad plot. A fascinating dance of seduction occurs halfway through the episode as Mary tries to convince an exceedingly reluctant Jimmy that it's in his best interests to get down and party with the CIA. "Oh, fuck, you been talking to them," he tells her, stunned, after she makes it clear that walking away is not an option. They already have him and his bank under a microscope. Jimmy is utterly flabbergasted as Mary walks him through the best way that he can manipulate this new and unexpected relationship completely to his own advantage.

  In a clear attempt to shut down this scary new development, he says, "Okay, here's the deal I want. If I do this for the CIA, I get a free pass forever, wherever I am." Mary agrees, without batting an eye, to sell his outrageous proposal to the CIA: "I'll take it to them. See what they say." There is obvious chemistry here--no operative is valuable enough to justify the limbs that Mary has gone out on to save Jimmy this season. Mary seems very vaguely aware of it when she tells Jimmy, "[The CIA] get up every morning and pray for an intelligence source like you to come through the door, just like I do." But she has enough of a blind spot not to recognize the undertone to her own words, or that Jimmy is a much more "special" informant to her than is safe. Jimmy is in even more denial, enough to be perpetually confused by Mary's helpfulness. And yet, he keeps turning to her for help and becoming increasingly beholden, mired in her intelligence game. And he probably shouldn't look too hard at his insistence that "I don't want to meet anybody" but Mary as his intelligence contact. Is he really protecting himself from too much entanglement with the Law, or is there something else going on inside that seriously screwed up head of his? After all, look at the whack-job black widows he usually picks for mates. Mary would be a step up, frightening as that sounds.

  This scene has been coming for two seasons, so it wasn't exactly unforeseen. But still, I have to admit that my very first thought on watching it was, "Jimmy's gonna be a spy! Jimmy's gonna be James Bond! Ohboyohboyohboy! This is so cool! I will be so pissed if CBC cancels this show!" Considering the success and timing of last year's cliffhanger, I'm quite sure that was the intended effect on the viewer because there is no way that this will all be resolved in the next three episodes. Mary has found her perfect operative for her long game and Haddock is clearly throwing out a teaser to make us really want to see that game.

  Jimmy's life is on more of a rollercoaster than Mary's, that's for sure. First, he is true to his word and brokers a deal between Phan and Dante. Phan claims to be ready to deal, but doesn't want to deal with any crap from Dante. Dante, meanwhile, balks at the idea of sharing Jimmy's old business with anyone, especially the guy who was involved in his nephew's death last season (even more directly than Dante knows). Jimmy shrugs this off. Dante is just going to have to deal with it if he wants a cut of the drug trade, he tells Bob: "It's not a monarchy anymore."

  The urgency of closing the deal is increased at the beginning of the ep, when one of Dante's top soldiers is gunned down by someone from the new American group (and investigated by Detective Ogawa in a welcome return). Jimmy and Ronnie cleverly set Phan and Dante up to talk by insisting separately to each one that they have to bend a little: "Show some fucking respect or it's not gonna happen," Ronnie tells Dante, insisting that Phan won't deal otherwise, at the same time that Jimmy is telling Phan exactly the same thing about Dante. After setting it all up and telling them that any disagreements will have to be arbitrated by a third party (probably Jimmy), Jimmy and Ronnie leave Phan and Dante to have a quiet drink together. I do believe Hell just froze over.

  Jimmy's personal life, meanwhile, is completely in the toilet. Francine follows through on her threat to take Stella away, packing her off to boarding school. To the welcome return of the tune from the original promo for the pilot, she directs a little rant at Jimmy at the beginning of the ep that is a masterpiece of paranoid hypocrisy, I especially liked the part where she says, "You smother [Stella], just like you smothered me." Yeah, normal fatherly love is so smothering. Before we all get on board about the awfulness of Jimmy's "thing" with Lorna, let's all pause to remember that last season, Francine was bringing every piece of low-life scum she could find back home to the house in which her daughter also lived, not to mention flaunting them in the club in front of Jimmy, and that one of those pieces of scum tried to kidnap Stella and hold her for ransom in the pilot. This is not to let Jimmy off the hook, but come on. Pot take a meeting with kettle, Frankie.

  After telling off Jimmy, Francine roars off in her cute little sports car to pick up Stella, who is staying with Sweet. Sweet tries to reassure Stella that boarding school isn't that bad. Francine just tells Sweet coldly, "Don't worry about us. We're survivors." Later, as Francine drops off Stella at the school, having effectively isolated the girl from all contact by saying she can't have visitors or go home for weekends for the first few months, Stella assures her that she'll be okay. But she also asks--twice--if her parents are getting back together. Clearly, she's worried about losing contact with her father. Francine just tells her that she and Jimmy won't be getting back together and Stella admits that it's probably just as well. Yes, she is surely her father's daughter. Got pain? Completely suppress it and insist that everything is okey-dokey.

  Francine starts to cry when she gets back to the car. That stops immediately after she whips out a little packet and snorts a bit of coke up her nose. Whoops. There went my sympathy. I'd be skeptical about Francine's declaration that this is really, really, truly, honest-to-God the end of her marriage to Jimmy, but then there's the end of the ep. But we'll get to that in a minute.

  Lorna, demonstrating once again the moral fortitude of a cockroach, horns right in on a heartbroken Jimmy in the middle of his deal with Dante and Phan, and persuades him to engage in a little quickie afterward. Because absolutely the best thing to do after your psycho ex-wife has packed off your only child to a Catholic boarding school, changed the girl's name from yours to her maiden name, and essentially promised that you will never see the kid again is to have a quick how's-yer-father in the back of the bar with the bunnyboiler who banged the final nail on the coffin of your marriage. You bet. Maxine needs to come back and stage another intervention for her crazy brother. His choice in women sucks.

  Lorna gets little time to savor her triumph, however. At the very end of the ep, she comes home to a dark apartment, turns on the light and guess who's waiting inside? Yup. Francine. As Francine steps forward and threatens Lorna's wellbeing if she ever sets foot near "my husband" again (wait...wasn't the marriage really, honest-to-God over this time...oh, never mind) the screen goes black and the credits roll. Ooops. Has Lorna gone to join Winston and Hogarty? Tune in next week.

  Finally, Jimmy discovers the "DEA" guy's connection. The connection is also the guy who whacked Dante's soldier. René finds out that he's an independent mercenary from LA called "Clive Raymond" and he's played by...wait for it...Chris Haddock himself. Yup. Haddock pulls a Hitchcock this week and does a cameo. Since Jimmy and Bob then promptly sic Dante on Raymond, though, I doubt it will be a longterm role. Though Haddock may get to play a dead body next week.

  ---

  Next week: The Heat Is On: Jimmy takes a meeting with the Americans, while Mary seeks to consolidate her hold over the Blackmire operation.

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This page was last updated on 11/27/2007