Summary
Murder in a Small Town Season 2 finally improves in Episode 7, tying its disparate subplots together intelligently, leading to some meaningful conflict.
When a show like Murder in a Small Town has an episode like “This, That, and the Other Thing” in its locker, it can sometimes make you wonder why it’s so content to be mediocre most of the time. Season 2, especially, has felt really adrift, and reached a point of maximal indifference right before Episode 7 turns out to be the best outing yet, on both a plot and character level. You just never know what you’re going to get.
And, again, it’s not about a murder, continuing a theme of the best episodes revolving around other things. This is also, for what it’s worth, the point where Karl and Cassandra’s individual storylines start properly knitting together, and it’s highly likely that the crossover will amount to some meaningful conflict down the line. It was obvious this was going to happen sooner or later, but the lack of attention this season has paid to the two of them as a couple made it sometimes difficult to believe.
This week’s main concern is a kidnapping – or is it? – witnessed by Isabella’s uncle. A young boy and his babysitter are snatched from outside a pizza place, and the police have their hands full trying to figure out who’s responsible and why. After the babysitter manages to escape and the respective parents are interviewed, things begin to fall into place somewhat, revealing a bigger conspiracy than anyone necessarily expected.
As it turns out, the kidnapping is really a ruse to stretch the struggling police force thin so that an auction at the swanky Gibsons Club can be relieved of all its expensive art and jewels. Unluckily for the robbers, Phyllis is in attendance and manages to place a call to Cassandra, who tips off Karl, thwarting the kidnappers in their tracks but leading to the fatal shooting of one of the suspects – the wife of the lead robber, posing as a caterer.
Laila took the shot, only compounding her difficult start in the Gibsons PD. She has been pretty neglected as a character thus far this season, so I’m hoping that this is the spark of a more focused character arc for her. Sid, too, was instrumental in the arrest, but he also continues to struggle with his rebellious teenage daughter, and at the end of Murder in a Small Town Season 2, Episode 7, he falls asleep at the wheel while picking her up from a far-out party in the middle of nowhere, crashing his car.
This is all in service of a deeper underlying theme that ties into what Cassandra is up to. Early on in “This, That, and the Other Thing”, she hands over the evidence she has acquired about the suspiciously symbolic flower having been left at a variety of road accidents, so I guess she’s moving on from that now and letting Laila deal with it, which is probably smart. But in the meantime, she immerses herself more completely in local politics, and one of the key contentious issues is the underfunded police force. This is why Karl and his team are struggling to solve cases; why Sid is falling asleep at the wheel. So, it’s a big deal. And thanks to Cassandra taking a principled stance in opposition to Mayor Christie Holman’s plans to slash investment in the social programs nearest to her heart, the budget is frozen, meaning no money is going anywhere for the time being – including the police force.
One of the things that Murder in a Small Town has done well this season is to characterise Christie as something more than the cartoon antagonist she initially appeared to be. We see more of her struggling at home with her son, and another side of her when she shows real sensitivity to Todd, the troubled man whom Cassandra is encouraging to work at the local library. But she’s also unsubtly using the police department’s funding to keep Cassandra onside by manipulating her relationship with Karl. She assumes that Cassandra will just accept the budget’s sweeping changes because it includes funding for the police, but in rejecting it and encouraging the rest of the town council to do the same, Cassandra is putting Karl’s department at further risk.
And, predictably, he’s not happy about it. And that’s good as far as the show is concerned, since things were becoming a little too easy and siloed. The turns in “This, That, and the Other Thing” are genuinely effective at weaving everything together, and I hope that it marks a turning point for a much-improved latter half.
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