Hit and Run
Episode 3 of The Bay Season 2 sees Manning more determined than ever to hone in on the family and investigate them in much more detail. Someone was stealing money from the family finances but who could it have been? Anyway, Mark speaks to Bill down at the dock and admits that he had documents from the Breakwater case they were working on. He panicked and burnt the papers. He destroyed them incase they fell into the wrong hands. Bill congratulates him though and tells the man that their priority right now lies with Rose and Oliver. They need to leave the police to do their job and hope that everything blows over. When Rose and Oliver head home, Bill takes offence to Stella and Mark discussing Bill’s “condition”. He reminds them that the business belongs to him – not them. Lisa listens to all of this unfold from the doorway, hearing the problems brewing in this household first-hand. Those problems extend to the finances as it turns out Rose’s salary was going into Stephen’s account. She’s apparently bad with money (even though she’s an account manager) and claims Stephen knew about the financial discrepancies at work too. Mark got mixed up in all this with a bad business scheme. After everything went sideways, Stephen immediately told Bill, sealing the deal and preventing him from ever being made partner at the law firm. Lisa heads out and talks to Mark next, who mentions that Bill has medical issues and he’s been trying in vain to get the man to see a doctor. On top of that, Mark bemoans his money woes and how everything is tight for them right now. He and Stella are also temporarily staying under Bill’s roof. After hearing his side of the story, Lisa decides she wants to to try and get Stella alone and hear her story. Well, Stella claims that Mark was pushed out the firm in favour of Stephen. Stephen slotted right in to the family unit but he seemed to also disapprove of Jamie’s homosexuality, saying very little to Jamie’s partner Theo. Cass is interviewed again but this time she opens up to Manning. She was recruited as a delivery driver of sorts, tasked with ferrying packages back and forth between different areas. She had no idea that this gun would be used for murder though and panicked after what happened. Med heads off and looks at Gainsley Road. Specifically, the value of the property that’s just been bought for £300,000. Only, it’s actually only worth £170,000. It definitely doesn’t add up and with Lisa dealing with problems of her own, he decides to tackle this alone. Med begins researching Breakwater Developments in much more detail and checks out their website. When Med rings their number though, it’s unrecognized. Is this a front for something else? Lisa heads out for a really awkward dinner with Andy, determined to at least try and patch everything up. Only, Abbie keeps calling her Father Andy. It’s a pretty tense affair, one that’s stirred up further by Andy admitting that her Mother tried to pay him off. Later that evening, Lisa confronts her Mother about this and the pair eventually fall out. Back at the station, Lisa feeds back the issues stemming between Stephen and Jamie to the team. It’s clear there was no love lost between them and it could link to the murder. Anyway, they also find a load of messages and calls on Stephen’s phone from an unrecognized number. One of these links back to the Midland Hotel. Lisa shows up and finds someone has signed the guestbook with “Mrs Marshbrook.” Furthermore, Stephen also made another booking for the next evening. The Midland Hotel is a significant place for Stephen as he apparently entertains clients there. For now, their search is sidelined by the team tracking down an Albanian called Tarek who could match their description. It turns out he’s working at the scrapyard Grace is working at. Is this just a coincidence? Lisa and Med don’t think so and head up to interview him. jump on this and head up to interview him. He claims to have been working on the lorry with Frank at that time, and his distinct lack of tattoos feels like another dead end. However, it does paint Frank in a pretty unfavorable light given his alibi includes hanging out with Grace. Someone is lying here! Med continues to hit a brick wall while investigating Breakwater. Elsewhere, Lisa interviews Grace before learning from the station that Jamie lied about his whereabouts. He claimed to be on a flight back during the evening of the murder. Actually though, he came back several weeks before. And this inevitably sends Lisa back to Bill’s house again to talk to Jamie. Only, he’s not there and all his things are gone too. As she rings Med to feed back this information, he’s hit by a car and left breathing heavily in the middle of the street. As Lisa calls out for him down the walkie, desperately trying to get her partner to speak, the car reverses back over Med to finish the job. As he starts bleeding out, the episode comes to a very dramatic close.
The Episode Review
While the case continues to intrigue, swinging like a pendulum between possible suspects, Lisa’s melodramatic family issues feel like filler rather than meaningful drama injected into the show. The romance angle with Rob and Claire feels like a way to pad out the run time while Andy returning feels like a contrived nod to try and inject more superficial drama into this one. And the crazy thing is, it’s really not needed. The case is actually intriguing enough on its own and with two or three possible suspects in the family, there’s a good amount of motive for any of the guys there to be the ones responsible. I’m not sure about you guys but personally, I’m sticking by my initial thoughts that it’s Mark responsible. What a dramatic end to the episode though! Hats off to ITV because killing Med is a really dramatic and unexpected twist. The entire scene was incredibly dramatic and season 2 has, so far at least, really stepped it up a gear and delivered an engrossing mystery. Whether the second half of this show can follow suit however, remains to be seen.
