apital Offense
apital Offense
Nick and Schanke apprehend a convicted murderess on the run from Texas authorities when an anonymous tip leads them to a rental car agency. Nick believes she may be innocent, however, he must prove it before she is extradited and put to death for her crime.
This one started out kind of slowly. They catch the convicted criminal (Laura Garfield, played by Lisa Langois) and bring her in. When they ask her why she's in Toronto, she gives the lame excuse, "I didn't know where else to go." Uh, huh. I'd certainly flee to Toronto if I were a native Texan...
Schanke is in great form as his usual bumbling self, with his reasoning just a bit slower than the viewer's (a standard trick, but usually not done well). His long, drawn out metaphors even seem to take their toll on the captain, who is usually oblivious to non-police business. Schanke even makes an attempt to get some time off after the captain tells Nick to take a few days off.
There's a great scene where Nick and Schanke are driving down the road and the Nightcrawler (LaCroix) is on the radio. Schanke seems disgusted, asking how Nick can listen to that stuff. "It's an acquired taste" just seems like an appropriate response.
I'm still not clear why Nick chose to trust Laura. Sure, it's explained in the flashback -- a nun once trusted in Nick and saved him from the vampire hunters. But why does he remember the nun's trust, rather than LaCroix's betrayal? Clearly the nun's trust was misplaced, since Nick effectively caused her death (indirectly, by bringing LaCroix there).
I suppose Laura was just amazingly good at pulling Nick along. She pegs him as a possible weak link in the very beginning, begging him to help her. When they're chatting later, she casually mentions that she didn't have a lily-white past, to which he replies "who does?" -- and then she draws him into a long description of how bad her life was. Since there's no conclusive evidence that she's guilty, Nick starts to believe that she's innocent. This matches other episodes where he finds someone whose past he can relate to, and decides to trust them (just as he would want to be trusted).
In the last ten minutes, we learn that Laura really is guilty, but Nick doesn't. There's at least a small sense of catharsis as he leaves her out in the car, practically unguarded. Good? Bad? I don't know. But it's there. Just like the ironic twist when Laura thanks Nick with her last breath, saying "I couldn't have done it without you".
I liked the way his piano playing slowed down to a halt as he entered his flashback. Quite artistic.
There are a lot of parallels between what Natalie tells Nick and what he heard from LaCroix in the past. After killing the nun, LaCroix explains that "trust is a very human emotion" (so Nick should ignore it). Similarly, Natalie suggests that Nick should go with his feelings of trust, since they're on the path to regaining his mortality. And at the very end, when she's trying to convince Nick that he still has a chance to become human, Natalie says "trust me" -- echoed in his head by LaCroix's "trust me". Very chilling, since Natalie and LaCroix are the two extremes he swings between, yet their arguments are based on the same words. Which one should he trust?
Episode rating (0 to 10): 8
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