Flashpoint: Who’s George
By fred | August 8, 2008
(S01E05) Brand new episode of this Canadian series, and as always it opens right in the middle of the action before “flashbacking” to a little earlier, before anything started. Where do we open this new episode ? Let me guess, there are guns involved and one way or another it’s some kind of new hostage situation… I know I’ve said this before, but I feel this is starting to be a little of a very noticeable flaw in this show : every episode is quite the same in that way.
Of course it’s a strong show and every episode has been pretty good so far, so there’s no real reason to seriously complain I guess, and the whole point of the show is to see the team react to such tense situation and specifically trying to resolve it without violence and opening fire, but by talking and negotiating.
And this week this is what it was all about, of course, and as always it was very well done.
We had a very classic situation : a bank robbery turned bad and a guy with a gun taking people hostage and asking for money. That’s really nothing new, and neither was the background of George. Nice trick to have the team at first think they were dealing with a professional who’d visited a few banks already, only to realize this wasn’t the case at all. After that, though, very classic background : the guy worked there for 20+ years, got fired, his wife got sick, he needed money, he was desperate, here we are.
What I like was the way things were handled with the new guy, from the little exercise at first, where it was clear he knew his manual but couldn’t really forget about it and start to really feel a situation and react to it, connect with the people involve and make it something real, not something on paper, to his “confrontation” with Parker to the final scene, in which it was clear that, even though he’s eager to learn and get better at this, he’s still the same. Best proof of this : all he cared was that the hostage was fine, that George was killed wasn’t a concern of his, he was the bad guy. For him, whoever’s got the gun - or happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time - is a bad guy, and bad guys can be killed.
I found it a bit odd that while pointing his gun to the hostage, everyone was holding fire, but as soon as George went up and pointed it towards one of them, they just shot him. Sure, Parker could have repeated his “hold fire” order, and he did not, and maybe that was the thing to do… Anyways, I’m also glad we didn’t get too much of a happy ending, that’s something I appreciate with this show.
I have a big problem with one thing though : security cameras. What the hell was that ?? I mean, George had been working here for decades, working as a security manager mind you - funny thing: he actually planned everything from security cameras recording - and yet apparently he had no idea that there were such thing inside the bank !?? Because if he wanted to stay anonymous, he should have put his mask right back on as soon as it went off, he had to know there were security cameras everywhere, not just because he worked there (as security… yeah okay I said it already) but because it’s a freaking bank!
But he did not, and then he freaked out when he found out the SRU knew who he was, and since they blamed his voice he stayed convinced that they couldn’t see him for the rest of his stay there. Seriously?
Anyways, another pretty good episode, and the fact that we had much less (not to say none) personal stuff from the team members might just also be one of the reason it worked so well, since this has always been the weakest part of the show.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Flashpoint
