Flashpoint: Keep The Peace (Part 1)

Posted by: S.P. Young • December 9, 2012 @ 2:01am

"Avoid public buildings."

Episodes that deal with a mad bomber are always fun to watch, especially when the bomb blows up. Bombs force the show out of the formula of resorting to negotiation, and de-emphasize the humanity of the criminals behind their destructive intentions. Bombs kill indiscriminately, are often cleverly hidden, can not be persuaded with emotions, and not everybody on the Strategic Response Unit is capable of properly dealing with them. Just ask Lou.

Or in this case, Donna.

Poor Donna. She had gone from filling in for Jules, to having to shoot a cop dead, getting her wedding day crashed by vindictive criminals, and now to getting blown up. It is almost as if whenever the show needs a punching bag, they bring Donna back.

She really should have listened to Spike telling her to get the hell out and to let him handle the bomb, since he is the only one on the team that understands anything technical. But instead, Donna stubbornly fumbled around the vest bomb, not knowing what she was doing, ultimately getting blown up in the process. If there was a lesson that should have been learned with Lou's death, it was that the SRU was in real need of cross training in bomb defusal, as to not leave everything up to Spike.

While everybody was attending to Team Three, Ed had gone to save his son from under the wreckage of a public building. This season has seen Ed's emotional state worsen as the episodes go by, to the point where he was unable to do his job. Just when it seemed like things were getting better, Ed was hit with the worse news ever, as he went to dig Clark out of the blast.

It is actually nice to see the villain on the show be both competent and cruel. In these last five seasons, the show has had too many well intentioned criminals and suicidal nutjobs that had to be reached on an emotional level as to not hurt themselves. A capable and irredeemable villain, on the other hand, who is the actual main focus of the episode, is way more exciting to watch. It is too bad that Flashpoint has had too few villains like this. With luck, the series does not end on Ed losing it on the finale antagonist, and needing to be talked down by his fellow Team One members.

Tags: Flashpoint, Keep The Peace, Fit For Duty, Hugh Dillon, Headstones, Person of Interest, Enrico Colantoni, Amy Jo Johnson, Jessica Steen, Sergio Di Zio