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Monday 2 July 2012

Without A Trace 3.4 "Upstairs Downstairs" Review


A family are at dinner with their baby and have plans of going to Paris, Roma and Milan.  Terri (Susan Floyd) the mother of the baby is drunk and her father tells her she’ll turn the baby into an alcoholic as she’s breast feeding.  Lawrence, (Chad Lowe) the father tells June (Esperanza Catubig) that the nanny has stolen one of her dresses and jewellery.  So she’s upset with her and he’s letting her go.  June and baby Nicki go missing.

9 Hours Missing
June’s mother doesn’t know where she is.  Danny (Enrique Murciano)  and Sam (Poppy Montgomery) search her house.  Jack (Anthony La Paglia) questions Lawrence and Terri.


10 Hours Missing
Terri is on medication as she’s depressive post partem.  He doesn’t know if Terri is an alcoholic.  They’ve been married 9 years.  She could be an alcoholic but he’s not having an affair with June.  They’ve been trying for a baby for 3 years.
Martin (Eric Close) finds the house alarm was set at 1:20am and went off at 4:12am.  She left her mobile behind.  Martin thinks June and Nickki may have been kidnapped. Terri let her try on her rings.  June reminded Terri of herself at that age.  June couldn’t imagine that Terri has everything and she let her borrowthe necklace.  Then she accuses June of betrayal.  Jack says if June took Nicki then the motive is important.
Sam finds an Armani dress and jewellery in June’s room.  Her mother says terri gave her the dress.  Danny asks how she could afford the plasma TV?  Her mother says they should be looking for her daughter not treating her like a criminal.  Jack finds a dummy in the cot.

11 Hours Missing
No one saw June at the train station.
The housekeeper has worked there for 32 years and raised Terri herself after her mother died when she was 9.  June idolized Terri.  She caught June eating caviar with Anthony de Bellis (Anthony Joseph De Santis) the gardener.  He’s worked here for 20 years and his father passed the business onto him.  June was out of line with the guest at the dinner party, he accuses her of having “greedy eyes.”

A ransom demand is made from a mobile phone at W 42nd St Manhatten:  The call is made through a voice distorter.  Computer analysis is done on the tape.  Sam finds it hard to belive that June isn’t involved.  Viv (Marianne Jean Baptiste) says the low tech voice distorter was bought at the leectronic district.

Jack tells the family that if June is innocent then he has an obligation to involve her family, if she’s guilty then their reaction could tell them something.  Jack says they have 2 options; either pay the kidnappers the ransom and then follow them or use decoy money, arrest them and force them to talk.  He recommends the latter.  June’s mother wants the ransom paid and then see.  June’s sister comments they’re worried about the money.

13 Hours Missing
June called him at 3:45am and told him she’d been fired and was saying goodbye.  They’d been sleeping together a few weeks, it wasn’t serious.
Sam says her sister works on W36th St and was out of the office at the time.  Her sister says June called her this morning from a bus and sounded afraid.  She took Nicki because Terri was abusing her and wanted to protect her from them.  

14 Hours Missing
Lawrence doesn’t believe it.  Terri wouldn’t hurt their baby.  Jack tells Terri about the call and abusing Nicki.  Jack tells her June betrayed Terri so maybe it had something to do with the gardener: Terri’s either sleeping with him or June is.  Terri wanted June fired because she saw them together.  Anthony told June Terri was beautiful and happy.  June says Terri doesn’t love Lawrence.  Terri loved Anthony since they were 15 and it was the only time she was happy.  Her father stopped her form seeing Anthony.  Laurence didn’t know so she made up the stealing story.
The housekeeper tried to straighten Terri out by telling her father that Anthony shouldn’t be around because Terri loves him.  Terri won’t make it without Nicki.

Jack calls his daughters, he’ll see them next weeked with their favourite bagels.  Hannah won’t talk to him.  They showed June’s photo to bus drivers.  The call came in at 10 from a 314 area code, that of St Louis.  She must have borrowed a phone from another passenger.

Jack gets a call.  Nicki is dead.  She was buried in a shallow grave.  Danny says it was dug in a hurry.  COD was suffocation there were no signs of abuse.

Martin questions Anthony and tells him Nicki was buried in the woods outside the family home.  He’s not protecting Terri and he didn’t make plans with June to Kill Nicki.  A man lent June the phone at Pennsylvania, the next stop is Pittsburgh.  Here June is found on the bus.

Viv thinks perhaps someone paid her to kill Nicki.  Jack thinks it could be a black market deal gone wrong.  He asks Viv to question her.  June was read her rights.  She was afraid of the police as they’d blame Nicki’s death on her.  She ddin’t kill Nicki and wants to talk with Laurence.

Jack talks with him.  Jack tells him Terri was abusing Nicki and June saw it so he sent her away because she knew too much.  Terri killed Nicki.  Lawrence says there was no abuse but an accident.  Terri was feeding her and suffocated her by falling asleep on her.  June came in and saw what happened.  Lawrence gave her the money and forced her to leave or he’d call the police and tell them June did it.  They’d believe him.  He couldn’t tell Terri because she’d kill herself.  He put Terri to bed and buried Nicki.  He thought June would go away.  Jack tells him he believed he could hire an expensive lawyer and get away with it.  Lawrence wants to tell Terri himself.  He’s going to arrest them both.

Jack goes to his office and cries after he thinks of his daughters.  Viv asks June why she ran and didn’t just stay and tell the truth.  She’s not rich or powerful and everyone thought it was her all along.   Viv explains it's because she ran.

 A family orientated episode which hits close to home for everyone, especially Jack.  He’s more involved this time around because of his daughters and sends Viv in to question June.  Also because of season 3 episode 3 when he took out his anger on the abused man.

Another episode where Danny very much “finds” the dead baby and again it gets too much for him. As he walks away when Jack opens up the bag, he can’t bare to watch.

In this episode Sam believes June is guilty and took the baby but she thinks differently of the missing mother in episodes 6 and 7; so her attitude isn’t consistent or synonymous with all victims, except may be the ones who remind her of her own situation, at least it appears that way.  What prompts her to suspect June is guilty anyway?

Terri’s father says he’ll turn the baby into an alcholic but what about a drug addict by popping all those pills. Terri says June can borrow the necklace “when you have a hot date,” she already knew about her and Anthony.

Martin: “wouldn’t be surprised if we get a ransom call soon.”  Which they do.
Kidnappers using the old ploy of voice distorters as did the one in the season 1 episode.  But the voice isn’t distorted much as it still sounds like a woman.

Jack: “Is it possible June witnessed something to prompt your wife into you firing her?”  Jack is right about this.  June did witness something only Terri didn’t know.
Danny: “…wrapped in her baby blanket with a lot of care.”  Who would wrap up a baby so carefully, only someone close to her.

Jack: “I think you should take a crack at her.”
Viv: “Why?”
Jack: “I don’t think my approach would be particularly useful right now.”

June has posters on her bedroom wall of Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom.
For afficiandos of both this show and CSI, this episode was straight out of CSI season 1 epsiode Gentle, Gentle  where they found the missing baby buried at the golf course behind the family house, after their other son had smothered him.

This episode was a foray into the dysfunctional family life of people who have too much money and can buy silence.
Danny likes to keep his sensitive side hidden – when he couldn’t sit around Jack looking at the baby.  Now sporting a bangle on his wrist. Like Sara in CSI Danny also gets cases which have an impact on him: either anger or sadness or both.  So who does he talk to about all this when it gets too much for him?

Viv asking why Jack wanted her to talk to June when the case was too close to home for him.  When he cries at the end, not that we get to see his face: private grief.  In the clip with his baby daughter, he probably never used to wear black back then, as he also never wore black in the pilot episode.

The ending was obvious, Terri suffocated the baby.  Clue: when she was feeding the baby under the blanket in the flashback she practically smothered her.

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