As the episode begins, we hear a news report and watch a tractor roll along the beach until it hits something. The driver gets out and finds something startling. When he goes in for a closer look, he finds a dead body. After the intro, we join Dr. Daniel Harrow (Ioan Gruffudd) as he checks Max’s body and believes he might’ve been in a fight with James before his death. Dr. Lyle Fairley (Darren Gilshenan) opens the door and interrupts. Lyle believes Daniel is second-guessing his work too, but Daniel denies it and says Bramson is being paid to find faults even if there aren’t any. He is just trying to see what he might pick on, but Lyle doesn’t understand why Harrow would be interested now. Daniel admits he doesn’t want Lyle to be wrong and he wants the boy’s death to be misadventure.

He wants to believe he has a son out there who is a long, long way from all of this. Meanwhile, James (Harrison Gilbertson) shows Fern (Ella Newton) around a nice flat that is closer to several pubs. She realizes he is worried about the people who came looking for him and he admits he is a little. He confirms he is going to move out and he recommends Fern do the same because he’ll know she’ll be okay there. Fern tells him that they’ll never be able to afford this place so James takes her to an electronics store and tells the clerk he is there to collect. The clerk brings back three iPhones but James says he only ordered one and he doesn’t have his card with him. Fern lends him her card and the clerk puts $1,900 back on her card. When they leave, James tells her those phones cost nothing to make but she doesn’t like being complicit in fraud.

He apologizes for using her and promises to never do it again. Next, Renae (Miriama Smith) walks in on Harrow searching for something and she has it. She reads the label and says it is Sidamo Arabica imported from Ethiopia. She tells him he’ll need to pay for his expensive coffee. Then, they learn from Bryan Nichols (Damien Garvey) that there has been two vehicle accidents. One victim is 17-year-old high-school student Kaara Oberg. A cyclist found her in a ditch after dawn and it is believed she was drinking at an end of the year school beach party. She went down the embankment sometime between 1 AM and 3 AM. The next one is 17-year-old Mitchell Vanderhaust who was run over by a tractor on a beach just after sunrise. Daniel likes the unique tractor case so Renae assigns him to the young woman’s case.

Seconds later, Bryan has to break up a fight between two men outside. It turns out to be their parents Charlie Oberg (Ian Bliss) and Ian Vanderhaust (Sandy Winton). Ian says his boy is dead and it is Kaara’s fault because his son didn’t drink until he met her. Charlie says his daughter didn’t drink though. The argument nearly escalates into a fight until Bryan splits them up. Daniel asks Charlie if he’d like to sit down and if he’d like to see his daughter. Daniel tells him how the process will work with the autopsy and everything. He learns that the couple was boyfriend and girlfriend. Charlie says Kaara always ate well and never drank unlike himself. Daniel invites him to come inside to take care of himself, but Charlie says there is no point since everything good is gone. Then, Harrow steps into the autopsy room and learns from Edwina (Faustina Agolley) that Kaara was driving her dad’s crash.

They look through the pictures and learn that she was barefoot and it looks like she drove straight from the beach. They argue a bit about whether or not she could’ve been drinking. There isn’t much in the form of medical records besides a summary from her bulk-billing medical center. Daniel checks it and finds she visited several times to ask about irritable bowel syndrome before learning she was on a waiting list to see a specialist. The doctor was concerned she might’ve had an eating disorder, but she denied it. Daniel believes Charlie but Edwina argues parents don’t know what their children are like. There are no signs of violence but she had paint on her fingernails. They check the CT scan and find a clear break between C2 and C3. Daniel theorizes that her head slammed into the hard window on impact and the weight of the body snapped the joint.

The pictures confirm she wasn’t wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident. There are beer bottles all around the car but that doesn’t sit well with Daniel. He orders a full tox before learning the boyfriend’s PM is still going. Seconds later, Daniel checks in on Grace (Jolene Anderson) and Lyle who are arguing about the autopsy. Grace wonders if Daniel can settle it before asking about heat loss in sand. Mitchell (Parker Little) was run over by a tractor and the crime scene team arrived an hour after that. By that time, the body temperature had dropped to ambient. Daniel asks about the conditions before saying there is evidence that alcohol consumption can cause a drop in the set point of the brain’s thermoregulatory center. Grace believes it is fishy and he might’ve died before the tractor ran over his body. Daniel notices something on the boy’s leg.

He pinches off a bunch of sand from the boy’s leg and they check it out in a microscope. It is compared to the sand found on Kaara’s body and they’re different so they believe they were at different beaches. Daniel and Grace go to the seaside and try to find out where it happened. Daniel explains the dry sand would be an insulator from heat loss. They don’t see any evidence of a beach party so they call Nichols to see if he can tell them. He arrives and takes them to the scene of the party. The kids they went to school with said both attended the party and Daniel confirms it is the same sand found on Kaara. Bryan believes Mitchell’s girlfriend drove him to the spot where he was found. Grace admits his body temperature suggests he was dead before he was hit by the tractor and Daniel says he isn’t sure Kaara was drinking that night.

Bryan complains about being drug out to there and Grace admits she should return and help Lyle write up the PM. Harrow decides to stay and poke around a bit. He notices a young girl watching him from a distance but she tries to flee when he approaches her. He tells her he is with the coroner’s office before asking the girl if she knew the victims. She confirms she knew them and they had a fight. She says Mitchell was a golden boy but Kaara wasn’t academic or sporty. She suggests they might’ve broken up and she didn’t see them leave together. Daniel asks about Kaara drinking but the girl doesn’t answer his question before she leaves. Later, he gets a call from Edwina confirming Mitchell was only drinking and he had a high enough blood alcohol level to fall asleep on the beach. It wouldn’t have been fatal though. As for Kaara, she had a blood level of 0.26 so her dad was wrong.

Daniel returns to the office and finds Charlie waiting for him. He wants to take his daughter home but Daniel says it isn’t possible yet. Charlie understands his daughter was drunk and shows Daniel something Mitchell’s father sent him. It is a video of Kaara being drunk at school and some of the kids ridiculing Mitch because of it. Charlie admits he thought he knew her but they were right and she was a drunk like him. He leaves shortly after that conversation. Daniel returns to the autopsy room and checks on her fingers again. When Edwina enters, he tells her that her stitching is nice. He says he wanted things to be different. Daniel zips up her bag before returning to his office and finding Renae in there. When he pulls out a bottle of alcohol, she reminds him it is an alcohol-free workplace so he puts it back. When asked, he admits he was upset she didn’t give him the tractor case.

She believes he spent the whole day projecting a mystery into the case, but Daniel reminds her that Charlie swore his daughter didn’t drink. Then, she turns her attention to his work performance over the years and says he performs just as many PMs as others, but he doesn’t do them in order or on time. She makes it clear that QIFM is over budget and will likely be cutting someone soon. She alludes to the fact that Daniel might be that person. Next, he runs into Lyle who is going through boxes of evidence. Lyle shows him a picture of Jack and they discuss him briefly before Lyle says he is looking for mistakes. Lyle admits Bramson (Matt Day) has him spooked and he is worried he might’ve missed something with Max. He was tense because he thought Max was Daniel’s son and didn’t want to mess anything up. Lyle says he is not going to leave if Bramson finds something because he doesn’t want that as his swan song.

Daniel tells Lyle he has nothing to worry about because he is an excellent pathologist. Lyle replies they were very upset for him so he is glad Max wasn’t his son. That night, James takes Fern and Callan (Hunter Page-Lochard) out to the club for drinks. Fern wants him to tell the truth about the dead boy. James comes clean by admitting the boy’s name was Max and working for his mother at a big software company. Max wanted to leave the country and needed a passport so James agreed to help him. He says a 14,000 pound medical bill is a lot for a 14-year-old kid looking after his sick mom. He did some dodgy stuff but didn’t kill Max and that is why he needs his phone. He tells them about diverting the security cameras to his phone because Max stabbed him in the back. He gave Max the passport but Max said he didn’t have any cash. He returned to the car to get his phone but found it being towed by cops.

He went back to tell Max and he was already dead. Callan tells him to speak to police but James doesn’t want to go to jail. Daniel calls Fern who denies being with James. When the call ends, Daniel images Jack Twine (Tony Barry) is on his boat with alcohol and his musical preferences. Daniel asks how he can love a boy who seems determined to avoid him. Jack says it isn’t about being loved in return and it is a job they do because it needs doing. Daniel confesses he isn’t sure he believes anything James says, but Jack says he has to believe his son before he disappears. After looking at a picture of himself with Fern, Daniel decides to visit Mr. Oberg. He finds something bad and tries to break down the door. Once he gets inside, he finds Charlie on the floor nearby a bottle of alcohol and calls for help. Harrow watches as the emergency service personnel take him away. Then, Daniel checks Kaara’s room.

He looks nearby and finds tubes of artist paint that account for the paint on her fingers. He finds a sketchbook from Kaara with a letter inside about her application to the Royal Australian College of Art. Daniel finds out that she was accepted to the school. He finds an odd sketch of a woman with a snake coming from her stomach. He checks the fridge and finds a note from Kaara asking her dad to try a different cereal. He returns to the office and tells Grace about the bread, crackers, cereal, and rice on the list. He says she was trying to watch her weight by avoiding carbs. Her GP thought she had an eating disorder and she thought he had IBS. Daniel thinks it was something else so they dive in for a closer look. They find that she ate pizza although she was trying to avoid carbohydrates. He checks the undigested food and confirms it does not have traces of alcohol.

Daniel confirms she wasn’t drinking and theorizes that she had auto-brewery syndrome. As a result, her digestive system would’ve converted carbs into ethanol. When she ate carbs, her body created alcohol and she got drunk. She was so drunk she could barely stand and couldn’t lift Mitchell’s body into a car. Grace says someone had to do it so Daniel remembers the girl he talked to earlier and her M key chain. Daniel visits the girl’s house and finds that she has been cleaning her car. He approaches Madison (Kaiya Jones) and she gives him permission to enter the gate. He asks if there is sand in her vacuum from moving Mitchell’s body. She admits it wouldn’t clean out his blood before Daniel says he saw her note to Kaara and knows they were friends. She encouraged Kaara to apply to the art school. Madison says Mitchell broke her before we see a flashback of them fighting.

He didn’t know what to do so he sat down behind Kaara’s car. When she thought he left, she went to console Kaara but he had fallen asleep behind the car and Kaara accidentally rolled over his body. Then, she went forward. Kaara didn’t know but Madison knew she would be charged with manslaughter. Madison moved the body to the main beach so the tractor would run over the body in hopes of saving Kaara. Madison shows Daniel a video in which Kaara says she can’t go to college because she has to look after her father. Daniel meets with Charlie and tells him everything as he looks at his daughter’s body. When he returns to his office, Renae scolds him for being out for most of the day again. She says Inspector Crowley called her and told her Madison presented herself to police. Renae pulls out the alcohol and pours them a drink. She says well done. Once they drink the shots, she confiscates the rest of the alcohol. Daniel runs into Grace and tells her about his whiskey. He invites her to go with him to buy some before Ben interrupts. Lyle arrives and Ben talks to him in Japanese. Then, Ben explains Lyle is letting him store some things in his garage. Lyle and Ben decide to join the couple for a drink but Renae interrupts and asks Lyle to attend the meeting with the Department of Justice. Daniel and Grace are forced to tag along as well.

Mila Zoric (Diana Glenn) is there and Bramson says he is going through his results. Bramson agrees that the cause of death was a fall from the ship. Lyle asks why they’re there before Bramson turns their attention to the damage on Max’s right hand. Lyle believes it happened when Max hit the ground, but Bramson suggests otherwise. He goes on to call the injury a boxer’s fracture and says it happened when Max hit someone. Daniel remembers James having a mark on his face. Bramson believes it happened just before his death and he was carried over the rail with significant forward momentum. When that ends, Bryan consults with Daniel who admits there might’ve been someone else on the boat. Nichols wonders if that person wrote Daniel’s name on the back of Max’s passport and left a letter for him. Daniel asks him about the security cameras being off in the hour when Max died and wonders if the phone had anything to do with it.

Bryan admits cybercrime couldn’t unlock it. When asked, Daniel says he hasn’t heard from his son. He leaves before Bryan tells his colleague to get in touch with the fingerprint bureau. Seconds later, he learns they found a partial print on the ship rail and a smudged thumbprint on the glove box of the Mercedes. A solid index print was on the phone in the glove box and it matches the print from the letter. These prints belong to someone else. Bryan realizes someone was with Max when he died. James walks around the couch while Fern and Callan sleep. He picks up her phone and Callan wakes up so he puts it back and makes an excuse.

 

Harrow Review

The 5th episode of this season was pretty good although it focused mainly on two side deaths. Two 17-year-olds were found dead not far from each other after attending the same beach party. They were boyfriend and girlfriend and their fathers couldn’t agree on much. Daniel unraveled the evidence and found that it wasn’t what it seemed like it was.

In the end, it was all a big accident and Kaara’s dad was correct that she wasn’t a drunk. As for James, things are starting to look bad for him. Although the case of the two 17-year-olds likely shook Daniel’s faith in his son, I’d say James is telling the truth. I could be wrong and I believe it could be interesting either way.

We don’t have many episodes left this season so I hope they start focusing a lot more on James and the murder of Max. This episode was pretty good regardless so I’d give it a 7.5 out of 10. Previous and future recaps of Harrow can be found here. Thanks for using Reel Mockery!