The Five S1:E5 Alcohol as Anesthetic Recap

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I can’t seem to get caught up on The Five, but we have a week to get caught up on the current four episodes sooort of available, let’s roll! Quick, before anyone else spoils it for us on social media!

So. To sum up the past four episodes: Jesse is still missing, but his blood showed up at yet another crime scene, that of Jay Newman, who was kidnapping and keeping young women with the coerced help of other captives.  The women were freed, one mentioned another man who would visit and another captive went after Rachel (formerly Britnay), stabbing her several times just at the end of the show, presumably because Brit (now Rachel) was responsible for helping Jay bring her in. Danny found out that all the casefiles on Jesse were blank and his dad is exactly no help (dementia is a BEAST), Kenton Marshall has entered the plot in a significant way, not just face-shot by Slade, but part of the complicated blackmailing scheme set up by Selena Callaway. I guess that the takeaway there SHOULD be that people shouldn’t cheat etc, etc, but really, most sex-workers wouldn’t be sex-workers very long if they targeted all their married clients and involved them in enrolling children in posh schools.

Hey! What if Alexa, who was most likely NOT underage, snogging in closets with Kenton Marshall, Laura’s ex (who was dating Mark – hang on, it gets a little long-winded!) is Selena’s daughter? Apparently she had one! Maybe that’s how they kept her in the game. Anyway, I’m sure we’ll find out a few things tonight, let’s roll!

We’re flashing back to Britnay (I’ll just call her that for the past, okay?) looking lovely and discussing song lyrics with Slade and Mark. She’s gone pretty deep, but doesn’t understand why the singer says the woman doesn’t care, but she counters that she cares enough to know that she doesn’t love him and that makes perfect sense to me. Really it’s just an excuse for her to eye-cuddle Slade and have him talk about hot and sexy. We’re back at today and she’s lying in a massive pool of blood and we can’t tell if she’s alive or not. Oh I think she might be, I see movement! He doesn’t see her, though, or her bloody handprint, until he calls her, hearing her phone.

Oh shite, when she was attacked, she was right next to an emergency button. Slade gets her to a hospital and he’s making me cry with how panicked he is.

Pru wakes up hungover not in her bed, but Mark’s. She’s had a blackout. She doesn’t remember anything after the bar, but Mark says they just drank a lot and he *may* have peeked down her top and that was it. She needs to get home. Alan must live with him, cuz there he is!

Ohhhh, I’m trying to imagine exactly how I would explain not coming home for a night as a married woman with children. Absolutely nothing is coming to mind. Stuart is clearly angry, but preferring to let their daughter interrogate Pru. He questions her later; did you? Did you want to? Why his place? They fight, but I’m distracted by Stuart’s awful accent. Americans don’t sound like that! Well, not the ones on TV anyway.

She blames her defection on the Old Pru rearing her head and ahhhh she was / is an addict. She tries to explain that she just doesn’t feel as though she fits this life she’s in; a private GP and a Statist (?)’s wife and I could not understand more. Conformity is like a mask that you forget how to take off after awhile. A frustrated Stuart shouts after her that moving here was the worst thing they ever did!

Danny’s got his dad in the car and taken him to the woods, I have to bring up the editing in the Previously On. Danny’s dad was the police officer in charge on Jesse’s case, and the editing cut to him when Jane was talking about the additional male abuser with Jay. I don’t know if that was a coincidence or not, now knowing much about the timelines associated with dementia, but it was thought by Ally and Danny that the extry man might be Jesse.

ANYWAY, Danny’s hoping the woods will shake his dad’s memory about Je-Je-the missing child’s case, he wants to know why the files are blank.

Slade’s waiting at the hospital, ahhh Rachel didn’t make it. I’m surprised she was still alive when Slade found her, honestly. They have CCTV footage of the woman who killed her, and she’s brought in with her parents. That must be brutal for them to lose her twice, I can’t even fathom.

Time passes. They’ve identified the body buried in Newman’s yard, an older man by the name of Dr. Aldus Croft, well, former doctor, he was stripped of his license when he was convicted of rape. The body had been there for about a year, and that doesn’t preclude this man OR Jesse from being GentleHodorHands.

They’ve got Sasha in for another interview, she has not adjusted yet, but she’s able to clearly identify Aldus Croft as GentleHodorHands.

Pru’s gone to see Mark, they cry and hug and talk about Britnay, all while Stuart is tracing Pru’s cell to M. Wells Solicitors and they say it’s all over when you start checking, isn’t it? Because there is always something to find by then.

Julie is scoping out a boy seemingly all by himself; she sidles over to ask where his mum is? Just as a woman shows up and starts shouting and pulling him away. Julie is furious that this mother isn’t enjoying her child and cherishing the time she has, and starts telling her off. The woman calls her an interfering old bitch, so Julie slaps her, to be head butted in the nose for her trouble.

WHAT? WHO DOES THAT? Nobody does that! Nobody headbutts an older woman in the face for suggesting you be nicer to your kid.

I WAS going to go off on a tangent about the last time my youngest ran away in a store and thought it was high-LARRY-us, but I’m still coming down from the shock of seeing respectable looking Julie in her gorgeous lemon jacket with blood all over her face.

Mark’s leaving a message for Slade when Stuart storms in, past Larry in a lovely pink scarf and black sleeveless number with cutouts in the back. Stuart makes a joke about transvestites that nobody but he understands; is Larry a transvestite? Is that term even in use anymore? And who stomps into an office to throw out a trans-phobic joke in the middle of a meltdown? It may as well have been a knock-knock joke! Stuart is there to talk about Pru, of course, not at home talking TO Pru, he wants Mark to not take Pru’s calls.

*that accent is terrible. I hope he’s not ACTUALLY American*

Julie is recovering in an ambulance when Alan shows up; he knows right away. “Did he look like him?” Julie’s been torturing herself; were they like that with Jesse? Did they yell and take him for granted and pull his arm and shout? Jesse was loved, says Alan firmly. He was loved.

Mark’s explaining his investigation to Danny, woot, Selena Callaway DID have a daughter named Alexa, maybe I did call it right! We just need to find out how / why Slade fits in, because he is alllllls over this mess. Danny intimates that Mark shouldn’t be in such a hurry to find Jesse, but didn’t we just find out that GentleHodorHands was the dead doctor? Danny asks Mark to stand down, then spills his guts about Jesse’s blood being at Jay’s crime scene as well.

Mark is wandering up and down the Ho Stroll showing pictures of Selena Callaway while the Long Lens Stalker takes pictures, it’s a woman. Is that Alexa? No, it’s a grown woman, looking grave.

Mark finds a freckled young woman who knew Selena, and is willing to talk, so takes her to a pub and pumps her for information. Selena was indeed on the game, but had taken a computer course and that was all she needed to design a device that could strip information from the mark’s phones. This girl seems SUPER free with the information, especially in public, even though we know these guys beat up Mark for coming nowhere near what was actually happening. Selena even took her to the hotel her and the gang were using, the Old Town Hotel, which is a real dive, but they all liked to use the Envy Room. Just then Chatty Cathy realises she’s not making any money right now, and she’s oot.

The hidden photographer arrives home to a bottle, she’s been tracking Mark for ages! She’s got a picture shrine and let’s think what she could be.

Julie’s looking out the window at the tree they planted for Jesse, $10 says that tree is coming DOWN. Alan stops and comforts her; they don’t have to be victims.

Karl (JokeyStraight) is sexually harassing Ally on the job again; let this be a lesson to all you Casanovas out there that think it’s flattering:  to have to listen to sexual innuendo every.single.time you need to get any information from anyone. Every.single.time. Try it! See how long until someone ends up with a cleaver in the melon. He asks her out and then opens his shirt to show his abs and I mean. She laughs, because what else do you do? Danny comes in just then and throws Karl out, they need to go see Jakob Marosi; the timeline is off and there’s no way he killed Jesse. Well, other than that Jesse appears to be alive. And he can’t prove that by the case files, because they are missing, too.

They’re off to see Jakob, who flirts with a clearly uncomfortable Ally, how is she a cop again? Danny challenges Jakob’s assertion that he killed Jesse immediately, taking Jakob by surprise, but it’s Danny who’s taken aback then, when Jakob terminates the interview upon learning that Danny is Ray Kenwood’s son (a name! Yay!).

Mark’s doing recon at the Old Town Hotel, asking for help from the extraordinarily accommodating and chatty front desk clerk. I’m really surprised he’s so up front about being in Procurement, but alas, he cannot sate Mark’s “fruitless yearning” in the Envy room, it’s already booked for a month. Mark offers Middle Name Leonard 50 quid to let him have a 30 second peep into the room: done!

I think this is where Kenton was when Slade found him and shot him in the face!

MNL opens the door, sharing the Old Town Hotel motto: “In and Out, Quick As You Can” and that makes perfect sense! Although if I rented a room and company for an hour, I’d want the whole 60 minutes, ifyouknowwhatImean, andIthinkyoudo. Around the WHOLE world, if you please!

Ohh, there’s blood all over the bed but I can’t tell if there’s a body. The clerk is FULL of questions; did Mark know about this? Why did he want a peep? What’s going on? He’s ringing the police! And yeah, I guess he should.

Mark’s leaving more messages for Slade, who’s burning everything of Britnay’s in the woods and then walking out into the lake. Is that the lake where he threw the gun?

Pru’s forgotten to turn the sound off on her phone, and a text from Mark brings everything to a head with Stuart. She throws her phone at him, he reads the text and mocks her and they have the kind of married fight that’s as fun to watch as it is to participate in. All I really got from that is she needs to sort out what she’s going to do with her daughter, and that he let her know he’s tracking her, if she was paying attention.

Ally is meeting Karl for drinks, ah, so maybe that was flirting and not sexual harassment and I’m a judgemental old bitch. Please don’t headbutt me. She’s holding back tears and ordering gin, he’s waxing poetic re: alcohol is the anesthetic by which we enjoy the operation of life. “Just get me drunk” she says.

Stuart is tracking Pru’s phone again from his car; where’s the daughter then? After that big fuss? Mark is making up his own Murder Chalk Board of the case, with three main questions:

  1. Where is Jesse?
  2. WHO Is Jesse?
  3. Do I want to know HIM??

He’s also drinking and dancing alone to Reggae music while Pru wanders high and alone by the road. She makes it to Mark’s place just behind Laura, that’s a surprise.  Pru is climbing through the bushes and peeping through Mark’s window as Laura tearfully explains to Mark that she was just scared, she’s very sorry she wasn’t there when he needed her. Pru watches them hug and eep, Stuart pulls up. He runs in and confronts Mark, who quite honestly tells him there isn’t anyone else but Laura there, he’s losing his mind. Pru tries to run away, but is caught by EVERYONE in the driveway. How mortifying.

Jakob is reliving when he first saw Jesse, Act I was talking, Act II was snatching, what’s Act III?

Hmmm. Onwards to the next, Script Kiddies!