Episode reviews

I can echo your point about Canuck justice agents [police at various levels, Crowns, Justice Ministries, CSIS, etc.] not liking American interference. Hey, they don't even like talking to each other [and not in the porous mole-riddled OCU kinda way Haddock describes]. It takes major initiatives to get the Toronto Police and other police forces to share information.

Hm, I'm going to look into this evisceration of law enforcement due to the Iraq war. You present a convincing case, but I must point out it seems at odds with the whole "homeland security" thing, as well as coupled with the ongoing war against drugs.

Oh, and thanks for the ep reviews. I managed, somehow, to magically miss the first ten minutes all three times this week, despite my best intentions. I wondered how Winston had gotten out of the back of the cruiser.

Yeah, I didn't miss that. Mary's a smart, tough, black woman. She's a political godsend--not that she's got an easy job, by any means. There is, after all, a very good reason why there are so few smart, tough, black women (or women, for that matter) in the higher echelons of government in the English speaking government--quite a few reasons, in fact. It's kind of embarrassing, when you think about it, that supposedly "backward" Muslim countries like Pakistan and Turkey have had women in the top spot, but Canada has never seen a female prime minister or the U.S. a female president. And, worse, that the mere suggestion creates paroxysms of horror in many circles. To be listed among those Things that Make You Go 'Hmm' in North America.

Hey, ask away. Don't forget that Mary herself is from back East and that most of her connections have so far been in Ottawa. Her most important Western connections so far have been, respectively, a Vancouver narcotics squad sergeant (Don Fraser), a Vancouver pot baron (Jimmy Reardon) and the now-disgraced Western head of CSIS (Roger Deakins). Back East is where all of her government connections are. It's out West where we see all her friends in low places.



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Apparently 400k viewers for Intelligence this week. So maybe some bleed?

That was a very telling scene, right up there with their respective interactions to seeing Johnny in the car at the end of last week's ep. Check out the interview of Cassini and Tracey on the official site where they talk about the friendship. Very instructive.

I don't know if this is deliberate, but I'm noticing some historical parallels in Jimmy and Ronnie. Jimmy, for example, has a style very similar to Julius Caesar's and Ronnie, in contrast, comes across a lot like Mark Antony, who always advocated kicking in heads over negotiating. The role of Cleopatra, meanwhile, seems to be divided up between Mary (hence, her nickname "The Queen") and Sweet. The Cleopatra dynamic also would parallel the fear that the Romans (here, the Vancouver criminal underworld) had of a powerful foreign queen who appeared to be seducing away the best men in Rome.

Whether or not the parallels are deliberate, it's interesting to contrast Jimmy's style of trying to negotiate and ally with anyone who will reciprocate with a little history: Caesar is now feared as a cold-blooded conqueror who brought down the Republic (actually, it was his nephew who was the cold-blooded bean counter who did that). But his patrician contemporaries tended to see him as weak and treacherous. They intensely disliked that, when blocked in bulding up power via the traditional routes, he allied with the women in his family (his beloved daughter was his equal and his staunchest supporter), the poor of Rome and even foreigners. The Jews of Rome, for example, showed up in force at his funeral to mourn him.

Further, Caesar is the first ancient ruler whom we see not only pardoning enemies, but actively using pardoning as a strategy to turn his enemies and lessen the damage of civil war.This had mixed results. Several of his assassins had been men whom he had pardoned on the battle field.

Why do we remember Caesar as such a dangerous man? Well, Caesar's unusual allies could be quite dangerous to his enemies. When Caesar finally defeated his great rival Pompey, Pompey fled to Egypt. But allies of Caesar there killed Pompey and presented his head to Caesar. Shocked and saddened, Caesar later said that he had intended to pardon Pompey, but was never given the chance.

Caesar himself was deadly once his vaunted patience ran out. Two examples suffice. Very early in his career, he was captured and held for ransom by pirates in the Mediterranean. They laughed at him when he swore that he would hunt them down and crucify them. They should have listened to him. As soon as the ransom was paid and he was released, he hurried to the nearest Roman city, got a ship, hunted them down and strung them up.

Later, during the Gallic Wars, Caesar conquered a particular town and made a treaty with it. There is some dispute as to how voluntary the treaty was on both sides, but to Caesar, a treaty was a treaty. The town, unsurprisingly, turned right back to Vercingetorix (the main Gallic leader). When Caesar came back, he cut off the right hand of every adult male in the town. So they could no longer wield swords, you see.

Aside from Jimmy cleaning out his brother's house in the pilot, we haven't seen very much of Jimmy's ruthless side. But I bet it will be making more and more of an appearance from here on out.


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I would love to have closed captioning again, but my current television is too ancient for such a function.


See, it's precisely because 24 is doing it so appallingly that I would love to see this done (not to mention that 24 is more like a comic book than real life). And 24 is avoiding domestic terrorism like the plague. Swarthy, Middle-Eastern fanatics, that's their obsession. Homegrown white supremacists (of whom North America has a terrifying number) are right off the board.

I tried to watch 24, too. I loved the premise, loved the format and I think that Kiefer Sutherland is an excellent actor who has been having the ride of his life. But the sexism and racism (not to mention the constant flood of raving plot cliches coming at warp speed) really got on my nerves. The writing just sucked to an absurd level. I soon started watching very sporadically. The last ep that I managed to watch more or less straight through was the season one finale. Such a shame. So much talent wasted by really pedestrian writing in the trenches.


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