about twenty seconds worth of civility left in me

Smithy is arrested following the murder of Louise Larson, leading us into Act 3 of one of the biggest storylines of the early JY era, albeit one that did start under PM. I never really loved the Larson arc, though Marcel and McTavish are both fantastic guest actors and Alex is great throughout but this episode does well at a point where the show is still trying to find it's footing after the regime change. S22 is an odd transitional year - they have curtailed some of the more excessively nonsense storylines and characters of the PM era, but we are still very firmly in Soap Opera territory for the moment.

One thing that makes this episode stand out at this particular point is the episode revolves entirely around this single incident. Even the unrelated threads happen within the framework of this one primary plot thread and the eps that do this are always stronger for it. The show also does quite well with the initial ambiguity and decision not to use dramatic irony for this ep - we do not see Louise get killed in the previous episode, instead the audience arrives on scene with Yvonne and Tony to see the aftermath with no additional information to fill in the blanks. I really like what the show does with this because away from the intial moment of confusion where the show gets to play with the horrifying possibility that Smithy could have done something and been completely unaware of it, the audience is not expected to believe Smithy killed Louise. The plot is not held together by the mystery of whether or not Smithy did it, but how can we prove he didn't. And that's where the earlier ambiguity helps: the audience is not sat there in frustration watching the characters try and piece together something we already know the answer to, we are in the same position as Yvonne and Adam and Neil - we believe Smithy is innocent, but how do we prove that?

Smithy is great, of course, but it's also a really good ep for Yvonne and Adam who get a chance to showcase their strengths and just be good officers and supportive colleagues after their messier storylines the previous year.

Zain is instantly all in on helping Smithy out, and their onscreen friendship really is great throughout this storyline and I hate that it disappears pretty much as soon as Smithy comes out of prison. I especially hate that it doesn't crop up again at all during the Shaw arc or Zain's return after being imprisoned and I will be going into more detail about that later, but ultimately it is not the fault of this episode or storyline that the romance in the Shaw arc is basically a lazy copy of this one and does nothing to integrate the existing interpersonal relationships.

We also get a reappearance by DCI Frank Keane, who is still a bit of a dick, and confirmation that Emma is his daughter. It's a nice fun detail but after this storyline they don't really manage to handle not being able to get the actor back for key episodes very well, but again, not the fault of this episode.

We also say goodbye to JT this episode, who has a very underwhelming exit after being given essentially fuck all to do for the year he's been here, which is a shame cos Nick Patrick could have done some good work if they'd given him the material. We also say goodbye to Dean McVerry around this time (he leaves seven episodes later, though only appears in two) though I understand why the show is dropping the administrative staff, since while they are a more accurate representation of how a station is run at this point in time, there is very little for them to do on a regular basis as characters outside of personal storylines which the show is intending to step away from.