DA VINCI'S CITY HALL REVIEWS-SEASON EIGHT

• Review of Episode 102: Cat in a Tree, Lunatic in the Street

  Oh, my golly-gosh, is that a "Last Week on Da Vinci's City Hall" catch-up? And a preview of next week in the end credits? My, oh, my. Don't expect them to tell you much. But the catch-up was fun and it did bulk up the still-short DVCH intro credits. I'm not sure if I like the bleached-color bit with Da Vinci going up the steps of City Hall and into his office (which looks quite a bit like the ad for DVCH's U.S. rival, "Commander in Chief" in the same time slot). The look reminds me of Sin City. Now, I liked the comic books but the film looks pretty dire. I mean, Jessica Alba? Please. It does tell you a bit about Haddock's noir inclination and roots, though.

  Da Vinci is off on another tear this week, frazzling his handlers (who actually get referred to enough by their first names--Sam and Rita--that I remembered them) even more. In the process, he butts heads with Bill and risks alienating Julia, the city administrator. This week, he latches onto the fact that Lloyd Manning somehow found out that Pacific Com Media outbid him, even though he had the lowest bid. Gee, who could have told Manning about that? Manning, who seemed like the local David opposite the American Goliath Pacific Com last week, is now looking more and more like a local kingmaker/bully who is trying to use Da Vinci to clean out any local opposition. Not a nice guy, then. What a surprise.

  Sam then discovers that Sandra Ferlinger's hubby had a business connection with Manning. Sandra is the cow on the city council who was leaking info from Da Vinci's campaign to her buddy Joyce, the prima donna interim mayor from the West Side, near the end of last season. Da Vinci's little meeting with Sandra is priceless and shows him with the upper hand, for once. She tries to snow him and he seems to buy it, until he asks her to support him in the city council on putting in the slot machines at the race track. When she protests that she opposes that and will have to search her conscience before she can support him, he says pleasantly, "That's fine. You take as much time questioning your conscience as you did questioning the ethics of your husband being in business with Lloyd Manning and I'll be satisfied...Always nice to see you, Sandra." He's enjoying himself, he is.

  The police shooting from last week has mutated into something really nasty. Charlie leans hard on Kosmo and Joe, telling Joe that the owner of the dog he shot is threatening to sue him. He also apparently leaks information to one of the constables involved that Kosmo and Joe discovered in their investigation--one of the witnesses remembers the constables using a stun gun. Chick and Maria the Pathologist (with a cool, new red hair do) show up for a brief scene in a diner to confirm that somebody did use a stun gun on the dog, and possibly, the shooting victim. When Joe tracks down one of the constables, the guy, forewarned by Charlie, admits to having a stun gun at the scene, but won't let Joe see it without a lawyer present. But he does also admit that he's nervous because he used it on somebody else in the past and the guy died of a heart attack as a result. Whoops.

  In case it's not obvious already, the other big theme this week is police corruption. From the top down, it's looking ugly. A new storyline introduced at the beginning of the episode is a squad of amazon constables who are conducting nighttime rogue raids on grow-ops. Watching these ladies, I'm not at all surprised that Josie Hutchins (the psycho constable who stalked and attempted to murder Mick Leary in season four before blowing her own head off) once told her sister that her colleagues covered for each other. If the blurbs for the following weeks (and past experience with the show) are any indication, though, this girl-gang operation won't stay clandestine for very long. That's just as well, since these crypto-fascist ladies are about as smug and obnoxious as you can get. I already hope at least one of them dies. Horribly.

  The cheery bloody-mindedness of the Xena-wannabes is nothing compared to Bill Jacobs' career self-immolation in this episode. He goes on the offensive, badmouthing Da Vinci, and the halfway house where the police shooting occurred last week, in the press. Rita, quoting one of his rants in a newspaper, gets the title line. He even tries to duck Da Vinci's calls, but Da Vinci confronts him and Charlie on the street. "The Police Department works for the City, not the other way around!" Da Vinci shouts at him, stating what most viewers will see as the obvious, but what Bill clearly doesn't see at all.

  What Bill hopes to accomplish is beyond me, but this doesn't seem to be a canny political ploy. He genuinely seems to think that he can get into a pissing contest with the Mayor, his boss, and win. Personally, I think he's allowing his hatred of Da Vinci to cloud his thinking, especially since he also allows Charlie to badmouth Da Vinci. That's just plain stupid. Da Vinci's response is to secretly scout around for Bill's replacement and openly mention the blackmail tape that he gave to Bill last year. You know, the one Leo made of Bill shagging one of his own officers, Sergeant Kurtz, in a hotel elevator (still no mention of whether she's still around). Since the episode ends with this little exchange, we don't get Bill's answer. We only see him and Charlie scurry away across the street like the rats they are as a scraggly homeless man pushes his cart up the sidewalk.

  Charlie seems to be the really bad apple, here, covering right and left for his gang of uniformed buddies while invariably hanging the plainclothes divisions out to dry. But Bill is just as bad, having used his position to cover for his psycho constable cousin, Dino, last year. Nepotism, thy name is Bill Jacobs. Joe seems well aware that these guys are not his friends by now and less than happy about it. There's also a little jocular tension between him and Kosmo. "You did the right thing. I'm glad you did it," she says after Charlie winds Joe up about shooting the dog. "Thank you," Joe says. "Yeah," she shoots back. "'Cause he was coming after me next, right after he chewed through you." Just in case he thought all was forgiven, I guess! I'm just loving the karmic payback of Joe getting investigated by his old buddies in IAD over shooting a dog. It's funny to see him stressing about it: "That dog was going straight for my nuts!" Somehow, I don't think he sees Kosmo as paranoid about the lack of support from the brass anymore.

  Constable Carter fans will be happy to see him promoted to Homicide this week. He's got a cool new partner, too, Lineham, an older aboriginal guy with a face and attitude as craggy as Chick and as deadpan as Mick. I like him. I hope we see a lot more of him. No sign of Lou this week, though, alas, and Helen remains MIA. I really don't like that new secretary in the Coroner's Office. She is way too young. Carter and his partner are investigating the gay bashing in Stanley Park. This week, they locate a witness, a nervous, chain-smoking young black man who's a regular on that trail. He says that the guy who was killed was being harangued by a group of people, some of them women, while naked. Since the guy's body was found naked, this is significant, to say the least. The witness also heard the women yell racial epithets at the guy, who was Chinese (those with long memories will remember that the previous gay-bashing also involved a gang of teenagers, some of them girls, too). Da Vinci gets Carter to fill in Jason Horne in exchange for Horne's cooperation in reining in Bill. Horne also wants a hospital kept open and Da Vinci promises to talk to the provincial premiere about it.

  Zack, meanwhile, is finding himself acting as an agent provocateur with the squatters on Da Vinci's behalf. He persuades Charles Martin Smith's character, Friedland (Smith also directed this episode) to tone down his in-your-face approach. Friedland wants to set up a tent city in a public park, but Zack persuades him to go with Crab Park rather than the much more centrally placed Queen Elizabeth Park. Friedland comes across as a lot more sympathetic this episode than the last one (which Nick Campbell directed). He's a hot-head, but a nice one. Maybe he's a keeper, after all. The one I'd like to see more of, though, is that dreadlocked girl who acts as his second in command. I want to know what her deal is.

  So far, I haven't mentioned Mick, but it's not for lack of his presence in the episode. As Coroner, Mick is involved in the police shooting, his ongoing investigation into the deaths of the two aboriginal boys and a new case that Kosmo and Joe get--the nighttime stabbing of an Arab man at a local jewelry store. The owner is cagey and vague about the group of guys who stabbed the man. He also has defensive cuts on his hands, but plays them down. Hmm.

  Mick hooks up with Kosmo and Joe when they arrive the jewelry store and pumps them for information about the police shooting (for the record, two of Ian Tracey's pics from the official site appear to come from this scene). His vibe with Kosmo is odd. I can't get a read on what is happening between them, or maybe, more to the point, what happened between them between seasons. Either way, Mick is not above trying to get both Kosmo and Joe to play his eyes and ears on the Department. He's as rumpled as ever and his suit never seems to change. It's clean enough, but we all know what's going on when Mick wears the same thing day in and day out. Too bad Leo's not still around to cover for him.

  Ian Tracey doesn't have as high a billing this week as last week, but Mick still gets an extended stint with a witness who knew the two aboriginal boys. The witness, Clarke Messner, is played by Glen Gould, the actor who played the father in season five's "Just For Bein' An Indian". It's good to see him again. In fact, it's good to see aboriginal characters all over the place in this ep, and not just as street people, either. I hope the trend continues. At any rate, we'll be seeing Messner again, according to Gould's official website. Anyway, back to the story. Messner is very nervous when Mick approaches him at his workplace. They meet later in a park, near a cricket game, and the guy tells Mick more details about the two boys being picked up by the paedophile and his friends and taken by helicopter to Victoria for orgies and such. The really creepy part starts up when Mick decides to look into the disappearances of other aboriginal boys around that time. There seem to be quite a few.

  Mick's ability to keep his cards close to his chest isolates him from the rest of the characters in this episode (though the Coroner's job tends to do that anyway). But in this case, it may also be protecting him. If anybody can get deep into this case without somebody getting wind of the investigation and shutting him down, it's Mick. But the danger is that he may get in too deep and become a mortal threat to whatever poisonous serpent lies at the end of this little rabbit hole. I don't think Haddock would kill Mick off. He and the rest of the writers clearly love writing this character as much as Ian Tracey still loves playing him. But plenty of bad non-fatal things can happen instead, as Mick has learned to his cost in the past. And Mick has never had to deal with a lot of outer demons before, not hanging out on a limb by himself as he is now. He's been much too focused on his inner demons. A collision between the two groups may be imminent this season.

  My one big complaint: I'm not wild about the lack of character development so far, but then, last season started off like this, too, and got better. Still, I hope that the introduction of the political element doesn't mean that we will get none of those juicy personal scenes that made DVI so much fun. Mainly, what we get (aside from Da Vinci butting heads with Bill and settling scores with Sandra) is Da Vinci at the racetrack (again), happily meeting up with a rich racehorse owner, Billie Simms; Ben hitting on the chauffeur (whose name is actually Marcie, not Claire) and a whiff of Rita having a possible past something with the track owner, Tom Venice, who introduces Simms to Da Vinci. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of Da Vinci at the racetrack, and that's fine by me. But let's bring back the personal grace notes, please. I want to know what happened to Kosmo's house and Mick's boat and Zack's daughter and Leo's retirement and Da Vinci's on-and-off thing with Marie. That was the stuff that made these characters real.

  Next week: Isn't Very Pretty But You Can Smoke It.

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This page was last updated on 11/2/2005