Tonight’s episode opens up right where the last one ends. Nick finds out that Hailey is his daughter as a large vehicle hits the car he is driving. This leads right into a pitch perfect recreation of a Jerry Springer episode complete with the man himself assuring Nick that he is in fact the Father. After this extended metaphor is over Nick decides the best course of action is to head out of town and go as far west as possible. To this end he crashes Le Dick’s laundromat poker game and ropes Happy into helping him cheat. he does this by lying to the Unicorn and promising they’d use the guns and cash won in the game to go save Hailey. While this is going down Meredith promises to bring Nick in for Blue in exchange for her freedom, Hailey has a conversation with who she thinks is a fellow kidnapped girl but is actually Very Bad Santa using a high pitched voice, Hailey’s mom Amanda gets a horrifying card on her doorstep and a very chilly reception from officer Meredith, and Happy takes narcotics for the first time. Finally after another brief encounter with Metaphorical Springer and some chewing out by Happy Nick finally decides to do the right thing and return to try and save Hailey.

I’d say this episode is better then the premiere episode even if the plot and action scenes slow down a bit. The interactions between Meredith and Amanda heavily hint at some relationship drama to come and I look forward to both characters getting a lot more to do then they had in the original. The poker game fight scene is the highlight of this week with some great camerawork and a hilariously hard to kill poker player. Smoothie comes back this episode as the man sent to keep an eye on Meredith’s mother and he traded in his comedic evil for a more pervy vibe which Patrick Fischler also plays very well. My final score this episode is a B+

Passing Thoughts:

• Nick: “The deck hates me.” Le Dick: Everyone hates you Nick
• The cops are really bad at their jobs. Last episode they just shoo Amanda out the door and in this episode she has to make a scene just to get the time of day from Meredith. I know most of them are probably in the pocket of Blue but you’d think they’d take a kidnapping more seriously
• I really want to know what is in this safe that is so important that it can make Blue untouchable
• The evil santa is credited as Very Bad Santa