Tarot Cards
With only a few episodes to go in this first season, The InBetween returns for another supernaturally charged stand-alone case, this time revolving around the mystical art of tarot cards. Cassie begins by experiencing a vision of being stabbed in the stomach by a masked, shadowy figure. As she gets back on the phone to Tom to tell him what she’s just experienced, we cut back to our detectives by the seashore at the scene of another crime. Upon hearing the victim was stabbed to death, Tom and Damien head to another scene that appears to have been staged to look like a break in. As it turns out, the victim’s name was Holly and she was big on tarot cards. On the day she died, she had her cards read. One card in particular, the ten swords, may have held a crucial role, along with a valuable ring she had worth over £1000. Thy catch a break when they arrest a man named Bruno. They then piece together what they believe happened – he was actually having an affair with Holly behind his wife’s back and she got pregnant. However, it’s not actually true as Bruno happened to have a vasectomy several years earlier, bringing them back to square one again. Meanwhile, Cassie tracks down a ghost’s son whom he never met but when she gets there, the reception is frosty to say the least. She refuses to let her in, saying he should have made amends while he was alive. However, Cassie does track him down eventually and his biological father watches on as his son learns he gets into Yale, celebrating with his current Dad. Cassie finds out soon after that it was him that wrote the letter about refusing paternal rights but he wanted to see his son as he was regretful. As the detectives bring Cassie in to discuss the cards, they find the meaning behind the ten swords. The sunrise on the picture means new beginnings which may have actually related to a fertility clinic by the same name. It turns out Holly was harvesting eggs for her sister as a surprise. The whole thing was an accident – Holly’s sister slapped her upon learning what her sibling did which resulted in her falling and subsequently dying. She and her husband staged the break in and threw Holly off a bridge to try and cover up the evidence. With the case solved, Cassie has one last farewell with the ghost from earlier in the episode, discussing his past music and the influence he had on her life growing up. The InBetween feels two shows rolled into one. Given the ease in which Cassie solves the case for the detectives at the end, I can’t help but feel the whole charade around interviewing different witnesses would have been resolved a lot quicker had they just consulted Cassie originally. The ghostly encounters she has feel like deliberate busy-work to try and throw her off the case each week and this consequently causes the entire show to feel like two styles rolled into one. At times this works reasonably well, especially her encounters with Ed, and there are some stand-out episodes but on the whole, The InBetween feels rigid by design and pretty formulaic. Still, there’s enough enjoyment to be had with this one over the summer, even if there are better shows out there in this genre.
