Max, Maddy, and a Pomeranian
WILD CARDS – Catch Me If You Con – limited spoilers ⁓
Max
After being cooped up for weeks with a sprained ankle, Max (Vanessa Morgan) is looking for something to do. Ricky (Fletcher Donovan) and his amateur theatre group are on their way to Oregon for a “sacred, silent retreat” in a yurt. Cole and his fellow detectives are attending the “Annual Police and Law Enforcement Conference and Expo”, which is fictional but sounds a lot like the Annual Summit and Policing Trade Show run by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Max’s alibi is that she orders takeaway frequently, and takes selfies with all the deliveries.
She visits her father George (Jason Priestley) in prison, but he has a time-sensitive poker game in Cell Block C designed to fleece a “hedge fund sleazebag” who is getting out of prison in a few days. George remembers that Max once pulled three cons, “The Bolivian Boondoggle”, “The Golden Goose Gambit”, and “The Cuckoo’s Nest” in one twenty-four hour period.
- The Bolivian Boondoggle could refer to the Buyback Boondoggle, which involves the repurchase of debt with money borrowed from a third party. (Bolivia was victimized by this one some years ago.)
- The Golden Goose Gambit might involve something similar what Stteve Cannane described in an article titled Paul Montgomery stole millions from the Gurney family business. He was known in the racing industry as ‘The Golden Goose’.
- The Cuckoo’s Nest could be a reference to “category fraud” used most notably at the Oscars. A film that conspicuously employed this stragagem was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest“.
Maddy meets Cole
Max gets an unexpected visit from her old friend Maddy (Katie Findlay) who has heard a rumour (from someone called Five Dice Darcy) that Max is working with the cops, and Max explains that she’s just trying to get her dad’s sentence reduced. Maddy’s father is also a con man, and at last report was operating a questionable alligator farm in the Everglades.
Maddy herself was trying to run a game on the Duke of Lichtenberg (Leuchtenberg?) that fell through when she was caught snogging his chauffeur. Both women bear some similarity to Frank Abagnale Jr, whose story was fictionalized in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film “Catch Me If You Can“. Martin Sheen, who plays Jonathan Ashford on Wild Cards, was Roger Strong in that movie.
Maddy and Lisa
Cole (Giacomo Gianniotti) drops by to give her a swag bag from the Police Convention, and Maddy makes a point of introducing herself as Max’s old school chum Kelsey Beckford. She reads Cole’s name off his convention ID leaving a clear thumbprint on it (very possibly on purpose).
Cole is suspicious. “Why are you so suspicious?” Max asks, and Cole answers: “It’s literally my job.” After leaving, Cole runs Maddy’s thumbprint, and discovers that her full name is Maddy Jenton, and she has a rap sheet that includes theft, fraud, and forgery.
For old times sake, Maddy and Max go on a crime spree beginning with mostly minor thefts, and ending with grand theft auto and unintentional dognapping. (They did not notice a well-groomed Pomeranian in the back seat.) Max makes Maddy give back the dog and the car. Then Max gives her friend one last challenge, to steal the contents of Bus Station locker 13.
Peyton and Max
Meanwhile the tennis pro at a local club is found dead, and a message is located on the dark web looking for someone to kill him, and the amount of money offered for the hit matches the amount of cash in Locker 13.
Both Maddy and Max have alibis for the time of the murder, so they’re off the hook, but Maddy decides to help Max solve the murder. The two of them run what they call a War of the Roses con to cause two tennis buddies, Lisa (Lauren Akemi Bradley) and Peyton (Anita Brown), to turn against each other and make them talk.
Maddy
After Maddy helps Cole solve the case, she heads to the Sydney Regatta. Before she goes, she and Max talk over breakfast.
MADDY: “I saw that gleam in your eye.”
MAX: “I told you, we’re just partners.”
MADDY: “No. That’s not what I meant. Max, I know you better than anybody, right? So I know that look that you get when you pull off a con. I know how much you love the rush. I saw that look when you were working the case with Ellis and I think this is where you’re getting your rush now. It’s okay. It’s nice.”
This might not be the last we see of Maddy.