Show: Agatha Christie’s Poirot
Episode
Particulars: S3EP3, “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery”, original airdate
January 13th, 1991.
Standalone
Thoughts: Despite some potential, most of this episode is kind of bland. It
cuts down on the padding, which is a plus, but what content is left isn’t all
that special. Which is odd because it could
have been special, given that a lot of the story takes place on the Queen Mary during her maiden voyage. A
bit of lingering on the décor or having characters enjoy the luxuries of the
ship could have led to some nice character moments. Plus, Hastings kept going
on about how exciting it would be, but once they’re on board, very little seems
to happen that isn’t connected to the mystery, except for the inevitable gag
where Hastings gets sick while Poirot doesn’t. Besides, if they’d done that,
then maybe the denouement of the episode wouldn’t feel so rushed. A little
extra time spent with the characters might have made the reveal feel less out
of nowhere, or at least felt more fair.
Even then, though, the final wrap-up is resolved a little
too neatly. Apparently, all of the big problems have been solved, even though
there’s no explanation for how some of them happened or any proof that the
problems are going to stay solved. Generally, unless someone is literally
waving a magic wand to fix everything, happy endings need to be earned, or at
least suggest that they are in the process of being earned. I can buy one of
the events mentioned at the end as happening, but not all of them. There’s no
shame in ending the episode with “things aren’t perfect, but they’ll almost
certainly improve”, so this insistence on everything being great doesn’t make a
lot of sense.
If I was ranking all the episodes, this one would almost
certainly be in the lower middle. It’s not annoying, frustrating, or
disappointing (minus the mild irritation that the story didn’t play fair), but
neither is there anything that’s particularly fun or clever. Maybe a little
padding’s not so bad after all…
Number of Tropes
Followed/Subverted: 2/15 tropes and 3/15 subversions today. There’s a
definite “An Affair to Forget”, and although Poirot puts a lot of the pieces
together while he’s talking to Hastings about the theft, he seems to put it
together because of a sarcastic response to Hastings’ suggestion, which makes
me mark it as a “Coincidental Comment”. Subversion-wise, we’ve got one spoiler,
a clear case of “There’s More to Life Than Murder”, and, unfortunately,
“Playing Fair”, because the thief and the motivation for the theft aren’t very
well established until the end. Plus, they never did explain why the box was so scratched up…
Other: *Today
I learned (and confirmed) that London has a street named “Threadneedle Street”.
I must assume that either that used to be in an area where a lot of tailors or
weavers lived, or the Brits have an even more bizarre sense of humor than I’d
been led to believe.
*To my surprise, Poirot
indulged in a little bit of continuity today, when Poirot gets a note from
the London and Scottish Bank and Miss Lemon brings up the events of “The Lost
Mine”. It’s a pretty good reference, too, giving us just enough information
that those who have seen the prior episodes will recognize it, while also being
discussed so casually that an on-again, off-again viewer will just think it’s
referencing a nonexistent case, a way to make Poirot’s job feel more real, as
it were. For a show like this, that’s probably the ideal sort of continuity.
*Series Three appears to be “The Series of Strychnine”,
because so far every single case has involved Strychnine poisoning. I’d
actually be kind of amused if the showrunners made that their theme for the
season.
*There’s almost certainly some stock footage of the Queen Mary being used for this episode,
given that the actual ship had become a tourist attraction in California by
1991. But since they have a newsreel that features black-and-white clips of
Poirot and Hastings (plus a narrator commenting about them), I wonder if they
used an actual newsreel clip and did some clever splicing and voice mimicry, or
if they cobbled it together with existing footage, new footage, and an actor
playing the narrator. Either way, though, it’s not a bad bit of work.
*People from other countries putting on American accents
has always rubbed me the wrong way (although I’m aware I’m a hypocrite, since
we unquestionably butcher British/French/etc. accents). They generally make us
sound too nasal, and if they pick a specific regional accent like Southern,
they go way overboard with it. Case in point, there is no way that actress
Lizzy McInnerny is American, because her attempt at a Southern Drawl is far too
over the top. It may be intentional, but as I like to say, that doesn’t stop it
from being annoying.
*One thing I’m kind of puzzled about; shouldn’t the Queen Mary have some sort of
Purser’s/valuables office? I know the Titanic
had one in 1912, and we saw that some hotels had them in “The Adventure of
the Western Star”. Wouldn’t it make sense to take the extra precaution of
locking the already locked box in the Purser’s safe, keeping the key on you?
But this never comes up in the episode, no doubt because it wouldn’t further
the plot. One line of exposition was all we needed to at least try to justify
this. Ah, well, sometimes you don’t notice these things until too late.
*I already said my piece about the ending, but the final
conversation between Hastings and Poirot strikes me as vaguely insulting to
women, and I’m not sure who I should be more annoyed by in that conversation.
So let’s just simplify it and say they both should probably get a
finger-wagging.
Most Interesting
Character: My pick this time around developed gradually. I didn’t think
much of the character at first, but they grew on me, leading to getting this
honor(?);
Mr. McNeil (Paul Young), head of security for the bank
He doesn’t seem like much to write home about at first,
but the longer the episode goes on, the more you see how dedicated he is to his
job, and once the theft occurs, he springs into action quickly and efficiently.
Plus, it’s kind of amusing that he’s questioning whether or not they should
entrust the case to a Belgian when he himself has such a thick Scottish accent.
I know Scotland’s considered a part of Britain, and that he’s an employee of
the London and Scottish Bank, but not everyone (including the English and Scots
themselves) makes those kind of distinctions.
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