INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON TWO

• Review of Season Two, Episode 23: The Heat Is On

  Watch this show while you can. Acorn Media is putting out season one on DVD next April 29 and Chris Haddock is developing an American pilot down south. But now that Haddock has gone public about the CBC's all-too-blatant attempts to bury the show with no promotion, the gloves are off between all parties and a season three is looking definitely uncertain. Write in if you want to keep seeing the show, and look out for the two-hour season finale next week, starting at 8pm, not 9.

  Mary's grip on her snitches starts to slip after Julianna has a "meltdown" and Jimmy gets the drop on the Americans. Meanwhile, Mary gets some canoodling in with David Baker (possibly a plant for the other side), this time on screen, and Francine shows her true colors--again. And we hear that Mike is down in San Francisco, though he doesn't show up.

  The episode begins with a misty Vancouver morning down by the docks (that's nowhere near the club, btw). Bob is doing jumping jacks on the roof of the Chickadee. Martin is shaving (accidentally cutting himself). Mary is waking up after a night of passion with new flame David. Julianna is cuddling with her new boyfriend and Jimmy is knocking on Lorna's door. No, don't get your hopes up--she's not dead. Yet.

  Lorna is upset about Francine's visit at the end of the last episode. She makes threats about going to the police; Jimmy promises to take care of Francine if Lorna keeps her mouth shut. Then, Lorna, who clearly has the smarts and learning curve of a paramecium, asks, "Are you gonna stay for a while?" And, of course, Jimmy hesitates at the door. God, this girl is nauseating. Kill her off, please.

  We do get some insight into why Jimmy is being so easy--apparently, he and Francine hadn't quite got back together, after all. When he goes to see Francine, one of her complaints is that they haven't slept together recently: "You know, if you wanna fuck somebody, fuck me! That used to be fun, remember?" I guess Jimmy was just desperate for a little tail. Or something. In their conversation, Francine makes it clear that when she said it was over last week, she didn't really mean that it was, you know, over. And of course, now she's got Stella out of the way just as she wanted. She tells Jimmy, "You think I put in fifteen years with you so that some little chickie you want to screw a couple of times gets to cash in instead of me?" Well, hey, Frankie, don't be mercenary or anything. But she also claims that Jimmy could just leave the business and disappear with her and Stella any time (which pretty much everybody but Francine knows is not possible). As always, Francine works across her own purposes, not to mention everyone else's.

  Meanwhile, Mary is having trouble handling Julianna. She warns Julianna that if she is ever caught, or confesses to Brown about her relationship with CSIS, "your life is at very great risk." Julianna agrees, but doesn't appear to take the warning seriously: "I have a lot of experience in how to lie...I erase my footsteps." "She's reckless," Mary tells Martin. "She enjoys the game too much." Mary wants to drop Julianna since they already have Jimmy. But Martin sensibly points out that neither Julianna nor Jimmy is completely reliable. Nor are they telling CSIS everything that they learn. Mary can use them both to confirm each other's information. So Mary keeps Julianna on despite the risks.

  Part of the problem is that Gordon Brown is not just investigating Julianna to be safe. I've suspected for a while that the speed with which he was moving in on her and taking control of her life was more than just professional paranoia. Sure enough, he's a jealous, abusive dirtbag on top of it. Mary and Martin scramble to give her a cover when Cruikshank shows up, fishing for an undercover operative inside Blackmire. Or so he says. And if that story stinks like week-old fish, it should.

  Martin goes through a fake recruitment with Julianna in a restaurant. But the ruse backfires (maybe deliberately). Brown gets the idea that Julianna is two-timing him (even though he's married--nice) and slaps her around. Freaked, Julianna smacks him right back (good for her), kicks him out and screams at the surveillance camera, "I quit!" As she starts packing, Martin goes into action, calling Mary (who is seriously distracted with David) and calling Katarina over to calm Julianna down. Later, Mary herself comes over to spell Katarina (nice moment between them there) and has a drink with Julianna, who thanks her. It looks sincere, but of course, it looked sincere when she was telling Brown about her mother's "death", too. By the end of the ep, Julianna is once again on the job and taking back a contrite Brown, with an appointment with a shrink of Mary's choice to help her keep on the level. And once again, we see Mary seesawing between being harsh and cold toward her informants and getting a bit too cozy with them. As she tells Julianna, "The feelings get confusing."

  Meanwhile, Jimmy, down and flipping out only a few weeks ago, is once again back on top of his game. And he's already flexing his muscles with Mary, snarking at her bigtime this week. "Oh, yeah, it's my job now?" he says when she asks him to keep the impending drug war from happening. "You guys have given up policing the city, is that right?" "It's gonna take the both of us," she replies. "And what are you gonna do about it?" he shoots back.

  The murder of one of Phan's top lieutenants (investigated by Ogawa and Ted, who gets the identification from Phan himself) sends both Phan and Dante into a tailspin. They want to get into reprisals, but cooler heads (specifically Jimmy and Bob) prevail. Bob points out that none of them have the resources for a prolonged war: "We don't want to get into a war without knowing how big the other guy's army is, first." Jimmy insists that peace is best for all of them: "We need peace to achieve the things we want to achieve. We don't have the resources for any kind of a protracted war." Eventually, they both talk Dante and Phan around. Some fans have been less than pleased about Dante's "softer" turn this season. However, I think that this is in keeping with Haddock's portrayal of violence as very effective in the short-term, but counterproductive in the long-term.

  At any rate, Jimmy cleverly sets up a meeting under heavy security with a top guy in the American gang, Pete, (a welcome return by Patrick Gallagher) at the Chickadee, then uses it to lay down the law. Jimmy informs Pete that Reardon Shipping, the Disciples and Phan's organization are in an alliance that brooks no new competition in the street trade of Vancouver. Smiling, he adds that Pete can buy from him, but not distribute: "Street trade here? Off limits." When Pete asks him if Jimmy is willing to ship down to the U.S. (hmmm, maybe this is a DEA black op, after all?), Jimmy smoothly tells Pete that distribution inside the U.S. is his business, not Jimmy's. Pete refuses to make a decision right then, but as Ronnie says to Jimmy afterward, "That sure sounded like you kicked him out of town."

  Though Jimmy appears to have gained the upper hand in this interaction, it creates some friction between him and Mary. Jimmy keeps trying to get intel from Mary, but she and the rest of law enforcement (include René) don't know what's going on. This makes Jimmy very irritable with both of his cop contacts. He goes off on René, then snarks to Mary, "Maybe you could do some police work for a change, find out who shot these guys [Phan and Dante's lieutenants]."

  But Ted has actually dug up some very disturbing information about the Americans. It seems that wherever they go, rivals disappear or are murdered. Jordan's (the head of the DEA kidnap squad) usual way of doing things, according to MI-5, has been to operate around American military bases in Europe, even sparking an ugly drug war in London. So, the move on Jimmy earlier this season seems to have been part of this plan. Had the kidnap attempt on him succeeded, he likely would have been found under a bridge somewhere, instead of being extradited back to the U.S. as everyone expected. So, don't count the American gang out just yet.

  Jimmy also meets with Evans, who brokers the deal between Jimmy's bank and Blackmire. It turns out that Blackmire is not going to funnel its money solely through Jimmy's bank, after all. What they want to do is set up an octopus-like network of similarly shady banks all around the world, with Jimmy's bank being only one of many "rogue banks". Jimmy ferries this information to Mary, who seems to be twigging that this could be bigger and more complicated than previously suspected. In fact, it could be that CSIS has accidentally horned in on a CIA attempt at dirty tricks north of the border.

  Finally, Ronnie and Sweet have a cute conversation about the coming baby--or possibly, coming babies. Sweet tells Ronnie that twins tend to run in her family. Meanwhile, Ronnie appears to be finally calling up his mother to have her come meet the mother of her soon-to-be grandchild. For the rest of the episode, he's mainly silent, letting Jimmy and Bob take the front seat aside from a conversation with Evans where Ronnie expresses concerns about the bank: "I like the direction we're taking, but I gotta admit, this bank is making me nervous." For once, I agree with him and so, apparently, does Jimmy. He and Ronnie persuade Phil Coombs to go down to the Bahamas to keep an eye on Evans & Co. Despite Ronnie's much lower profile, I so hope nothing happens to Sweet and her baby(ies).

  ---

  Next week: A Dark Alliance/We Were Here Now We Disappear: It's the two-hour season finale (In Haddock Entertainment terms, that usually means two separate eps one right after another), starting one hour earlier than usual, at 8pm.

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This page was last updated on 12/4/2007