stars don't fall for men

A return from an old regular and a heart-breaking end to one of the show's best Regular/Guest star dynamics.

George Costigan is wonderful as Roxanne, with an effortless warmth, dry wit and charisma that does a really good job of following on from Paul O'Grady's earlier performance. I want to save a deep dive into the Ted/Roxanne relationship for another post, but it needs to be said both George and Tony do a wonderful job of conveying a lot with a relatively understated script.

Ted's return is also very well handled just from a returning character perspective. Where the character is makes sense with how he left, and he gets to interact with just about everyone you'd expect him to and his immediate digging at Andrew, Matt and Jack is a lot of fun. Having him mention Roy and Frank also makes me very happy.

The dynamic with Jim is the main one here, though, and it's delightfully layered. Jim trying to pull the clever moves on Ted and having it backfire because he just isn't Ted, or Frank, or really that kind of copper at all is a nice touch, as is Jim showing backbone regarding Ted's attitude towards his alcoholism (and Ted's own).

This two-parter is actually really strong for Jim over all. Between the drinking, the growing cynicism and complacency ahead of his tenure, and the resulting spiral of his anger issues, Jim hasn't gotten to just be good in a long while, and it's nice - if a bit sad - to see these glimpses of the man and officer he could have been in a kinder world.