Summary
As predicted, Karl and Cassandra’s relationship is beginning to show cracks in “Mother Love”, with their conflicting responsibilities causing issues.
You can’t say I didn’t warn you. It was only a matter of time before the cracks started to emerge in Karl and Cassandra’s relationship, and for all the efforts that Murder in a Small Town has made in Season 2 to create the illusion of a united front, their conflicting responsibilities and differences of opinion were always going to calcify into a divide. Episode 3, “Mother Love”, gets us to that point already, which doesn’t bode well for these two’s romantic future, given how early we are in the season.
Unusually for this show, we’re working with a very traditional A-B plot here (with a lower-case “c” for good measure). That typical procedural format is actually deployed to decent effect since it knits together quite well by the end, with a couple of overlapping threads helping to inform the character drama and reiterate the thematic underpinnings. In less floaty critical terms, it makes Gibsons feel a bit more like a real place, with citizens who know each other and have a history together.
This week’s victim is Maria Bannister. By all accounts, she won’t be winning any Mother of the Year awards, since she abandoned her daughter, Belinda, when she was ten, having left her father, Richard, for another man. Maria’s intentions for Belinda have been a little unclear ever since, but unfortunately for Richard, she tried to communicate with her on the night she had her neck broken in her apartment, so he immediately becomes the prime suspect.
You can’t blame Karl for this. Maria and Richard ended on bad terms, and their final meeting turned violent, with Maria as the aggressor, so it stands to reason he wouldn’t want her trying to snatch their kid off the street. And then there’s the whole matter of her having broken his heart. But the husband is far too obvious a suspect for a mystery like this, so it quickly becomes apparent that someone else is to blame. A brief suspect is an eccentric local named Todd – more on him in a bit, since he’s more connected to Cassandra – and then suspicion settles on the true culprit.
The killer is Maria’s half-brother, Harry. After recently trying to connect with her biological father, a dying older man named Captain Darcy Stewart, Maria had earned the attention of her half-sibling on the basis that the Captain’s will had been changed. Harry wasn’t sure in what precise way, but, not willing to take the risk after a lifetime of what he believed to be devotion and service to his father, he made sure Maria wouldn’t be inheriting anything. He also went after Belinda, since she was another relative who might have stood to benefit from the inheritance, but that proved to be his downfall, as Karl caught him in the act.
Anyway, let’s talk about Todd. Todd’s a homeless dude who likes to spend most of his time in the public library, where older, more well-to-do citizens act like he’s being a profound imposition just by sitting there reading Beowulf. Todd’s eccentric, but he’s not harmful, so Cassandra is particularly fond of him. As a result, it’s she who rushes to his defence when he’s accosted by some local bullies and pulls a knife in self-defence. Cassandra is able to talk him down, but she almost gets stabbed (by him) and shot (by the responding officers) in the process, which Karl is mightily upset about.
You know how I mentioned that Murder in a Small Town Season 2, Episode 3 started showing the cracks in Karl and Cassandra’s relationship? Well, here they are. Karl’s overprotective, and Cassandra has been the victim of a controlling relationship when she briefly dated a man twenty years her senior, so there’s a bit of an impasse here. Karl is hardwired to see danger everywhere and intervene as a protective figure in every crisis, but Cassandra is impulsive and would prefer to handle her own problems unless she specifically asks for help. You can bet your bottom dollar this is going to come up again. And probably again. Maybe even again.
As a final note, “Mother Love” might have also introduced a bit of an overarching mystery about the identity of the so-called “Creeper”, a local urban legend about a figure who looms over the grave of Lauren Park, a girl killed in an accident during her youth. Holly and Devon get embroiled in this and make an effort to try and catch the Creeper, taking their theories to Cassandra, who knew Lauren personally. Through a photo they took, Cassandra is able to deduce immediately that an old associate named Trace has been visiting the grave out of guilt over not picking Lauren up on the night she died. But Trace doesn’t leave flowers, and someone else does, which suggests that the Creeper might be someone else, and we’re going to return to this minor, seemingly go-nowhere subplot again before we’re done. That should be interesting.
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