With Reid’s life teetering on the edge after last week’s shooting, Ripper Street went back to basics for an entertaining, if fairly disposable episode that’s partially redeemed by an unexpectedly heartfelt final act.
The previous two episodes of Ripper Street have been heavily character-focused, but ‘Heavy Boots’ flipped the switch for an episode that still leaned heavily on interpersonal drama, but featured a much larger focus on plot, as the case of the week unfurled.
Truth be told, the case of the week was hardly a vintage one – a relatively straightforward tale of men pushed to do terrible things by circumstances, that yielded very few surprising twists and followed an often conventional path.
Up until the final act, the case plotline was filled with stock characters (the earnestly brutal criminal, the wise leader, the love interest with a conscience), conflicts and motivations that felt disappointingly unoriginal for a show that’s truly pushed boundaries in the past few weeks, preventing a relatively enjoyable plotline from reaching greatness.
However, ‘Heavy Boots’ managed to pull a bit of a turnaround in the final act, as it finally transformed a simple and well-trodden plotline into something far more complex. The leader’s terminal cough, glimpsed throughout the episode as a sign of his weakness, became the centrepiece of a brief but impactful meditation on mortality that felt entirely appropriate for an episode that began and ended with a man on the brink of death – and his final speech towards his impulsive brother had a genuine and notable emotional weight.
Though large parts of ‘Heavy Boots’ seemed like Ripper Street with its foot off the gas, it was impressive to see the show come up with a moving and emotional conclusion that tied up the story of the week in an unprecedentedly satisfying fashion.
Unfortunately, outside of the standalone case, ‘Heavy Boots’ did very little to progress most of the season’s ongoing storylines. Ripper Street did briefly pay lip service Drake’s tumultuous relationship with Rose in a couple of scenes, but the plotlines concerning Susan and her Obsidian clinic were entirely on hold here.
It’s understandable in a way, yet the lack of progress gave a great deal of ‘Heavy Boots’ a feeling of treading water as it slowly recalibrated the show for the final three episodes of the season.
Increased screen-time for more ancillary characters like Chief Inspector Abberline and PC Grave was appreciated, and the episode certainly lays some groundwork for major development later on down the line for those characters, but despite these strengths ‘Heavy Boots’ didn’t come across as quite as accomplished as previous outings, with weaker character work and a standalone plot that only came into its own in the last 20 minutes.
However, it seems that things may just be picking up once again – with Reid now awake from his post-shooting coma, it can’t be long before Susan starts facing some consequences for her actions – that is, if Reid is still the same man he was before his shooting…
Aired at 9pm on Friday 28 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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