L&O season 2: Episode 2
Apr. 22nd, 2025 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyThis one was clearly ripped off the Ashley Madison hack, with a weird reference to Rohinie Bisesar (the woman who stabbed a stranger to death in the PATH Shoppers Drug Mart). The latter is even name-checked in the show, which I'm kind of surprised is legal.
The plot is needlessly convoluted. A hacker gets the database for Not!Ashley!Madison Dot Com, and appears to be blackmailing either the owner or someone in the database. People in the database include a well-regarded judge and a pastor of a megachurch. She's about to reveal the identity of someone in the database to her married best friend, but will only do it in person. They agree to meet in their usual spot in the PATH, but the hacker, who arrives first, is being followed. She makes her way to a Shoppers, where she's stabbed to death by a masked assailant.
It turns out that the married friend was also on the app, having gotten sick of being a wife and mommy, but the man she met wanted to play out a scenario called Door Ajar where she's blindfolded in an AirBnB when he comes in to meet her. She feels uncomfortable so she tries to take the blindfold off. He rapes her, and since she doesn't have a real name or face, she can't press charges.
(Not like the cops tend to pursue charges in rape cases, especially in this case, where it's a woman of colour cheating on her white husband. But let's go along with the copaganda for now.)
It turns out to be the megachurch pastor, obviously, who has killed the hacker to cover up his rapes of at least two women and to protect his wholesome Christian reputation.
This was messy, with a lot of steps, but at least it didn't actively evict homeless people from a park, making it a better episode than the previous one. There was a lot to dislike about it, though. Mostly, the cops were very judgmental about the cheating men but not so much when it turned out that a woman was cheating. Again, cops being hypocritical and bad at their jobs is par for the course, but I still get to be irritated about it.
The actual worst thing about it is the opening shots, which cut from married friend being blindfolded in a sexual situation to her child at a birthday party being blindfolded in a piñata situation. It's gross and unnecessary and the director should have thought with their brain and asked themselves if this was a good idea to do or not. (Spoiler: it's not.)
Also, some eagle-eyed viewer on Reddit spotted a Sikh extra in the Christian megachurch, which is funny.
The highlight is Sarah Podemski as the pastor's wife. The entire time I was trying to figure out who she was because she looked so familiar—she is Rita in the vastly superior show Reservation Dogs, and what was making me notice was that she was the character in this episode who could act. Which is a bit jarring, because she didn't have any lines but I felt immediately sympathetic towards her in a show where normally no one is sympathetic. I hope she gets better roles soon as she is really very good.
Plot: ** (grading on a curve, but it was better than last week's)
Characters: ** (we find out that Graff doesn't like talking on the phone. Technically this is only one piece of character information but I find it highly relatable)
Toronto: ** (it gets one point for the PATH, which is really an underused location that more people should use in fiction, and another point for the cheating app's location in Liberty Village. However, I find a megachurch on Jarvis to be implausible.)
Murder count for the season: I fucked up yesterday; there have actually been 10 murders in Toronto in 2025. Actually two were right near a friend's house, which is scary. Anyway, since the judge's death is suicide, the murder count is now 2, representing 20% of all murders in Toronto.
The plot is needlessly convoluted. A hacker gets the database for Not!Ashley!Madison Dot Com, and appears to be blackmailing either the owner or someone in the database. People in the database include a well-regarded judge and a pastor of a megachurch. She's about to reveal the identity of someone in the database to her married best friend, but will only do it in person. They agree to meet in their usual spot in the PATH, but the hacker, who arrives first, is being followed. She makes her way to a Shoppers, where she's stabbed to death by a masked assailant.
It turns out that the married friend was also on the app, having gotten sick of being a wife and mommy, but the man she met wanted to play out a scenario called Door Ajar where she's blindfolded in an AirBnB when he comes in to meet her. She feels uncomfortable so she tries to take the blindfold off. He rapes her, and since she doesn't have a real name or face, she can't press charges.
(Not like the cops tend to pursue charges in rape cases, especially in this case, where it's a woman of colour cheating on her white husband. But let's go along with the copaganda for now.)
It turns out to be the megachurch pastor, obviously, who has killed the hacker to cover up his rapes of at least two women and to protect his wholesome Christian reputation.
This was messy, with a lot of steps, but at least it didn't actively evict homeless people from a park, making it a better episode than the previous one. There was a lot to dislike about it, though. Mostly, the cops were very judgmental about the cheating men but not so much when it turned out that a woman was cheating. Again, cops being hypocritical and bad at their jobs is par for the course, but I still get to be irritated about it.
The actual worst thing about it is the opening shots, which cut from married friend being blindfolded in a sexual situation to her child at a birthday party being blindfolded in a piñata situation. It's gross and unnecessary and the director should have thought with their brain and asked themselves if this was a good idea to do or not. (Spoiler: it's not.)
Also, some eagle-eyed viewer on Reddit spotted a Sikh extra in the Christian megachurch, which is funny.
The highlight is Sarah Podemski as the pastor's wife. The entire time I was trying to figure out who she was because she looked so familiar—she is Rita in the vastly superior show Reservation Dogs, and what was making me notice was that she was the character in this episode who could act. Which is a bit jarring, because she didn't have any lines but I felt immediately sympathetic towards her in a show where normally no one is sympathetic. I hope she gets better roles soon as she is really very good.
Plot: ** (grading on a curve, but it was better than last week's)
Characters: ** (we find out that Graff doesn't like talking on the phone. Technically this is only one piece of character information but I find it highly relatable)
Toronto: ** (it gets one point for the PATH, which is really an underused location that more people should use in fiction, and another point for the cheating app's location in Liberty Village. However, I find a megachurch on Jarvis to be implausible.)
Murder count for the season: I fucked up yesterday; there have actually been 10 murders in Toronto in 2025. Actually two were right near a friend's house, which is scary. Anyway, since the judge's death is suicide, the murder count is now 2, representing 20% of all murders in Toronto.
