Last episode of season one of Cardinal, you guys! It’s the slickest Canadian show I’ve EVER seen, even more polished than OB, yo! I love how they embrace it’s elemental CanCon-ed-ness while also not skimping on promotion or talent. Or cameras. If you’ve seen a Canadian show, you know what I mean. Rolling S1:E6 Catherine after the break!
We have dual investigations rolling at high speed now, the suicide of one half of our murderous duo casting a pall over the search for Keith London (Robert Naylor) but not slowing down Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse) digging into her partner John Cardinal’s (Billy Campbell) financial affairs a whit.
That she is moving forward so aggressively when they’ve had a major break in their shared desperate search for Keith makes no sense to me.
Cardinal doesn’t seem too concerned about how everyone is attacking from all sides, his daughter Kelly (Alanna Bale) only wants to know one thing: is there really a dead raccoon in his freezer?
Allow me to explain, oh ye of warmer climes: when an animal dies in the winter and you want to bury said animal instead of cremating, you have to wait. You can pay for storage in a vet’s freezer, or you can keep it next to the frozen peas and haul it out for cuddles on trying nights. I wish I was joking about that last bit.
Confident or not, Cardinal has to be cleared as Fit For Duty by Internal Affairs. He has to answer a lot of questions while we watch Delorme research the person we know Cardinal has been bribing.
We just don’t know WHY he’s been giving money to Tammy Lidstrom (Fiona Highet), but Delorme has been able to connect her to the mob killing 4 years ago in Toronto that led to a police officer’s death.
Our second serial killer Edie Soames (Allie MacDonald) is playing Everything Is Totally Normal but her Gran (Amanda Smith) has just seen the news with first murderer Eric Fraser’s (Brendan Fletcher) face all over it.
She’s frail and Edie is desperate.
Lise takes John aside, he thinks it’s about the case they’re working together (he’s noted that the drugs everyone was given are a cocktail, meaning maybe there’s someone else involved), but she spills instead about her investigation. An electric showdown.
She lays out the whole case for him, Cardinal and I are confused. But so is Delorme; she wants to understand, tell her he didn’t know about the bombs?
He tells her to do what she has to do, but let him tell Dorothy Pine (Gail Maurice) that they’re found the killer of her daughter Katie. We cry with Delorme as she tries to rectify his seeming confession of greed with who she knows he is. She gives him until that afternoon to tell Dorothy.
That was heavy.
None of us believe John did that. Not for money.
Cardinal tells Dorothy who killed Katie and hands back Katie’s bracelet, she’ll hear some things over the next few days but he did his best. Dorothy has always been Cardinal’s most stoic critic, but the sight of a grown man trying not to cry over her daughter’s death moves her to compassion and she feeds him.
Delorme tells Sergeant Noelle Dyson (Kristen Thomson) of her report, she’s wavering. Dyson counsels her: can she live with her doubts?
Oh goody, Delorme’s husband Josh (Alden Adair) has come to see her at work. He and another detective stare at her out the window while he calls her…and she doesn’t pick up. I’m sure he won’t take that personally.
Side note: I’m trying not to be annoyed by how large a role Josh has, because he is an integral part of Delorme’s stress. HOWEVER, it’s not as though we see John’s wife Catherine (Deborah Hay) all the time, and she is ALL of John’s stress. It’s almost as though some people/writers/directors can’t think of a strong female character without including the men in her life in an overbearing way. Who’s McLeod’s wife again? Ah right, WE DON’T KNOW. But yet, another scene for Josh. Rant over!
Kelly is visiting her mom in therapy with better results than last time, Catherine is lucid and laughing about the frozen racoon and fully aware that John is not trying to protect Catherine from Kelly, but rather the other way around.
Edie approaches the trunk of her car with trepidation, but Keith is gone! Wherever she stabbed him last time can’t have been fatal, because all we see is a pool of blood and no captive.
Cardinal stops by the station to say goodbye to Dyson, he thinks the pharmacy bag is hinky. She wants him to gooo.
Ostensibly because he hasn’t been cleared yet, but she also knows what else is coming down the pike. John is as good a listener as ever, heading over to the pharmacy to make them count pills. The pharmacist knows exactly who has taken the missing drugs.
Kelly comes home from the hospital, Edie is lurking just around the corner picking at her face.
Delorme’s staked out Tammy’s movements, she wants to know the exact nature of their relationship before she files her report.
Delorme can’t get a handle on it, she asks a lot of questions but is perplexed at how much Tammy knows about Cardinal, including his wife’s name. Tammy can tell Delorme’s on a fishing expedition and shuts it down.
Cardinal, meanwhile, has headed straight to Edie’s house, where I hope her Gran is still alive. She is not. He calls in the units and finds Keith!!! Alive!! But in shock and bleeding and really really fecking cold. Oh John, GO!!!
Edie’s made it up to the house, talking her way inside. I’m worried but Kelly is slightly out of reach and young and strong. I don’t know if that will be enough.
Cardinal makes sure Keith is under care at the hospital and then heads home to his terrified daughter and Edie, who shoots him twice without preamble. She wants him to see her kill Kelly, but Cardinal drags himself away to get her attention and it’s enough that Kelly can get clear.
Delorme’s made it by then, she kills Edie and rescues the Cardinals, but John is in the woods in his head, will he make it back? Delorme begs John to come back, she knows the whole story, she knows what happened in Toronto.
We cut to Cardinal in the hospital, he made it! Course. Delorme’s brought him a bottle of hooch, even though it was she who saved his life. She’d like to run something by him, before she files her report.
It was Catherine who called the mob boss and blew John’s cover, she didn’t understand anything and didn’t know what she did.
“It’s not your job to protect her from herself,” says Delorme. “I need her,” rejoins John and we have stalemate.
The detectives fake out poor young Constable Fox (Eric Hicks) with that poor dead raccoon because sure. It didn’t make me cry, will take! Jaysus this epi.
Delorme lets Malcolm Musgrave (David Richmond-Peck) know that Cardinal isn’t his guy and hey: cut out this rogue investigation or she’ll tell everyone.
Delorme leaves the stand-down to come home to…nothing. Josh is gone. Catherine is home at the Cardinal residence, I jumped when I saw her but she and John look happy. And we’re out.
Whew, that was a heavy, heavy show, well done but dark. Technically we have a happy ending, except for Delorme (okay, maybe a little happy, it was totally not gonna work out with datguy) and the fact that Catherine’s condition isn’t curable. Manageable, but no magic pill or operation. It does get handled later on in the book series, I’m wondering how closely they’ll follow. Until next time, which is…tomorrow! Tomorrow, January 4 the second season starts and I will see you shortly after that! Cheers.
