Summary
Run Away begins to get particularly knotty in “Breaking Point”, and the reveals are piling up as we approach the season’s midpoint.
Episode 3 marks the point where Harlan Coben’s Run Away starts to go a bit nuts. I mean, don’t get me wrong, these shows are always nuts, and this one hasn’t exactly been even keel from the very beginning. But “Breaking Point” is aptly titled, since it’s exactly that. There’s all sorts going on here; all kinds of revelations, connections, and implications, in each of the core subplots (which are, as we know, inevitably all the same plot, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
A bit of backstory, both shown and implied, helps to provide some necessary texture, too. We’re not quite halfway through yet, but it feels like we’re well on our way. Everyone’s bedding in, the stakes are really clear, and the reveals are piling up. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your perspective – so are the bodies.
Ruth Jones In Tactical Gear
“Breaking Point” begins 25 years in the past, with a bit of backstory for Elena. Back then, she was a police officer, and we see her carrying out an armed raid and meeting her husband, while also taking a bullet in the backside. Don’t worry too much about the timeline, since Ruth Jones doesn’t look any younger; just worry about the meet-cute.
In the present day, Elena is sitting at the grave of her husband, Joel, pouring out Guinness in his honour. This seems like a bit of contouring, but it’s actually connected to the ongoing subplot about Elena stalking a vegan woman, which considerably escalates here.
In case it wasn’t obvious already, Elena breaking into the woman’s house – her name is Maria – leaves no doubt. While there, she finds a photograph of Lou, proving that Maria is connected to her in some way. And since Lou was Joel’s mother, well… the pieces fit. However, we also see later that Maria has cameras in the house and knows that Elena broke in, so her next visit to the cafe should be pretty awkward.
Information Exchange
Picking up where we left off in the previous episode, Elena and Simon exchange stories about how each of them got to this point. During the conversation, Cornelius visibly recognises Isaac’s name. But more on that later. This is all information we already had, but the key revelation is that the email Paige sent to Henry emanated from an IP address at Maybridge University – the university that Sam attends.
At the hospital, Simon confronts his son about having seen Paige recently. He admits that she turned up at his halls of residence about a week prior, just after the park incident. She stayed four days, but when he went out to replace a broken string on her guitar, he returned to find her gone. She had also cleared him out, along with half of the rooms on the block. That’s what the money was for – Yvonne was helping him pay everyone back.
Paige isn’t new to thievery. During her previous visit to the family home six months prior, she had stolen some jewellery, which seemed to be Ingrid’s breaking point. Around here, Simon and Elena set out on individual side quests. Simon is going to Aaron’s memorial service at his family’s rural petting zoo, while Elena is going to the tattoo parlour from the previous episode.
Side note: Do I detect a bit of sexual chemistry between these two?
Isaac and Ruby Begin to Suspect Ingrid
You’ll recall that in the previous episode, Isaac and Ruby had uncovered CCTV footage revealing that Ingrid left the hospital during her shift on the night Aaron was murdered. Footage also shows her leaving at the end of her shift, but not returning to the hospital in the meantime.
Isaac confronts Jay about this, but he has a ready-made justification. On her night shifts, Ingrid goes to a nearby Mexican street food place called Busy Burritos to get a deal on nachos for the nurses. When Ruby and Isaac follow that lead, though, the Busy Burritos proprietor says that while Ingrid ordered in person as usual, she asked for it to be delivered instead of waiting around, and then snuck out of the back door. Weird.
At the end of Run Away Episode 3, Isaac and Ruby acquire more CCTV footage that sees Ingrid being followed by a man who looks very much like Jay. Curiouser and curiouser.
Meet the Parents
Meanwhile, Simon attends Aaron’s memorial service and briefly speaks with his father, Wiley, who isn’t exactly forthcoming with information. He has a bit more luck with his wife, Enid, though. She has been Aaron’s stepmother since he was eight, but she never liked him. He was always trouble. His birth mother, Bruna, had apparently died in a car accident. Wiley claimed to have met her in a vineyard in Italy, but when he and Enid were due to go on holiday, and she called the passport office because she couldn’t find his passport, she was informed that he had never possessed one in his life. So, he’s lying about how he met Aaron’s mother.
Simon asks Wiley about this but, again, he isn’t forthcoming. He does reveal, however, that Paige and Aaron didn’t meet at university, as Simon suspected. Instead, she came to the farm looking for him and found him staying in the grotty caravan that Simon had earlier seen during the memorial. He goes there again and has a peep inside, discovering Paige’s Lanford jersey. She was there recently, but she’s once again in the wind.
Something happened to Paige at Lanford that compelled her to hook up with Aaron. But what?
A Connection Is Revealed
While this is going on, Lou tells Elena that the mobile number on the tattoo parlour flyer belongs to one Damien Gorsch, who, as we know, was the guy Ash and Dee Dee killed. The tattoo place is her next stop.
At the crime scene, Elena’s contacts in the police force allow her access alongside DS Alex Talbot, the guy investigating. She intuits immediately that the robbery was staged and the young victim – his name was Robin Bailey, not that it matters now – was simply collateral. Damien’s husband, Neil, promptly arrives, and while he doesn’t know anything about Henry Thorpe or Paige Greene, he does vaguely recall the name Aaron Corval. He also allows Elena a peek at the shop database.
Here, a connection emerges. Damien was looking up an ancestry website. Given that Henry was adopted, and Simon clarified in this episode that Aaron’s father had been deeply mysterious about his parentage, it seems like a connection is beginning to emerge.
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