Challenge 02: Previously On... Death In Paradise 9x04
This review contains images and spoilers for the episode in question. Be warned!
Secondary warning: domestic abuse and suicide are discussed in the episode.
904: Pirates of the Murder Scene
The 4th episode picks up where the last one left off. Mooney is sitting on a log on the beach thinking about his options. The scene is intercut with a church service - so I'm guessing someone at that church is going to die. And it's either the young woman or her boyfriend/husband (who also appears to be the pastor's son). Okay, it's the husband, apparently. The pastor knocks on their door at midnight and when the wife (Alesha) opens, he says he got a "help me" text from his son Christopher.
Cut to Christopher, lying dead in a boat floating on the ocean, his broken phone next to him.
Aaaand: theme music. I still love the contrast between the murders and then boom! Everything is colourful and happy.
Cut to the next morning. The boat is at the harbour and the team are investigating. Madeleine is wearing a colourful jumpsuit again!
JP doesn't have much info: just he vic's name and that he's dead. His phone needs recharging before they can try and get some info from it, and the boat has no identifying markings.
Madeleine and Mooney talk to the family/main suspects. The pastor says Christopher left early; everyone else stayed to clean up. The wife (Alesha) says he had an office in town and she assumed he went there because his car wasn't in the drive when she got home. The other two (Shonelle and Clarence Delpont) are friends who don't really contribute much at this point. The pastor shows the text message from his son which Mooney finds a little strange. Meanwhile Madeleine went to take a call and calls Mooney over. They found Christopher's car in the jungle.
Jumpsuit from the front:
Back at the station, Mooney is looking at a map of the island when Ruby and JP come in. Ruby found no prints on the boat and JP couldn't really find out where the vic went after the church barbecue.
After work, Mooney meets up with Anna and his daughter Siobhan who's visiting. Siobhan and Anna get along great. Siobhan loves the idea of Mooney joining Anna on her trip. Anna, meanwhile, doesn't expect Mooney to just drop everything and get on a plane, but maybe by the end of the months he'll have things sorted to join her in San Francisco. I'm really glad they made Siobhan and Anna get along.
Siobhan talks about her new job and Mooney is visibly proud of her, which is also very sweet. But he's also very pensive. I hope he's not going to do something rash because I really like Anna.
The next day, JP investigates the vic's office while Ruby tries to trace the boat. JP finds a security camera while Ruby finds... a paint blob. At the station, Mooney receives a fax: the autopsy report says that Christopher died after a fall from a significant height... which doesn't fit at all with the whole boat thing. So how did he end up there? Clearly someone pushed him from somewhere, put him in the boat and pushed it out to sea.
He and Madeleine go over the murder board. The vic was born on St. Marie, his father is the pastor. The others (Alesha, Shonelle and Clarence) became friends with Christopher at the church's Sunday school when they were kids. Christopher and Alesha started dating as teenagers and then married after school.
Alesha had a hard childhood - she was abandoned as a baby. Clarence is the church's musical director - something about him makes Mooney suspicious. There is next to nothing on Shonelle.
Then Ruby comes in in a very good mood. She proudly tells them she found... a splodge. It really isn't much, but I like how Mooney and Madeleine are still encouraging Ruby. Then JP calls and says he found nothing, except the security camera. It shows the vic arriving at the office after the barbecue... and something else.
Mooney checks his email for the file and it's Schonelle, entering Christopher's office. Guess who was lying about that to the police?
Shonelle is acting very weird and suspicious when Mooney and Madeleine go to talk to her. But she categorically denies there being an affair between them. She still doesn't want to talk about it, but Mooney threatens to arrest her for obstruction. So she tells him that Christopher was a player. He constantly cheated on his wife. He supposedly stopped, but Shonelle caught him with another woman and tried to talk to him about it. She told him to stop sinning like that and that she wouldn't tell his wife if he just stopped.
Cut to Mooney and Madeleine interviewing Alesha. She tells them she knew about it. Which of course is a great motive. But she also says she has, in fact, been planning to leave Christopher. She pulls out a bunch of paperwork (rental agreements and so on) to prove it. So why would she kill him for cheating if she was already planning on leaving him? (She noticeably has trouble bending over to reach the paperwork, so remember this as A Clue.)
Back at the station, Mooney sets Madeleine on finding the other woman to check her alibi. Inside, they find JP reading a file and Ruby... napping with her feet in a tub of water.
She apologises, but she's been all over the island to find info on the boat, but no luck. Mooney is ready to admit defeat, but Ruby is not giving up yet: she called the Big Guns.
Cue the Commissioner walking in.
Ruby asked him to put a photo of the boat in the local paper to ask for help from the people of St. Marie. While the Commissioner is there, Mooney asks to talk to him.
Before he leaves, the Commissioner talks to JP about the sergeant's exam. He says it's particularly challenging this year, since he set it himself.
JP's face:
The Commissioner's face:
Back in his house, Mooney goes through some personal paperwork. He finds the title to his house in London and a picture of his wife and daughter. The Commissioner arrives and they settle down with a bottle of whiskey(?) - something alcoholic. They talk a bit and Mooney mentions he might leave to go travelling. (Yay!) The Commissioner has some very good advice, which is basically "stop worrying about what other people think/want and do what you need to do for yourself."
The next morning, Ruby's in the paper. No calls yet, but it's early. Madeleine found the vic's affair, but she's been off the island visiting family. The only thing JP found on the vic's office computer was that he accessed his wife's email and social media accounts, and that he's been doing it for ages. Mooney supposes he might have been insecure about his marriage, but Madeleine counters that he was the one having affairs.
Mooney and Madeleine head to the church to talk to the pastor to get some info on Shonelle and Clarence. He reveals that Clarence used to have a crush on Alesha before she married Christopher and he married Shonelle. The day before his wedding, he had doubts, but he talked himself into the marriage anyway.
At the station, Ruby waits for the phone to ring.
It finally does and it is indeed someone who saw the article and recognised the boat. Cut to a little lighthouse:
The boat belonged to the lighthouse keeper who left it there when the lighthouse was automated ten years before. So the lighthouse is where the murderer got the boat - might also be the scene of crime. Evidence of a break-in seems to point to it. And the vic fell to his death - the lighthouse is definitely tall enough.
Mooney and Madeleine climb up to the lighthouse - Mooney is obviously not fond of heights.
He finds a small plastic ballerina, like from a music box. They also find signs of a struggle.
Back at the station, JP has found a fingerprint match: Clarence's fingerprint is on the tarpaulin the boat was stored under...
They collect Clarence for questioning and confront him with the evidence but he denies it. He admits he was at the lighthouse, but he didn't kill him. He refuses to say anything else.
Cut to the music box sans ballerina... and Shonelle.
Madeleine delves deeper into the vic's computer and finds out that he was very controlling. He cancelled nights out he didn't want his wife to go on and so on. And if he was controlling and jealous, maybe he and Clarence did fight, considering Clarence is in love with Alesha.
Mooney fiddles with his tie and says he has to go and do something. From the way this is filmed, it looks like he reached a decision, and that decision is not staying on St. Marie.
Mooney meets up with Anna and tells her... he's not actually joining her on the trip. She's ... not surprised. She tells Mooney that he's running away from his unhappiness and his grief and he tells her she's doing the same. But Anna isn't - she was unhappy at home, stuck in a marriage she didn't want anymore. Travelling is her way of being herself, of finding herself again. Mooney? He's just running. But Mooney counters that he's not. He's doing the same thing - by going home.
He says that travelling with Anna would be amazing, but it would also be him running away again. So he's doing the opposite. He's going home to confront his old life - the life he lost.
Mooney: How cross are you on a scale of one to ten?
Anna: Ten... and a half.
But then she kisses him! Says she'll be away until next January (and it can't be later than late January/early February here) but that she'll make London her last stop. And he's going to wait for her. Awww. I'm kind of sad that they're not going to be together now, but at least there's hope?
Back at the station, Ruby found an article about the lighthouse about a baby being abandoned there - a baby that happens to be Alesha. Mooney has the beginning of an idea and talks to Clarence who says his wife has the music box. Shonelle tells Mooney she found it in Clarence's truck. She'd known something was up when Clarence came home late that night, sweaty and upset. But he denied everything.
Mooney opens the music box and boom. He's got it figured out.
Cut to Alesha's house. Mooney knocks with the music box in his hands. Alesha opens and sees it. "You know?" Mooney nods.
Mooney follows her into the house while the others stay outside. They talk while Mooney is gluing the ballerina back in place.
The music box belonged to Alesha's mother. It was the only thing she had of her mother's. Alesha was at the lighthouse that night to kill herself. Christopher was controlling and abusive. He found out she'd been planning to leave him and Alesha saw no other way out. But Christopher found her note and went to Clarence for help to figure out where she went. Clarence, of course, didn't want her to die and he didn't know about the abuse, so he figured out she was at the lighthouse. They went there and Chistopher went up to Alesha. They fought. He fell over the railing in the struggle. Clarence sent Alesha home and put Christopher into the boat. He waited until Alesha was home to send a text to the pastor with Christopher's phone to give Alesha an alibi and then he went home himself.
Mooney is very careful in the interview - he keeps his voice soft and makes it clear that Christopher was wrong to abuse Alesha. He's very understanding.
I liked that they did it differently this time. No big reveal, no rehashing things with everyone there. Just Alesha and Mooney. It would have been awful for her to have to do this in front of everyone, I imagine.
Mooney is clearly touched by the case.
Back at the station, he tells the Commissioner his decision: he's not going travelling, but he is leaving the island.
The Commissioner says they're gonna miss him.
Mooney is a little teary:
Back at his house, he's packing his bags. Siobhan is giving the view one last look before she grabs a bag. Mooney says they'll be back to visit (I wish). He says goodbye to Harry ("look after the next one for me"). And cut to some lovely scenery shots as they drive to the airport.
After a stop to say goodbye to Catherine, they're at the airport and say goodbye to the team.
Hang on, boys, you can do better than that!
It's bittersweet, seeing Mooney leave the show. But at least he's leaving on a somewhat hopeful and happy note.
And because crime never sleeps on this island, the last scene is the team (sans Mooney but with the Commissioner) at the station. The Commissioner wanted to drop by to see how they're coping. Just as he's saying he hasn't found a replacement yet but that he hopes there won't be any serious crime until then, the phone rings. They have: a suspicious death.
The episode ends with the team getting ready to go to the scene. JP stops in the door and turns back to Mooney's empty desk before following everyone else.
The music is spot on in the last few minutes. First someone sings that home is where the heart is when Mooney is saying his goodbyes, and then in the end scene it's "my heart is gone" or something along those lines.
Now we just have to hope that the new guy, whoever he may be, is up to the challenge.
Secondary warning: domestic abuse and suicide are discussed in the episode.
904: Pirates of the Murder Scene
The 4th episode picks up where the last one left off. Mooney is sitting on a log on the beach thinking about his options. The scene is intercut with a church service - so I'm guessing someone at that church is going to die. And it's either the young woman or her boyfriend/husband (who also appears to be the pastor's son). Okay, it's the husband, apparently. The pastor knocks on their door at midnight and when the wife (Alesha) opens, he says he got a "help me" text from his son Christopher.
Cut to Christopher, lying dead in a boat floating on the ocean, his broken phone next to him.
Aaaand: theme music. I still love the contrast between the murders and then boom! Everything is colourful and happy.
Cut to the next morning. The boat is at the harbour and the team are investigating. Madeleine is wearing a colourful jumpsuit again!
JP doesn't have much info: just he vic's name and that he's dead. His phone needs recharging before they can try and get some info from it, and the boat has no identifying markings.
Madeleine and Mooney talk to the family/main suspects. The pastor says Christopher left early; everyone else stayed to clean up. The wife (Alesha) says he had an office in town and she assumed he went there because his car wasn't in the drive when she got home. The other two (Shonelle and Clarence Delpont) are friends who don't really contribute much at this point. The pastor shows the text message from his son which Mooney finds a little strange. Meanwhile Madeleine went to take a call and calls Mooney over. They found Christopher's car in the jungle.
Jumpsuit from the front:
Back at the station, Mooney is looking at a map of the island when Ruby and JP come in. Ruby found no prints on the boat and JP couldn't really find out where the vic went after the church barbecue.
After work, Mooney meets up with Anna and his daughter Siobhan who's visiting. Siobhan and Anna get along great. Siobhan loves the idea of Mooney joining Anna on her trip. Anna, meanwhile, doesn't expect Mooney to just drop everything and get on a plane, but maybe by the end of the months he'll have things sorted to join her in San Francisco. I'm really glad they made Siobhan and Anna get along.
Siobhan talks about her new job and Mooney is visibly proud of her, which is also very sweet. But he's also very pensive. I hope he's not going to do something rash because I really like Anna.
The next day, JP investigates the vic's office while Ruby tries to trace the boat. JP finds a security camera while Ruby finds... a paint blob. At the station, Mooney receives a fax: the autopsy report says that Christopher died after a fall from a significant height... which doesn't fit at all with the whole boat thing. So how did he end up there? Clearly someone pushed him from somewhere, put him in the boat and pushed it out to sea.
He and Madeleine go over the murder board. The vic was born on St. Marie, his father is the pastor. The others (Alesha, Shonelle and Clarence) became friends with Christopher at the church's Sunday school when they were kids. Christopher and Alesha started dating as teenagers and then married after school.
Alesha had a hard childhood - she was abandoned as a baby. Clarence is the church's musical director - something about him makes Mooney suspicious. There is next to nothing on Shonelle.
Then Ruby comes in in a very good mood. She proudly tells them she found... a splodge. It really isn't much, but I like how Mooney and Madeleine are still encouraging Ruby. Then JP calls and says he found nothing, except the security camera. It shows the vic arriving at the office after the barbecue... and something else.
Mooney checks his email for the file and it's Schonelle, entering Christopher's office. Guess who was lying about that to the police?
Shonelle is acting very weird and suspicious when Mooney and Madeleine go to talk to her. But she categorically denies there being an affair between them. She still doesn't want to talk about it, but Mooney threatens to arrest her for obstruction. So she tells him that Christopher was a player. He constantly cheated on his wife. He supposedly stopped, but Shonelle caught him with another woman and tried to talk to him about it. She told him to stop sinning like that and that she wouldn't tell his wife if he just stopped.
Cut to Mooney and Madeleine interviewing Alesha. She tells them she knew about it. Which of course is a great motive. But she also says she has, in fact, been planning to leave Christopher. She pulls out a bunch of paperwork (rental agreements and so on) to prove it. So why would she kill him for cheating if she was already planning on leaving him? (She noticeably has trouble bending over to reach the paperwork, so remember this as A Clue.)
Back at the station, Mooney sets Madeleine on finding the other woman to check her alibi. Inside, they find JP reading a file and Ruby... napping with her feet in a tub of water.
She apologises, but she's been all over the island to find info on the boat, but no luck. Mooney is ready to admit defeat, but Ruby is not giving up yet: she called the Big Guns.
Cue the Commissioner walking in.
Ruby asked him to put a photo of the boat in the local paper to ask for help from the people of St. Marie. While the Commissioner is there, Mooney asks to talk to him.
Before he leaves, the Commissioner talks to JP about the sergeant's exam. He says it's particularly challenging this year, since he set it himself.
JP's face:
The Commissioner's face:
Back in his house, Mooney goes through some personal paperwork. He finds the title to his house in London and a picture of his wife and daughter. The Commissioner arrives and they settle down with a bottle of whiskey(?) - something alcoholic. They talk a bit and Mooney mentions he might leave to go travelling. (Yay!) The Commissioner has some very good advice, which is basically "stop worrying about what other people think/want and do what you need to do for yourself."
The next morning, Ruby's in the paper. No calls yet, but it's early. Madeleine found the vic's affair, but she's been off the island visiting family. The only thing JP found on the vic's office computer was that he accessed his wife's email and social media accounts, and that he's been doing it for ages. Mooney supposes he might have been insecure about his marriage, but Madeleine counters that he was the one having affairs.
Mooney and Madeleine head to the church to talk to the pastor to get some info on Shonelle and Clarence. He reveals that Clarence used to have a crush on Alesha before she married Christopher and he married Shonelle. The day before his wedding, he had doubts, but he talked himself into the marriage anyway.
At the station, Ruby waits for the phone to ring.
It finally does and it is indeed someone who saw the article and recognised the boat. Cut to a little lighthouse:
The boat belonged to the lighthouse keeper who left it there when the lighthouse was automated ten years before. So the lighthouse is where the murderer got the boat - might also be the scene of crime. Evidence of a break-in seems to point to it. And the vic fell to his death - the lighthouse is definitely tall enough.
Mooney and Madeleine climb up to the lighthouse - Mooney is obviously not fond of heights.
He finds a small plastic ballerina, like from a music box. They also find signs of a struggle.
Back at the station, JP has found a fingerprint match: Clarence's fingerprint is on the tarpaulin the boat was stored under...
They collect Clarence for questioning and confront him with the evidence but he denies it. He admits he was at the lighthouse, but he didn't kill him. He refuses to say anything else.
Cut to the music box sans ballerina... and Shonelle.
Madeleine delves deeper into the vic's computer and finds out that he was very controlling. He cancelled nights out he didn't want his wife to go on and so on. And if he was controlling and jealous, maybe he and Clarence did fight, considering Clarence is in love with Alesha.
Mooney fiddles with his tie and says he has to go and do something. From the way this is filmed, it looks like he reached a decision, and that decision is not staying on St. Marie.
Mooney meets up with Anna and tells her... he's not actually joining her on the trip. She's ... not surprised. She tells Mooney that he's running away from his unhappiness and his grief and he tells her she's doing the same. But Anna isn't - she was unhappy at home, stuck in a marriage she didn't want anymore. Travelling is her way of being herself, of finding herself again. Mooney? He's just running. But Mooney counters that he's not. He's doing the same thing - by going home.
He says that travelling with Anna would be amazing, but it would also be him running away again. So he's doing the opposite. He's going home to confront his old life - the life he lost.
Mooney: How cross are you on a scale of one to ten?
Anna: Ten... and a half.
But then she kisses him! Says she'll be away until next January (and it can't be later than late January/early February here) but that she'll make London her last stop. And he's going to wait for her. Awww. I'm kind of sad that they're not going to be together now, but at least there's hope?
Back at the station, Ruby found an article about the lighthouse about a baby being abandoned there - a baby that happens to be Alesha. Mooney has the beginning of an idea and talks to Clarence who says his wife has the music box. Shonelle tells Mooney she found it in Clarence's truck. She'd known something was up when Clarence came home late that night, sweaty and upset. But he denied everything.
Mooney opens the music box and boom. He's got it figured out.
Cut to Alesha's house. Mooney knocks with the music box in his hands. Alesha opens and sees it. "You know?" Mooney nods.
Mooney follows her into the house while the others stay outside. They talk while Mooney is gluing the ballerina back in place.
The music box belonged to Alesha's mother. It was the only thing she had of her mother's. Alesha was at the lighthouse that night to kill herself. Christopher was controlling and abusive. He found out she'd been planning to leave him and Alesha saw no other way out. But Christopher found her note and went to Clarence for help to figure out where she went. Clarence, of course, didn't want her to die and he didn't know about the abuse, so he figured out she was at the lighthouse. They went there and Chistopher went up to Alesha. They fought. He fell over the railing in the struggle. Clarence sent Alesha home and put Christopher into the boat. He waited until Alesha was home to send a text to the pastor with Christopher's phone to give Alesha an alibi and then he went home himself.
Mooney is very careful in the interview - he keeps his voice soft and makes it clear that Christopher was wrong to abuse Alesha. He's very understanding.
I liked that they did it differently this time. No big reveal, no rehashing things with everyone there. Just Alesha and Mooney. It would have been awful for her to have to do this in front of everyone, I imagine.
Mooney is clearly touched by the case.
Back at the station, he tells the Commissioner his decision: he's not going travelling, but he is leaving the island.
The Commissioner says they're gonna miss him.
Mooney is a little teary:
Back at his house, he's packing his bags. Siobhan is giving the view one last look before she grabs a bag. Mooney says they'll be back to visit (I wish). He says goodbye to Harry ("look after the next one for me"). And cut to some lovely scenery shots as they drive to the airport.
After a stop to say goodbye to Catherine, they're at the airport and say goodbye to the team.
Hang on, boys, you can do better than that!
It's bittersweet, seeing Mooney leave the show. But at least he's leaving on a somewhat hopeful and happy note.
And because crime never sleeps on this island, the last scene is the team (sans Mooney but with the Commissioner) at the station. The Commissioner wanted to drop by to see how they're coping. Just as he's saying he hasn't found a replacement yet but that he hopes there won't be any serious crime until then, the phone rings. They have: a suspicious death.
The episode ends with the team getting ready to go to the scene. JP stops in the door and turns back to Mooney's empty desk before following everyone else.
The music is spot on in the last few minutes. First someone sings that home is where the heart is when Mooney is saying his goodbyes, and then in the end scene it's "my heart is gone" or something along those lines.
Now we just have to hope that the new guy, whoever he may be, is up to the challenge.