Season 1, Episode 3
Date of airing: April 27, 2021 (La Une, Belgium), May 6, 2021 (TF1, France)
Audience information: 10.52 million viewers, 41.5 percent share in Viewers 4+ (TF1, France)
Written by: Julien Anscutter, Marion Carnel, Alice Chegaray-Breugnot
Directed by: Vincent Jamain
”Your car's anti-theft transmitter is with the money?”
“Six thousand stolen cars. It seemed like a good purchase.”
It's not much of an anti-theft transmitter when you have to chase after the stolen car, and as soon as you find it, you can watch it burn to the ground. You still lose your car. Now you just need an anti-fire thingy.
The first half of the episode felt like the standard crime procedural cop-drama to fill the hour, before the writers finally decided to get into the gist of it and deliver a story. Before the episode made it clear that the girls were kidnapped and Morgane planned an impromptu money exchange, the story made the case look a lot more complex and meaner than it had any reason to be. It's the general curse of crime fiction: being forced to add to the story, so that the runtime (or the page count, when it comes to novels) can be used completely. And, sometimes the story doesn't just add extra minutes, but also unnecessary twists, red herrings, and boredom.
The episode got a lot more interesting and thrilling when Morgane found the mother at the antique shop and became a weird cop in her own right – helping the mother to get her kids back, all without police assistance. Karadec had all the reasons in the world to be mad at Morgane, and it should have been grounds for dismissal, with Morgane losing her consultant position then and there. But this is crime fiction, and it's only the third episode of the show, so of course Morgane won't learn what it's like to break all the rules and suffer the consequences for it.
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| A burned-out car has the biggest collection of clues. |
