Recap / Endeavour S 3 E 04 Coda

Never bet against a man with nothing to lose.

The bank robbery episode.

As Morse sits his sergeant's exam, garment factory owner Cedric Clissold is shot dead during a wage snatch. Thursday questions the gangster fraternity, leading to the Matthews brothers, likely heirs to the late crime boss Harry Rose.

At the same time, Morse's former tutor Felix Lorimer asks him to investigate bingo caller Paul Marlock, known to consort with the Matthews brothers, who is seeing Felix's estranged wife Nina - and, as Morse discovers, Thursday's daughter Joan. Nina tells Morse she believes that Felix killed Cedric and indeed Morse finds evidence to link the lecturer to the Oxford underworld.

Whilst Thursday receives distressing news regarding his health, Morse and Joan are amongst the hostages when the Matthews gang raid the bank where Joan works — during which time, aided by a coded notebook, Morse works out just who killed Cedric Clissold.

This episode contains examples of:

• Blood from the Mouth: Thursday starts coughing up blood just before he goes to make what might be his last stand against the bank robbers. He then coughs up the bullet that had been lodged in his lung.
• Break the Cutie: The events of this episode break Joan Thursday to the extent that she leaves town.
• Call-Back: The funeral is that of Harry Rose, Bixby's criminal backer in "Ride".
• Call-Forward: Quite a few in this episode:
  • Several key events in this episode form the back-story for the original series episode "Promised Land":
    • The funeral scenes at the beginning of each episode are almost identical. Even Thursday's summary of what happened for Morse's benefit in this episode is exactly what Strange says to Lewis in "Promised Land":
      Thursday: You know what they say about funerals. There’s always someone catches their death.
    • The funeral at the beginning of "Promised Land" is that of Peter Matthews, one of the bank robbers in this episode.
    • Kenny Stone, the criminal-turned-supergrass who Morse and Lewis go to Australia to find in "Promised Land", appears in this episode's funeral scene, but only on police film footage.
  • Morse bumps into an old professor of his, the campy classical scholar Jerome Hogg, who also appears in the original series episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts". The student he's with is called Randall — and so may be Randall Rees, who also appears in that episode.
  • The string quartet whose recital Morse attends is performing Debussy's String Quartet Op. 10 — the same music that's used in "The Way Through The Woods".
• Continuity Snarl: Although there are clear references in this story to "Promised Land" (see Call-Forward, above), dialogue from that Inspector Morse episode indicates that the bank robbery in this episode may have been a different one.
  • In "Promised Land", Strange recalls losing a good officer, and Morse says he lost a good friend. They're clearly talking of the same person, a detective called Ron. However, the only police officer killed in this episode is an unnamed uniformed constable.
  • The robbery referred to in "Promised Land" is said to have taken place ten years earlier to the events of that episode, which is to say c.1981, given that "Promised Land" is set c.1991 (the year in which it was first broadcast); this episode takes place in 1967.
• Counting Bullets: In the denouement, Morse tells Cole Matthews (the gangster holding Joan Thursday hostage) that he has been counting the shots and that he has emptied his revolver. This causes the gangster to move his gun from Joan to Morse. As he is doing so, Thursday shoots him. Turns out, Morse was bluffing — there was still one live round in the gun. He just wanted to get the gun moved away from Joan.
• Creator Cameo: Colin Dexter is the cello player in the string quartet.
• Foreshadowing: A couple of examples, both involving Fred Thursday.
  • The first words heard in this story are Thursday's remark when he arrives at a vantage-point near the church to observe the funeral — "eyes down for a full house". At the time, it seems merely sarcastic (he and Strange are observing a funeral service attended by a very large number of criminals), but it assumes a greater significance as the story develops. These words are traditionally employed by bingo callers at the start of a session, and bingo caller Paul Marlock is a key character.
  • It is clear that Fred Thursday has not told Win about his suspension when she arrives at the scene of the siege. This secretiveness foreshadows his failure to tell her about his loan to his brother Charlie in Series 5, leading to an estrangement between them which lasts into Series 6.
• Heroic BSoD: Joan Thursday experiences one of these as a result of the events of this episode, causing her to leave home in the finale.
• Hostage Situation: Happens when the bank robbery goes wrong after the getaway driver panics, shoots a copper and takes off. Among those taken hostage are Joan (who works in the bank) and Morse (who was there pursuing an enquiry).
• Not My Driver: A group of hostages are loaded on to a coach by one of the bank robber. When the coach runs into a roadblock, the robber orders the driver to open the doors. The driver turns around and points a pistol in his face. It's Trewlove.
• Papa Wolf: Two words: Fred Thursday.
• Parallel Porn Titles: When Morse and Trewlove are searching a car, they find some "stag" films with very highbrow examples of this. They are Hedda Gobbler and Moaning Becomes Electra, referring to plays by (respectively) Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill.
  Morse: Only in Oxford.
• Pistol-Whipping: Morse finds himself on the receiving end of one of these.
• Police Brutality: Thursday's penchant for what Bright calls "outdated methods" leads to his suspension.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Thursday's advice to Trewlove — "no parasan" — means "they will not pass". Adopted from the Spanish Civil War, this was the slogan of British anti-fascists in the October 4 1936 Battle of Cable Street, when a march by Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts was abandoned in the face of opposition from East-end Londoners. It suggests that Thursday witnessed this, possibly as a young police officer on duty that day.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Dorothea Frazil attempts to enter the church during the funeral, she is contemptuously rebuffed by Peter Matthews with the words "have some respect". This is the same phrase used by Sonny Corleone as he prevents the FBI agents from attending Connie and Carlo's wedding in The Godfather.
  • Hogg comments about a male student: "I think he prefers oysters even with all my blandishments". This is a reference to Spartacus which has a scene — involving Laurence Olivier trying to seduce Tony Curtis — in which oysters and snails are used as metaphors for (respectively) heterosexuality and homosexuality.
  • Hogg contemptuously dismisses Felix Lorimer as "the face that lunched a thousand shits", a vulgar pun on the famous line about Helen of Troy in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.
  • Thursday reveals that his mentor was Sergeant Vimes of Cable Street — a direct reference to Terry Pratchett's Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Cable Street is one of the watch houses in Ankh-Morpork.
  • In the post-robbery climax, Morse distracts Cole Matthews, one of the bank robbers, by claiming that he's fired all of his six shots, a nod to Dirty Harry. As he's dragged away, Matthews begs to know if he had or not.
  • Joan's departure at the end of the episode, and her parents' distraught reaction to this when they wake up, plays out like the lyrics of the Beatles song "She's Leaving Home" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was released in 1967 — the year in which this episode is set.