PRIVATE EYES WEST COAST – Episode 101 – Changing Tides (limited spoilers) ⁓
Angie and Matt
One thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one days after the final episode of “Private Eyes”, Everett and Shade Investigations has moved to Victoria, B.C. and is back in business. And so far no other characters from the first show have come there with them. Matt (Jason Priestley) and Angie (Cindy Sampson) are married now, with a one-year-old named Declan. The child’s nickname is ‘Dex’.
Dex
Nicole de Boer, Shade’s ex-wife Rebecca D’Orsay in sixteen episodes of the first series, was ‘Dax’ in Star Trek DS9, which is close to ‘Dex’ and that might not be significant except that Sean Piller directed this episode and his father co-created DS9 with Rick Berman. No mention was made of Rebecca in this episode. The only mention of her daughter Jules (Jordyn Negri) happens when Shade is reluctant to go back to work. “I missed so much of Jules’s childhood,” he tells Angie. “I don’t want to miss anything this time around.”
Will describes his half-sister Angie as ‘Columbo and Angela Lansbury rolled into one, but younger and with better clothes.’
Everett got a subscription to an unspecified ancestry website from her Uncle Dave as a wedding present, and through it her half-brother Will (David Kaye) located her. Two years ago, Will had a rafting accident. Angie came to Victoria to help out, and Shade joined her after she decided she liked the place.
Shade doesn’t want to go back to being a P.I., but Angie does, and after they manage to rescue a friend of Angie’s who is being framed for murder, he renews their business license. In Toronto, they had an office (at 1144 Queen St. E.), but now they will work from home because of the kid. Shade still drives a Porsche, but now its a Cayenne Hybrid instead of the old 911E.
Vancouver Island PD’s Officer Piller and Detective Violet Xiao
Out east, their police contacts were Detective Mazhari (Ennis Esmer) and his assistant, Danica Powers (Ruth Goodwin). Their new police liaisons might be (currently semi-hostile) Detective Violet Xiao (Olivia Cheng), and (possibly) Officer Piller (Caroline Battista) as well.
Battista also is Officer Toni on CBC’s “Wild Cards”, which is set in nearby Vancouver. We have not yet learned Officer Piller’s first name.
Raine Atebe
At the start of things Shade is invited by Professor Wheeler (Charles Jarman) to speak to university students about his memoir, “Beyond a Shadow”. Shade accepts the invite, but talks about nothing but his hockey experiences. This disappoints one of the students, tech wiz Raine Atebe (Khamisa Whilshire) who is much more interested in his work as a P.I. and says so. “I skipped computer science class to hear you talking about PI-ing. she tells him. “This is all hockey. Why did you write about the least interesting part of your life?” Later, Shade enlists Raine’s help with the case, and will probably do that a lot this season.
THE CASE
At Will’s suggestion, the detectives go out for dinner, where they run into Priya (Paniz Zade), who owns a baby boutique, and her boyfriend Ben. The two seem very much in love. After dinner, a scream is heard and Priya is found kneeling beside Ben’s lifeless body with a bloody knife in her hand.
The suspects: Zach Moore, Siobhan Callahan, and Eduardo Molina.
Angie refuses to believe Priya would do such a thing, and tells Shade: “When I was here alone helping Will after his accident, and pregnant, I went into Priya’s store, and I had a bit of a meltdown. Priya saw a woman in need, and she was there for me. I cannot not help her.”
The victim, Ben Moore (Jason Nash), ran a whale watching operation, but before that he was a real estate mogul. Other than Priya, three people had motive and opportunity to kill him.
— Eduardo Molina (Miles Wilkinson), the victim’s old business partner
— Siobhan Callahan (Laura Mennell), Ben’s former VP of Sales,
— Zach Moore (Patch May), whose past drug problems make him a suspect.
The detectives break into Molina’s office, question Siobhan at the gym, and follow Zach from the Flying Otter Grill to Orca Spirit Adventures where he works. The clue that reveals the killer’s identity is a cute pair of shoes.