A Televisual Feast

With this episode has none of the problems of the season premiere, it’s got a couple (lesser) ones of its own. First, the pieces to the mystery are introduced towards the end of the episode, last fifteen minutes, twenty on the outside. It goes from being about one thing to another in an instant and, as such, the first forty-five or fifty minutes become a waste of time. Nothing really happens in those minutes–less than usual for a “Rebus” episode and then their import just gets flushed.

The second problem has a little to do with those wasted minutes, but, specifically, it’s the absence of Siobhan in the episode. Oh, she’s around, but she’s silent most of the time. As Rebus’s sidekick… well, it’d be nice if she had some presence other than visual. I don’t think she’s ever been so underused in an episode before and it’s kind of weird (like Claire Price was having a contract dispute). But the lack of Siobhan–and the lack of Rebus solving the case in the bar–mess with the episode’s pace. It feels like nothing has happened.

There is a futile attempt to give Rebus something else to do–visit a colleague in his rest home and solve his possibly imagined conspiracy theory–but it doesn’t even play out. It actually gets handed off and forgotten. Everything seems too hurried and too light. It’s a fine episode, but it’s barely engaging.

3