Summary
Cross Season 2 gets the ball rolling properly in “Scatter”, developing the subplots and entangling them in the main story.
Cross Season 2 seems to know where it’s going, and is in a hurry to get there. This is no bad thing, in my view, since too many shows take much too long to meander to nowhere. If the premiere was getting the pieces on the board, Episode 2, “Scatter”, is about kicking them all over the place and worrying about how they fall later. It’s about developing the subplots and little relationship dramas and knitting them into the fabric of the main story (most of them, anyway). And it’s about reminding us that this is a sequel season by reintroducing a character who probably didn’t need to be here but who we’re grateful to see anyway.
I think if you squint a bit, you can see where most of this is going. Most of the stuff in Kayla’s personal storyline will set alarm bells ringing for anyone even cursorily familiar with the books this show is based on, and the “billionaires are corrupt pedophiles” angle isn’t very fresh-feeling, given the current news cycle. But it’s zippy and competent enough to be consistently entertaining.
The Avenging Continues
After killing Richard Helvig and removing three of his fingers in the premiere, you’d think Rebecca and Donnie would be done with him. But not quite. There was a little more to his operation under the surface, which means some more loose ends to tie up. One of them is named Beverly, a bank employee who was intimately connected to Helvig’s shady operations.
Rebecca needs the contents of Helvig’s safe deposit box, which means having Donnie spend the day with Beverly’s children to strong-arm her into cooperating. Rebecca poses as an ally before eventually revealing herself as the perpetrator, forcing Beverly to open the box so she can pilfer the classified documents inside.
Donnie lets Beverly’s kids go; neither he nor Rebecca seems interested in killing anyone who doesn’t deserve it, let alone innocent women and children. But Beverly was too complicit in Helvig’s operations to be allowed to live. She was on the flights full of trafficked children. She has earned her fate. Rebecca slits her throat in the car and leaves her to bleed out.
Connections
The audience already knows that Helvig’s death is connected to the threats that Durand has been receiving on account of the fingers, but Cross and Kayla need to work this out. It doesn’t take much brainpower, though, since as soon as Helvig’s death is discovered and the three missing fingers are noticed, two plus two does indeed equal four.
This means confronting Durand about the connection that he very obviously lied about, which he eventually admits. During the pandemic, Helvig had helped Durand get his food production workers classified as essential, which allowed him to keep the country fed. It’s pretty obvious that Durand believes his work during this period makes him pretty much untouchable, which isn’t quite how the legal system – or indeed morality – works, but you know what rich folks are like.
Durand claims to have severed ties with Helvig as soon as it became apparent he was a pedophile sex trafficker, which is a bit eerily familiar to recent real-life stories that have made the news. There’s no evidence to contradict him at this point, so Cross and Kayla have no choice but to take his word for it. For now.
Smile for the Camera
The prime suspect in the Durand case is a man who seems to have some military experience, or at the very least knows how to throw off biometric scanners by throwing out a ridiculous, manic grin whenever he’s on camera. Thanks to his ability to befuddle surveillance, there isn’t a great deal to go on with this guy. The breakthrough comes from a possible accomplice who helped him sneak inside one of the venues where Durand was giving a talk. Her name is Mackenzie, and Cross and Kayla quickly deduce that she was the suspect’s therapist.
Mackenzie identifies the man as John Ramos, a former patient she developed a slightly too-personal relationship with, but claims not to know any more. Since she’s obviously lying, they give her the wrong idea about Ramos being in danger, knowing she’ll go out of her way to warn him. They pursue her to a meeting she sets up with Ramos in Chicago, and give chase as soon as he realizes they’re onto him.
Cross and Kayla don’t manage to catch Ramos, but they do follow him to his hideout, which he summarily detonates to throw them off. The blast doesn’t destroy some crucial evidence, though, including some casino chips and pickled fingers, both of which are perfectly normal things to have in a hideout, I’m sure. His real name is also Lincoln Esteban, and he’s an illegal immigrant. How topical. Some coordinates on a document lead to a border town in Texas, so I’ll see you there in the next episode.
The Mastermind
Elsewhere in Cross Season 2, Episode 2, we get a bit more clarity on Kayla’s predicament with Bad Religion. She gets a call from Maggie, who is deeply worried about someone she refers to as “Mastermind”, who she thinks will kill her family. So sure is she of this, in fact, that she takes her own life live on the video conference.
Now, I don’t want to give too much away, but Kayla is a genderbent version of the Kyle Craig character from the novels, and – major book spoiler alert again for good measure – Kyle Craig is Mastermind. For now, it’s impossible to tell whether the show is going to go in the same direction.
Either way, Kayla is on her own with the problem. She can’t really confide in anyone since the Bad Religion thing was potentially illegal, and she won’t be receiving any official support from the FBI. Instead, she turns to the only person who might be able to help her unofficially – Bobby Trey.
RELATED:
