Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 1.4

Yeah, I'm switching back to single episode reviews for these series. There's too much to say about each episode for me to really condense it down.

Gene hunts for evidence on a grand conspiracy.

Ashes To Ashes - Series One, Episode Four

Ok, half-way through the series. To off-set the dodginess of the new characters, we get a focus upon... Alex's character. Alex's retroactive relationship with her parents still refuses to make sense for either party. Sam typically had a lot more tact when dealing with his parents, and yet we're supposed to believe that Alex is a lot more savvy than he is. The story, however, did work a lot better because of the links into Alex's past and would have probably been quite dreary without them.
     When the body of a murder victim disappears, Alex is forced to follow a paper trail of corruption that runs straight through to her mother. While the team follow the lead through to the victim's socialist links, Alex gets to know her mother a lot better, finding out that the suspect worked at a Weapons Research Facility. While Alex believes that they're operating under a conspiracy, Gene wants to bring in Alex's mother - especially after she discovers that the victim was blackmailing her. Through his pictures, Alex that her mother had an affair with her god-father Evan while her real father was away, and she feels betrayed. After the Home Office steal the evidence from the victim's body, she and Gene track the plans back to a government vault, where they're locked in until the rest of the team can save them. Soon the leader of the local women's resistance movement  is revealed to have been the killer, having defended herself from being raped.
      Alex's mother is a lawyer, someone that I'd assume has a modicum of intelligence. And yet she sees no links to a woman that looks like her, is incredibly interested in following her life, and feels betrayed upon discovering she has had an affair. It's not an insane link to make, and with the fact that Alex makes little to no effort to disguise it, it's a wonder that she doesn't figure out exactly who Alex is. Pete Tyler did it in Father's Day with less information, goddamnit.Why is Alex this stupid? She's supposed to represent the advanced face of modern policing, and yet she's shouting at her mother and Evan, completely derailing the investigation. Luckily she's learnt her lesson by the end of the episode, but it stands out where it does appear.

Sara is the leader of a resistance movement.

      One of the key parts of the episode is the fact that their investigation is leading them into the path of the government and their secretive, Cold-War activities. This is certainly more ambitious than Life On Mars ever tried, and in the ten minutes where it actually applies, it really works. However, the rest of the episode feels a little stunted because it instead feels like we're just revolving around Alex's life and history. Luckily, it's also a good bit of character work for Alex - not that we'll see her exercising that any time soon.
      Thematically this episode was a lot more down-to-earth and gritty than last week, which had its players doing very little at all. This is the first episode of the Bonanza to really exploit the Cold War, and its second half is immeasurably better for it. However, it broke down a lot in places because of how Alex was written and how little time we got to really explore the concept in its entirety. Despite it's problems, however, 1.4 is so far the best episode of this series to come.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Russell Fucking Tovey is at it again....