Strip – Episode 2 opens with Yvonne Kaczmarek (Emily Martino) explaining her overdose experience to Dalia Tun (Zoe Doe) and Angela Combes (Amelia Stylianou). She claims that the experience has now psychically linked her to cats. This is soon interrupted when Dalia is attacked by Sabine Horvat (Annie Rose Buckley) who apparently blames her for Luka Horvat (Luke Greco) being in a coma. Dalia has no option but to defend herself.

Senior Constable Sandra Ali (Roxie Mohebbi) attempts to carefully approach Senior Constable Zilficar ‘Zil’ Ahmed (Akshay Khanna) about the incident but this is soon sidelined by the arrival of Constable Cassie Milton (Heidi May). This reveals that an automobile accident has caused a blackout all across town and the hospital has brought in a specialist to help with Luka’s recovery.

Dalia is surprised when she returns to the group home to find Alice (Brittany Santariga) working the night shift. She soon learns that Alice isn’t working but rather there to counsel her in dealing with the police. It becomes clear that another supervisor, Christian (CJ Bloomfield) is uncomfortable with the discussion. Dalia sticks with her story that she didn’t know Ahmed was a cop due to him being dressed in street clothes.

Things appear to be looking up for Ahmed when he learns from Inspector Ivy Tsuma (Zindzi Okenyo) that he’ll be back on duty after a three-day course and some pamphlet reading. Despite this, he is advised to take a few extra days and stay away from Luka’s family. The only major downside to all this appears that he will be on desk duty when he does return to work.

At school, Yvonne appears to be enjoying the newfound social popularity that Dalia’s situation has brought to their group while Dalia doesn’t so as much care. Things are only hinted are getting worse before they get better when a teacher (Brigid O’Sullivan) tells Dalia that the counselor wants to see her later.

With the assistance of Detective Sam Che (Danny Kim), Detective Edith Barcelos (Simone Kessell) goes through the security footage from along the route Ahmed and Dalia took during the chase. She immediately becomes frustrated and calls him out on his lackluster approach to the task.

At the same time, Ahmed attempts to release some of his pent-up aggressive with a visit to the gym with Senior Constable Greg Hall (Jackson Heywood). Greg doesn’t share Ahmed’s positive outlook on the incident and even hints at bending the rules to get a peek at the investigation. Ahmed encourages him not to do anything stupid. Later that evening Ahmed receives footage from the investigation while spending time with Ali and Rezana Ahmed (Esmee Blocking). Whatever he received doesn’t appear to be good news, causing him to take his frustration out on Rezana. This soon leads to an argument between him and Kasim Ahmed (Akkshey Caplash), who has just arrived home in time to witness Ahmed’s blow-up.

Although Ahmed attempts several different tactics to keep himself distracted, he has little success. It soon becomes clear that there is only one thing that can distract him – Ali.

Before visiting Hayden Broadis (Jai Waetford), a random stop-and-frisk puts her in an awkward situation with him and Ty Egan (Hunter Page-Lochard). Ty later tells her that the stop and frisk was only the beginning of what the cops will do to make her look bad.

Superintendent Trevor Latt (Erik Thomson) briefly introduces Ahmed to Vic (Gerry Sont) and Tina Kaczmarek (Hester Van Der Vyver), who have personally stopped by the station to thank him for saving Yvonne’s life. Before leaving Latt tells Ahmed to stop by later and see him. This meeting turns out to be extremely beneficial for Ahmed when an unexpected call reveals that Yvonne is friends with Dalia. In addition to that, he and her parents convince her to reveal that she got the drugs from Hayden.

After questioning a cart vendor on the chase route Edith learns that one of Dalia’s pursuing officers had his Tazer drawn. At the same time, Ahmed looks into Hayden and shares his discovery with Ali. As it turns out, she is familiar with Hayden due to his prior complaints about Constable Phillip Davidson (Challito Browne). She promises to make a house call that results in Hayden’s arrest. Hayden does resist with a brief chase but remains docile, even as Probationary Constable Dallas ‘Probie’ Plunkett (Nicholas Burton). This, however, immediately changes when Greg Hall shows up and orders Ali to strip-search them.

When this search is later performed, Hayden can be heard protesting from the adjacent room. Although Ali treats her with the utmost respect, the situation is obviously embarrassing for Dalia and her being on the rag doesn’t help matters. Things get really awkward when Greg walks in on them even though he immediately leaves.

Dalia battles with her emotions over the search while Ahmed learns from Trevor that he’s being put back on duty. Despite his excitement, Ali doesn’t share it when he later reveals the news to her. At that moment she appears to be more upset by the fact that he didn’t tell her Hayden was involved with Dalia. Ahmed attempts to convince her that it wouldn’t have made a difference and apologizes but it clearly doesn’t ease her anger. Their disagreement ends when she tells him that Luka is going to live but his legs had to be amputated.

Despite Dalia missing her meeting with the school’s counselor, Alice doesn’t appear too upset when she later confronts Dalia about it. Their meeting reveals that there will be a follow-up visit tomorrow. Alice also drops hints about becoming Dalia’s caseworker once she completes her courses.

Before going back over the incident, Edith meets with Trevor to express her frustration with the officer’s lack of cooperation. She also shares her discovery about the Taser and further reveals that the drawing of the Taser isn’t documented anywhere in the case notes. Trevor claims that since it wasn’t Ahmed who pulled the Taser, the officer probably didn’t think it was important.

Edith takes a different approach to Dalia’s interrogation this time by starting at the end and working back. Much to Dalia’s surprise, Edith takes her side against Alice when she is called out for referring to one of the officers as a scumbag. Edith apparently agrees that some officers are scumbags. Although Dalia cannot properly identify the officer, it’s clear that she isn’t referring to Ahmed. Despite this, this does not end up looking good for Ahmed when Dalia claims he looked aggressive and didn’t identify himself as an officer.

The episode ends with Hayden ranting to Dalia over the phone after being released on bail. He’s clearly not happy with the arrest and wants them both to pursue things legally. Dalia doesn’t want to muddy the water further and the thought of getting Ty involved only makes matters worse. The conversation ends with him promising to keep her out of it, but as it does, it’s revealed that Ahmed is watching her movements.

 

Critical Incident Review

Episode 2 wasn’t horrible and I do appreciate the speed at which the story is building. I figured out Ahmed’s status as an officer would be pending for the entire season, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case. I feel like the series tries to take a serious approach to policing but some of the situations just come off as outlandishly unrealistic to me. In addition to that, the gist of the episode was Ahmed. I’m not necessarily saying that is a bad thing, but I would have liked to see various scenarios mixed in.

I thought that the rap karaoke scene was embarrassing as well as Dalia’s strip search. That said, I have to admit that Dalia did a decent acting job. All in all, I’d give the episode a 5.3 out of 10 and am interested enough to check out the next episode.

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