he Code
he Code
When Schanke's ex-partner Delehanty shows up, his rich, comfortable, and "warm" life in Arizona, gets to Schanke's winter-worn heart. When Schanke and Delehanty conclude that a series of deaths are the result of product tampering, Nick's hunch about the case drives a wedge between him and Schanke. When Schanke refuses to listen to Nick, he must solve the case despite Schanke and Delehanty's conclusions, and before Schanke decides Arizona might be the place to be.
I've noticed that in these later episodes they often have slightly bizarre, almost artistic beginnings. Like this one, where Schanke is trying to start his car, gets run into by a nun, and then stands out in the middle of the street with his arms raised skywards and the camera slowly rising up. While he's working on the car, the scenes are intermixed with those of a woman snorting cocaine, until the car crash, when she suddenly keels over and dies. Nice, but strange.
LaCroix makes some comments to the effect that all friendships go sour after a while, and that the small lies (not the big ones) eventually drive friends apart. But this doesn't ring true with either the flashback or with Schanke's problems. In the flashback, Nick's old friends save him from the bounty hunter, even though he'd deserted them to seek out a new life. Even in the current day he's friends with Janette, and at least tolerant of LaCroix. And it was Delahanty's big lie that really hurt Schanke; the small lies (such as his claim that he was "just visiting for fun") had almost no effect. (Delehanty, I should note, was played by Joseph Ziegler) But perhaps this just shows that LaCroix's notions of friendship are quite different from human notions.
The bounty hunter was an odd person; first saving Nick from (apparently) certain death, and then trying to kill him to collect a bounty? Couldn't he have just let the old man kill Nick, and then killed the old man? His style of speech was also variable, ranging from highly complex grammatical structures and words to very simple ones (not many people use both "acquired" and "ain't"), with a similar range of philosophical content.
Everyone else is pretty much themselves, except for Schanke, who is understandably different, given his emotional turmoil and the arrival of an old friend. His sudden decision to resign and move away to Arizona without even consulting Myra seemed reasonable (for Schanke). And Nick's unquestioning trust of the bounty hunter was completely in character (even if his ease at consuming the whiskey wasn't). Even his reaction to the "Provatrex scandal" (disbelief without any strong evidence to the contrary) was normal.
All in all, a decent, if not terribly exciting story, with no immense, gaping holes in the logic or in the character's actions.
Episode rating (0 to 10): 5
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