I still don’t think this series is as good as Medical Investigation, and for the most part, it lacks that enjoyable “whodunit” suspense. There are some dull episodes, some exciting ones, and then the ones I can’t help but watch again and again, because I love them. I still don’t enjoy it as much as some other shows because I really need to have that “whodunit” suspense
But the actors do a great job, and what’s sad is that a team element – the main thing I found lacking about this show – looked as though it were starting to build when the show ended. The characters only
just seemed to be forming closer bonds with each other (the Darnell and Joe relationship was becoming more father/son-ish, Marcy and Lily were getting eerily tight – as in, to the point where they were talking of sexual exploits – and I’m half-certain the show’s creators were planning to go somewhere with Heather/Joe). So, it’s not great but it grew on me a lot, I think.
Another thing I really enjoyed was seeing how AB handled the part; what’s weird is it seems like she brought an ironic element to Lily’s character that possibly wasn’t supposed to be there from the first, but that they ended up using anyway later on. I don’t know that I’d want to see a second season of this show, like I would with MI – but it might’ve been nice because it seemed like they were
just starting to take Lily’s character in an interesting direction (Darnell’s too, but the other three characters – Heather, Marcy, and even Joe – were fairly static). It seemed liked Lily was getting pretty tired of some of the assignments she was getting. She was all gung-ho about her job in the beginning, and then it was as though she was getting disillusioned with it later on, when she kept being sent undercover in ‘guy-bait’ roles. In the mobster –wedding episode, Joe was pressing her about how important her part was, and she answered him with something like “yes, I know I’m a very important piece of ass-et”. Joe laughed, but I’m still not sure Lily was actually joking – there were some FBI agents under Joe who were specifically paid to sleep with whoever the target(s) was, but there was this whole tiff between Joe and Lily in one episode (not the mobster-wedding one, but an earlier one where she was undercover as an Irish nanny) where she kept insisting that that wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
I don’t know, I found it to be a neat potential storyline, and I wish I could’ve seen where it would’ve gone. Unfortunately, the entire show ended rather abruptly. The ending of Episode 16, the final one, barely seems as though it should’ve been allowed to end where it did, let alone serve as the ending to the series. It literally ended with their suspect jumping off a balcony to his death while Joe looks on in horror. *shrugs* Weird.
Episode 12 was easily my favourite of the series. Anna and Hill really knocked it out of the park in this one, I was on edge during every one of their scenes. Lily and Darnell were undercover among this group of small-time thugs who were stealing cars; things get out of hand when one of them ends up shooting/murdering Lily’s undercover boyfriend (he was also a member of the group, but was getting ready to turn his friends in; I felt so bad for him because he was so genuinely afraid of getting killed, too
). The leader freaks and basically forces the entire gang by gunpoint, Darnell and Lily included, to skip town. Neither Darnell or Lily can contact the team in the meantime, so it’s assumed that they’d been kidnapped; Joe and Marcy spend the entire episode looking for them. It was an
intense one. I felt even worse for Lily than I did for the undercover guy, because it seemed like the guy really was her boyfriend (actually, I’m still trying to figure out if he was for real, or if they were putting on a show for the rest of the gang. The latter is possible, but their scene at the beginning had more feeling in it than I’ve ever perceived in any of Lindsay and Danny’s scenes, and there weren’t any witnesses. And I can’t believe all that hysteria after he died was just for show.).
What was also sweet was how Darnell was all concerned about getting Lily away from the gang first – because she was the rookie – before dealing with the leader on his own.
- the other fun fact about this ep is it guest-starred Emmanuelle Vaugier. Not as a part of the Lily-Darnell case – she was playing a character who was set to testify against her boyfriend the next day; Heather was babysitting her during the night because she was petrified her boyfriend was going to show up at her place. I liked EV a lot in this, and her character was pretty great, too. It made me wish yet again that she’d been set up to play a character other than Angell on NY, because in another role I might’ve actually liked her there, too.
There were other fun episodes; Episode 15 , “The Wedding Party” was another great one, kept making me laugh though, because Lily’s mobster “fiancée” was the guy from CSI:NY’s S1 finale (the diner-waitress’s boyfriend?). And Episode 13 was also a good one, but that’s because I loved the whole political-thriller element.
