Day 197: Poirot, Wasp's Nest

Show: Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Episode Particulars: S3EP5, “Wasp’s Nest”, original airdate January 27^th, 1991.

 Summary: Poirot meets up with an old friend, John Harrison (Martin Turner) at a little country fête, and also meets his fiancée, model Molly Deane (Melanie Jessup). While reading her tea leaves, Poirot predicts trouble ahead for her (although he also has more concrete reasons for concern) and decides to keep an eye on her and his friend, in the hope of preventing that trouble before it starts. It soon comes out that Molly was previously in a relationship with Harrison’s friend Claude (Peter Capaldi), but wound up falling for Harrison instead. Poirot also learns that there’s a huge nest of wasps in Harrison’s yard that can only be destroyed by some heavy-duty poison. Which means there’s a risk of it being used on a human as well…

Standalone Thoughts: I know this sounds strange, especially after some of my previous discussions of the subject, but the padding in this episode is what makes it one of the better episodes so far this season. Though to be fair, “padding” probably isn’t the right word in this case, because pretty much all the material not directly related to the mystery does eventually tie in to it in some way, which is not the case with true padding. Whatever you want to call it, the point remains that having a little extraneous material allowing Poirot, Hastings, and Japp to bounce off each other brings some humor into proceedings and lets the story feel more engaging, since we’re spending time with characters we’re familiar with instead of flitting between one-off supporting characters and their problems. In this case, Poirot’s exasperation with Hastings’ photography hobby or Japp’s suffering from appendicitis adds some warmth to the story, making things feel a bit less perfunctory, I guess. The episode also includes some lovely sets and costumes, which is always a positive thing and can improve my opinion on an episode, even if it’s just in a “at least everyone looked good” kind of way. In this case, it brings the episode up to, if not “good”, at least very very close to good.

As for the mystery, it’s not bad either. The big reveal and explanation is a bit rushed and thus can be hard to wrap your brain around, but it’s also an interesting deviation from the norm (something Christie was good at) and the reveal involves flashbacks and laying out all the clues, so it has that going for it. The mystery itself—preventing a crime before it happens—is presented a little more dramatically than it probably deserves, but it’s not over-the-top either and thus can be glossed over. The actors are all pretty good, and if you’re a Doctor Who fan (or someone like me who knows about Doctor Who through fandom osmosis), you’ll probably get a kick out of seeing Peter Capaldi in a very different context. All in all, while it will never be the best Poirot episode, it’s currently one of the higher ranked ones, and that’s good enough for me.

Number of Tropes Followed/Subverted: Just 2/15 tropes this time, and no subversions. One is “An Affair to Forget”, and the other is “Playing Fair”. Some of the clues the episode drops might be considered a bit of a stretch, but at least all of them do make sense after the fact and we were shown enough that a really perceptive person would probably be able to put the pieces together beforehand. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s another reason I responded so well to this episode…

Other: *Japp’s wife is mentioned several times in this episode, but we never actually see her for one reason or another. I couldn’t help but think of the joke in Columbo where we never met Columbo’s wife, and I wonder if Poirot was doing something similar. As with so many things, I’ll keep an eye on it.

*Take a look at this shot;

I swear that’s a 666 in the right corner. Obviously, there are going to be buildings (I think that’s on a building) that are number 666, but given that number’s connotations, it’s always slightly amusing when it turns up in an innocuous context.

*I don’t know if this was an intentional detail or not, but I’m amused by the fact that John Harrison misspelled “fashion” in his planner;

I think we can all agree that he’s missing an “h” there, again for reasons unknown.

*Poirot mentions that there is no Hercule Poirot among the wasps to warn them of their impending doom, like he’s doing with this case. He’s trying to be profound, but all I can imagine is a wasp with a little bowler hat and cane solving bug crimes. Now there’s a parody I’d like to see.

*In keeping with my tradition over on my movie blog, I’m happy to report that a cat makes a brief appearance near the end of the episode, hanging out in Claude’s apartment. I’m going to assume it’s Claude’s pet, even though we hadn’t seen it previously. Maybe it doesn’t like visitors.

Most Interesting Character: All of the major players in this story were at least a little interesting, but in the end, I had to pick one of the minor players, on the basis of one thing. That said, though, my choice is also a bit of a SPOILER, so proceed with caution;

Doctor Belvedere (John Boswall)

We see Belvedere several times throughout the episode before he’s revealed to be a doctor, and he’s shot in a way that makes him look very ominous, especially because of that skull cane. Then we find out he’s a doctor, and that just makes it delightfully perverse. Why would a doctor walk around with a skull cane? I could see owning one thanks to a morbid sense of humor, but actually using it publically suggests that this doctor either has a really dark sense of humor or that he’s long given up caring what people’s opinions of him (professionally or otherwise) are. Despite the strangeness, you can’t help but admire a man like that at least a little.