Motor City Blues

Spoiler Alert!: The most important spoiler for the season so far is in this review.

by Courtney Hilden

Oh, hi, Detroit 187, it's been a long time since we've checked in with you.
The first thing this episode covered, and probably the biggest change on the show, is the death of Detective Stone. He sort of died off screen, as the audience watched him get shot and then they ended the episode there. And when we returned, there were the detectives, mourning his loss. Given that Stone was one of the few white and young actors on the show, it's surprising that they killed him off. This is actually sort of admirable, because usually when they kill off characters they are the person of color who has always been relegated to a side character anyway. Here's hoping the show will allow the other characters, almost all who are people of color, will be the focus of the show. They are far more interesting.
That said, the characters got over Stone's death pretty quickly. By about fifteen minutes into the episode, it was easy to conclude that no one on the team had died, judging by how business as usual the characters were. Sanchez, as a woman (and the only woman really on this team, as one of the others is a boss and the other is federal) was the only one allowed to mourn, which adheres to our culture's insistance that only women can (should, are weaker for) showing emotion and that men never feel anything, especially not for a colleague or friend. The scene between Sanchez and Fitch, talking about Stone, rang incredibly false. The actress playing Sanchez seemed to struggle to be sad.
Speaking of feminism, it would have been easy for this show to turn Fitch's wife, Linda, into a sterotype, but instead, they showed her as someone who wanted her son to know his father and wanted to avoid a confrontation with him. This is possibly the most heartaching and realistic-kid-centric divorced couple I've seen on television.
That said, taken in the context of Sanchez, Latina as female stereotype and Linda, white woman as not a female stereotype, I was bothered. Linda, a white character, is allowed to be more than her identity as a white woman, while Sanchez is confined to the stereotypes of Latinas as histronic. Or, put another way, Sanchez, as a woman of color has been defined solely as a woman of color, and nothing beyond that.
(As of this episode, Sanchez is also the character with the least to do or the least backstory. The show has spent time showing the audience Fitch's family problems, Washington's relative family bliss, Longford's struggle with whether or not to retire, and Mahajan, with his romantic life. When are they going to give Sanchez something to do other than be a love interest of Stone and Fitch? When is she going to be defined as more than a woman for male characters to desire?)
That said, this show as a whole has done been doing some wonderful things with their soundtrack and set. The soundtrack has been a wonderful blend of old school and new school, with an emphasis on music that has come out of Detroit. The graffiti in this episode was also great. "At least Katrina was quick." That's a wonderful bit of on-the-nose politics. Nice. And the best moment? Bobby freaking out Washington by calling him on the phone.

Appointment with Death

by Courtney Hilden

Appointment with Death follows Poirot as he travels to the so-called "Middle East" to see a dig of an ancient city, where a Biblical character is said to be buried.  As always, there's murder in store when the archeologist's wife, who supplies him with the financial resources to dig, turns up dead at the site.  As always, Poirot is on the case, and, as always, there are several red herrings to distract everyone from the crime at hand. 
Poirot, like all great detectives, is all about the details, and in this outing the show itself was all about the details. Poirot, for example, was doing things in style, using an interesting cane device with a built-in binocular that allowed him to see things in the distance.  Some of the details were even creepy, like one man referring to his much younger fiance as his "child bride."  The first victim's unshuttable eyes were also a nice detail, as they emphasized how horrifying her death was.  Even Poirot himself was a little creepy, telling someone that his "gray cells" were "singing" to him while he was trying to solve the case. 

Some of details were also pertinent to the place.  They made a point at depicting the call to prayer, and then later showed a group of local men praying.  It's nice, given that this story is almost chiefly about British characters, that the show's producers and director and creators remembered to show that they are not the only ones around, although almost none of these "Arabs" (a word that is itself very troubling) had speaking parts in the story.  They're more like set pieces, in someways, much like Wedgwood plates and Edwardian furniture in those houses that Poirot so frequently inhabits.   
Speaking of faith, just as is Murder on the Orient Express, this episode emphasized Poirot's Catholic faith.  One of the villains of the story was masquerading as a nun, but Poirot stayed with his faith, even passing it on to one of the ultimate victims of the story, the four children who were brutally abused by the the first murdered victim.  It's too bad that the child abuse aspect of the story was kept at such a minimum, since it was the most interesting and depressing part of the story.