Flashpoint: Out With A Bang

Why can't anything be simple?

Whilst it ordinarily does its best to portray itself as an action drama, Flashpoint is never quite on top of its game until there is a bomb involved and this week, we got three. Continuing to shine its crown as the king of procedural cop shows on the air, Flashpoint came to us this time in the form of “Shockwave,” an intense and emotional episode with just dash of drama, suspense and well, everything that you could possibly want out of a show like this.

Starting in a calm manner relative to what was to come, the episode began with Spike visiting his father in a hospital bed. Whilst their relationship throughout the show has been less than good because of Spike’s job and the dangers involved with it, the scene avoided any bickering and simply set the tone for the episode when a soccer analogy from Spike’s dad cleverly aligned the moment with the broader theme of the episode for Spike: knowing where you need to be. After getting the news that all is good with his father, we followed Spike straight into the action as he joined Team One to inspect a suspicious package found in a trash can in a downtown high-rise.

As the rest of team one evacuated the building, Spike and Raf took Babycakes (the bomb disposal robot) into the basement where the package was found to assess the situation. Struggling to get evacuees to co-operate in leaving the building as they believed it to just be a drill, Sam opted to use the old-fashioned way of getting people to listen by smashing down the door with a trash can. Unfortunately for him, however, it also contained a “suspicious” package. Just seconds after confirming that the two packages were bombs, both detonated causing a collapse, trapping Sam, Spike, Raf and several civilians beneath the building.

After recovering from the blast, Raf got to checking on an unconscious Sam and the civilians whilst Spike pondered the effectiveness of the explosions that had just occurred. Noticing that the only logical purpose for the two explosions was to close off the basement to the outisde, Spike soon discovered a third, much larger, much more sophisticated device trapped down there with them. Working on a narrow timescale to evacuate everyone with the threat of the third bomb, Ed took to blowing a new exit in the basement wall after being winched down a nearby ventilation shaft.

As the civilians were slowly evacuated, Greg and Jules began to look for a motive for their bomber and quickly got onto a defense contractor with offices in the building – seeing them as a potential target. After speaking to the manager and discovering that an extremely technologically capable employee had a grudge against the company after being let go, the team got to work on tracking him down. The search took all of five seconds when, after receiving their target’s picture on their PDA’s, Spike, Raf and Sam noticed something – the bomber was down there with them.

After clearing out the remaining civilians the team confronted the man that they now knew to be the bomber, but with time running out and him refusing to co-operate, things were looking bleak. To make matters worse, Spike had just found out that his father had taken a turn for the worse and may not make it through the night, putting him ever so slightly on edge. Although emotional over the news about his father, Spike refused to leave when he recalled what his father had said to him earlier about knowing where you need to be. As Sam and Raf evacuated, Spike and the bomber connected in what were set to be their final moments over their mutual love of explosives until Spike made a breakthrough with him and got him to help disarm the device. The episode concluded with Spike attending his father’s bedside.

Much like the final season of Friday Night Lights, it is becoming a consistent theme for me to end a Flashpoint review by saying “well that was pretty good.” “Shockwave” was no exception to the outstanding quality laid out by the fourth season of Flashpoint thus far and was perhaps even a contender for the best episode of the season, but it stood somewhat separate from its character driven predecessors with it delivering more action and suspense than any episode in recent memory instead.  Sadly, with no official air date (so far as I can find) set for the next episode, Flashpoint may be done for a while, but with the remainder of season four and all of season five still to come, fear not Flashpoint fans, it will be back.

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