Day 189: Poirot, Double Sin

Show: Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Episode Particulars: S2EP6, “Double Sin”, original airdate February 11^th, 1990.

 Summary: Poirot, having made up his mind to retire from detective work, takes Hastings on a vacation. While exploring some of the small towns of the area via bus, they run into Mary Durrant (Caroline Milmoe), who’s delivering some antique miniatures on behalf of her aunt, Miss Penn (Elspet Gray). When they arrive at their destination, they discover that the miniatures were stolen from Mary’s bag, most likely during the time the bus stopped for lunch. Poirot leaves the case to Hastings, who finds himself even more flummoxed when the person buying the miniatures, Mr. Wood (Michael J. Shannon), claims he took possession of the miniatures two hours before the bus reached its destination and the theft was discovered. It’s an intriguing mystery, but the deck isn’t exactly stacked in Hastings’ favor.

Standalone Thoughts: This episode is a mess, plain and simple. I’m not even sure where to begin with it. I guess I’ll start with the faint praise; I like the idea of Poirot sitting back and letting Hastings be the detective for once. Unfortunately, this is undermined by two things. One, Poirot initially refuses to help at all, even though Mary is upset and the nature of the crime should interest him. He just says he’s “retired” and leaves it all up to Hastings. That seems extremely unusual for him, and a little mean besides. Secondly, this idea would work a lot better if Hastings was treated with respect. Maybe he can’t solve the case as quickly as Poirot, but having his love of cars or golf allow him to stumble into finding the solution would be nice. Instead, he mostly bumbles about, devotes way too much time to something pointless, and solves the case by accident, while it seems like Poirot knew the answer the whole time and declined to inform him of that fact. It’s still not as bad as “Peril at End House”, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth when all is said and done.

Then there’s Poirot’s motives. Poirot states at the beginning of the episode that he’s considering retiring, then he says he’s taking Hastings to the seaside in the hopes of improving Hastings’ grey cells, and then we learn that he now considers himself retired. He made up his mind pretty quick, didn’t he? What’s more, we never get a concrete reason for him wanting to retire, or why he then decides to unretire at the end of the episode. If it had been to encourage Hastings, that would be one thing, but I’ve already established that that wasn’t the case. I think I have a vague suspicion of what was going on, but I can’t tell if his reason was genuine (which would make one scene kind of sweet) or just an excuse (in which case, it was a very bad excuse). All I know for certain is that it doesn’t exactly make Poirot look good.

And the annoyances keep piling up. A large chunk of the episode is dedicated to a red herring that just vanishes from the story once it’s proved to be a red herring. There’s a subplot involving Miss Lemon losing her keys that contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, not even a vague parallel situation. But above all else, the episode outright cheats. It’s one thing to misdirect the audience, where things turn out to have a double meaning (“The Third Floor Flat” did this to great effect), but it’s another to show us something that turns out to make no sense when all is revealed. That, combined with barely any clues to speak of and a very lackluster reveal scene, is what makes this a particularly disappointing mystery. Sure, you can probably figure it out due to the Law of Economy of Characters (short version; every character introduced has to be important in some way), but that’s just due to recognizing tropes, not anything the episode itself gives you. I might not be as annoyed with this episode as I was with “Four and Twenty Blackbirds”, but it’s definitely the worst of the season, and one I would probably stay away from. Fortunately, given the nature of this show, that’s very much an option.

Number of Tropes Followed/Subverted: Only 1/15 tropes and 2/15 subversions today. We get a fairly blatant case of “An Affair to Forget”, and there’s no question that “There’s More to Life than Murder” too. And as I’ve made clear, there’s absolutely no way that this episode could win “Playing Fair”. I honestly don’t think they were even trying, and that just makes it even worse.

Other: *Why is this episode called “Double Sin”, anyway? It would have been one thing if the episode revolved around two suitcases (which is where I thought the story was originally going), but the only other way it makes sense is if it’s a spoiler for the resolution of the case, which doesn’t seem like a smart move.

*Apparently in 1935-36, 1,500 pounds was worth $7,000. I guess this must have been a result of the Great Depression or something, because I grew up my entire life with the pound being worth twice as much as the dollar, not nearly five times as much. Though it took me awhile to realize that; my initial reading was that Mary and her aunt were hoping to get at least 1,500, and they sold for 7,000. When I realized that the characters were just talking in the monetary terms they were familiar with, I was left boggled. Now there’s an indication of the passage of time for you.

*At one point during the “An Affair to Forget” portion of the plot, the female half of the couple angrily asks Hastings “Don’t you know what it’s like to love a man?!” Hastings, flustered, responds with “Well, no, not exactly.” And all I can wonder is if the writers deliberately stuck a gay joke in there. I don’t think Poirot and Hastings have quite the same reputation that Holmes and Watson have, but you never know…

Most Interesting Character: While I had my issues with the rest of the episode, I will admit that the supporting characters at least had personality, so my problem for once was choosing between them. But I guess I’ll go with;

Miss Penn

I chose her primarily because, like Lowen in the previous episode, I’d like to know her backstory. How did she become an antique dealer? It can’t be an easy job, especially for a single woman in the 1930’s. Now that would make an interesting short story. And she’d probably be better served by it than she was here.