WILD CARDS – Episode 301 – Rack ’em Up – (some spoilers) ⁓

Cole (Giacomo Gianniotti) has been cleared of any wrongdoing in the investigation of his brother’s death (see previous post), and is back on the job. He tells Max (Vanessa Morgan): “I took the boat down to Mexico. I was gonna travel around a little bit, but I ended up just settling down in a small surfing town. I ate, drank, surfed, bummed around a little bit.” Max points out that “bumming around” is out of character for Cole. “I needed to clear my head,” he explains. “Honestly, I was trying to figure out how to just be myself again.”

Cole went undercover as a surfer in “Strangers on a Wave” (episode 1.4). In that episode Cole explained how he got into surfing: “My brother was ten years younger than me,” he told Max. “I had to watch him a lot. One day we were watching this cheesy surfer movie on TV, and as soon as he saw it he just knew he had to surf. My dad couldn’t really swim, and he [Daniel] was too little to go in the water by himself. So I took him. We ended up learning how to surf together.”

Detectives Yates (Amy Goodmurphy) and Simmons (Michael Xavier) are investigating ten separate homicides, and have just been made aware of an eleventh. Yates is happy to have Cole back to reduce her workload, and at the same time unhappy that Cole and Max will steal the spotlight. At one point Yates makes a voodoo doll of Cole out of pencils.

Max and Cole are assigned to investigate the shooting death of pool shark Tommie Z, last seen alive at the Astoria Hotel. Shortly before his death, Tommie won $50,000 from José (Benny Wang) in a game of 9-ball. He had the cash when he left the hotel, but it was not found with his body.

Max has not told Cole that her mother Vivienne (Tamara Taylor), believed dead for many years, has returned.

Vivienne was believed killed in Monaco when her car went into the sea, and she spins a tale of why she disappeared. She was caught running a con on a Monaco casino which she did not know was owned by the mysterious Gideon Varga, a mob boss whose existence is only rumoured and might be a carefully constructed myth. Viv stole a car from a valet stand and, after jumping out, sent it over a cliff and into the ocean. She says that the money she stole “went down with the car”. Vargas did not believe she was dead and never stopped looking. When she decided to watch (from a distance) George (Jason Priestley) being released from prison, one of Vargas’ henchmen, Tomo Hayashi (Kevan Ohtsji), found her. Now Vargas wants his hundred million back and threatens (through Hayashi) to kill them all if he doesn’t get it.

It seems relevant that The Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend (who imprisoned Merlin and was Lancelot’s stepmom) was also called Vivienne.

Ricky (Fletcher Donovan) finds it suspicious that Vivienne turns up with this story immediately after he, George, and Max inherit more than a hundred million from George’s late mentor Jonathan Ashford. If George and Max find it suspicious, neither of them says anything. They offer Hayashi the $100 million but he says it’s not enough and he wants another $30 million in 20 minutes which George says is impossible. Hayashi tells them if they steal a diamond for Vargas, all debts will be forgiven.

Cole has not told Max that he met Jessica (Kaylah Zander) in Mexico, so Max runs into her accidentally when she visits Cole on his boat. Cole is uncomfortable, and clearly didn’t want the two women to meet. “We met down in Mexico,” Cole explains, “She was taking some time off, and so was I, and uh, anyway, she’s a journalist.” Jessica lives ‘in town’ and has heard a lot about Max.

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All episodes of WILD CARDS can be streamed on CBC Gem in Canada and on The CW website in the US.