A TOUCH OF PANIC Review Murder In A Small Town Ep 1.05

Welcome back fans, is there a fan name for Murder In A Small Town? Anyway let’s talk “A Touch of Panic”.

The episode opens on one of the newest residents of Gibson, Holly Alberg (Dakota Guppy) is out taking photos with her friend Devon (Alisha Newton). It is a nice touch that she’s a photographer continuing the artist in the family thing with her grandmother being a painter. Anyway while these two friends are taking pictures the viewer becomes aware that someone is watching.

Eventually Devon notices and honestly this is the first moment in the episode that irked me. Devon is getting more and more concerned about the stalker and Holly really isn’t taking her seriously. I’ll note dive fully into a rant about how disrespectful it is to ignore a friend when they tell you they are scared but eventually Holly realises something is up. Devon’s panicking at that point but they are luckily saved when they hear and see a police car pull up in our lead in to our most problematic scene of the episode.

A Little Too Real

A young woman Genevieve (Amy King) runs a stop sign prompting a traffic stop. This is the stop that scares off the stalker targeting the girls. Officer Kendrick (Fritzy-Klevans Destine) is the cop involved and this interaction is so uncomfortable to watch the pair should be recognised for this performance. This interaction and its consequences extend throughout the episode.

Kendrick was incredibly inappropriate during the stop. The lean in and then telling her to stop when she gets her documents out really made me uncomfortable. If there was a checklist of a police officer should not during a stop he hit most of the big ones. The power imbalance in the situation and then the personal questions were just too much.

Moving on, though we will be back we drop in our resident OTP.  They are in the process of reassessing the relationship following the dinner with Holly. It is cute  to be honest we also hear Cassandra (Kristin Kreuk) once again mention the library expansion fans so I suspect that will keep coming up. Karl (Rossif Sutherland) is supportive here and we learn that both the women in Karl’s life are somewhat wary of each other and that makes a lot of sense.

The Watcher Watches

We also get a look at someone looking at the two lovebirds, maybe looming from a distance is a pretty description. Karl comes home and meets Devon for the first time and bless her heart she tells him about creepy pick up driver much to Holly’s annoyance. He then has the mildest freakout in known history and tells them to be careful and that he will drive Devon home that day.

Creepy dude (Devon Sawa) comes over and introduces himself to Cassandra shortly after she has a typical mother and adult daughter talk. They don’t mention Karl so I wonder if she has told her mother about him yet. Creepy dude says he wants to help with the planning.

Over at the police station Genevieve submitted a complaint and Kendrick has to explain himself. The worrying thing is he really doesn’t see that he did anything wrong. Things get pre-empted when our sheriff realises this traffic stop is the one that scared off the stalker. At the library Cassandra and Holly have an interaction with way too much tension not helped by Cassandra being distracted by an up coming meeting. The meeting is with creepy guy to talk building stuff but Cassandra is no dummy and quickly realises he is not who he claims to be. Unfortunately the realisation comes too late.

Making A Bad Situation Worse

Karl goes to check on Cassandra as she hasn’t responded to his texts, he meets Bree (Paloma Kwiatkowski) who confirms something is wrong. Corporal Edwina Yen (Mya Lowe) goes to talk to Genevieve about the complaint and somehow this whole incident becomes even more problematic. While questioning her and getting some pushback, Edwina suggests that the complaint has a racial factor behind it. I nearly launched my phone at the screen.

I’m not sure the thought behind this interaction, there is nothing that happened during the stop that suggests this. There is a lot of pushback during the questioning and things become adversarial quickly which is not the way someone as a complainant would want things to go at this initial stage. That brings things to an end in such a dismissive way that it is no surprise later when we find out the complaint goes away.

As a black man this stuck with me for the rest of the episode. It depends on your take if Genevieve maybe is racist which I don’t think the show went far enough to make that clear. Even if that is the case, police don’t get to be creepy because the victim isn’t a nice person. Later the Seargeant and Karl discuss Kendrick but at the end of the day those are just words, there’s no apology to the victim, no writeup for Kendrick and the highest ranked policewoman  at the station basically intimidates someone intro dropping a complaint. Same thin blue line even in a small town on the Sunshine Coast.

Cassandra Handles a Crisis

The kidnapping story that is the second half of this episode is pretty gripping. We find out that Gordon Murphy is here for revenge against Karl. Cassandra proves herself a badass sending out a message to provide a crucial clue. We find out that her mother recently recovered from a serious battle with cancer. She suggests coming out on the other side changed her mother and I think we’ll have to meet her before the end of the season.

Seeing Karl not able to do his calm and collected thing was interesting. The interaction with Holly was touching as well, hopefully she’ll give Cassandra a little slack going forward.

What did you think about  “A Touch of Panic” did the traffic stop bother you? Do you think Kendrick is can hack it as a cop? Let us know in the comments.

Read our review for Prized Possessions if you missed it.