Hello, bonjour everyone and welcome back to Cardinal, which I left for longer than I meant to but I am sure is worth the wait. Rolling S1:E3 Edie and Eric after the break!
We’re in the woods with Eric Fraser (Brendan Fletcher) peeing next to Edie Soames (Allie MacDonald), who’s practicing her shooting while he mocks their captive’s texts to his girlfriend. Eric caps that off by texting a picture of his pee/snow sculpture and they head back to Edie’s gran’s place. Meanwhile, Detective John Cardinal (Billy Campbell) runs, in winter, in northern Ontario. LIKE YOU DO.
Edie lives with her gran (Amanda Smith) who is so deef she doesn’t hear them torturing strangers for days on end in the basement. Who’s a lucky murderous couple?? Keith (Robert Naylor) is still asleep and not quite ready to meet his gruesome end.
Over at Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse)’s house, she and her husband Josh (Alden Adair) are delicately fencing around major issues, as married people do. Delorme skipped her own family party (YOU CAN DO THAT??) so Josh went instead (WHAT??) and he’s sorry he told her mom they were trying to procreate. Well, why else do people get married? Duh
Cardinal briefs the staff while Chief Noelle Dyson (Kristen Thomson) stands by, they think the last victim Todd Curry (he got pretty messed up in some farked up ways) maybe met his assailant online. That is a reasonable assumption given that we just saw Eric pounding away at a computer.
Delorme made it back onto Cardinal’s bad side with her afterhours snooping on him, she’s been busted back to following up tips from the general public, which she thinks is very much junior grunt work.
Dyson asks Delorme if she got made while investigating Cardinal for the RCMP, yesterday Cardinal couldn’t get enough of Delorme and now he’s shutting her out for pretend phone calls, a la Paris Hilton circa 2005.
Eric is tried of waiting for his plaything to wake up, he threatens to cut off Keith’s finger to jolt him awake but Edie and I are not down. I will not watch torture, dudes. Eric complains that Edie isn’t taking a more active role in their fun and games, anyone can watch. He wants a playmate.
*significant deviation from the book alert*
Edie watches police canvas her neighbours, McLeod (James Downing) calls Cardinal with the location of Todd Curry’s last known destination, which is nothing. There is nothing in that area but snow and cold and some more cold and some railroad tracks. How did Todd spend 5 hours there?
Cardinal has brought the bracelet they found to ask Katie’s Pine’s mom Dorothy (Gail Maurice) if she’s seen it before or if she knew if Katie had a secret friend online? Well, SECRET, Cardinal. I do love how Dorothy never lets anyone off the hook, they can pat themselves on the back as much as they like as to how well they’re doing but she’ll always call it as she sees it.
Keith finally wakes up, naked on a mattress in a basement he doesn’t know. Eric is charming and believable and Keith clearly feels like shite, but still: naked on a mattress in a dungeon-like basement.
Eric drugs him again and explains about Edie’s face, it isn’t burned but rather eczema, which I’m sure Keith gives two flying farts about. And he’s out again.
We do see Edie’s face in full, she pulls her lank hair in front to hide it and that’s for sure part of the problem. A coworker Margo (Kelly Van der Berg) runs in twenty minutes late to complain that it’s Edie’s fault for not punching her in. Um. Your boss can SEE you run in 20 minutes late, Margo, and no way cameras didn’t record you stealing gum immediately after.
Edie judging Margo for stealing gum when SHE DRUGGED AND KIDNAPPED A GUY AND IS PLANNING TO TORTURE HIM TO DEATH seems like the Hannibul Burress existential question re: Bill Cosby.
Delorme’s having a great time on the tip line, “not all tips are useless. Some are useless AND racist.”
Dishy Detective Hannam (James Thomas) rubs it in, isn’t she supposed to be Number Two on this case? Never mind, they’re lucky to have a big-time Toronto undercover officer on their case as SAID NOBODY EVER, I mean. You know I love Toronto, but I’ve never heard people talk lovingly about a big-city type coming in and showing everyone how to do their jobs, whether from Regina or Halifax, ya know?
Cardinal’s visiting his wife Catherine (Deborah Hay) again, we found out last time she has bipolar disorder and now we’re seeing some of its symptoms. She’s edgy and withdrawn, uncaring about her daughter and angry when he asks her some questions about developing photographs from film, is he working right now? She’s tired, which means GTFO.
Cardinal wanders the woods while Keith comes to strapped securely to a chair. He’s still naked, but now he’s upright and Eric is taking pictures. Eric warns him about moving too much making the shot blurry, but do what feels natural!
Originally I was reminded very strongly of the murderous couple Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, but this latest information is bringing to mind a local (to me) case in Edmonton. Mark Twitchell lured a man to his home for a date and then filmed himself torturing and murdering the man, disposing of his body in the sewer.
Back to the show; Keith is still not understand his predicament fully, politely telling Eric that he might have the wrong impression: this really isn’t his thing.
Only in Canada.
He fumbles through an apology, did he offend Eric? Is this over a spat? He just doesn’t know what Eric wants with him, but Eric doesn’t buy that. He’s pretty sure Keith knows what Eric wants with him, as Eric kneels in front of his naked, immobilized body.
A noise from above draws Eric’s attention, it’s the police knocking on doors. It’s Constable Fox (Eric Hicks), they can hear him talking to Gran clear as a bell, why doesn’t Keith scream?? Eric and Keith are frozen for a second and then Keith is yelling, but Eric gets to him with a sharp knife. Constable Fox takes his leave but he looks suspicious.
Downstairs, Keith gets gagged with duct tape for his trouble, a sweaty kiss, a slap and we get far too much information about that hole cut in his chair. Someone told me this program had a lot more “show” than tell and I could totally do without the urination shots, fanks.
Eric explains that Keith is for Edie. She’s totally ready.
Detective Jerry Commanda (Glen Gould) has been called out to see a dead horse on the side of the road, that’s unusual. Even more so because the horse was hit square on, so whatever vehicle hit her would have felt it and there would have been evidence. Blown airbags, or a messed up front-end, like the truck driven by the guy who sold Cardinal some black market chips in the middle of the night.
Delorme’s been investigating Cardinal’s undercover background as much as she can and a news article about the death of a cop draws her right to Malcolm Musgrave’s (David Richmond-Peck) house. Ah damnit, he’s just been using her in his personal vendetta against Cardinal.
Musgrave and Cardinal were involved in a sting operation that went south. Someone tipped off the bad guys that the white hats were coming and they blew their popsicle stand, but not before placing some explosives to actually blow that shite up. A cop died, Cardinal was cleared, but Musgrave is using his “broad discretion” to continue to investigate Cardinal with Delorme’s help. She’s not interested in Musgrave’s assertions of Cardinal’s guilt, she knows Cardinal is hinky, but none of us can see him accepting money so another cop gets killed.
Edie spies Eric flirting with her co-worker Margo and I mean this in the best way: I am not buying that this charismatic, compelling and attractive guy is the isolated serial killer sociopathically toying with his prey in between working at the mall music store.
Cardinal takes a minute to explain to Delorme that he wasn’t shutting her out today, he trusts her, so he knew she could handle sifting through the first wave of tips without having to double check. Nothing came of it, but Hannam has found out that Keith is missing, so everything just went nuclear.
Not that Keith was meant to stay in Algonquin Bay, he was on his way through the area, but then carried on to Quebec, so it must not be connected. Except Cardinal sees through that immediately, he knows we have a killer who puts phones on trains to throw them off and now they know Keith is in grave danger.
It’s Edie’s turn to look in on her captive, Keith tries to appeal to her better nature and possible remorse.
She makes sure he understand that none of this would be happening if he had walked her home after her and her boyfriend dragged him into their weird swinging party in the bar. Except then maybe they would have grabbed him anyway, yes? One more way to make Keith feel as though any of this was his fault.
He cries and begs for her help, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. She won’t help him. She tapes his mouth shut again, off to make him food. He has to eat: house rules!
Back at police headquarters, the team is elated because they’ve broken Todd Curry’s encrypted emails and have an IP address. Todd had been emailing with a 19-year-old girl immediately prior to his death, it must be related. Delorme takes one look and knows they’re not looking at a female, during her time in Financial Crimes she saw all kinds of “honeypot fraud” involving men acting as women.
A gender analysis confirms it: a man was pretending to be a girl online and DUH. They get an address and wherever 42 Copeland Drive is, I’m sure it’s not where Edie is carefully smushing drugs into her mashed potatoes.
Keith works at his bonds as Edie makes her way downstairs, he gets an arm free and makes an escape attempt that ends with her spitting directly on his face.
So. Um. About disshow.
As Cardinal and gang arrive at the 42 Copeland Drive, which is very much not Edie’s Gran’s house and you all owe me ten dollars.
Well, this is unfortunate. The guy at that house WAS the guy pretending to be a teenaged girl online to meet teenage boys, but he’s not the guy who killed Todd. I have to ask myself what these guys think will happen when they drag their married, greying arses off to meet young, heterosexual men (just like them, they’re married, right?) expecting young women. Honestly.
Edie is weirded out enough by Keith’s escape attempt to talk to Eric in public, she can’t do that! Not because he’s ashamed of her, pfft, but because they shouldn’t be seen together. Huh. She has a present for him, one that makes Eric almost levitate. It’s Keith’s finger.
And we’re out.
I don’t know about this show, to be honest. I’d forgotten how graphic the violence can be and I am a giant baby. We’ll see. I am blown away by Brendan Fletcher as the murderous Eric, his scenes are amazing, even if gross: this is a guy who needs to be going places. His intensity is unreal. I am biased because I read the books first and while I had no mental image of Eric, I did have a very clear one of Edie and I am not happy with the casting whatsoever. If you’ve read the books, you’ll know what I mean. If not, doesn’t matter anyway!
The cold continues to be a character, the same way the rain was in The Killing and the shot of the desolate place where Katie was found is beautiful in its separateness.
I like how our characters are developing but whatever Jerry Commanda is doing isn’t even tangentially related to what we’re understanding of the cases at hand, so what’s the point, Jer? I’m sure it will all work out, as will Delorme’s undercover investigation of Cardinal.
Until next time, I’m going to do my best to work “honeypot fraud” into my next conversation, you see if I don’t! Cheers and keep your stick on the ice.
