A metro line is a great equalizer. It breaks down barriers between poor and affluent neighborhoods by allowing the easy movement of all citizens. The Whitechapel metro station was opened in 1876 and connected that beleaguered area to the City of London. For the detectives of Ripper Street, the construction of the new metro line is the scene of a double murder. The only witness is in a state of shock and cannot help them. Thus, Inspector Reid, Drake, and Captain Jackson have to rely instead upon their powers of deduction.
We first meet Lucy, a beautiful young woman in an expensive looking white dress, when she visits Long Susan and asks for a job. She is refused. Shortly after, the police find her wandering the street covered in blood and insensible. Shockingly, people stare at her, but nobody stops to help. She tells the police where she’s been and Reid, Drake and Jackson rush to the scene of the crime.
Watching 19th century police work is always interesting. There are no rubber gloves and no taped off areas. Jackson and Reid piece together the logistics of the murder of Lucy’s mother and a rent collector by examining the blood splatter, bullet holes, and wound trajectory. They determine the rent collector killed the mother, but that a fourth person killed him while Lucy watched. When they find a bullet that ricocheted through this fourth person, you wish they had DNA technology to help solve the crime. But, through old fashioned detective work, they reach the same result that modern technology might have given them. However, their examination of the crime scene by crawling on hands and knees with knives to scrape things is horrifying by modern standards.
Reid eventually determines that Long Susan is the murderer and had killed the man to protect Lucy. In a wonderfully tense moment, Reid sits before Long Susan and conducts a slow pat down. This situation could have been played as a sensual or aggressive confrontation. It was neither. That’s not how we would want to see Reid. Right now, he is quite proper in his demeanor and there is no sense that he can be tempted by anything. The scene plays out without any eroticism or violence and Reid arrests Long Susan. The discovery, though, of her connection to the crime sends Reid into a rage.
READ MORE: http://www.tvequals.com/2013/02/10/ripper-street-season-1-review-the-good-of-this-city/
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