Summary
Murder in a Small Town Season 2 isn’t working for me overall, and I think you can see most of the reasons why in “Trust, But Verify”.
Season 2 of Murder in a Small Town isn’t really working for me. I’ve thought that since the beginning, but after a week’s hiatus prior to Episode 6, “Trust, But Verify”, you can really feel both the case of the week and the overarching storylines struggling to sustain interest. Karl and Cass are being kept completely siloed, and their obligatory end-of-episode romantic scene just seems forced, like a way to keep their relationship ticking despite the script making no effort to work on it. And there have now been so many murders in this small town that it doesn’t feel remotely noteworthy when there’s another one. I can’t imagine why anyone would live in Gibsons. The life expectancy must be about 35.
There’s a slight Halloween contour to “Trust, But Verify”, since the victim, one of a group of young women in town to honour the life of one of their number who had recently committed suicide, was mauled by a bear. The bear – largely left to the imagination, presumably for budgetary reasons – is initially discussed as though it might be some kind of awful lurking monster instead of a typical fixture of the local wildlife. But it turns out the bear isn’t the culprit anyway. The victim, Laurisa, was killed prior to being feasted on, struck on the back of the head with a rock by one of her catty so-called friends.
This group isn’t very likable in general, and that hurts this case somewhat. But I think there’s a deeper underlying reason why none of this resonates, which is that the show continuously utilises the same formula. There are murders pretty much every week – except in the previous episode, which was, not coincidentally, the best one of the season – and the victims and culprits are almost always out-of-towners. I get why this is the case – Gibsons is supposed to be a “small town”, and it’d run out of people before long if they were constantly getting killed off – but it ends up creating too much distance between the setting and Karl’s investigations. It reuses the same rhythm and structure every time, too.
The only real value of this case is the thematic underpinning of suicide, and particularly its impact on the loved ones of those who decide to end their own lives, especially totally unexpectedly. This relates very personally to Laila, a character who was new to Murder in a Small Town Season 2 and still feels new even by Episode 6. That’s not a great sign, so this little bit of detail about her background is valuable, even if it’s overdue.
Cass and Holly continue working their own case in “Trust, But Verify”, looking into what is increasingly beginning to look like a string of revenge killings connected by gravestones and flowers. It’s nice that they’re keeping themselves busy, but this whole subplot feels like that, like it exists only to give these two something to do together, as if working on their relationship will keep Karl and Cassandra’s alive by proxy. It feels quite inevitable that this is going to end up with Cass and Holly on someone’s radar, imperilling them both and leaving Karl to take action to save them, which I’m sure will be engaging in real time, but doesn’t feel as if it’s being arrived at especially organically.
In fairness, though, I do think this storyline feels much more intimately connected to Gibsons as a setting in a way that the cases of the week almost never do. It’s also through Cass’s interactions with the mayor, and the ongoing stuff with the mayor’s son after the whole bully debacle, that the show feels as though it’s telling a larger, ongoing story about a place and the people in it, instead of being a string of extremely isolated incidents. There’s proper development and growth in these dynamics, and I wish Murder in a Small Town would spend a bit more time with them. We’ve had episodes that focus almost exclusively on Karl’s case and shove Cass and co into the margins – why not the other way around once in a while?
Maybe I’m being nitpicky – you’ll have to let me know (and I’m sure you will). But this season just isn’t working for me, and I’m starting to get annoyed by the obligatory quasi-romantic bits at the end of each episode, which feel like shortcuts rather than proper storytelling. And you know what? I didn’t think Karl’s portrait of Cassandra was that good either.
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