Nobody gets to choose. The further a man runs away from his nature, the sooner it'll find him out.
The Gatsby episode.
March 1967. Morse is disillusioned after spending time in prison following his last case, and even though he has been exonerated, he ponders his future with the police. Having relocated to an isolated lake-front cottage, he is befriended by Joss Bixby, an unhappy millionaire, and his party-loving friends. At a funfair on Cowley Green a bus conductor, Jeannie Hearne, is spirited away into the night, seemingly without explanation. When her body is found the next morning, Fred Thursday investigates and discovers that Morse's new friends are involved. When Bixby is killed, but then appears the next day, Morse realises that his future is as a detective, and that the solution lies at the funfair where Hearne went missing.
This episodes contains examples of:
- Call-Forward: The younger version of a character from the original series makes an appearance. Anthony Donn is a friend of Morse's from university, and will appear in "Deceived by Flight" (in which he's a murder victim). Two other characters from the original series, Roly Marshall ("Deceived by Flight") and Julius Hanbury ("Ghost in the Machine"), are mentioned in passing.
- Comically Missing the Point: Bright, on hearing about what happened at the fairground on the night Jeannie Hearne disappeared. Viewers unfamiliar with British slang terms for money note may find the following somewhat puzzling...Jakes: They went out on a few rides. Took in a magic show. Shooting gallery. Potter says he won her a monkey.Bright: Five hundred pounds?Thursday: Stuffed, sir.Bright: What?Thursday: Soft toy.Bright: Ah.
- Continuity Snarl: The voiceover at the beginning, outlining the Blenheim Vale cover-up, refers to Morse as a DS (Detective Sergeant), although at present he is still a DC (Detective Constable).
- Cool Car: Bixby has quite a few, including a red Jag that he offers to Morse.
- Distressed Woodchopping: Morse is seen doing some of this at his cottage.
- First-Name Basis: Defied by Morse, as per usual — although Kay wants to find it out.Kay: What does it start with? I bet I can guess.Morse: [realizing she means it] Kay?Kay: Hold out your hands. Now look into my eyes. A? B? C? D? E? F? It's E, isn't it?Morse: [intrigued] Quite a trick. Where did you pick that up?Kay: A misspent youth. Don't change the subject. E for what?Morse: Embarrassment, mostly.
- Foreshadowing: A few examples.
- The magic trick in which the Great Zambezi shoots a gun and then coughs up the bullet becomes this when you consider that this is how Fred Thursday will get the bullet out of his lung in "Coda".
- At the end, Kay tells Morse that she and her husband are going to stay with Guy Mortmaigne in Kenya; the Mortmaigne family will figure prominently in "Prey".
- When Max diagnoses the death of the student as being caused by heroin, he refers to the drug as "new in these parts, and rather worrying". The growing heroin trade in Oxford will become a significant plot point in Series 5 and 6.
- For Your Own Good: Strange tells Morse that, during the process of uncovering the conspiracy following the events of "Neverland", prison was probably the safest place for him to be. Not that this does anything to assuage Morse's anger and disillusionment over the way he's been treated.
- London Gangster: Harry Rose.Thursday: Slots, drugs, racketeering, you name it. Harry Rose has been at it since the Devil was in short trousers.
- The Nicknamer: Donn addresses Morse as "Pagan", his university nickname (which he got because he never uses his first name, which can also be referred to, somewhat archaically these days, as a Christian name).
- Noodle Incident: The resolution of the Blenheim Vale conspiracy has taken place off-screen.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Harry Rose is described as "the man who fixed the World Cup last year", alluding to the 1966 World Cup. This works in two ways. Firsly, it's a nod to Meyer Wolfsheim, the character in The Great Gatsby on whom Rose is based, who was referred to as "the man who fixed the World Series in 1919" (something actually done by Arnold Rothstein, the Real Life inspiration for the character). Secondly, it can refer to the theft of the actual World Cup several months before the 1966 tournament, a national sensation in Britain at the time. The thieves demanded £15,000 (equivalent to over £200,000 today), but the trophy was found undamaged under a hedge in a suburban garden by a dog named Pickles. A known criminal called Betchley was arrested in connection with the theft, but refused to identify his associates, who remain unknown to this day. The implication here is that Harry Rose masterminded the theft.
- Take That!: To Sherlock; sometimes, it really is twins.
- Treachery Cover Up: The corruption conspiracy that came to a head in "Neverland" and the abuse that went on at Blenheim Vale have not become public knowledge; instead, they've been classified for the next fifty years.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Bright moves away from his Obstructive Bureaucrat characterisation of the first two series. He apparently watched over Thursday while he was recovering in hospital to make sure no-one came to finish him off, and even offers an apology of sorts to Morse for the way he was treated.
- Verbal Tic: Bixby's "old man" catchphrase, the lack of which clues Morse into the fact that he has a double.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: In addition to the Blenheim Vale abuse being covered up, we never find out if Jakes and the other surviving Lost Boys managed to find Peter Williams's body. We will have to wait until the last-ever episode of the show to discover what happened to him.
- Whole-Plot Reference: This episode is basically a retelling of The Great Gatsby — including a Gatsby (Bixby) who throws wild parties, a Daisy (Kay), a Tom Buchanan (Bruce), a Meyer Wolfsheim (Harry Rose), a Nick Carraway (Morse), a shooting in the water and a woman getting run over by a car. Then, the mystery twists into a version of The Prestige toward the end.
