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switchbladeeyesThis is a sad episode that raises some hard questions about justice and redemption for which there may be no answers. Or, perhaps, there may be many answers but no way to tell which one is "right."
The character of Travis Drake/Casey Brooks parallels Nick, both having committed heinous acts in the past for which they seek to atone. But can they ever really do that?
The backdrop of the Vietnam War was quite an effective and visceral place to set the flashbacks, probably particularly so for a 90s audience for whom events of the past and notably, the My Lai massacre (definitely an inspiration for the fictional Binh Loc massacre of the episode), would have been much closer in time than for a new viewer today.
On a different note, it was personally neat for me to see Clark Johnson guest starring since I was a big fan of "Homicide: Life on the Street" in which he played Detective Meldrick Lewis.
We kick off with a paranoid guy having groceries delivered. His little house looks like a compound with its high fence, locked gate, and bright flood lights. He greets the delivery guy with a cocked gun. He's sweaty, hypervigilant, and frightened. Paranoid Guy is anxious for Delivery Guy to go visit a man named Casey Brooks on his behalf. Delivery Guy promises he will and books it out of there because Paranoid Guy is totally unhinged.
As it turns out, it's true that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Paranoid Guy is muuuuuurdered by an unknown culprit. Once the police are on the scene, Schanke says it's "amateur night" on the part of the culprit because he left behind a bloody knife. The "why" of it though is unclear because nothing was taken so it wasn't a robbery.
Inside Paranoid Guy's house, Nick is looking at a symbol drawn on the wall and spacing out. He flashes back to Vietnam where he was serving as a Red Cross medic. He comes across the same symbol carved in a downed tree. When he comes out of the flashback, he says to Schanke, "Binh Loc." And because he's Nick, he doesn't elaborate, which Schanke is used to at this point.
Paranoid Guy had an absolute arsenal of firearms that "aren't registered here." (Wikipedia tells me that registration of guns is required in Canada.) Paranoid Guy had made some phone calls to the United States. All this points to Paranoid Guy being American. Schanke has put an APB out on Delivery Guy. He's also talked to Paranoid Guy's landlord. As we see, while Nick was spacing out, Schanke's been busy with actual police work.
Delivery Guy is found and Nick and Schanke interrogate him at the station. Good interrogation scene for them. But I find myself totally distracted by Nick's vest. This is the worst one yet! All Delivery Guy can tell them is that Paranoid Guy was obsessed with a man named Casey Brooks.
Turns out, in Toronto, Casey Brooks is like the Second Coming for his work rehabilitating youthful offenders out on probation. He's politically very well connected in the city. Schanke's skeptical of Saint Casey Brooks and is like "I don't trust anyone that sounds that good."
Nick journeys back to flashback land in Vietnam where he's administering vaccinations to children in a village. Nick asks a young woman about the symbol he saw on the downed tree, and both the tree and symbol are apparently known to her. It's an old form of writing with the translation meaning "clean." Who put it there or why is unknown.
We go to an indoor basketball court where some young folk are hanging around. One complains that Casey's late and that he's going to take off. Brooks then drops from the ceiling using a rappelling line. 'Cause no one apparently noticed him just hanging around out there in this well-lit space. It's fine and is a cool entrance. Brooks really connects with the young people he's trying to keep out of trouble and it's clear that they respect him. It's a nice scene to give us a sense of Brooks even if it's a bit "after school special"-y
Nick and Schanke arrive and question Brooks about Paranoid Guy, showing him a photo of the murder scene. Brooks is like, nope, don't know that guy, only know he was trying to get in touch with me and was crazy. Brooks is not coming across as super believable. When Nick and Schanke confab together, they both agree Brooks could be a suspect. Because Brooks touched the photo, they now have his fingerprints. (I'm like... wouldn't his fingerprints already be on record somewhere? He's a probation officer for goodness sake. It seems like the kind of profession for which you get fingerprinted. Whatever.)
Later that night, we get Brooks alone at the basketball court or rec center or whatever it is. He appears distressed, and when he looks in a mirror, he sees an image of an armed man with a Vietnamese child and hears the sound of gunfire. Then he has flashbacks to a burning village and soldiers, including himself, firing weapons. The PTSD is strong in this one.
At the morgue, Natalie's autopsy has revealed that the location of the knife wound indicates Paranoid Guy was looking up when he died. Schanke makes the very good point that you can rappel from a tree. Not looking too good for Brooks. Also, we learn that the symbol inside Paranoid Guy's house and carved into the tree in Vietnam is also tattooed on Paranoid Guy's arm.
This, of course, sends Nick back to the flashback. He's driving his jeep when he comes across an obstruction in the road. American soldiers come out of hiding and question what he's up to. We see among the soldiers is Paranoid Guy! Another soldier calls for their leader, Lieutenant Drake. And holy shit, it's Casey Brooks! Nick explains himself and where he came from. Drake/Brooks is like, oh yeah, we know that village, Binh Loc, we've heard there's a contingent of VC up there. Nick's like, it's mostly sick kids and people that "look like friendlies." Drake/Brooks rightly asks him what the hell he could know about it (because, really, why would Nick have any idea if any VC were in the village?) Turns out Drake/Brooks and his unit are known as the "Clean-up Crew" because they are tasked with cleaning out Viet Cong soldiers.
Sooooooo, Nick knows "Casey Brooks" is an alias. But Drake/Brooks didn't recognize him, which is interesting. This isn't like someone from a distant past, in human terms. This is someone from 23 years ago. At the same time, they met only briefly and it was dark.
At home Drake/Brooks is packing up a bag and preparing to get the hell out of Dodge. He journeys to flashback land (it's so interesting because most of the time, flashbacks are Nick's or at least another vampire's). It's daytime in the village of Binh Loc and folks are peacefully going about their business when the Clean-up Crew arrives. The soldiers assault the villagers and round them up for interrogation. Drake/Brooks demands the young woman Nick spoke to the night before tell them where the VC are. She insists there are no VC, and then Drake/Brooks clocks her. A young man throws himself between her and Drake/Brooks, likewise insisting that there are no VC.
At the police station, Natalie gives Nick her report and opines that Nick "knows something." Nick acknowledges that he's met Drake/Brooks before and "knows what he's capable of." The fingerprint report has been delayed, which means that no fingerprints connect Drake/Brooks to the murder, but Nick insists that he and Schanke must go arrest Drake/Brooks immediately because otherwise, he'll flee across the border, out of their jurisdiction.
In the car, Schanke is skeptical of Nick because Nick has no evidence to put Drake/Brooks at the scene. It's got to be frustrating for Schanke to work with someone like Nick, who we've seen act several times without evidence. Nick says he knows they have to go after Drake/Brooks based on "experience." And we're whisked off to another flashback. It's sunup and Nick has apparently been holing up with other vampires in an underground bunker. (There's quite a large number of vampires here for rural Vietnam. Theory: this is a hideout along the route to more populated areas so these vampires are just passing through.) Nick demands the other vampires wake up and account for whoever of them "is feeding on the children." So, it's not just disease at the village that was making the children ill. It is at this point that LaCroix enters the chat.
But we'll have to wait a minute on the vampire story because we're back with Drake/Brooks in the present as he's about to flee. For a moment, he goes back to his own flashback where he is demanding the villagers tell him where the VC are. One of the villagers, who apparently escaped the initial round up, runs out of his house. A soldier cries out, "VC!" and another soldier guns the villager down.
Nick and Schanke are almost at Drake's/Brooks's house when Nick goes back to his flashback. Nick confronts LaCroix about feeding on the children. LaCroix's like, chill out bruh, the kids are going to be fine, "it's just a fever" and "they will recover." Apparently, LaCroix (and maybe the other vampires) have been drinking small amounts of blood from many children instead of draining any of them entirely. This is ghastly and morbid in human terms, but, in vampire terms, represents a high level of restraint. And LaCroix's the last person you'd expect to have any scruples about this. It's an interesting little slice of character development, although we don't learn why he prefers not to kill children. But he has limits and apparently that's one of them.
From underground, the vampires hear the sound of automatic gunfire coming from the village. We transition up the village, which means we cannot be in Nick's flashback anymore and are now in Drake's/Brooks's. Villagers frightened by the shooting of the man earlier start running away and the soldiers gun them down as they flee. Initially, Drake/Brooks orders them to hold their fire, but things quickly spiral out of control. One of the houses in the village catches fire, more villagers start trying to flee, and the soldiers keep shooting. It's pure chaos and a fucking massacre of all the men, women, and children of Binh Loc. Drake/Brooks shoots a young man, the same one who put himself between the young woman and Drake/Brooks earlier, as he tries to run away.
In the present, Drake/Brooks flees when he sees Nick and Schanke. Nick is able to detain him and says they need to "talk about Binh Loc and the Clean-up Crew." Nick apparently does not need to explain how he knows about either of those things. The cops find a photo at Drake's/Brooks's house and use that to unearth the truth. Brooks was an assumed identity and Drake is his real name, and he and his unit massacred 18 villagers at Binh Loc, an act for which Drake/Brooks was court-martialed.
I have to take a moment and be like, it's bananas that all this information is coming out so fast. This is the same night based on the clothes Drake/Brooks is wearing. Supposedly, the photo at the house led the police to contact the U.S. army. Pretty incredible turnaround time for all this info on Drake/Brooks in the middle of the night!
Annnnyway, turns out half of the members of the Clean-up Crew died in Vietnam and the remainder all died violent deaths after leaving Vietnam. All except Drake/Brooks. He denies killing the other members of the unit and denies knowing who could be doing the killing. Turns out that in 1981, Drake/Brooks and the remaining members got together to talk about how the others had been murdered (so Drake/Brooks was free in 1981, must not have served much time in prison as a result of the court martial). They thought it was a covert operation from Vietnam to hunt them down like the Israelis hunted down those responsible for the massacre of members of the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich Olympics. (This theory is pretty accurate as it will turn out!) Drake disappeared in 1983, walking away from family and friends, to assume a new life as Brooks and escape the danger. Drake/Brooks liked his new life in Canada where he thought he could make a difference and "try to make up for what happened." Oof, the look on Nick's face. He identifies with that.
Cohen interrupts the interrogation so Natalie can drop the drama bomb that none of the fingerprints at the scene of Paranoid Guy's death belonged to Drake/Brooks. Nick thinks they have enough to hold Drake/Brooks for a while. And Nick's going out alone to "check with a source."
Nick journeys back to the flashback where he returns to Binh Loc at night only to find all the villagers dead. LaCroix has actually beaten him there. Why he's in the village, IDK. LaCroix is lamenting the deaths because damn, no more food source. Nick's like, I don't understand why they attacked this village. LaCroix's like, oh well, that's just war, my friend. Nick pops. "This isn't war. This is a crime!" And, interestingly, LaCroix actually agrees with him and asks, "What are you going to do about it? What will you do to bring these criminals to justice?" (It's always hard to tell if LaCroix is serious or if he's just picking at Nick but later, we'll learn, he was serious.)
We zip back to the present. 99% of the time whenever Nick is "checking with a source," it's almost always Janette. No difference here as he heads to the Raven. It looks like a pretty slow night in the club (or it's getting late for club hours). Janette is trying to do her taxes LOL, which she seems to find just as frustrating as the rest of us. Nick asks her if anyone new is in town "from overseas." He suspects a vampire of murdering Paranoid Guy. Janette's like, I dunno. He also asks if LaCroix ever mentioned Vietnam to Janette. Nope, not really, he mentioned only that he didn't like environmental destruction there and liked it better under the French because of his business interests there, his "plantations." Nick's like, no, I mean did he make any vampires there. She says no. (As ever, I find myself skeptical about whether she's being truthful.) Nick takes off, but not before she can proposition him. Heeeyo. I love their chemistry.
In his car, Nick's like, guess it's time to listen to LaCroix talk to me on the radio. Turns out, LaCroix knows what's been on Nick's mind, saying he can “hear your thoughts" and feel "your" pain, frustration, and desire for justice. He literally tells Nick to come to him and Nick does. (I mean, WTF do listeners of this show think this show is about? "Come to me now." He's soooo creepy.)
At the radio station, LaCroix's like, "Nicholas, how unexpected" lol, like he didn't know Nick was on his way over. Nick accuses LaCroix of making a vampire in Vietnam. LaCroix's like, yep, sure did, "it was your righteousness that inspired me." LaCroix goes into a flashback and finds a single survivor of the massacre, barely alive and longing for vengeance. It's the young man that Drake/Brooks shot and LaCroix turns him into a vampire.
In the present, LaCroix tells Nick, "The crimes of the Cleaning Crew were before me, and here I was with the power to make justice possible for the victims." This is very interesting coming from LaCroix. He had no personal stake in what happened in Binh Loc. He had no reason to get involved. But after talking to Nick, he apparently felt Some Kind of Way about the massacre. What the hell got into him in Vietnam? Sympathy for humans isn't exactly what he's known for. Yet, not only was he intentionally leaving children alive, but he was also trying to offer his version of justice to the villagers. What a softie! You know, for him.
Anyway, LaCroix’s like, bruh, didn't you want justice for what happened? And Nick's all, "Yes. But not this way." Man, LaCroix has got to be so sick of not doing anything right in Nick's eyes. Yes, justice, but no, not like that. He can't win. It's got to be especially grating considering Nick did fuck all to bring justice for the massacre and yet here he is saying LaCroix, who actually did do something, did it wrong. So LaCroix calls Nick out. He's gets on a bit of a roll. What about punishment? What about the victims? What about justice? What about vengeance?
"What about my plantations?"
Whhhhut. Really? “What about my stuff?” This really dilutes the otherwise zinger of a point he was making. (It's a terrible line. I wonder why it was included. Was there supposed to be more about this plantation stuff so that the line makes sense? Anyone have a script of this episode?)
Fortunately, the rest of the dialog is great. Nick comments that Drake/Brooks was court-martialed, he's turned his life around, he works with kids. And LaCroix's all, super sarcastically, "Oh, well, that makes everything all better then." He observes that if Drake/Brooks can be forgiven for his sins then it must follow for Nick that Nick can be forgiven for his. Nick's logic is "perfectly self-serving" in LaCroix's eyes.
Nick protests, "It isn't about me." And LaCroix rightly counters, "It's always about you!"
It's an interesting bit of dialog because, of course, LaCroix doesn't believe Nick needs forgiveness for the vampire things he's done. But what LaCroix can't seem to stand is Nick as a hypocrite. Nick's hypocrisy is more than once, a target of LaCroix's cruel little tricks. He's not even playing a trick here though, just pointing out uncomfortable things to Nick.
Nick wants to know where the vampire from Vietnam is, but LaCroix refuses to help him. LaCroix's like, JFC, stop tormenting yourself about this like you torment yourself about everything else. You wanted justice and I delivered it, let it finish. Which is perhaps a fair point. Vampires do not consider themselves beholden to human laws or codes. Vigilante justice is no problem for them. The victims of Binh Loc can never be made whole. Is LaCroix even wrong that this isn't Nick's fight? What does justice look like here and who gets to decide? Does an American court-martial = justice? Did Drake/Brooks pay his debt because he was court-martialed and now helps at-risk kids in the community? Isn't the sole survivor of the massacre the best person to decide a just outcome? Who is Nick to interfere in this?
So many thorny and interesting questions come from this scene. LaCroix's points are well-made (minus the plantation stuff lol). No easy answers for Nick, which is good. The answers shouldn't be easy.
Schanke calls Nick. It turns out that Drake's/Brooks's political connections have gotten him released. Nick thinks he knows where to find Drake/Brooks, not that he's going to clue Schanke in, Nick being Nick and all.
At an airplane hangar, Drake/Brooks is preparing to flee in a private plane. Nick deduced Drake/Brooks would attempt an air escape having both a pilot's license and friends in high places with planes. Why it wouldn't be more logical to just drive out of the city... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nick confronts him and wants to put him in "protective custody 'til we get this killer." Not sure what THAT is supposed to look like. Stash him at the loft? Drop him off at the Raven? No human can protect Drake/Brooks from a vampire.
Drake/Brooks insists he isn't Drake anymore, he paid his debt, he "tried to stop" the massacre at Binh Loc. And I'm like, ummmmm... I totally saw you shoot that young villager in the back. Nick tells him that "some debts can never be repaid" and someone is going to keep hunting him because of it. Drake/Brooks refuses to go with Nick. Nick insists that Drake/Brooks at least take a cross with him, not that Drake/Brooks has any idea why.
But it's too late. Nick's vampire radar goes off. He can sense another vampire nearby. And whoosh, the vampire from Vietnam makes himself known. He says to Nick, "They warned me about you. Some said you might stay out of it."
Who's the "they" that warned him? Nick's activities must be a hot topic of vampire gossip. Think the Community has a listserv to chat about Nick? NICKNI-L? Are LaCroix and Janette among the "they"? Makes you wonder who in the Community he was talking to. I feel like at least LaCroix must have talked to him. LaCroix probably told him, "it's nice to see you again, glad the vengeance thing is going well. Bee-tee-dubs, there's a super annoying vampire in this city who's probably going to get all up in your business for hunting down humans. He's my Best Frenemy Forever so plz try not to kill him, thx."
Drake/Brooks is like, who's this, but then he remembers the face of the young man he shot. And then he remembers Nick as the "Red Cross doctor." It's all pretty confusing for him. The vampire from Vietnam threatens Nick if he interferes. They have a confrontation where Nick tries to hold him off with the cross, burning his own hand in the process. Then it's time for fisticuffs. It's not snarly, hissy fisticuffs at first, but it does devolve into that, but for only like a second, thank goodness.
Drake/Brooks, confronted by a literal ghost from his past, fires a gunshot into the air, causing the fight to pause. He says as he points the gun at the vampire from Vietnam, "I want to know. Are you VC?" And the vampire is like, you should ask that question of my family, my friends, all the people of the village you massacred, they all liked Americans. But Drake/Brooks needs to know whether the vampire was VC. And he confesses, "Yes, I am." Drake/Brooks apologizes for what he did and then kills himself. Jesus, this is bleak.
With the death, there's no longer a dispute with Nick. The vampire from Vietnam even thanks Nick for everything he did to try and help the village as a medic. He says he has one more task. He's also going to kill himself. He opens the hangar doors to the sunlight while Nick escapes. The vampire from Vietnam goes up in flames. This is a lot of death in the final few minutes of the show. Why did the vampire from Vietnam kill himself? Was it because all he wanted was to accomplish his task and now he had no reason to carry on? Did part of him blame himself for what happened at the village? The only reason the Clean-up Crew was there was because they had information there were VC operatives present, which was, in fact, true. To be done, did he need to pay part of the price? I think this makes the most sense to me. (Not that I personally believe he bore any responsibility for the massacre, but rather that maybe he believes it.)
Back at the police station the next night, Nick is again sporting an awful vest. Anyway, Schanke's typing up the case report. Apparently, Drake/Brooks has been deemed the murderer of Paranoid Guy? Even though they made many points earlier in the episode that they had no evidence of that? Mmmmkay, FK is sloppy with the police stuff on the regular. Probably some whammying or falsifying of evidence went on. That would explain it for me. Nick makes a point to Schanke that "by the end, he was Casey Brooks" rather than Travis Drake. THE END.
Whew. Did Drake/Brooks deserve to die? Would it have been right for one of Binh Loc's victims to have killed him if he hadn't killed himself? Had he redeemed himself? Although his powerful friends apparently totally distance themselves in the end, he did actually improve the community. The youthful offenders did look up to him. Think of the sense of betrayal they must feel about their mentor. How did that reverberate in the human community?
Did the victims of Binh Loc have justice in the end? Was justice even possible? And what does it all mean for Nick? He has killed faaaaaar more people than the soldiers killed at Binh Loc.
It was Nick that pointed out both that "some debts can never be repaid" while also accepting that, in the end, Drake was Brooks. He wasn't the same man who shot the villager. Perhaps the answer to the question of what it all means has contradictions: there can never really be justice for something like Binh Loc, but also, people can be redeemed (even if not forgiven) though they've committed terrible crimes.
Messy. I like it.
The character of Travis Drake/Casey Brooks parallels Nick, both having committed heinous acts in the past for which they seek to atone. But can they ever really do that?
The backdrop of the Vietnam War was quite an effective and visceral place to set the flashbacks, probably particularly so for a 90s audience for whom events of the past and notably, the My Lai massacre (definitely an inspiration for the fictional Binh Loc massacre of the episode), would have been much closer in time than for a new viewer today.
On a different note, it was personally neat for me to see Clark Johnson guest starring since I was a big fan of "Homicide: Life on the Street" in which he played Detective Meldrick Lewis.
We kick off with a paranoid guy having groceries delivered. His little house looks like a compound with its high fence, locked gate, and bright flood lights. He greets the delivery guy with a cocked gun. He's sweaty, hypervigilant, and frightened. Paranoid Guy is anxious for Delivery Guy to go visit a man named Casey Brooks on his behalf. Delivery Guy promises he will and books it out of there because Paranoid Guy is totally unhinged.
As it turns out, it's true that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Paranoid Guy is muuuuuurdered by an unknown culprit. Once the police are on the scene, Schanke says it's "amateur night" on the part of the culprit because he left behind a bloody knife. The "why" of it though is unclear because nothing was taken so it wasn't a robbery.
Inside Paranoid Guy's house, Nick is looking at a symbol drawn on the wall and spacing out. He flashes back to Vietnam where he was serving as a Red Cross medic. He comes across the same symbol carved in a downed tree. When he comes out of the flashback, he says to Schanke, "Binh Loc." And because he's Nick, he doesn't elaborate, which Schanke is used to at this point.
Paranoid Guy had an absolute arsenal of firearms that "aren't registered here." (Wikipedia tells me that registration of guns is required in Canada.) Paranoid Guy had made some phone calls to the United States. All this points to Paranoid Guy being American. Schanke has put an APB out on Delivery Guy. He's also talked to Paranoid Guy's landlord. As we see, while Nick was spacing out, Schanke's been busy with actual police work.
Delivery Guy is found and Nick and Schanke interrogate him at the station. Good interrogation scene for them. But I find myself totally distracted by Nick's vest. This is the worst one yet! All Delivery Guy can tell them is that Paranoid Guy was obsessed with a man named Casey Brooks.
Turns out, in Toronto, Casey Brooks is like the Second Coming for his work rehabilitating youthful offenders out on probation. He's politically very well connected in the city. Schanke's skeptical of Saint Casey Brooks and is like "I don't trust anyone that sounds that good."
Nick journeys back to flashback land in Vietnam where he's administering vaccinations to children in a village. Nick asks a young woman about the symbol he saw on the downed tree, and both the tree and symbol are apparently known to her. It's an old form of writing with the translation meaning "clean." Who put it there or why is unknown.
We go to an indoor basketball court where some young folk are hanging around. One complains that Casey's late and that he's going to take off. Brooks then drops from the ceiling using a rappelling line. 'Cause no one apparently noticed him just hanging around out there in this well-lit space. It's fine and is a cool entrance. Brooks really connects with the young people he's trying to keep out of trouble and it's clear that they respect him. It's a nice scene to give us a sense of Brooks even if it's a bit "after school special"-y
Nick and Schanke arrive and question Brooks about Paranoid Guy, showing him a photo of the murder scene. Brooks is like, nope, don't know that guy, only know he was trying to get in touch with me and was crazy. Brooks is not coming across as super believable. When Nick and Schanke confab together, they both agree Brooks could be a suspect. Because Brooks touched the photo, they now have his fingerprints. (I'm like... wouldn't his fingerprints already be on record somewhere? He's a probation officer for goodness sake. It seems like the kind of profession for which you get fingerprinted. Whatever.)
Later that night, we get Brooks alone at the basketball court or rec center or whatever it is. He appears distressed, and when he looks in a mirror, he sees an image of an armed man with a Vietnamese child and hears the sound of gunfire. Then he has flashbacks to a burning village and soldiers, including himself, firing weapons. The PTSD is strong in this one.
At the morgue, Natalie's autopsy has revealed that the location of the knife wound indicates Paranoid Guy was looking up when he died. Schanke makes the very good point that you can rappel from a tree. Not looking too good for Brooks. Also, we learn that the symbol inside Paranoid Guy's house and carved into the tree in Vietnam is also tattooed on Paranoid Guy's arm.
This, of course, sends Nick back to the flashback. He's driving his jeep when he comes across an obstruction in the road. American soldiers come out of hiding and question what he's up to. We see among the soldiers is Paranoid Guy! Another soldier calls for their leader, Lieutenant Drake. And holy shit, it's Casey Brooks! Nick explains himself and where he came from. Drake/Brooks is like, oh yeah, we know that village, Binh Loc, we've heard there's a contingent of VC up there. Nick's like, it's mostly sick kids and people that "look like friendlies." Drake/Brooks rightly asks him what the hell he could know about it (because, really, why would Nick have any idea if any VC were in the village?) Turns out Drake/Brooks and his unit are known as the "Clean-up Crew" because they are tasked with cleaning out Viet Cong soldiers.
Sooooooo, Nick knows "Casey Brooks" is an alias. But Drake/Brooks didn't recognize him, which is interesting. This isn't like someone from a distant past, in human terms. This is someone from 23 years ago. At the same time, they met only briefly and it was dark.
At home Drake/Brooks is packing up a bag and preparing to get the hell out of Dodge. He journeys to flashback land (it's so interesting because most of the time, flashbacks are Nick's or at least another vampire's). It's daytime in the village of Binh Loc and folks are peacefully going about their business when the Clean-up Crew arrives. The soldiers assault the villagers and round them up for interrogation. Drake/Brooks demands the young woman Nick spoke to the night before tell them where the VC are. She insists there are no VC, and then Drake/Brooks clocks her. A young man throws himself between her and Drake/Brooks, likewise insisting that there are no VC.
At the police station, Natalie gives Nick her report and opines that Nick "knows something." Nick acknowledges that he's met Drake/Brooks before and "knows what he's capable of." The fingerprint report has been delayed, which means that no fingerprints connect Drake/Brooks to the murder, but Nick insists that he and Schanke must go arrest Drake/Brooks immediately because otherwise, he'll flee across the border, out of their jurisdiction.
In the car, Schanke is skeptical of Nick because Nick has no evidence to put Drake/Brooks at the scene. It's got to be frustrating for Schanke to work with someone like Nick, who we've seen act several times without evidence. Nick says he knows they have to go after Drake/Brooks based on "experience." And we're whisked off to another flashback. It's sunup and Nick has apparently been holing up with other vampires in an underground bunker. (There's quite a large number of vampires here for rural Vietnam. Theory: this is a hideout along the route to more populated areas so these vampires are just passing through.) Nick demands the other vampires wake up and account for whoever of them "is feeding on the children." So, it's not just disease at the village that was making the children ill. It is at this point that LaCroix enters the chat.
But we'll have to wait a minute on the vampire story because we're back with Drake/Brooks in the present as he's about to flee. For a moment, he goes back to his own flashback where he is demanding the villagers tell him where the VC are. One of the villagers, who apparently escaped the initial round up, runs out of his house. A soldier cries out, "VC!" and another soldier guns the villager down.
Nick and Schanke are almost at Drake's/Brooks's house when Nick goes back to his flashback. Nick confronts LaCroix about feeding on the children. LaCroix's like, chill out bruh, the kids are going to be fine, "it's just a fever" and "they will recover." Apparently, LaCroix (and maybe the other vampires) have been drinking small amounts of blood from many children instead of draining any of them entirely. This is ghastly and morbid in human terms, but, in vampire terms, represents a high level of restraint. And LaCroix's the last person you'd expect to have any scruples about this. It's an interesting little slice of character development, although we don't learn why he prefers not to kill children. But he has limits and apparently that's one of them.
From underground, the vampires hear the sound of automatic gunfire coming from the village. We transition up the village, which means we cannot be in Nick's flashback anymore and are now in Drake's/Brooks's. Villagers frightened by the shooting of the man earlier start running away and the soldiers gun them down as they flee. Initially, Drake/Brooks orders them to hold their fire, but things quickly spiral out of control. One of the houses in the village catches fire, more villagers start trying to flee, and the soldiers keep shooting. It's pure chaos and a fucking massacre of all the men, women, and children of Binh Loc. Drake/Brooks shoots a young man, the same one who put himself between the young woman and Drake/Brooks earlier, as he tries to run away.
In the present, Drake/Brooks flees when he sees Nick and Schanke. Nick is able to detain him and says they need to "talk about Binh Loc and the Clean-up Crew." Nick apparently does not need to explain how he knows about either of those things. The cops find a photo at Drake's/Brooks's house and use that to unearth the truth. Brooks was an assumed identity and Drake is his real name, and he and his unit massacred 18 villagers at Binh Loc, an act for which Drake/Brooks was court-martialed.
I have to take a moment and be like, it's bananas that all this information is coming out so fast. This is the same night based on the clothes Drake/Brooks is wearing. Supposedly, the photo at the house led the police to contact the U.S. army. Pretty incredible turnaround time for all this info on Drake/Brooks in the middle of the night!
Annnnyway, turns out half of the members of the Clean-up Crew died in Vietnam and the remainder all died violent deaths after leaving Vietnam. All except Drake/Brooks. He denies killing the other members of the unit and denies knowing who could be doing the killing. Turns out that in 1981, Drake/Brooks and the remaining members got together to talk about how the others had been murdered (so Drake/Brooks was free in 1981, must not have served much time in prison as a result of the court martial). They thought it was a covert operation from Vietnam to hunt them down like the Israelis hunted down those responsible for the massacre of members of the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich Olympics. (This theory is pretty accurate as it will turn out!) Drake disappeared in 1983, walking away from family and friends, to assume a new life as Brooks and escape the danger. Drake/Brooks liked his new life in Canada where he thought he could make a difference and "try to make up for what happened." Oof, the look on Nick's face. He identifies with that.
Cohen interrupts the interrogation so Natalie can drop the drama bomb that none of the fingerprints at the scene of Paranoid Guy's death belonged to Drake/Brooks. Nick thinks they have enough to hold Drake/Brooks for a while. And Nick's going out alone to "check with a source."
Nick journeys back to the flashback where he returns to Binh Loc at night only to find all the villagers dead. LaCroix has actually beaten him there. Why he's in the village, IDK. LaCroix is lamenting the deaths because damn, no more food source. Nick's like, I don't understand why they attacked this village. LaCroix's like, oh well, that's just war, my friend. Nick pops. "This isn't war. This is a crime!" And, interestingly, LaCroix actually agrees with him and asks, "What are you going to do about it? What will you do to bring these criminals to justice?" (It's always hard to tell if LaCroix is serious or if he's just picking at Nick but later, we'll learn, he was serious.)
We zip back to the present. 99% of the time whenever Nick is "checking with a source," it's almost always Janette. No difference here as he heads to the Raven. It looks like a pretty slow night in the club (or it's getting late for club hours). Janette is trying to do her taxes LOL, which she seems to find just as frustrating as the rest of us. Nick asks her if anyone new is in town "from overseas." He suspects a vampire of murdering Paranoid Guy. Janette's like, I dunno. He also asks if LaCroix ever mentioned Vietnam to Janette. Nope, not really, he mentioned only that he didn't like environmental destruction there and liked it better under the French because of his business interests there, his "plantations." Nick's like, no, I mean did he make any vampires there. She says no. (As ever, I find myself skeptical about whether she's being truthful.) Nick takes off, but not before she can proposition him. Heeeyo. I love their chemistry.
In his car, Nick's like, guess it's time to listen to LaCroix talk to me on the radio. Turns out, LaCroix knows what's been on Nick's mind, saying he can “hear your thoughts" and feel "your" pain, frustration, and desire for justice. He literally tells Nick to come to him and Nick does. (I mean, WTF do listeners of this show think this show is about? "Come to me now." He's soooo creepy.)
At the radio station, LaCroix's like, "Nicholas, how unexpected" lol, like he didn't know Nick was on his way over. Nick accuses LaCroix of making a vampire in Vietnam. LaCroix's like, yep, sure did, "it was your righteousness that inspired me." LaCroix goes into a flashback and finds a single survivor of the massacre, barely alive and longing for vengeance. It's the young man that Drake/Brooks shot and LaCroix turns him into a vampire.
In the present, LaCroix tells Nick, "The crimes of the Cleaning Crew were before me, and here I was with the power to make justice possible for the victims." This is very interesting coming from LaCroix. He had no personal stake in what happened in Binh Loc. He had no reason to get involved. But after talking to Nick, he apparently felt Some Kind of Way about the massacre. What the hell got into him in Vietnam? Sympathy for humans isn't exactly what he's known for. Yet, not only was he intentionally leaving children alive, but he was also trying to offer his version of justice to the villagers. What a softie! You know, for him.
Anyway, LaCroix’s like, bruh, didn't you want justice for what happened? And Nick's all, "Yes. But not this way." Man, LaCroix has got to be so sick of not doing anything right in Nick's eyes. Yes, justice, but no, not like that. He can't win. It's got to be especially grating considering Nick did fuck all to bring justice for the massacre and yet here he is saying LaCroix, who actually did do something, did it wrong. So LaCroix calls Nick out. He's gets on a bit of a roll. What about punishment? What about the victims? What about justice? What about vengeance?
"What about my plantations?"
Whhhhut. Really? “What about my stuff?” This really dilutes the otherwise zinger of a point he was making. (It's a terrible line. I wonder why it was included. Was there supposed to be more about this plantation stuff so that the line makes sense? Anyone have a script of this episode?)
Fortunately, the rest of the dialog is great. Nick comments that Drake/Brooks was court-martialed, he's turned his life around, he works with kids. And LaCroix's all, super sarcastically, "Oh, well, that makes everything all better then." He observes that if Drake/Brooks can be forgiven for his sins then it must follow for Nick that Nick can be forgiven for his. Nick's logic is "perfectly self-serving" in LaCroix's eyes.
Nick protests, "It isn't about me." And LaCroix rightly counters, "It's always about you!"
It's an interesting bit of dialog because, of course, LaCroix doesn't believe Nick needs forgiveness for the vampire things he's done. But what LaCroix can't seem to stand is Nick as a hypocrite. Nick's hypocrisy is more than once, a target of LaCroix's cruel little tricks. He's not even playing a trick here though, just pointing out uncomfortable things to Nick.
Nick wants to know where the vampire from Vietnam is, but LaCroix refuses to help him. LaCroix's like, JFC, stop tormenting yourself about this like you torment yourself about everything else. You wanted justice and I delivered it, let it finish. Which is perhaps a fair point. Vampires do not consider themselves beholden to human laws or codes. Vigilante justice is no problem for them. The victims of Binh Loc can never be made whole. Is LaCroix even wrong that this isn't Nick's fight? What does justice look like here and who gets to decide? Does an American court-martial = justice? Did Drake/Brooks pay his debt because he was court-martialed and now helps at-risk kids in the community? Isn't the sole survivor of the massacre the best person to decide a just outcome? Who is Nick to interfere in this?
So many thorny and interesting questions come from this scene. LaCroix's points are well-made (minus the plantation stuff lol). No easy answers for Nick, which is good. The answers shouldn't be easy.
Schanke calls Nick. It turns out that Drake's/Brooks's political connections have gotten him released. Nick thinks he knows where to find Drake/Brooks, not that he's going to clue Schanke in, Nick being Nick and all.
At an airplane hangar, Drake/Brooks is preparing to flee in a private plane. Nick deduced Drake/Brooks would attempt an air escape having both a pilot's license and friends in high places with planes. Why it wouldn't be more logical to just drive out of the city... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nick confronts him and wants to put him in "protective custody 'til we get this killer." Not sure what THAT is supposed to look like. Stash him at the loft? Drop him off at the Raven? No human can protect Drake/Brooks from a vampire.
Drake/Brooks insists he isn't Drake anymore, he paid his debt, he "tried to stop" the massacre at Binh Loc. And I'm like, ummmmm... I totally saw you shoot that young villager in the back. Nick tells him that "some debts can never be repaid" and someone is going to keep hunting him because of it. Drake/Brooks refuses to go with Nick. Nick insists that Drake/Brooks at least take a cross with him, not that Drake/Brooks has any idea why.
But it's too late. Nick's vampire radar goes off. He can sense another vampire nearby. And whoosh, the vampire from Vietnam makes himself known. He says to Nick, "They warned me about you. Some said you might stay out of it."
Who's the "they" that warned him? Nick's activities must be a hot topic of vampire gossip. Think the Community has a listserv to chat about Nick? NICKNI-L? Are LaCroix and Janette among the "they"? Makes you wonder who in the Community he was talking to. I feel like at least LaCroix must have talked to him. LaCroix probably told him, "it's nice to see you again, glad the vengeance thing is going well. Bee-tee-dubs, there's a super annoying vampire in this city who's probably going to get all up in your business for hunting down humans. He's my Best Frenemy Forever so plz try not to kill him, thx."
Drake/Brooks is like, who's this, but then he remembers the face of the young man he shot. And then he remembers Nick as the "Red Cross doctor." It's all pretty confusing for him. The vampire from Vietnam threatens Nick if he interferes. They have a confrontation where Nick tries to hold him off with the cross, burning his own hand in the process. Then it's time for fisticuffs. It's not snarly, hissy fisticuffs at first, but it does devolve into that, but for only like a second, thank goodness.
Drake/Brooks, confronted by a literal ghost from his past, fires a gunshot into the air, causing the fight to pause. He says as he points the gun at the vampire from Vietnam, "I want to know. Are you VC?" And the vampire is like, you should ask that question of my family, my friends, all the people of the village you massacred, they all liked Americans. But Drake/Brooks needs to know whether the vampire was VC. And he confesses, "Yes, I am." Drake/Brooks apologizes for what he did and then kills himself. Jesus, this is bleak.
With the death, there's no longer a dispute with Nick. The vampire from Vietnam even thanks Nick for everything he did to try and help the village as a medic. He says he has one more task. He's also going to kill himself. He opens the hangar doors to the sunlight while Nick escapes. The vampire from Vietnam goes up in flames. This is a lot of death in the final few minutes of the show. Why did the vampire from Vietnam kill himself? Was it because all he wanted was to accomplish his task and now he had no reason to carry on? Did part of him blame himself for what happened at the village? The only reason the Clean-up Crew was there was because they had information there were VC operatives present, which was, in fact, true. To be done, did he need to pay part of the price? I think this makes the most sense to me. (Not that I personally believe he bore any responsibility for the massacre, but rather that maybe he believes it.)
Back at the police station the next night, Nick is again sporting an awful vest. Anyway, Schanke's typing up the case report. Apparently, Drake/Brooks has been deemed the murderer of Paranoid Guy? Even though they made many points earlier in the episode that they had no evidence of that? Mmmmkay, FK is sloppy with the police stuff on the regular. Probably some whammying or falsifying of evidence went on. That would explain it for me. Nick makes a point to Schanke that "by the end, he was Casey Brooks" rather than Travis Drake. THE END.
Whew. Did Drake/Brooks deserve to die? Would it have been right for one of Binh Loc's victims to have killed him if he hadn't killed himself? Had he redeemed himself? Although his powerful friends apparently totally distance themselves in the end, he did actually improve the community. The youthful offenders did look up to him. Think of the sense of betrayal they must feel about their mentor. How did that reverberate in the human community?
Did the victims of Binh Loc have justice in the end? Was justice even possible? And what does it all mean for Nick? He has killed faaaaaar more people than the soldiers killed at Binh Loc.
It was Nick that pointed out both that "some debts can never be repaid" while also accepting that, in the end, Drake was Brooks. He wasn't the same man who shot the villager. Perhaps the answer to the question of what it all means has contradictions: there can never really be justice for something like Binh Loc, but also, people can be redeemed (even if not forgiven) though they've committed terrible crimes.
Messy. I like it.
