INTELLIGENCE REVIEWS-SEASON ONE

• Review of Episode 8: Clean and Simple

  Vancouver got hit with lots of snow this weekend. It's a winter wonderland and apparently won't be going anywhere any time soon. Will we be seeing any of this on screen? Probably not, but you never know. It looks pretty cool, even if temperatures in the teens Fahrenheit are less than fun.

  The theme for this week's episode is how tough it is to keep a secret on either side of the law. This ep has more rats in it than the sidewalk in front of the Vancouver courthouse on Main and Cordova and these rats aren't nearly as cute as the little fellahs I see scurrying about there on warm, dry nights, harmlessly going about their ratty business rather like big, brown nocturnal squirrels (Yes, I think they're cute. Sue me). It starts off with Eddie back in town and Mary meeting up with him. It also begins with Jimmy...uh...cooking. No, seriously. He's having a big meeting on the club's rooftop about an ambitious plan to rip off the bikers and he's grilling steaks for all. I can't help getting a kick out of how domestic Jimmy can be. It goes far to showing how flexible a personality he is and how unpredictable. But it's also kinda cute.

  Rather less cute is the situation we see him in at the end of the ep, riding around with Winston the DEA narc making a deal when they are both pulled over on what appears to be a bit more than a routine traffic stop. I sure hope this doesn't mean that Jimmy has suddenly dropped fifty IQ points just because his business is a bit starved for "product". The ep also sees him tailing Winston up until the point that Winston apparently does a buy. Winston is so nervous about the tail that he cancels a meeting with George and Ted. On the other hand, Ted is giving George of the Red, White and Blue such sterling advice as allowing an entire shipment of pot ("200 pounds of weed") to disappear into Jimmy's operation because Jimmy would spot a GPS unit. The bean counters will love that, I'm sure. Jimmy has so far been about ten times as smart as Ted is, let alone thinks Jimmy is. I'm hoping this will continue. But then, George and Ted are also both unaware that Mary has spotted George north of the border and is on the trail of a guy named Luiz Falcone, a coke dealer who is probably the guy George wants Ted to protect, since Mary spots them together. Oops.

  No surprise, then, that Mary comes across as increasingly canny this week. Mallaby keeps getting in her face about Harvey's Homicide investigation and how it is coming increasingly close to Royden. Mary pleasantly agrees to get Homicide to back off on Roger while never once admitting that she is behind goading Homicide into being on Roger's tail in the first place. "I don't know who you spoke to," she tells Harvey later. "But you hit a nerve." Mallaby insists that CSIS is "satisfied" with Roger's explanation that he only called the Hong Kong police to confirm Lee's security clearance and inadvertently outed him. Too bad, so sad and all is forgiven now that Lee is dead. Since we see Royden coaching Roger over dinner on the same story, Mallaby is either stupid, naïve or in cahoots with Roger and Royden.

  And oh, how dirty Royden is. Not only is he a mole, he's a total rat for the U.S. government. Nice. Eddie appears mainly to introduce Mary (somewhere near the docks downtown) to a canny old former spy named Flannigan, who is up north with Eddie on a sort of bounty hunter kick after Falcone. Flannigan tells Mary that CSIS has been loaded with moles "since its inception". It's an old boys' network going back to the Cold-War-deep-freeze '50s where Canadian operatives went to college down south and were recruited there. Mary admits that even she was approached when she was going to Columbia University, but turned them down. Royden is especially dirty, having worked for the CIA and the Department of Defense down south running simulations like what would happen if Quebec ever seceded (I had to laugh at that one, considering the events of the past week). Mary notes that he has a hole in his resume from the late '90s, but Flannigan doesn't have much information on that. Either way, Royden is as sleazy as they come.

  Mary then gets an alarming request from Mallaby for the files on all of her current and ongoing operations. By this time, Mary has been hearing all sorts of things from Harvey in Homicide about all of the people who are snowing him (Mary's ultimate boss in CSIS, Arthur Penhall back in Toronto), stonewalling him (Royden, who flatly refuses to give up his phone records) and schmoozing him (the press secretary for the Minister of Security and Intelligence). She has a drink with Don Frazer where she morosely admits that if she had kept the Lee problem to herself and come to a discrete understanding with him, he might still be alive. She wonders what the point is of keeping state secrets if Canadian security is so wide open that every foreign power knows more about Canada than the Canadians do themselves. Don, bless him, refuses to let her cry in her cups for long and gives her a rousing speech that she takes to heart:

  "Mary, I don't know why you're still trying to play the game by their rules. You're not an 'old boy'. They're never gonna let you in. C'mon, that's not news; you've known that forever. You've got to do what you've always done: have a plan of attack and when the time is right, kick down the door; take no prisoners. They fuck with you, you fuck with them. Rattle their rice bowl. It's the only thing these guys understand." Bust down the door and eat all the chickens. I like it.

  Her confidence thus rebolstered, Mary smoothly tells Mallaby that she'll give him the files, then tells Martin to give her all files on Katarina and her girls and Ted to give her all of Jimmy's files, making them effectively disappear off the radar. She then calls a senator and tells him that "some of our files are ending up where they shouldn't", then asks if she can safely blow the whistle or will she be left twisting in the wind? She then steps into Mallaby's office and tells him that until he suspends Roger, she can't pass on any files, what with security having already been fatally compromised in the Lee operation. Later, she confronts Roger, who pulls off the gloves. But he's overmatched and knows it. Mary makes it clear to Roger that retiring quietly might be his best option. The look on Roger's face indicates both that he feels a bit guilty about Lee and that he realizes he may be the one who ends up twisting in the wind. Either way, Mary has a tiger by the tail--Royden. And knowing her, you know that she won't let go until she's hunted him down. Yay, Don.

  As usual, of course, Mary has other irons in the fire. She's mightily interested in Katarina's latest job, which is supplying three ladies of the evening (herself decidedly not one of them) to a little get-together between the Chinese and some Canadian researchers who are selling agricultural patents to the highest bidder. She puts Martin on it. Martin is working with one of Katarina's girls to set up the surveillance on the Canadians. He even gets into their hotel rooms and later cheerfully tells Mary that the Chinese were doing the same thing. I like Martin as a character, even if as a person, he's a total sleaze. It's partly because he works so well for Mary and partly because Eugene Lipinski has so much fun playing him. When his partner-of-the-week tells him that Katarina has said that he can get her a visa, Martin says that's true. When she asks him what she has to do to arrange for this visa, he replies, "Only what you're doing already." Ewwww.

  Things Chez Reardon are almost as complicated, natch. Jimmy is setting up a raid on the bikers with Phan and his Vietnamese friends. Bob Tremblay carefully sets up his surveillance of the biker tradeoff of funds (much like Jimmy's ATM operation, except that it involves driving cash south to Seattle) on Howe and Dunsmuir, using a buddy who observes things from a motorcycle, a helmet conveniently concealing his identity. Unfortunately, unforeseen events ensure two problems--first, Kristina finds herself locked out of the dressing room that she previously shared with Sweet and forced to share the general one with the rest of the girls. She asks Mike why when he comes in to fix a broken ceiling light. "Sweet's got Ronnie pussy-whipped, that's why," he tells her cheerfully. What he doesn't know (and she doesn't tell him) is that sitting there in the dark, changing for her dance, she has observed one of Jimmy's war meetings with the Vietnamese on the rooftop. Good thing for her, too, since she hasn't been returning Mary's calls and Mary is threatening to have her deported to Katarina. She needs something to trade for staying in the country.

  Second, at the close of the ep, as Jimmy is sitting in a car keeping his hands in sight while Winston the Narc is being arrested by constables for whatever they stopped him for, the raid on the bikers go badly wrong. The biker courier realizes that he's being crowded by one of Phan's guys and busts out prematurely onto the street to find the guy's partner boosting his car. As he pulls a gun on the partner, the first guy comes out and puts two bullets in his back before roaring off in a second escape car. Oh, dear. And after Jimmy had expressly told them, "No violence, right?" too. And yet, I couldn't help a little smile at how easily the tables were turned on the bikers, even though this bodes ugly things in the future for Jimmy and his gang. Truly, if you live by the sword, you'll die by it.

  Speaking of Sweet, Ronnie and Jimmy decide to offer her a house across the street (to the tune of 1.2 million) to hold their excess cash. At first, Sweet thinks that Ronnie is really offering the house with no strings attached and is both embarrassed and touched. Once she realizes why he's really offering it, well, she's not so touched anymore. She goes back and forth on whether or not to agree to do it, especially since Ronnie won't offer her anything more (including her name on the deed) without Jimmy's approval, Jimmy being his boss and all. He even offers to let her meet his mother rather than that. But she holds out for the deed and that's what she finally gets.

  Ronnie, meanwhile, is fretting over using the Vietnamese guys as partners in the raid on the bikers. Considering how it all goes down in the end, he does have a point. On the other hand, Jimmy notes that Ronnie can't seem to decide what he wants. He keeps pushing Jimmy to "do something", yet when Jimmy does do something, he gets antsy. Ronnie says his problem isn't with the plan, but the partners. But you can't really pick your winners in this kind of game, as Jimmy points out. This combination of impatience and cold feet is probably the most persuasive reason why Jimmy is the boss and Ronnie isn't. On the other hand, Ronnie makes a very good devil's advocate. After all, he is ultimately right about Phan's guys being disastrously volatile.

  Meanwhile, Jimmy's lawyer, Phil Coombs (former child actor Shane Meier, who must be ecstatic about getting so many one-on-one scenes with an actor of Ian Tracey's calibre), has some scary news about Francine (who I just realized is probably based on Sharon Stone's character in "Casino", though Jimmy bears basically no resemblance to Robert de Niro's) and a very odd business proposition for Jimmy. First, it seems that the lawyer Francine saw a few weeks back about a divorce got nervous and went to see Phil. Never mind lawyer-client confidentiality--the guy is very nervous about proceeding any further without Jimmy's agreement, considering all of the revelations that Francine is all too anxious to make about Jimmy's past and present business dealings. On Phil's advice, Jimmy angrily agrees to let the guy keep Francine on as his client. This way, they can keep tabs on Francine's blabbing and keep her neutralized on the legal front. Nice. Talk about an old boys' network. Even though I thought she thoroughly deserved it, I couldn't help feeling creeped out by the ease with which Francine's lawyer violated her privilege and sold it out to her gangster ex.

  Finally, Rene hands over a bunch of biker files to Jimmy, noting rather nervously that some of them will probably turn up dead. Jimmy gives him a sour smile in response (he really doesn't love his bad rep on that front), but hands over a bonus, anyway--some season tickets. His reservations forgotten, Rene gets all perky again and drives off, mollified. You have to admire Jimmy's people skills, especially with scum of the earth.

  Next week: Eps 9: Mike finally remembers where he knows the guy who jacked him from. Dante is furious about the raid (not to mention Jimmy). Winston is nervous that Jimmy will twig to him being a narc. Francine and Ronnie have a confrontation that doesn't go well. Mary finally admits to Ted that he's not a part of her transition team, "but you could be". Ted plots to cover up something, probably Falcone.

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This page was last updated on 12/02/2006