Hey guys, I hope you had a great Christmas / holiday season; who realised there is a new series of Cardinal coming up right away? ME EITHER so I’d better get my bum moving on finishing off season one’s recaps. Rolling S1:E5 Keith after the break!
We open with a naked and bloody Keith (Robert Naylor) trying to sneak out of the basement room, no easy feat considering he’s in handcuffs and Edie Soames (Allie MacDonald) is just outside the door scrubbing away Woody’s brain matter off the walls.
Last week Woody (Gord Rand) followed exactly the wrong guy home from the mall, a simple burglary turned fatal when he tried to rescue Keith, who has been kidnapped, tied up and tortured by a pair of malcontents: Edie and Eric (Brendan Fletcher).
Eric is working a recovery plan, they can still go ahead with Keith. Edie wants to pull the plug, why don’t they just stop now? Eric never says die, but he is disturbed by Keith staring at him.
Across the city, Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse) has some ‘splaining to do. She’s been taking birth control pills (and smoking) while telling her partner Josh (Alden Adair) that she and he are trying to have a baby. Like, the whole time.
Yikes.
She just got promoted and didn’t want to lose her new role to a pregnancy and we can all understand that, right? The problem is that she didn’t tell him, she kept lying to him until he found the pills and the jig was up. He asks her point blank whether she wants this, and by extension: him and she lies and says yes. It’s hard to do the right thing, because the wrong thing has feelings too and asks questions like that.
Delorme didn’t only get a promotion, she got two jobs at once. One’s working with John Cardinal (Billy Campbell), the other is investigating him for taking payoffs. She got some weird information for Malcolm Musgrave (David Richmond-Peck), she followed Cardinal to a casino where he washed money using chips, but the money he used was brand new, not from a payoff. Delorme and I are confused, but Malcolm is elated. This behaviour is suspicious and shows them they on are the right track. Now he thinks Cardinal is making the payoffs instead of taking them.
For his part, Cardinal wants to know how Tammy Lidstrom (Fiona Highet) found his house with her big gun. He gives her all the money he has, but she doesn’t think it’s enough for a buyout.
He explains the case he’s on, she asks if he’s putting this on her? No, but if she keeps this up, his partner will find out what they’re up to. She asks if he’s forgotten about the dead cop and of course he hasn’t, but we’re left not knowing what the substance of their deal is, just that it involves a lot of money flowing from him to her.
A hunter finds Woody’s body out in the woods, he thinks he shot him by accident.
Cardinal has another unexpected visitor, it’s his daughter Kelly (Alanna Bale) who has kicked off school and come to see her mom, who is a Form 1 and can’t be seen. Kelly’s mom and Cardinal’s wife Catherine (Deborah Hay) has been committed involuntarily and the reason Kelly can’t see her is that she is considered a harm to herself or other people.
A phone call draws Cardinal’s attention, Jerry Commanda (Glenn Gould) is working Woody’s crime scene. You know how most criminals get caught? TV is wrong usually, showing us masterminds who work out plot details years in advance. Most criminals and like Edie and Eric, inexperienced and prone to mistakes like dumping Woody’s body in the same woods where they hid Keith’s finger.
Jerry takes a minute to assess Cardinal, is he up to this case? Delorme shows up and identifies Woody right away.
Edie goes to work to steal pills, just barely making it before getting sent home for looking like a Dia De Los Muertos mask.
Catherine gets the good news that her daughter is coming to see her, we’re all nervous about that.
Cardinal and Delorme have to do the notification to Woody’s wife Kristin (Trenna Keating) who cries as she helps them connect Woody to Keith’s guitar. Off they go to the music store at the mall where they are able to quickly connect Eric to the guitar and to Katie Pine even.
Catherine has walked into the wilderness by herself, that’s how unsettled she was about seeing her daughter. Kelly and Constable Fox (Eric Hicks) search in his patrol car.
Cardinal and Delorme go to Eric’s apartment after putting on bulletproof vests for the first time (Canadian), but the news has already spooked him and he is gone.
Eric calls Edie and tells her to dispose of Keith but it’s not physically possible, he’s too big. So he has to go over there and that will assuredly be their downfall. Until now, the cops have nothing connecting those two.
A frustrated Delorme and Cardinal fight in Eric’s empty apartment, the pressure of this case is getting to them. He cuts a little too close to the bone with her, telling her she’s half-assing her job as she’s half-assing her home life. Delorme isn’t taking that lying down.
He gravely tells her that whatever she’s looking for she isn’t going to find.
How do you trust a partner with your life when you can’t trust them at all?
He storms away as she continues to search Eric’s place and comes up trumps with photos of the dead kids. They have another clue: where Eric could have developed those photographs?
Edie manages to drag a naked and bleeding Keith out to the car in broad daylight as Kelly finds her mom by a bridge. It’s extremely cold and Catherine doesn’t have gloves, she didn’t want her daughter to see her like this. They struggle to find ground.
The detectives make it to a school previously guarded by Eric while he worked security, it seems hella dangerous to have just two cops checking out a whole school. I’m not worried because I know he’s on his way to Edie’s place, but still.
They find his photo lab setup, but no Eric. A noise draws their tense search to an end, it’s a video of one of the murders and Eric shoots Delorme twice before getting away, so excuse me for the whole being at Edie’s place thing.
Cardinal chases Eric outside, jumping in the back of his van before it crashes and they’re both injured. FARK. Eric kills himself before he can tell Cardinal where Keith is.
The aftermath
They’ve searched the school without finding Keith, Dyson (Kristen Thompson) asks if they’re looking for a body now? Cardinal nods his assent and Dyson moves to Delorme.
Delorme offers to pick up clothes for Cardinal, who wants to bet me $10 that she snoops? Nobody? Good, because thankfully Tammy left all her shite everywhere so Delorme has a lead.
Keith begs Edie to let him go, she can blame it all on Eric. Instead she stabs him with a huge knife somewhere that makes him grunt a bunch. I did not watch.
And that’s it for our penultimate episode of season one of Cardinal, what do you think? I think both leads are excellent, as is Brendan Fletcher as Eric, but the book has added several layers for Edie that aren’t evident in the show so I’m struggling with her character. She’s a cipher with a skin condition. Until next time, which is the last of this season, cheers!
