WILD CARDS – Episode 308 – The Hostage Always Rings Twice – (limited spoilers) ⁓

Veronica (Christina Rosato)

Vivienne (Tamara Taylor) does not ring the bell before she lets herself into Max’s place. She has no key, but tells her daughter “you really should get that lock upgraded. I’ve got it down to three seconds flat.” Vivienne is clearly nervous, and when she’s nervous, she chatters. She notices coffee and hopes it isn’t “that hazelnut nonsense”. Max (Vanessa Morgan) finds a business card for a realtor named Dan Vartel stuck to the fridge. “It’s for you to sell this pied-à-terre,” explains Viv. “You should always have a sale in place before a big job.”

Max being patient with her mother

“But this is my home,” says Max. Viv disagrees. “No,” she replies, “it’s a trap. You set down roots and then you wake up one morning and realize you’ve been living next to the same people for 25 years. Same faces, same casserole smells, same tedious book clubs. That’s not freedom, darling. That is just captivity with better drapes” and goes on to redefine “stability” as “fear wearing pearls”. Max needs to find somethng to wear to a police charity event scheduled for later that day, and her mom insists on helping. They decide on a lace maxi-dress (the Kathryn Gown from Revolve’s ‘Lovers and Friends’ line).

Max in her lace maxi-dress

At the cop shop, the detectives are all dressed for the ball, but a 911 call interrupts their plans. Kidnap victim Veronica Dreskin (Christina Rosato) has jerry-rigged a phone. “I found a painted over wall cover,” Veronica explains, “and so I was just hoping there’d be an old phone jack inside…there was no phone jack, But there were these these phone wires. So all I needed was a way to hear and be heard. Every smoke alarm has this, like, small speaker inside, so I was able to hook it up and then I tapped out 911 with the wires and I just prayed that someone would answer and you did.” (This would work. A speaker can easily be converted to serve as a microphone.)

Chief Patrick Li

Chief Li (Terry Chen), who is also listening to the conversation, says: “You built a phone? What are you, MacGyver?” But Veronica, who works as a building inspector for the city, actually did better than MacGuyver (Richard Dean Anderson), who only improvised a phone once. In an episode called “The Widowmaker”, MacGyver climbed a pole and tapped into a phone wire, scraped away the insulation, and tapped out a message in Morse code with a bracelet.

That was MacGyver episode 308 and this is Wild Cards episode 308.

Chief Li (Terry Chen) tells Max to stay on the line with Veronica while they find out where she is. When Max is uncertain, the Chief reassures her. “I was sitting on a bomb,” says Li, referring to the events of “The Big Bang Theory” (episode 207), “and you got me through it. I can’t think of anyone better to help her through this…Just be yourself. If you can talk a mark out of a million dollars, you can talk her into staying calm.”

Landon Alvarez

The kidnapping is found to be related to micro-betting. Among the main suspects are:

— Todd Dreskin (Cesare Scarpone), husband of Veronica, who has both financial troubles and a mistress.
— Landon Alvarez (Jeff Avenus), husband of Ramon (J P Padda) the victim of a related kidnapping.
— Arturo Bianchi (Cameron Park) a developer who calls Veronica “Sherlock Holmes Inspector” because she spots the “tiniest infractions” and cost him millions.

Veronica made detailed observations about the building where she was held. “These cinder blocks have thick, irregular joints,” she explained, “so the building’s probably old. Probably older than 1950, when the mortaring style changed.” (Ottawa issued a Code for Dwelling Construction in 1950 that specified how mortars should properly be mixed.)

Cesare Scarpone as Todd. — Scarpone also stars as Michael Winchester, an American deserter sheltered by a Doukhobor family, in Patricia Gruben‘s period drama HEART OF GOLD.

Afterward, Max seems happy, and is preparing to confront her mother, who is pressuring her to reconsider Dan the realtor.

Then Max gets home, and Tomo Hayashi (Kevan Ohtsji) is visiting. He asks how preparations for the planned heist are proceeding, and reminds everyone that “failure is not an option”. Hayashi chews the same gum as does George’s parole officer (see previous post). He leaves the gum wrapper on the coffee table.