The kidnapping episode.
April 1967. Change is afoot for the Oxford City Police, with Jakes due to leave following a whirlwind romance with an American student and WPC Shirley Trewlove joining the team. Those officers who are not laid low by a spate of stomach upsets are baffled as to what caused a house fire in which artist Simon Hallward dies. Simon had previously been a member of Gideon Finn's hippie commune but left after six months. Meanwhile, Richardson's supermarket chain falls victim to anti-Apartheid protesters and food contamination as blackmail, the latter causing a customer's death. Then supermarket boss Leo Richardsons' daughter Verity is kidnapped for six-figure ransom; Morse drops off the money and rescues her, although the kidnapper remains at large. Morse establishes a connection between Richardson's promiscuous wife Annette and Hallward as well as discovering that Verity is keeping secrets from her parents — which leads him to crack the case.
This episodes contains examples of:
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Jakes and Morse, who've never had the most constructive of working relationships, are shown to be getting along quite well with each other in the former's final appearance.
- Bait-and-Switch: Whether Jakes will actually survive the episode and get to leave Oxford with his new love is touch and go at times.
- Call-Forward: To the original series; charity worker Marion Brooke is a younger version of the character who appears in "Masonic Mysteries". In both episodes, she works for Amnox, the Morseverse's Fictional Counterpart of Oxfam.
- Character Development: Jakes, of all people, is in love.
- Cult: Gideon Finn's commune comes across as one of these, and causes Fred Thursday to say the line at the top of this page.
- Deadpan Snarker: Morse, in response to Marion Brooke's evident dislike of the police.Marion Brooke: A policeman donating to Amnox? Your lot are usually more at home breaking up our demos and arresting lawful protestors.Morse: You should be safe today. My rubber truncheon's at the menders.
- Dumb Blonde: Utterly averted by Trewlove, who's quickly shown to have brains as well as beauty.
- Expy: The unnamed group of students chasing after black people with hunting horns and chucking them in the river are this to the Bullingdon Club
. - O.O.C. Is Serious Business: It doesn't take a detective to know something's up with Jakes when he's totally unresponsive to the presence of WPC Trewlove.Thursday: You sickening for something? A new WPC and no off-colour remarks from you? We'll be sending out for iron tablets!
- Put on a Bus: Jakes leaves the show on one.
- Mrs. Robinson: Annette Richardson. Who tries (and fails) to seduce Morse.
- Shout-Out: A few, as ever:
- There's plenty towards The Graduate which was released in 1967, the year in which this episode is set. The relations between the Maddox and Richardson families are very similar to those between the Braddocks and the Robinsons — with Annette Richardson in the Mrs. Robinson role. Mike, the Maddoxs' son, gets asked by several people what he's going to do now that he's graduated. Also, Jakes and his fiancee leave town on the back seat of a bus at the end of the episode, just like Benjamin and Elaine did in the film's final scene.
- Simon Hallward's landlady is called Mrs. Crevatte, which is also the name of Tony Hancock's landlady in The Rebel.
- Hallward is also the surname of the artist who paints The Picture of Dorian Gray.
- When the blackmailer demands money from the police, Morse is the officer who will drop it off. From there, things get a bit Dirty Harry as he has to take the money in a bag to a telephone box and wait for instructions that send him to another telephone box, etc. Fortunately, Jakes avoids the fate of many a colleague of Harry Callaghan and gets to leave the show alive.
- * Tampering with Food and Drink: The extortionist targeting Richardson's plants tainted products on their shelves — there's arsenic in the bloater paste, and crushed glass in the baby food.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Bright had already started to move from his Obstructive Bureaucrat tendencies towards a more paternalistic demeanour, but it is the the arrival of Trewlove that really brings out his softer side.Bright: My door is, well, if not exactly always open, then not infrequently ajar.
