Summary
“Donald” thickens both the murder case and the personal lives of the jurors as questions, including the most crucial ones, continue to loom large.
This recap of The Twelve season 1, episode 2, “Donald”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
The Twelve episode 2, “Donald”, gets tricky with time as it opens twenty years prior, on the night of Britt’s murder, as she and a young Frie party New Year’s Eve away. All is not well, however, since Britt is pregnant but her partner pretty explicitly doesn’t want children; this detail is an uncomfortable one given by the end of this sequence we’re seeing her remains be dredged out of the water.
With that unsavory business handled, we return to the present day and the various personal plights of the jurors and attendant family members, including the titular retired cop Donald. Delphine is finally let out of her bathroom; Arnold finds his wife’s grave vandalized; Yuri and Bjorn continue to disagree over the construction business, and so on, and so forth.
We return to court and, fittingly, to Britt’s death; The Twelve episode 2 opening with it was not a coincidence. Donald led the case. We get details of early suspects being aggrieved cattle farmers, thanks to an early, hostile relationship with Marc, and the use of a bolt gun – a cause of death of two dogs and later Britt, though it’s proved when the case is reopened in 2016 and a post-mortem was performed that Britt was actually suffocated; the shot was to implicate a cattle farmer in the killing.
This, combined with a video in which Britt begged for help and claimed to be in imminent danger, makes for a complex case. But how does Frie tie into it? Well, the prosecution argues that she led the police officers – Britt was under protective surveillance – away; this is corroborated by reports of a female voice. The prosecution also argues that Frie hid Britt’s body in the attack; when the case was reopened, traces of Britt’s blood was found there. Frie had access to a bolt gun. It’s a pretty picture.
Of course, once the defense make their own arguments, the situation is no clearer in The Twelve episode 2. Frie had plenty of witnesses confirming she was still at the NYE party, and Donald himself can’t say one way or the other. Such is the way of these things.
Then there’s the development of the juror characters to consider. Thanks to spying on Holly’s phone, her real identity as a Meester, not a Ceusters, ties her to a well-known murdered millionaire family. There’s also big trouble at Yuri and Bjorn’s company when they have to dump one of their cash-in-hand workers, an illegal immigrant, off near the hospital. To what extent this kind of subplot is necessary in an already complex case will have to be determined as we go along.
Nevertheless, The Twelve season 1, episode 2 continues to balance its elements well, developing both the case and the lives of the jurors simultaneously and letting us know that there is much more going on than meets the eye when it comes to Frie – a final flashback scene in which Marc offers Donald a hefty bribe virtually confirms it. With plenty of questions still left to be answered, including all the most crucial ones, there are plenty of reasons to keep watching.
