Murder in the First - My Sugar Walls - Review: "In The Walls"

Well, that was a fun episode, cleverly titled My Sugar Walls. This allowed for a nice theme there with the killer being held behind Sugar's Walls which set the backdrop of the episode as the gang covered him up and left him until the end of the episode, where they brought him out from behind the walls again and left him alive because he was "blood". I was left wondering what the fate of the killer would be - would this be how Hildy stops Sugar? By finding the killer in the walls? But no. However, there's potential there for more to come with the killer's character and I don't think we've seen the last of him yet. So watch this space.

Now onto the rest of the episode, which, although not as fast paced as the first two episodes were, was pretty well done and I wasn't bored. We got to spend plenty of time with Raffe, Hildy and Terry as they perused various leads which all worked well together, as well as introducing Dustin Maker's attorney, Jamie Nelson, who is trying to help him avoid the death penalty. Leads look cold at the moment but Jamie's hoping that Dustin's parents were abusive, even though they were initially very forthcoming for the investigation and didn't feel the need for an attorney before they found out that Dustin could be up for the Death Penalty. It's clear that they still care about him, and now it'll be interesting to see how Jamie's character can provide a foil for the SFPD as the case progresses. Already she's stopped them from taking Dustin out of the hospital, and there's still a big unknown question about Dustin's parents. Do they know more than they let on? Hildy might suspect that they're not being entirely honest as well, as she wants to know where Dustin got the money for his guns and ammunition from, which is a fair point. How did Dustin and Alfie get those guns?

However, Dustin was only a minor part in a pretty busy episode of Murder in the First, and it's nice to see that it's remaining as packed as possible. It's also looking as though we're dealing with three four separate crimes at least for now, and whether they have any connections or not remains to be clear. Dustin Maker, the gang shooting, Caleb's suicide and the missing undercover cop Sarah Tran. Let's tackle them individually.

First up, Sarah Tran, the missing undercover cop who was mentioned briefly in the premiere before the bus attack. We now know that she's alive, with a voice-mail message left on the phone. This seems to be a slow burner plot at least until now, but hopefully we'll have some nice revelations in the next episode. We got plenty here to say the least, with multiple minor cliffhangers that could propel through the next episode. Is Murder in the First doing too many cases at once? I guess we'll have to wait and see, but for now at least, I'm enjoying watching them unfold on a weekly basis. The extended episode count should be interesting as well as we'll also find out whether it was really needed, because in most shows, they're often not.

Following shortly after the reveal of Sarah still being alive we got Hildy and Miller examining Caleb's corpse at the very end of the episode. All throughout the episode, everyone thought that his suicide was "just" a suicide with no ulterior motives being hidden. English interviewed Captain Evans, who we learnt had previously lost a partner like Caleb, and even though they didn't know each other very well, Evans was willing to listen to Caleb. However, it didn't do much to help him. Or at least, there may not be much that Evans could have done, given that we found out there was evidence of a blowtorch being used as well as a gun, and that would be too complicated for someone who was just trying to kill themselves. So it's pretty clear that someone killed Caleb, posing as a nice question at the end of the episode to keep the audience hanging for next week. Personally, I can't wait. There's lots of potential for this to develop, depending on whether the writers can manage the pacing of all the various plot threads and keep them entertaining.

The main part of this episode was the gang stuff, with plenty of potential here. We're getting the start of some tension between Raffi and Hildy, and it's pretty good to see that they've at least decided to avoid the love triangle direction with English here, with the issues that Raffi is having with Hildy being purely professional. She's worried that if Hildy goes storming into gang territory then it'll risk all of Raffi's undercover work being exposed. However, to counterbalance the problems, Raffi's friend, Sharisse, who didn't even want to go along with her anyway, set up Raffi to have her face and that of her other cops revealed to a kid with a camera. The money's not in the house, and they were framed. It was handled pretty well and made for a good demonstration of the tactics that the guys who they're out to catch can employ against them.

We also spent time with Hildy's brother as well in the strip club (because it looks like the strip club is the only place we're going to see Junior this season). Does he know more about what's going on than he lets on as well? He's constantly trying to dissuade his fellow inspector from investigating, so we don't know, or at least at this early stage. There's not enough information and no blatantly obvious hints yet like some other shows would have given us. We'll have to wait and see how this goes.

So it looks as that's it for this week's episode of Murder in the First. What did you think of My Sugar Walls?. Are you still enjoying the direction and multiple cases of this season? Do you think that Dustin's parents and Junior know more than they're letting on? Let me know in the comments below!

Overall Rating: B-
Positives:
-Managed to juggle all of the cases well.
-More time devoted to the Undercover Cop case.
-Cliffhangers.
-Mystery with parents and Junior. Do they know more than they're letting on?
Weaknesses:
-How long can these mysteries drag out for? Still doesn't look like enough material for a whole Season.
-The show is still struggling to decide what direction it wants to go in.

About the Author - Milo MJ

Milo is an Arsenal FC supporter and loves TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and Person of Interet. He reviews Black Sails, Childhoods End, Da Vinci's Demons, The Knick, Manhattan and Murder in the First for Spoiler TV as well as books, films and games for his own blog The Fictional Hangout and contributes to comic reviews on a weekly basis for All-Comic.

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