Loveday Writing

After the opening credits we see Nichols continuing struggle with his laptop, we then see who we think is a Queensland Police IT Support employee but is in fact James. Nichols’ colleague, Detective Brookes, comes in and Nichols hands over James’ phone, which was revealed to be locked in a safe in his office, asking her to take it back to the evidence locker. While she’s there, she informs him that she has a new lead on the Zoric case, telling Nichols that James Reed entered the country on a student visa and that the Department of Immigration would be sending through a passport photo. However James intercepts and deletes the email before Nichols can see it. Nichols also mentions there has been no further progress on the tap on Harrow’s phone.

Meanwhile at the Institute, Harrow finds Grace cyberstalking Ben, before the body of the woman we saw at the beginning of the episode comes in. Her name was Gabriella Echeverria, 28, a hotel maid. Harrow has to calm her husband, Carl, before he and Edwina can conduct the autopsy, as he is demanding Renae to let him see Gabriella. While Gabriella’s death was initially ruled a heart attack, Harrow and Edwina do the autopsy and find she died of an anaphylactic reaction, with raspberries shoved down her throat, although according to Carl, she wasn’t allergic to raspberries.

After Harrow speaks with Carl and finds out Gabriella wasn’t actually allergic to raspberries, he and Grace go to the hotel she worked at to find out where the hotel gets their raspberries. While Grace informs him that toxicology will tell them whether the raspberries were tampered with, Harrow counters that the report won’t come back fast enough to stop someone else from eating them if they have been tampered with.

When they get to the hotel, the manager informs them that Gabriella was a good employee who took as many shifts as possible and that the raspberries were placed in fruit platters for VIP guests, on a floor Gabriella didn’t have access to. When Harrow and Grace are told that leftover fruit platters are thrown in the dumpster, Harrow goes into it to find room service receipts for fruit platter orders. Only two platters were ordered for the 15^th floor but one platter isn’t in the dumpster. After he climbs out of the dumpster and sees the other dumpsters that Gabriella crashed her car into, he finds her access card.

To his surprise, Harrow is actually able to access the 15^th floor with the card and goes into one of the suites. He looks around only to be surprised by two men pinning him against a wall. The two men converse in Russian before asking Harrow why he is in the suite, he tells them he is looking for raspberries. They keep him in the suite until a mysterious woman arrives, she asks him about the maid and how she died, however she doesn’t tell him who she is. When he gets back to the Institute and does research, he discovers that the woman is Yelena Grishenko, a Russian journalist and environmental activist, who grew up in a coal town, which resulted in her developing childhood emphysema. Her activism has resulted in her receiving death threats by the fossil fuel industry and the Russian government. Harrow concludes that the raspberries were tampered with something intended for Yelena. However Grace tells him that there were no drugs, alcohol or poison found on the raspberries, and the toxicology report results corroborate the anaphylaxis theory.

After telling Carl that Gabriella died of anaphylaxis, he returns to his office to find a little boy, Louie, checking it out. Renae comes into his office, and it’s revealed that Louie is her son. After Renae and Louie leave, Harrow calls Fern and she finally answers. They discuss helping James, and Harrow informs her about James stealing money from Mila Zoric’s company.

The next day, Harrow finishes an autopsy and hears the Institute’s alarm bells ring. Fairley informs him that the body of a man who has been garrotted has arrived. When Harrow and Fairley examine the man’s body, Harrow finds a Spetsnaz (Russian Special Forces) tattoo. While Harrow, Fairley and Grace are conducting the autopsy, Harrow matches a bite mark on the man’s arm with Gabriella’s teeth, and Grace finds mucus in the man’s throat.

Harrow concludes that Gabriella bit the man who killed her (and tried to kill Yelena), and that the man took the missing fruit platter. When Harrow and Grace get to the hotel, Harrow calls Edwina and asks her to run another tox screen, looking for a nerve agent this time. Grace finds that Yelena is giving a talk in the hotel. When the hotel manager refuses to let Harrow and Grace talk to Yelena, he threatens to have the Federal Police shut the hotel down. Harrow and Grace try to talk Yelena out of going on stage but fail.

Harrow and Grace then realise that Gabriella was on the 15^th floor as she was covering for another maid, Fiona. Harrow then asks the manager to see the surveillance footage near Yelena’s suite. When they watch the footage, they see two men chase after Gabriella, one of them being the man who was garrotted. While Harrow calls Nichol for police back-up, he spots the other man in the crowd and goes after him. Harrow gets Grace to warn Yelena and her bodyguards. When he reaches the man, it’s revealed that Gabriella witnessed the men poisoning the raspberries, they chased after her and shoved the raspberries down her throat so they wouldn’t have a witness, and the second man was killed as Gabriella bit him. The man tries to strangle Harrow but stops when some of the hotel staff come outside. Harrow tells him he’s failed but the man drives off, saying that he hasn’t.

Meanwhile Grace tries to warn Yelena but she won’t listen to her. Both Harrow and Grace are being held back by Yelena’s bodyguards while Yelena is preparing to go on stage. When Yelena goes to take a puff from her inhaler, Harrow realises it’s been tampered with and both he and Grace tackle Yelena, with Grace getting a hold of the puffer. Harrow and Grace are then arrested for their ‘antics’. Yelena goes on to give her speech without further incident.

After an unnecessary montage of the hotel staff doing their jobs, we then cut to Harrow and Grace being bailed out of jail by Ben. Once again Harrow calls out Grace for caring about Ben and Sage, Grace says she doesn’t and asks Harrow out for ice-cream, despite it being 7am.

We then cut to Nichols and the Deputy Coroner having a meeting. The Deputy Coroner tells Nichols he had lunch with Merilee Cotter from Prosecutions and she asked him how the investigation into Max Zoric’s death was going. Nichols asks if Merilee wanted him removed from the case, the Deputy Coroner says no but does tell him she’s under pressure to prosecute the case, and Mila Zoric’s legal team are constantly calling her asking for Max’s body back, the car found at the shipping yard and its contents. Nichols agrees to releasing Max’s body, but he can’t release the car or its contents. Nichols also says that if Harrow knows anything he’d be wise enough to share it before a trial.

Later at the Institute, Nichol informs Harrow and Grace that Gabriella’s other killer was himself garrotted in a bathroom in New Caledonia, but his murderer isn’t known. Harrow tells Carl the truth about Gabriella’s murder.

Later Nichols’ laptop is fixed by a Queensland Police IT member. When Nichols’ mentions James looking at it, she tells him that she has been the only person assigned the job. Nichols asks her to look for a deleted email, and she finds the email James deleted. Meanwhile Fern is walking to her next cleaning job and Mila Zoric approaches her. Mila asks her if she’s looking for work and Fern gives Mila her phone number. Mila tells Fern she’ll be in touch.

Later, Callan is at home cooking and James tries to bait him. Callan calls him out for using Fern and tells him that Harrow is a better man than he’ll ever be. Meanwhile Nichols asks Detective Brookes if James could be the man in the CCTV footage going through the car found at the shipping yard. She believes he could be and they conclude he was after his phone and it’s connected to Max Zoric.

The episode ends with Fern meeting James at a nightclub and informing him that she knows about the money he stole. While Harrow is at his boat, he calls Grace and asks her out for ice-cream. When the call ends a woman is approaching his boat. The woman is revealed to be Tanya Reed (Sara Wiseman), James’ mother, alive and well.

Overall I felt this episode was a weak one.

While the case of the week was interesting, like it usually is, I felt that it was built up too high, in regards to its synopsis and promo, for its neat and easy resolution. Usually the case of the week is filled with twists and turns, and red herrings, however this case of the week was neatly tied up with only one set of suspects, no red herrings, a second murder being easily prevented with no additional consequences or complications to the almost second victim, and eventually both perpetrators being killed.

While I didn’t mind Harrow, Grace and Nichols being in the spotlight, as they had to be for their subplot and the main story arc respectively, I feel that the appearance of and writing for the supportive characters is diminishing, especially in this episode. Renae again only makes brief appearances, once at the beginning of the episode to chastise Harrow about his backlog of autopsies and in the second-half of the episode when her son, Louie, is chatting with Harrow in his office. In all honesty, while I understand Maxine had to be replaced, considering that the amount of air time Renae is given seems to be decreasing every week, I find myself wondering why the writers are bothering with her at all, especially if they aren’t going to develop her into a rounded character like Maxine was. The writers also had Fairley lying low, despite making him the overt comic relief last week, with only two lines of dialogue and apparently being too busy in one of his classes to bail his own niece out of jail.

One aspect of this episode that did make me happy that has been a bug bear of mine over the last few weeks is the James story arc. We finally got to see progress in the story arc with Nichols finding out who he was, especially as James couldn’t help himself by pretending to be an IT Support staff member to gain access to Nichols’ laptop, as well as to once again try and get his phone back. I personally feel that James’ inability to help himself when it comes to getting his phone back, and sneaking into Police Headquarters multiple times will eventually be his downfall. He’s smart enough to think of a plan, but in this episode he didn’t execute it well, at the very least he didn’t think things all the way through. While I’m happy that both Callan and Fern have called James out, we actually didn’t see the consequences of this play out with James, especially Fern’s confrontation with him. We didn’t really see a reaction or response from him.

On a smaller note, I’m not entirely sure at this point whether the writers have completely given up on Grace being Harrow’s love interest. The last few episodes the writers’ seem to be implying that Grace still has feelings for Ben, and Harrow doesn’t seem interested in pursuing her, yet at the end of this episode, Harrow asks her out for ice-cream. I guess only time will tell on this front.

In all honesty the reveal of Tanya being very much alive and well didn’t surprise me, however I am looking forward to seeing where the James story arc goes from here with this spanner in the works. Really, it can only go one of two ways, Tanya will either assist Harrow with James, or she will help James evade conviction. She will either be a friend or a foe and I’m looking forward to finding out which over the remaining three episodes of the season.

Stray Observations:

Episode title translation: Sola Dosis Facit Venemum – The dose makes the poison.

-Harrow speaks Spanish.

-Harrow and Steph went to Fiji for their honeymoon, however they didn’t get to enjoy it due to heavy rain, and Harrow having to conduct an autopsy on a chef who died under unusual circumstances.

-Renae has a son, Louie.

-Harrow only knows two sentences in Russian: ‘How much is that beer?’ and ‘I’ve got haemorrhoids.’

-Fairley was too busy in a Yakimono porcelain class to bail Harrow and Grace out of jail.

-James’ passport provides the following details about him:

• He was born on 21 July 1997
• His passport was issued on 24 April 2014.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “You did an autopsy on your honeymoon? Tell me again why you’re single?” (Grace to Harrow)
• “You smell like day-old abalone, so I’m going to get a taxi.” (Grace to Harrow on leaving the hotel after he dug around in the dumpster)
• “Thank you Dennis, as usual your lodgings lived up to their reputation.” (Harrow to a police officer after being bailed out of jail)
• “I feel like ice-cream.” “It’s seven in the morning.” “It’s the best time, I was thinking chocolate and hazelnut, and rum and raisin.” (Grace-Harrow-Grace)