Code of Silence – episode 3

[shallowness]

I don’t think it was the plan for me to wait something like a month and a half between episodes, but there we go. Last thing, Braden was making Liam look at Alison’s phone. In this episode, we learned that her messages to the police were on autodelete, which explained why they weren’t there for them to see. We’d also see a helpful app that translated speech to text for Alison – IRL translating an answerphone message left to her mother. And oh, the added cruelty of someone who was paid to help disabled people leaving a voice message for a deaf person, and that message was she’d have to wait four months for Access to Work help she needed then and there. Before that, we’d seen Nancy Drew, I mean Alison, using it by sticking it outside the window of a meeting in a caravan to capture the gang’s words. She only just got away with it.

Two management styles to compare and contrast: Braden AKA Hulk, who we’d seen threaten the driver in the previously, was at it again with the pub landlord and then later Liam, all ‘I own this place (and you)’ machismo, threatening the landlord’s kids, all over hiding guns. No thought that this might make Liam queasy – we and Alison don’t know why he owes him a favour.

The other, more effective bit of coercion came from the top police officer, who had heard Ashleigh’s concern (without knowing the whole of it) about Alison getting too involved and not realising what danger she was in. But Alison’s intel, as she told them about another meeting and lip read for them, giving a crucial breakthrough about who the gang’s target was, and then mentioned the possibility of guns that they couldn’t ignore, was too useful. So, when Alison turned up with something to report and Ashleigh was away, he flattered her into staying, in an intense scene where they were sitting super close so that she could lipread, and possibly using proximity to influence her.

She’d turned up to report that the gang member she knew as Wolf was one of the directors of the company that was going to evict her and her mother. (Would like to crow that I’d already noticed the connection with the company, who were in charge of the development/building site where Alison was at her most Nancy Drewish.) Alison and her mother’s precarity was emphasised in this episode, with her mum likely to lose the job she hadn’t yet started because of Access to Work shenanigans, Alison needing the money her bar work gave her, on top of Braden turning up to be ableist, obnoxious and threatening at her house. And on a universally relatable level, she wanted to prove herself and her abilities, and sought that chance and validation. (The junior police officer is still snide towards her.)

Meanwhile, things were developing with Liam, after she aimed some righteous fury at him for the stuff with her phone in the previous episode. He apologised, wanted to make it up with her, talked a lot about trust. And she was spying on him, sometimes in plain sight. Interesting that he found her constantly looking at him with her ‘big, beautiful eyes’ romantic, when seeing is such a big part of her identity. Things were brewing between them – a kiss interrupted here, a date stood up (because the police were doing a shakedown over the guns). Alison’s ex pushed her about it, she said it wasn’t going anywhere. She’d say much the same to Liam, who was vehement about not wanting to hurt anyone, but had much to think about now that he knew that Braden had stashed guns at his flat without his knowing. A quick kiss showed that it wasn’t over before it had started at all.