A surprisingly kinetic and curious episode.
The Goonies would be so proud of the boy scouts in the opening scene of this week’s episode of The Glades. The troop finds a boar carcass on their trip; they also find a human finger embedded within the carcass. This one disembodied digit from a human leads Longworth and Callie on an investigation to the dark world of drug trafficking.
The Glades earns some props for putting its audience through a rinse cycle on adrenaline. Its stories make you feel you’re following the Star Trek Enterprise through a black hole — there are so many twists and turns in one episode that it can cause motion sickness! Let’s put it this way: if you come in late you end up lost. How did we go from murder to drug trafficking? I don’t know, and the show sometimes forgets too. The fast paced nature actually helps the story in the case of this episode though. What starts off as the murder of a young war veteran soon becomes a story about drug trafficking and, worse yet, human trafficking. Human trafficking isn’t used much in most procedural dramas — unless you are Law and Order SVU where despair is the norm — so it comes off refreshing to see this idea explored from a southern perspective. It’s even more of a pleasure to see the sometimes insufferable Longworth meet his match in the form of a hillbilly boar hunter.
The episode moves at a kinetic pace, but never drowns viewers in “WTF just happened” moments. In fact, the brisk pace of the investigation leads to humorous scenes such as seeing Daniel nerd out over urine. It makes you wonder how kinky he is. The episode’s obstacles also serve as trials for Longworth to overcome to earn Callie’s affection. Seeing Longworth’s wit and strength near the episode brings her to rethink their relationship and perhaps start a new one. The two start off fighting in the beginning of the episode while trying to find the boar hunting shack and this fight climaxes into Longworth dangling from the tree due to a trap. Thanks to “Spiderman,” I can no longer take a scene between a female lead and a dangling male lead seriously. The scene maintains its flirty nature and never strays into an intolerable boink-fest like some would try with this reference.
Overall, this was a rewarding episode and its kinetic pace makes you realize “hey, this is a summer show dammit!” Give those boy scouts a medal for most effing brave scouts please. I’m done.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.