After Reid took the week off last episode, the Inspector was back in action in a thrilling episode that wrapped up ongoing plotlines in often shocking ways, and catapulted the season into an entirely unexpected new direction.
It was clear within the first few minutes that ‘Your Father, My Friend’ would be a very different beast to last week’s instalment. For one, it shifted Reid back into the centre of the show – and secondly, it actually abandoned the ‘case of the week’ format for a purely serialised tale that acted as the culmination of the first section of this season.
Ripper Street more than made up for Reid’s absence last week with an impressive character study of Drake, but ‘Your Father, My Friend’ was undoubtedly elevated by the presence of Reid – the Inspector’s furious rampage invigorated the episode from the get-go, immediately providing tension and stakes while acting as a somewhat sad display of how far Reid has fallen this season.
That multi-level success somewhat sums up the strengths of this episode – combining exciting action and tense stand-offs with meaningful, layered character work that takes the show’s central character into intriguing and fresh new places.
It’s evident in multiple action scenes throughout the episode, the final scene included – and much of this success has to also be attributed to Matthew Macfayden, who delivers a terrific, multi-faceted performance that simultaneously conveys Reid’s sympathetic desperation and newfound brutality.
The search for Reid’s daughter initially meandered a little, but the episode’s central mystery soon began to yield some intriguing results – the introduction of the ‘Ripper’ map that Reid’s daughter was following was a particularly clever way of linking back to the famous murder case that sparked the events of this entire show in an organic manner.
Reid’s daughter also became a surprisingly compelling character, with her fractured mental state clearly evident throughout her scenes. The idea that she remembered little from her time with her father apart from Reid being a ‘monster’ was a deeply tragic one that heightened sympathy for Reid, and provided a nice counterpart for Reid’s near-transformation into a ‘monster’ of sorts as he resorted to increasing violent methods to find his daughter.
This tension between father and daughter reached a hugely satisfying culmination towards the end of an episode, with a highly emotional reunion that became somewhat bittersweet in retrospect…
It’s the final scene, however, that really defines this superlative episode.
Reid’s confrontation with Capshaw this early in the season was surprising in of itself, but to have Reid shot down (with Capshaw soon following) was a deliciously cruel gut-punch of a twist.
Did Ripper Street really just kill off its central character? Even if Reid somehow makes it out alive, the final scene will still stand up as a masterclass in building tension, leading to a one-two punch of character shootings – and if he doesn’t, then Ripper Street might just have pulled off the boldest storytelling twist in the entire three-season run.
Either way, Ripper Street is continuing to excel week in, week out – and as the ending of this episode demonstrated so well, it couldn’t be more unpredictable…
Aired at 9pm on Friday 21 August 2015 on BBC One.
> Order Season 3 on DVD on Amazon.
> Buy the Season 1-2 box set on Amazon.
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