Floyd
After an opening scene involving a dead cat outside, we begin episode 2 of Briarpatch with Jake phoning Allegra and checking up on her while she tends to a concussion. After getting dressed, Allegra speaks to AD and asks him to collect up some documents, intent on finding out just what’s going on and more convinced than ever that her sister didn’t live at that address. The bomb blast has caused more than a concussion it seems too, as Allegra wrestles with fragments of her sister bleeding into her mind. After a warm reception at the police station, Allegra collects up the files on Felicity and checks in on Strucker, who’s in a really bad way in hospital. With casts entombing his body, Allegra leaves and finds herself face to face with Freddie, who taunts her and casts seeds of doubts in her mind by reminding her “she’s not as good as she thinks she is.” Our protagonist ignores this of course and continues her investigation, speaking to Cindy McCabe who teases the police with her body before spilling details about Felicity and one of her ex-boyfriends; a man driving around in a “rattly old truck” that just so happens to drive past the house at that very moment. However, a run-in with Gene does help her close in on another possible suspect – Floyd, a man linked to the truck and the other pinches of information uncovered through the episode. After running into Jake and dancing around more half truths and ideas, Allegra manages to corner Floyd, leading to a foot chase across the car park, despite him telling her the feds will pin the murder on him and telling her he’s innocent. Unfortunately a nasty headache strikes at the worst possible time, prompting Floyd to stop and tell her he’ll bring her something to help. As the episode continues, Allegra exhibits doubts and suspicions about everyone around her, especially Kim who acts hostile toward Freddie when he tries entering the bar and yet buys him a drink in private later on in the episode. This is certainly suspicious behaviour and only reinforces that there’s something more at work here. The episode closes out with a montage of our various characters while Allegra returns back to her hotel room. Unfortunately she finds herself choked out and knocked down to the ground by a shadowy figure but quite who did this, remains a mystery for now. In true whodunnit fashion, Briarpatch leaves things wide open with multiple questions around who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. It’s an intriguing set-up and the various colourful characters here do a wonderful job fleshing out this mystery with competent and charismatic performances. There’s an underlying dark humour that weaves through the entire show as well and this really makes Briarpatch an unusually comedic drama that flirts that line between the two genres perfectly. While this episode is a little slow and the zoo animals in the first episode appear to have disappeared this time (I’m guessing the police have rounded these up now?), as a foundation setter, Briarpatch does well to add some more colour to this show and leave multiple unanswered questions going into next week.
