Other Doctor Lives: Criminal Record: Season 1, Episode 8 – “Carla” (2024)

*Episode premise spoilers, which include spoilers from episode 7.*

Season finale of Criminal Record! I know that the show has been picked up for another season, and as I’ve been watching, I wasn’t sure how that was going to work—I assumed this season would wrap up the Adelaide Burrows murder case, and I couldn’t really picture how they’d move on from there. Like, would it be more of an anthology show like True Detective? But now that the season is over, I can kind of see how the show could be continued.

In the last episode, June confronted Hegarty about the recording she discovered of him coaching Errol through his false confession. Despite the immoral and illegal tactics he used to close the case, Hegarty is still confident he’s got the right man, and he offers to go through the case records with June to prove it. When that search reveals a glaring hole in the original investigation, Hegarty is just as anxious as June to chase down the leads he missed back then. This becomes even more urgent after someone leaks the recording of the emergency call that started June down this path in the front place—not only is the real murderer still out there somewhere, but now the audio of his girlfriend Carla saying he brags about killing Adelaide is all over the internet. June and Hegarty are forced to work together before the leak costs Carla her life.

That’s right—these two have had each other in their sights all season, and now they’re reluctantly teaming up. It gives June a different perspective on Hegarty and the initial murder investigation. While what he did to Errol is still horrifically gross and unethical, she’s able to see the difference between him and some of his goons, who are more nakedly and enthusiastically racist. Hegarty has huge, unconscionable blind spots that contributed to him dropping the ball in a very consequential way, but he does ultimately want to arrest the right people, not just whoever’s convenient.

So the two of them comb through the evidence and try to find the real killer, racing against time before he punishes Carla for the leak that she had nothing to do with. The situation is urgent enough that both June and Hegarty can compartmentalize and stay focused on the investigation, but neither June nor the show lets Hegarty off the hook for his past actions. In the quieter, less high-stress moments of the episode, June repeatedly takes Hegarty to task: for missing critical evidence the first time around, for coercing Errol’s confession in such an awful way, and for not analyzing why he succumbed to such a perfect storm of corruption in this case in particular.

While I don’t get behind all of the show’s choices here, I think they strike a good balance with Hegarty in the end. Like I’ve said the last few episodes, the show is able to explore the motivations behind his choices without excusing or justifying them, and I’d say that bears out here. And although there are certainly plenty of cops who are openly, grossly racist, like some of the characters we see on this show, it’s a more interesting narrative to me that Hegarty isn’t one of them. That he views himself as a good detective and wouldn’t think of himself as being prejudiced, but that he still does some truly terrible things and goes down an intense road of corruption to cover his ass afterwards. That his biases are one of several reasons behind his actions. And that it ultimately doesn’t matter whether or not he’s done these things because He’s an Evil Racist: whatever his reasons, Errol’s life has been destroyed either way. This is a more interesting, more complex story, and it gives Peter Capaldi more to do than if Hegarty had been characterized more like his cronies.

Accent Watch

Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. I don’t think it succeeds in everything it sets out to do, but it has some interesting stuff going for it.

Peter Capaldi – I think I would. Capaldi turns in a strong performance here, and it goes places I didn’t expect at the start of the series.

Warnings

Graphic violence, copaganda, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, and strong thematic elements (including gaslighting and references to suicide.)

Y tu Luna también: Everything Will Be Fine: Season 1, Episode 8 – “Everything Will Be Fine” (2021)

*Episode premise spoilers, which include a major spoiler from the end of episode 7.*

Season finale! I’ve heard basically nothing about Everything Will Be Fine since shortly after it came out, so at this point, I’m guessing there’s not going to be a season 2. Which is a shame—in addition to being a great show, the finale opens the show up in really interesting new directions, and I’d love to show where they were going with it. There’s been no official cancellation, so hope springs eternal, but I’m not holding my breath.

At the end of episode 7, Andrea was brought home safely. And while Fausto read her a bedtime story, Julia and Ruy wound up kissing. Now, with Andrea in bed and the crisis behind them, all three adults celebrate her safe return in an atmosphere charged with elation, relief, and conflicted feelings.

I’m going to save the big spoilers from this episode for a separate post, but I like where the show takes things here. While it’s a big swing, I think the show does the legwork to make it work. As I said, it leaves room for a lot of interesting growth and expansion for the characters.

There’s also a large time jump in the episode—throughout the season, there have been throwaway references to the approaching pandemic, mostly as the radio or the news plays in the background, and once the dust settles from Andrea’s attempt to run away, we jump forward about a year. Now, we’ve skipped over the early months of the pandemic and reach that hopeful period when folks have gotten into the rhythm of things, looking out for themselves and each other, doing stuff remotely and wearing (cloth) masks with news of vaccines on the horizon.

This is an interesting choice as well, because it doesn’t really break down the big move following episode 7. Instead, we skip ahead and get a feeling for the characters’ new idea of normal, in terms of both the pandemic and the relationships between the characters. Not everything is spelled out easily, and while the show drops a lot of tidbits, we’re left on some level to imagine how everything has shaken out. As far as the feel and theme of the finale go, Ruy sums it up best: “It’s not about whether change is good or bad. Change merely is. It exists, period. And now, even change is changing.”

Oh, and did I mention there’s a lowkey but full-blown musical number toward the end of the episode? Another big swing—while music has been an important part of the series, it’s never been employed like this, with the major characters singing their feelings. I’m guessing I’m a little hampered here by the subtitles, which translate the lyrics in a very straightforward manner without rhyme or rhythm. Reading the translation, the song seems fairly on-the-nose and a little corny, but I don’t know how it comes off in Spanish.

On the whole, this is definitely my favorite behind-the-camera project from Diego Luna. It’s fun and messy and emotional, and the characters feel so complex and real. I love how lived-in the whole show feels, and I really like the different ideas Luna explores in the story.

Recommend?

In General – I would, as long as you don’t have issues with the content. This is an interesting, entertaining show—I’m glad that Y tu Luna también prompted me to watch it a second time.

Diego Luna – Yes. Luna’s direction is so confident and unobtrusive, quietly building the lives of these characters onscreen. And again, I’m not sure how much of a direct hand he has in the story, but I love that as well.

Warnings

Sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, scenes of violence, and thematic elements (including sexual harassment.)

Favorite Characters: Jod Na Nawood (Skeleton Crew)

*All the Jod-related spoilers*

It might be odd that Jod is the first character I’m writing about from Skeleton Crew. After all, the kids are the heart of the show, and I love all four of them for different reasons. But for my money, Jo is certainly the most interesting character on the show, and that’s why I want to start with him.

Our young heroes first encounter Jod when they’re thrown into the brig on a pirate spaceport. Jod is a fellow prisoner, and he rescues them with the aid of the Force. Wim is immediately thrilled to be meeting a real live Jedi, and Fern is just as immediately suspicious of the robed figure sedately intoning wise-sounding aphorisms.

Unfortunately for Wim, it doesn’t take long for Fern’s theory to bear out. In their escape from the spaceport, Jod has to be cajoled into rescuing SM-33, he takes some serious gremlin measures to get away when the ship is caught on a refueling line, and the kids soon learn that he has aliases for days. By the end of the episode, he’s pointing out that he never actually called himself a Jedi, Wim just assumed he was.

Within this, I love that Jod isn’t a Jedi, but he is Force-sensitive. Fern’s early suspicions extend to thinking his use of the Force is some sort of trick, and Disney-era Star Wars has already shown us that’s possible, with con man Haja Estree on Obi-Wan Kenobi. But a couple episodes later, we get confirmation that Jod really can use the Force. It’s not an easy “Jedi or fraud” dichotomy, and I like that. It’s reflective of the complexities of the character as a whole.

So we have Jod, loose cannon scoundrel and almost certainly down-and-out pirate captain, making a deal with four lost kids and their droid buddy to help them get home. He’s lured in by the legends of their planet’s eternal treasure, and for a while, Jod keeps up his end of the bargain—sort of. He does snoop around the ship for valuables, he does literally serve himself first when the kids are tired and hungry, and he does briefly joke that he’s considering trading them for livestock. But he also saves them from a tight spot, jumps into action when SM-33 goes haywire, and brings some major aggravated-dad energy when trying to wrangle the kids to look for clues on an ancient-pirate’s-hideout-turned-luxury-spa-planet.

It’s only a matter of time before Jod betrays the kids. When they finally get the coordinates to return to At Attin, the lure of eternal treasure leads him to challenge Fern as captain. “You can’t fight us, we’re just kids!” she cries as he holds a knife to her throat. “It’s not fair.” But Jod is undeterred. When he claims the Onyx Cinder, the kids narrowly escape getting captured by him, and he avoids a brutal dispatch from his former crew by leading them to At Attin, where the pirates invade and attack the bewildered civilians. He tries to boil his pursuers in acid, he kills his mutinous first mate who’s already incapacitated, and he cuts off SM-33’s head with a lightsaber.

Yeah, Jod is a bad guy. He’s ruthless, duplicitous, and self-serving. He doesn’t challenge Fern because he knows it’s the only way to take charge as the one grown-up in the room, he’s not secretly working against the pirates the whole time, and he doesn’t have an eleventh-hour redemption. But I think it’s important that we see just how awful he can be, because it draws such an interesting contrast in the moments where he does pull his punches.

For all of Jod’s casual violence, he goes out of his way not to hurt the kids. When he challenges Fern, he definitely threatens her and scares her, and he grabs her and holds a knife to her throat. But he doesn’t hit or shove her once, and he never gives her so much as a superficial cut with the knife. The whole time they’re “fighting,” he repeatedly tells her to yield, even pointing out that she needs to physically say the words to make it official. Once she does yield and he becomes captain, there’s no reason for Jod to order SM-33 to take the kids prisoner. It wouldn’t be hard for him and 33 to kill them, and it’d be easy to simply leave them for dead in a boobytrapped pirate’s lair. Taking them prisoner would be a hassle he doesn’t need, but that’s the order he gives anyway. Similarly, when they all get to At Attin, Jod is quick to threaten the kids and their parents with his newly-acquired lightsaber, but again, he doesn’t actually hurt any of them. He tells the other pirates to stop attacking, saying they use the civilians as forced labor, and he seems genuinely upset when the Onyx Cinder is shot down with KB inside.

None of this is to say that Jod is really “good.” Clearly, he’s not. But I love that it’s not entirely black and white, that there are certain lines the dangerous pirate doesn’t want to cross, even when it gets in the way of his treacherous plans. I like really his backstory, growing up as a starving street kid who’s briefly taken in by a Jedi on the run. As he tells the kids, she was only able to teach him a little before “they” caught her, forcing Jod to watch as they killed her. His experience of the galaxy is one where everyone is out to get you, and the “pinpricks of light” can’t outweigh the danger. In Jod’s mind, everything is kill-or-be-killed, meaning he has to look out for himself first because no one else will. His past trauma and deprivation don’t make his actions right, but it makes them understandable. What an excellent character to add to the larger universe of Star Wars!