INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON ONE

• Review of Episode 4: Jimmy's Got a Money Machine [Seriously, that's the ep title. Somebody is having way more fun than is legal coming up with these.]

  The ratings for the first two episodes of the season were apparently not what CBC hoped for, but much better than the ratings for any other new show that CBC is putting out--in the 350-450,000 range, in other words. Of course, that may only be for the first Tuesday night showing and the Friday night showing is apparently the one that's getting all of the new-to-CBC viewers on board, so the total figures could be a lot higher. Tuesday is a heavily contested night this year. I think that CBC needs to get behind the fact that they lost a lot of viewers due to that shutout last fall and that it's going to take a while (probably until next spring, at the very earliest) to woo them back. I've got a newsflash for them--they won't be getting this viewer back if they cancel this show. And they need to keep promoting it, too, so that people will know it's still on and wander by to check it out. They won't be finding it through clairvoyance.

  This week, Jimmy puts his ATM "scam" into action, including armored car guys in uniforms and 20 fake ATMs. What I'm not really getting is how this works if Jimmy is laundering his own money through these ATMs. I can't imagine he's scamming ATM users out of their money when his main problem is laundering what he's already got. That's just pocket change and doesn't solve his free-floating cash problem. And how does he keep users from realizing what's going on if he can't hook them up to their bank info? It's all still just a little bit foggy.

  Even so, the operation gives us a cool in to showing Jimmy's business acumen on a quotidian level as we see him engaged in several deals and meetings of various import throughout the ep. Randy, for example, tries to get him to help him get that ship full of arms out of dock in Panama. Jimmy savors the sweet irony that he's the one who is responsible for Randy's shipment problem as he first guilelessly encourages Randy to spill the beans about it, then guiltlessly sells Randy out yet again to Mary. Moral of the story: don't screw over Jimmy Reardon then expect him to bail you out. Especially if you are a cokehead, wife-beating, biker-related stockbroker. Speaking of which, the lovely Casey is looking pretty rough, this week. Looks like she made her bed and isn't so happy with it. Randy, meanwhile, is already tiring of her, as he tells Jimmy quite openly.

  Jimmy later shocks the hell out of Mary when she asks him what his daughter will think when she finds out about his true business and he confesses to her his big plan and lifelong dream: in five years, he intends to have shed all of his criminal enterprises and to have gone completely legit. Mary is shocked and not entirely thrilled. Though she tries to put a good face on it, Jimmy sees her lack of enthusiasm and looks not a little hurt and confused. She's a cop, after all. Why wouldn't she want to see him go legit? But of course, he'd be much less useful to her if he did. And I'm sure that while Mary could see Casey wanting a way clear, she probably never saw it coming that Jimmy would want out of the crime business, too. He's a very successful criminal, after all. Why would he want to go legit? But what we see in this ep is that Jimmy really enjoys being an entrepreneur much more than he enjoys being a gangster. And out of the gangster business is really what he wants.

  Jimmy leads the first ATM run himself, at night, before deciding to pass it off to Mike. Ronnie is concerned that too many people are getting involved in the operation to be safe. "It's not a family operation any more," Jimmy tells him later, shrugging. "Well, that's what I'm saying," Ronnie replies, as if he's not quite sure why he's worried, but is worried, just the same.

  Ronnie has reason to be concerned. First, two of Jimmy's main backers try to back out. The restauranteur is looking at a two-million-plus debt that could pull him under. Jimmy is furious with him for taking so long to 'fess up and shows it. But when the guy admits how much he's in for, Jimmy says quietly, "I can give you that." In exchange for a piece of the guy's coffeeshop chain and a handshake, he'll give him the money.

  Jimmy's buddy Vic Morvallo is less easy to persuade. His banker is taking an unhealthy interest in putting in ATMs of their own, since he has such good locations. Jimmy assures him that he can find him a new banker, but Vic worries that this will attract undue attention, especially since the banker has mentioned the possibility of organized crime muscling in on the ATM action (which, lo and behold, is exactly what's going on). The conversation ends inconclusively, but it's a tour de force of acting, with Ian Tracey and Jason Schombing walking down an alleyway skillfully overlapping each other's lines. The way Jimmy quietly says, "Oh, shit" when Vic lays out the situation for him is also a lot of fun. Such a simple line so complexly said.

  Jimmy and Ronnie also get a visit from a Homicide cop named Walford who tells them the guy who attempted to shoot Jimmy last week is named Eric Sabakis. Sabakis claims he got mad over being bounced and that he's not connected to anyone (as you do after you've botched a major hit). Needless to say, neither Jimmy nor Ronnie believes this in the least. Jimmy puts out feelers with both Rene and Mary to find out what's going on with Eric Sabakis. When Jimmy asks Rene about Colin's murder, Rene tells him the current VPD Homicide theory is that Jimmy did it: "They got somebody says it was you: Colin burned you, you buried him."

  Jimmy, who seems to have genuinely seen Colin as a friend (assuming we don't find out later that he did have Colin whacked), is upset by this assumption. He later pays a visit to the local head of a biker gang, Dante, to assert that he doesn't want a war but is aware of the gang's attempted expansion on the Island. He and Dante exchange outwardly cordial greetings and small talk, until Jimmy lowers the tone by asking Dante about his family. Bald and bulletheaded Dante, rather contemptuous of the "soft" and apparently conciliatory Jimmy up to that point, tries to lighten things by treating it like a serious question and mentioning his son's sports enthusiasms. But when he asks Jimmy about his own family, Jimmy does not respond in kind. Instead, he smiles coldly and leaves. This makes Jimmy's question a very clear and personal threat that Dante warily takes on board.

  Jimmy is also busily corrupting his banker, John Hogarty, using Kristina (seems he wasn't so drawn in by her charms, after all). When he asks her how she's progressing with Hogarty, Kristina replies snarkily, "I think if I give him another dance, he's going to propose." Seems Jimmy was more interested in how he could use her to reel in Hogarty and get him under Jimmy's control (hey, he's a crook; he can't always be a nice guy) than in actually sleeping with Kristina, himself. Jimmy is really tough to fathom in how he acts about the strip club. Offstage, he's nice to the dancers and treats them like human beings. On the other hand, he watches them while they're performing in about the same way he might watch the fish at the Vancouver Aquarium--as beautiful scenery. I can't decide if it's disarming or rather creepy.

  But other things are happening that Jimmy should be wary of, himself. First, Francine appears at the forty-minute mark at Reardon Shipping to beg Maxine's help in any court case against Jimmy and sit in Sal Repisto (Keith Dallas)'s lap. Sal is Jimmy's front man at Reardon Shipping, a big, cheerful black guy with no apparent guile. He doesn't have a chance against Francine. Her pathetic clothing sense doesn't do her much good with Maxine, though, granted, there are many young girls half her age prancing around Vancouver (even this late in the year) in similar hooker-chic garb and they don't look any classier doing it. Perhaps they will stop now that Halloween's over. Or not. Maxine shines Francine on as Francine whines about feeling like the family leper, but later rages to Jimmy about how crazy she is. When Francine asks Maxine if Jimmy ever talks about her, Maxine says no. But really, telling Francine, "Your ex thinks you're a scumsucking cokehead slut" would be counterproductive, no? And since Francine has kept Jimmy away from Stella for three weeks now, and letting him see Stella would be the most obvious way to get back in his good graces, Maxine has every reason to question her motives.

  We get a little more family background in this ep. Ronnie lights a candle in front of an old photo that may be of his father. Walford, the Homicide detective mentions that his dad used to harass Ronnie's dad back in the 60s. And Maxine points out that she was against Jimmy's marriage to Francine from the get-go. "We had an engagement intervention, if you recall," she tells Jimmy. "Yeah, what was I thinking?" Jimmy replies amiably. "With your dick, as usual," Maxine says, with typical sharpness, though Sal doesn't understand why Jimmy let Francine go when she's so hot. Sal doesn't seem to understand the difference between "hot" and "radioactive", but Jimmy sure does now. Maxine needs to have another such chat (as she did in the pilot) with Michael. In an echo of last week's Ronnie-Jimmy bulletproof vest exchange, Michael shows up with matching guns. Jimmy turns him down on that offer, but Ronnie takes one of them (gee, could this be foreshadowing?).

  Meanwhile, Ted [yawn] and Roger continueth to plot against Mary, though Roger is now officially skeptical of Ted's plan to use the DEA to go after Jimmy. Roger really doesn't see the point. In fact, nobody but Ted sees the point of Ted's plans by now. This might be a warning sign for Ted if in his very first scene this week, we didn't see him downing airplane-size bottles of booze. Fer cryin' in the grog, man, if you're going to be an alcoholic with a high-paying salary, at least drink the good stuff.

  Roger feels that Ted is wasting his time getting at Mary through Jimmy via the DEA. Too many moving parts. I can't say he's wrong when the DEA guy, George Willams (Aaron Pearl), lays out for Ted his hilariously Rube Goldbergian scheme to take down Jimmy's entire enterprise with just one narc and Ted buys it hook, line, sinker and fishing rod. Yeah, right. So, if the DEA were able to do that, how come they're still trying to extradite that guy who sells mail order marijuana seeds out of Vancouver in real life?

  Small surprise, then, that when Roger suggests to Ted that Ted get some dirt on Mary, Ted looks genuinely astonished, as if such a route hadn't occurred to him. As if Mary's personal life weren't a blazingly obvious target already. Ted further refuses to see any warning signs on the road to his horizon when he gets one of his erstwhile contacts to try to bug Mary's safehouse apartment. Not only does the guy think bugging one of the OCU's own places is "insane", but he also points out that they want to get rid of Roger, anyway. Ted declares that he wants to get rid of both Roger and Mary, blithely ignoring the obvious that were that to happen, they would then get a complete wild card that nobody knows or has connections to in the local CSIS branch. Everybody would lose out.

  In fact, Mallaby and new CSIS handler Richard Royden (David Green) are already considering doing that. After they meet with Mary, Royden is less than impressed and more than relieved when Mallaby assures him they have other candidates in case Mary can't get a handle on her new job. Royden is a creepy American who tells Mary and Mallaby that the CIA is losing its best people to the Pentagon. "The military's taking over," Mallaby says in a chilling understatement. Mary goes on to call CSIS's current ability to do any out-of-Canada intelligence "lame" and gets Royden's tentative cooperation in recruiting intelligence sources on the U.S. side of the border.

  Obviously, this all makes Ted look pretty damned incompetent. I can't help wondering if the writers are setting him up to get whacked by the end of the season. He has absolutely no depth and there's no reason to like him or feel sorry for him. I sure wouldn't miss him. Not to mention the fact that he's really no good at his job and an alky would indicate that however things turn out in the Mary vs. Roger CSIS deathmatch, Ted won't be getting Mary's old job at the OCU.

  Which brings us to Mary. Mary is still focused on turning Lee, her mole. To this end, she enlists her buddy from last week who called her "Queenie", Edward Forrest (Joseph Pierre). He stays at her apartment, but it's all purely platonic (even though he'd clearly like it to be more). She also reels in Martin (Eugene Lipinsky's character) who up until now has sort of been in Ted's camp but unhappy about it. Mary tells Martin that she's very happy with his work and would like to take him with her to CSIS, thus reassuring him. Ted had had him convinced that she hated him. Now, he appears to be sort of in Mary's camp, especially since we discover this ep that he and Katarina have a thing going and Katarina appears to genuinely like Mary. It helps, of course, that Mary has come through (so far) on her promise to bring Katarina's mother and daughter to the U.S. Katarina even offers Mary a really nice apartment in gratitude. Mary regretfully turns it down, but reluctantly accepts a "family heirloom" of a bracelet instead.

  So, while Ted boneheadedly plots, Mary plots to turn Lee so she won't have to "burn her unit to the ground" as last week's official synopsis so eloquently put it. This job is not made any easier when she discovers that Lee's contact is his mistress (whose brother is in a Chinese gang) and that Lee and his mistress are plotting to kill Lee's wife. "Ohh. That's not good," Martin says in the understatement of the season when Mary tells him about the problem. The solution is for Edward, Martin and Mary to set up a wiretap in Lee's wife's apartment. The only problem with that is that Lee's wife is always there and when she's not, her kids' nannies are. They eventually figure out a time to do the wiretap (at night). Martin goes over and puts in the wiretap himself. Thus, ensues the funniest scene of the ep, where Martin "models" lingerie in the apartment window for Edward and Mary, who are watching him through the surveillance cam. "Jesus Christ," Mary says, about two seconds after I did the first time I watched the scene. It's sick. It's hilarious. It's so Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well, it was the Halloween ep, after all.

  Next week: Eps 5: Mary closes in on her mole and gives Jimmy a tip about his would-be assassin. Meanwhile, Stella takes matters into her own hands.

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This page was last updated on 11/03/2006