Day 178: Poirot, The Third Floor Flat

Show: Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Episode Particulars: S1EP5, “The Third Floor Flat”, original airdate February 5^th, 1989.

 Summary: A new tenant, Mrs. Grant (Josie Lawrence), moves into Poirot’s apartment, two floors below him and one floor below another girl, Patricia (Suzanne Burden). On the evening she moves in, Patricia and some of her friends go out to see a play, coincidentally the same play Poirot and Hastings are attending. They all get back at around the same time, but while Poirot and Hastings enter the flat without incident, Patricia’s misplaced her key, forcing the two gentlemen of the group (Nicholas Pritchard and Robert Hines) to use the dumbwaiter to get inside. They wind up on the third floor by mistake…at which point they discover Mrs. Grant’s body. Fortunately, Poirot is obviously still awake, and is therefore on hand to solve the case.

Standalone Thoughts: While there’s enough good acting and energy in the episode that I generally enjoyed it, the way it handles the mystery is, in some ways, even worse than in yesterday’s “Four and Twenty Blackbirds”. Instead of the answer being immediately obvious, they go the complete opposite route and don’t give us all the information until it’s convenient to do so. While this has been par for the course for a lot of the episodes so far, what makes this particular time even worse is that the writers basically called attention to the fact that they were doing it. You see, the play Poirot and the others attend is a murder mystery, where the solution to the mystery comes out of nowhere and royally annoys Poirot. “They did not give us all the facts!” he indignantly declares at least twice…and then the episode itself doesn’t give us all the facts. When you’re lampshading a trope, it helps to, you know, actually lampshade it.

To give the episode some credit, though, the twist is somewhat clever, and there’s an early scene that I thought meant one thing but turned out to mean something completely different after the fact, so that was well-handled. Plus, as I said, the actors are good and the dialogue is punchy, so you can enjoy most of the episode. It’s just when everything starts getting revealed that the disappointment starts. I’m also extremely put-out that they seemed to be giving Hastings the opportunity to be the hero who catches the killer when they try to make a break for it, but then just fall back on making him oblivious and/or the butt of the joke. Maybe that was my fault for expecting too much, but I’m sure there are others who feel the same way. Not to mention that it just makes the ending even harder to swallow. This is one episode where you should watch it for the characters and not the mystery. And if you can’t separate the two in your head, well, at least it’s two minutes shorter than normal.

Number of Tropes Followed/Subverted: When it comes to the main body of the episode, we get 1/15 tropes (unfortunately, it’s a spoilery one), and 1/15 subversions (“Playing Fair”, as discussed above). That being said, the murder mystery play they attended seems to be poking fun at some of the tropes, like “Playing Fair”, “Family Resemblance”, and “The Butler Did it…Again” (literally, actually). I’m not sure if that should count in my final reckoning, but I wanted to mention them just in case.

Other: *Poirot is supposed to be sick in this episode, but David Suchet is very inconsistent about whether or not he talks in a congested voice. I guess the episode tries to justify this by saying his symptoms vanish while he’s focusing on the case, but it’s a weak justification. I’m not going to hold this against anyone, but I wish there could have been more consistency.

*I was slightly wrong in my “The Adventure of the Clapham Cook” review; Poirot and Hastings are not living together, because Hastings drives up to visit him in this episode. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things, but I like to make sure I get my facts straight.

*Imagine my surprise when I realized that the victim was played by Josie Lawrence, who I mostly know as a comedian on the British version of Whose Line is it Anyway?. I didn’t expect to see her in a serious part, but to her credit, she’s pretty good in her few scenes. It’s always nice to see an unexpected familiar face in a TV show.

Most Interesting Character: While the supporting characters have more personality than the previous episodes, I still didn’t have a lot to go on. So I wound up picking;

Mildred (Amanda Elwes, in the white coat)

My reasoning this time around was mainly for aesthetic reasons; her coat is lovely, and her hairstyle is far more flattering than her friend’s. That being said, she’s also got verve and spunk, while also reacting to the murder discovery in a realistic way (losing her appetite and being surprised yet somewhat understanding that Poirot hasn’t). Tragically, she disappears midway through the narrative for no apparent reason, which is weird because all the other characters stick around. It’s a shame, because she deserved way more love than she actually got.