The Responder season 2 episode 3 recap contains spoilers... Chris finds himself with a decision to make when he gets hold of Franny's ENCRO phone. Elsewhere, Ray Mullen discovers some jaw-dropping secrets about Debs and Rachel finally faces her demons...
Chris drops by to see his father, Tom, who’s furious about the money he stole from him. He may not be able to go to the toilet by himself anymore, but when he grabs Chris and hisses threats in his ear, it’s a terrifying window into the police officer's youth.
When Tilly comes in, Tom’s demeanour changes instantly and he gives her a tenner from his pot. “You dad knows where the money is.” Chris is eager to leave though and when Tilly is outside, he tells his dad he put the money back. Outside, he’s furious with Tilly for coming in, with his frustration and fury at the challenges he faces spilling into the most precious area of his life.
Speaking of stress, Franny drops him a text telling him to ask two old ladies where a guy called Vernon Hartley is. We doubt it'll be as easy as it sounds though. "He’s got something of mine and I want it back. Debs will have you sitting at that CID desk before you know it," says Franny.
At Tilly’s communion, Chris chats to Father Liam and they both give the other a glimpse of their personal demons. In a touching moment, the priest tells him “he’s not a bad man", when the police officer opens up about his love for his daughter.
Later on, at the school gates, Ray Mullen hears Chris has a new day job lined up with Debs and is both furious and suspicious. We reckon he might do a bit of digging and it wouldn’t take much to uncover a veritable nest of vipers.
Meanwhile, Chris pays the two old ladies a visit. But while he’s trying to get the information he needs, Deb calls and tells him to day the day job’s not going to happen, because Ray Mullen is getting suspicious. She’s not wrong and that night Mullen finds the CCTV of Debs and Franny outside the pub.
Further digging reveals that Debs may have helped him get off a burglary charge back in 2010 and that she was also romantically involved with him back then. We knew that, but now Mullen does and it’s probably not good news for Chris either.
'It's a ticket to ride that'
At Jodie’s house, she and Casey are preparing for their first night working the club, when the host opens up on how much she misses Carl Sweeney. It's a reminder that, like pretty much everyone in the show, Casey has a sword of Damocles hovering above her head constantly.
However any sympathy we have for her quickly goes out of the window when she calls Marco, begging him to leave Adele and come to the club to help her sell the drugs. “Don’t bring me down Marco!” she said to him in the last episode, which seems rather rich now.
Elsewhere, when Franny offers to take matters with the two ladies into his own hands, Chris heads back to see them in the hope of stopping him from doing something terrible. He eventually finds Vernon just before Franny’s heavies turn up, yet Chris manages to get him into the car and away.
Vernon needs to flee town, but on the way to the bus stop, Vernon says he has a phone that contains details of Franny’s whole operation. “Hodgkin got hold of it and was blackmailing Franny,” says Vernon, who says the deceased criminal gave it to him to look after. “It’s a ticket to ride that,” says Vernon, but is it Chris’ ticket out of jail or a ticket further down the rabbit hole?
'What you gonna do Steve?'
At the club, Jodie’s two henchmen make a power grab for her cash and drugs, during which leaves Marco gets clobbered. He makes it home to see Adele, but with the social services coming the next morning he might need to clean himself up. However he’s made it home, with no real harm done, so we’re praying this wake up call makes him realise he needs to leave all that shit behind for good. Come on Marco!
Across town Rachel helps her old friend Trevor out by removing some noisy squatters from the vacant flat of his old nemesis, whom he misses now she’s passed away. Yet striking fear into three blokes gives her the confidence to speak to Steve’s new girlfriend. “He warned me you’d come round,” says Lorna. “You’re mad!”
However when Steve comes to the door and tries to make her leave, she attacks him. It’s nothing more than he deserves, yet we fear that Rachel will be the one to suffer in the aftermath. In retrospect she should have just pressed charges, yet the mixture of doubt and pain he caused means it’s not quite that simple.
She calls Chris to help her out and after telling his pal she’s messed up, she arrests Steve for assaulting an officer. Fair enough we think.
