Curl Up And Dye – The episode begins with a busy morning at La Belle Dauphine where stylists wish their boss, Bianca Bailey (Airlie Dodds), happy birthday and tell her they are treating her to lunch at The Hut. Bianca is incredibly grateful but quickly busies herself with making calls. By the time lunch rolls around, Bianca is still on the phone and the impatient girls decide to have her meet them at the restaurant. Bianca’s absence will be explained when the girls return to find her face down in the office.
Glenn Strong (Tai Hara) has already determined strangulation as the cause of death and has a good estimate of the time by the time DI Mackenzie Clarke (Anna Samson) shows up. Aaron McGrath/Constable Felix Wilkinson (Aaron L. McGrath) and Detective S.C. Colin Cartwright (Lloyd Griffith) quickly rule out robbery while Clarke steps away to peek into the other rooms. She’ll briefly note that the massage room is missing its smoke detector before she and Cartwright question the staff. Tahnee Jones (Natalie Abbott) handles most of the questioning but it will also be revealed that one of the stylists is Bianca’s sister, Skye Bailey (Tess Haubrich). Before Clarke’s attention is drawn to a nearby phone alert, she’ll take note of 5 dots in an X formation on Donna Smithwick’s (Anni Finsterer) left hand.
After discovering nothing from their perimeter check, Clarkes orders Reggie Rocco (Celia Ireland) and McGrath to begin canvassing the neighbors. Before noticing they are down a stylist, Clarke will briefly note from the appointment computer that the salon was practically Bianca’s life. Clarke’s attention will soon turn to the missing stylist, Donna, who has stepped away to clear her head. When Clarke confronts her in the massage room, she learns that Donna did an eight-year bid for armed robbery. Bianca apparently knew of her background and was willing to overlook it. Donna also claims that Bianca was a bit of a wildcard herself, having several verbal melees with the landlord. The Q&A doesn’t get much further thanks to Glenn’s interruption. He’ll ask Clarke to dog sit over the weekend because he wants to take Daisy Dixon (Andrea Demetriades) camping. This won’t get much further due to Cartwright’s announcement that Daisy is ready to speak with them at the bar.
Daisy’s interrogation will reveal more about her and Glenn’s anniversary weekend than the actual case. Despite nothing out of the ordinary from their lunch, Clarke continues to suspect one of the stylists was involved. As Clarke will later point out to Senior Sergeant Philomena Strong (Catherine McClements) at the station, Bianca was too preoccupied with the salon to be involved with anyone else, except for the landlord who Cartwright discovers that she owes $60,000 in unpaid rent.
Before racing off to speak with Troy Lexton (Jason Chong), Strong will ask to speak with Clarke privately. Much to her displeasure, Clarke learns that HR wants her to sign a contract of employment with the station so they no longer have to pay her casual rates. For the moment, Clarke doesn’t appear to take the announcement seriously, believing that she will cleared of all wrongdoing and reinstated.
Troy’s interrogation will reveal that Bianca had actually repaid $42,000 of the owed $60,000. He claims to not know where she got the money and was even less interested in finding out. He’ll also show them a parking slip nearly across town during the suspected time of the murder. As for the smoke detector, he claims there should have been one there.
A brief visit with Glenn will confirm his earlier suspicions of strangulation. Although he’s still unclear about the murder weapon, he has managed to rule out the hair dryer’s electrical cord that Clarke suspected. From there, Clarke and Cartwright learn that Skye and Bianca had a rocky relationship due to their strict religious upbringing. It was apparently so strict that their mother literally disowned Skye when she was involved in an arson incident at 16. Despite this, their mother’s death brought Skye and Bianca back together.
Reggie and McGrath will provide a possible solution in butcher Wade Thornburn shortly after the case reaches an impasse. According to Wade, an Asian man dressed in polyester slacks and brown shoes was seen coming and going from the salon during the time of the murder. It takes some leveraging, but Clarke will eventually get Troy to admit that he was at the salon to ask for the rest of the back rent. He’ll claim that he left after discovering the body. This goes no further at the moment.
Tahnee becomes Clarke’s focus when she discovers an unpaid invoice for a retirement home in her salon locker. After questioning her, Clarke will learn that the $42,000 payment to Troy came from money intended to buy Tahnee’s grandmother a spot at a retirement home. Bianca had apparently promised that the salon would be a success and she’d be able to repay the debt. Despite this, Thanee claims that she didn’t feel betrayed and had always seen Bianca do remarkable things. Clarke will soon be called back to the salon by Cartwright.
Reggie and McGrath will spend the afternoon tailing Troy while Cartwright shares his discovery with Clarke. It turns out that Bianca had taken Donna off the payroll. It will later be revealed that Bianca caught Donna stealing from the register and was blackmailing her to work for free. With her age, record, and parole offer breathing down her neck, quitting wasn’t an option.
Later that evening at the station, while discussing the case with Strong, Reggie, and McGrath will arrive to share their afternoon watching Troy illegally dump trash. The discovery will send the entire team back to the dump the following morning, in search of the smoke detector. McGrath finds the detector with a nasty little surprise inside, a hidden camera. Troy will later admit to using the camera to film women in the massage room. He would panic and throw the detector away after finding Bianca’s body.
Although the footage is damaged, Clarke apparently draws a conclusion from a scene that suggests a moved audio speaker. Without any explanation, she orders Cartwright and McGrath to gather everyone involved in the case at the salon. After a bit of a dog and pony show in unveiling her evidence, Clarke will reveal that it was Skye who killed Bianca. When the girls left for lunch, they only saw Bianca from behind talking on the phone. A changing of costume and the close family resemblance was apparently enough to lure them into thinking they were speaking with Bianca. Skye not only used the speaker to project her voice from the washroom, but she also recruited Tahnee to help ensure everything went smoothly. When Daisy shows up in the middle of the unveiling, Clarke will reveal the murder weapon to be hair extensions.
Clarke appears to be ready to sign the HR contract when she learns that Strong has bought her a little more time. Much to Strong’s surprise, Clarke takes this as an insult, suspecting that Strong doesn’t want her around permanently. Strong will assure her that isn’t the case and was trying to avoid putting pressure on Clarke because she doesn’t have such a good record handling stressful situations.
The episode ends with Glenn and Daisy dropping off Frankie at Clarke’s house for the weekend. When Daisy volunteers to wait in the vehicle, Clarke attempts an awkward apology for standing him up at the altar. He’ll awkwardly accept.
Return To Paradise Review
What an incredibly needless, long, and drawn-out episode. There were some interesting things and despite being as cheesy as you can get, some of the performances and jokes aren’t so bad. The resolutions are never fully satisfying and overcomplicated. That was especially the case with this episode.
I’m sure it takes a lot of careful planning and research to bring these cases together. The moved speaker, the hidden camera, and the religious zealously, all that is incredibly thought-provoking and well-researched, but taken to the extreme. I’d have to give the episode a 5 out of 10.
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