SGRoA: Forever Knight S02 E07: Hunted
In which we have another Se7en knockoff episode? The DVD liner notes tell me this ep is about some killer hunting killers. But I'm pretty sure we already had that plot, didn't we? Whatever, I guess. Onward!
We open on a dude dressed like a soldier walking around an...apartment complex? I think? Anyway, he looks at his watch, which is counting down to something. He's all freaked out and keeps running around on these ramps - maybe it's a municipal building? It's big. I can't imagine so many ramps at an apartment. He starts going through a trash can and finds a gun, so he shoots at nothing, and then gets shot dead. Someone else takes a metal suitcase - full of cash, obvies, because what else does one put in metal suitcases? - out of the trash and walks away.
So this seems like some sort of scavenger hunt or something, but instead of being made fun of on Facebook for failing, you die. Fun!
So this is the sixth killing in six months. Every time, there's a watch with 30 minutes on the counter, and there have been other guns given out, since slugs have been found in walls, but no guns have been recovered. Schenke calls the killer "The Garbage Man" because he "takes out the trash". The first victims were homeless guys, then street punks, now a knifefighter. So the liner notes were not entirely accurate: The killer is making a game of this, turning it into The Most Dangerous Game on the streets of Toronto. At least this episode promises to be more entertaining than that story.
And it's Flashback Time! Lacroix, Nick, and Janette are wandering around the woods looking for food. Janette's unhappy, Nick thinks they should fly, and Lacroix's all excited to go mountain-vampire and kill in the wild. Looks like 1840-something, and I'm with Janette.
Since they've got nothing on this guy, Nick suggests they go undercover. The killings were all fairly close together, so he and Schenke will go hang out in the neighborhood, try to get a bead on who it could be. Nick, of course, takes this opportunity to vamp out and fly around a bunch, because obviously that'll get him farther than just keeping his ear to the ground and listening to the scuttlebutt on the street.
He ends up following some biker dude who looks like Kevin Kline, is carrying a gun, and is really, really jumpy. So, okay, Nick, you made a good choice, but this is your show, so, you know. He flies down to talk to the guy? I think? and ends up getting shot by the killer and the dude. The killer takes his suitcase and flees, just before the biker's watch timer goes off and some uniforms show up.
So they've stopped another killing - good! But now the biker's all, "I shot that guy like a millionty times!" and Schenke can't get any info out of him at the scene - except that he found the gun he was using. 9mm, just like the bullets pulled from other crime scenes.
Back in the woods, our unhappy trio come upon their prey: a hunter. He welcomes them to sit at his fire, because they claim they're "weary travelers" and they have a woman with them. Lacroix gets super intense right away, asking about how he feels about the kill and blah blah, and the hunter rightly gets all, "So, yeah, nice to see you, enjoy the fire, I'm going home." They chase him, of course, and leave the fire just burning away, which seems like a particularly bad idea for vampires. Don't they know how fast forest fires can spread?
Anyway. Schenke wants the biker to be the Garbage Man, but Nick's all, "Dude. He had the watch and someone else was here, shooting at shit. Please be a detective for two seconds." They take the gun to Nat, because apparently the ME and ballistics are all the same thing, and she tells them it's not the murder weapon just by looking down the barrel with a flashlight.
She wonders how sick you have to be to want to hunt people, and Nick guiltily looks off into the middle distance so he can remember chasing the hunter through the forest like a crazy person.
They get Kevin Kline in the interview room, and it's really more like if Kevin Kline and Jeffrey Dean Morgan had a baby and he ended up on syndicated Canadian television. So Kevin Dean Morgan-Kline starts telling them how he ended up in that alley, looking for cash. He was in a bar, went to the loo, and when he came back, a tape recorder was on his table. He played it, and a distorted voice told him there was two million in cash waiting for him, he just had to go find it. While he was doing that, there would be someone hunting him. The watch was strapped to the tape recorder, and at the end of the time, he'd either have the money or he'd be dead.
So this is their only lead: a killer with no real motive and no connection to the victims, setting them up with cash. Random crimes are the most difficult to solve. Captain Cohen sends them to the RCMP profiler, and tells them they're to coordinate with "the Bureau". Apparently, the RCMP is like the FBI for Canada. For once, no one argues jurisdiction or anything; Schenke just makes the call. Must be Canadian politeness.
Schenke goes out to his car at the end of the night, alone, and ends up getting a tranquilizer dart for his trouble. Nick goes out a little after him, and sure enough, there in his car is a tape recorder with a watch on it. He has 30 minutes to rescue Schenke - alone, unarmed, and on foot, and while he himself is being hunted. The taped voice says it knows what Nick is, and what he'll be dealing with.
Since it's dawn, Nick goes down into the sewers and has a flashback. Lacroix and Janette are walking in circles around the woods, while Nick has gone back to the camp - where the fire is now, thankfully, out - and stops the hunter from shooting Lacroix with an arrow. Since Nick was smarter than everyone else, he gets to kill the dude. And he does, without whining about it for once.
Look, we can have a big discussion on how vampires see humans and whether they have souls or morals or whatever. I'm not really in the mood for it at the moment, but that's what comment sections are for, right? I'm just impressed that for once, Nick gave in to an unsavory impulse without twenty minutes of angst. We all make bad decisions. Few of us take quite so long to get to them as Nick does.
Anyway. Schenke's being held at a power station or something, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. Turns out the killer is a woman, but Schenke doesn't put that together and offers to save her from a psycho. She laughs at that, and, like any good villain, tells him all about her plans and why she does it. It's for sport, and Nick wouldn't be lured with money, because "his kind" doesn't need money. Schenke's all, "Buh? What kind?" and she laughs that he's being discreet on his partner's behalf. She's filling hollow points with garlic while all this is going down, too, and talking about the lust for power. She straps a bomb to his chair and is off to find Nick.
Who's finally reached the end of the sewers, and has his first encounter with the killer, who spends her time with him talking about vampirism. He puts the mojo on her, and it almost works. But not quite, so he's off and running through whatever shade he can find to get to Schenke.
Of course, this is a great time to flashback some more. Nick's shared his kill with his companions, and now we get guilt. Boring. Especially when the hunter's wife shows up and Nick's still lurking in the shadows, watching her screaming. Which I guess makes him think of Schenke's wife, and he's off again, done wasting time, I hope.
He finally makes it to the power station - there's lots of dials and walkways and stuff - with our killer close behind. He's got five minutes to find Schenke and get him away from a bomb, and he doesn't look very hurried. He also apparently can't smell humans or hear heartbeats, but he can hear the recording of her voice she's left on telling him that he's just like her. She's throwing holy water and molotov cocktails at him and he still seems more involved in getting her than finding Schenke - although he starts hearing Schenke's thoughts to find him? This is the most muddled episode about vampire powers we've yet had. It doesn't make me happy.
Two minutes now, and she's shooting him with her garlic hollowpoints while he's bargaining with her. She shoots him off a catwalk, but he doesn't hit the ground, so she goes back to the room where Schenke's being held and turns off all the lights and gets her night-vision goggles. Nick comes busting in through the window, blinding her, and rescues Schenke while she's blundering around. They get out of the room, but she's blown up by the bomb. Nice and neat.
Next week: Nick joins a cult! I remember this being a really good episode; we'll see how my memory holds up.