White Out – Part 1 – As the first episode of Three Pines begins, Inspector Gamache (Alfred Molina) watches a protest through the window as the people outside demand answers regarding their missing relatives. Superintendent Francoeur thinks they’d want to be home with their families on Christmas Eve. Gamache believes that is exactly what they want, but they all have someone they love missing from their family. Then, the women are interviewed on television and discuss the missing indigenous people. A police officer gets aggressive with one of the protestors who keeps putting a picture of Blue in his face. He begins cuffing her and tells her he doesn’t give a crap about her rights. Armand goes outside to stop him and release the woman. Francoeur (Marcel Jeannin) yells for Armand.

Armand drives Arisawe, Missy, Kara, and the baby home while talking to them about Blue (Anna Lambe). He learns that she got a ride and never came home about a year ago. No one is dealing with the case and they doubt anyone ever will. They insist the 18-year-old wouldn’t have run away because she would’ve never left her daughter Pearl. Arisawe tells him that Blue used to play tricks on them by hiding any place she could fit, but this isn’t a trick. She is convinced that Blue is scared and alone out there somewhere. He agrees to them find her. Reine-Marie (Marie France Lambert) is glad when Armand finally returns. He learns that Enid was sick so she didn’t come. He talks to his guests and gets a gift from Pierre Arnot (Frank Schorpion). He tells him that he gave the family a ride home because he didn’t know what else to do.

Pierre believes Francoeur will be gunning for him now. Although Pierre is running an operation out of their community, he doesn’t know the Two-Rivers family. They’re investigating a man named Kevin Kis. Blue Two-Rivers is dating his brother Tommy. They looked into her disappearance to see if there was any connection. Kevin took off around the same time Blue and Tommy disappeared. Peacekeepers think the kids just ran off and they didn’t find anything to suggest otherwise. All the leads they followed told them that they saw Blue and Tommy getting a ride with Kevin Kis in his truck. They tried to trace him, but the track was last seen crossing the border. Pierre agrees to run the plates for him although he believes these cases are going to break Armand’s heart. Most of the families don’t get answers and he knows Armand will obsess about it. Richard tells Crie to come on. She reminds him that she promised.

He says he bets that she’ll meet them there. CC de Poitiers talks to her lover about the Li Bien ball. Her mother made them and destroyed them. She tore every ornament from the tree the year she turned ten. She laughed before they took her away. Richard (Robert Moloney) tells Crie (Roberta Battaglia) that her mother wouldn’t miss this for the world. Saul Petrov takes pictures of CC while she covers her face with a book. She realizes that she has to leave. Saul tells her that he wants to be with her. CC admits she’d rather be here than listening to a bunch of kids whining at her daughter’s singing. Saul goes further and says he’d like them to be together forever only for CC to tell him he is crazy. Crie waits for her mother to arrive as Richard urges her to begin singing. When CC eventually arrives, Crie begins singing with the others.

Later, Crie asks her mother where she was, but CC will only remind her that she was there. Richard tells Crie there is one last chocolate snowflake on the tree. When she goes to get it, Crie breaks her mom’s ornament. Richard promises it was a mistake, but CC gets mad and says the only mistake was marrying him and giving birth to that. Crie cuts her find before CC walks away. The next day, the locals get together to play curling while CC poses for pictures nearby. Clara (Anna Tierney) and others sit around and talk about her. CC is showing Clara’s art to the great Saul Petrov. They stop talking when Richard comes over to grab some sugar only to start again when he walks away. Richard notices that CC and Saul are obviously close. He interrupts to give CC her coffee. He briefly talks to Saul before leaving with Crie. Clara asks CC if she had time to show Saul her work yet, but CC isn’t remotely interested.

CC tells her that he doesn’t think her work shows promise before sitting down under the heater. The curling match begins. A blue liquid begins dipping beneath CC’s chair. When she grabs the armrest, she ends up getting electrocuted and killed. Armand learns from Francoeur that he is being sent out of town. He thinks he is being punished for driving that family home. Armand drives to Three Pines where he meets with Jean-Guy Beauvoir (Rossif Sutherland) at the crime scene. Yvette Nichol (Sarah Booth) introduces herself to Inspector Gamache and Isabelle Lacoste. Yvette was the first on the scene and Francoeur said she should stay as long as they need her. She thinks it is fate since he told her the other day that she should finish her training with Inspector Gamache who she thinks is the best. Yvette tells them how CC died and the fact that nobody saw anything.

She believes it was a freak accident so it was likely nothing. Armand says every mistake he made was because of an assumption. Yvette gives them the book CC wrote previously. They begin discussing how CC got electrocuted out there as they quickly discredit Yvette’s theories. Yvette says you’d have to be crazy to try to electrocute someone out here while Armand says you’d have to be brilliant to succeed. Armand and Jean talk about Agent Nichol in private as Jean reveals she poured coffee down his favorite shirt. She shredded an irreplaceable document and disclosed a safe house address to a violent perpetrator. Then, he learns where CC died and how a generator was used to power the heater. Armand finds a pair of buster cables near the generator. He wonders if the killer used the generator to kill her although he can’t imagine why they’d do it in such an elaborate, public way.

They go to CC’s home which is an old residential school for indigenous kids. Armand wants to know when they can expect the report so he asks someone to call the pathology lab. As Jean calls them, the others knock on the door. Jean sees someone upstairs so he knows someone is home. Yvette asks about breaking the door down only to be told this isn’t a movie. Richard eventually comes to the door and explains he was in the attic before inviting them in. Once they go inside, they’re introduced to Crie who is still in shock. In private, Richard says it was a stressful time for CC with her book coming out. He tells them that her philosophy is about keeping your emotions trapped inside. He isn’t sure what time she left for the curling match although it was early and she went with Saul Petrov who lives in Montreal and has a rental there for the holidays.

He is documenting CC’s life for her next book and took photos from the curling event. When Armand mentions that Saul was spending a lot of time with Richard’s wife, Richard insists it isn’t what he thinks. Richard confesses that CC wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. He questions whether that means someone would want to kill her. Armand sits with Crie who learns that he lost his mother when he was a little younger than her. He says he lost his father too. He can’t tell her that the pain will stop even though he believes she will survive this. He goes on to say he can help her understand what happened to her mother. Later, the team gets together to plan for tomorrow including getting statements from everyone at the curling match. Armand also wants to track down Saul. As for the pathology report, it should be ready in the morning. Yvette is tasked with setting up a situation room for them.

When they go inside to get something to eat, Armand notices a painting of CC on the wall and learns that Clara did it. Clara comes over and tells him that she painted it from a photo because CC didn’t have time to sit. Although CC seemed so perfect, Clara thinks there was something underneath the surface. Peter Morrow (Julian Bailey) comes over to say his wife is a huge talent waiting to be discovered. Yvette confirms she found them a situation room. Armand tells them to buckle up because nobody is going anywhere. Next, Yvette takes Armand to the Be Calm Centre which she wants to use as the situation room. They go inside and learn about the crafting workshop that they’re going to use. Bea shows them around. Armand asks if she knew CC since the name of her book was Be Calm. Bea claims it was a coincidence since Be Calm has been here for a long time while CC hadn’t.

Bea (Tantoo Cardinal) steps out and tells Lacoste that she made an unusual choice for a native woman. Lacoste explains she had the crazy idea that she could change things from the inside. Lacoste doesn’t know who her people are since she was adopted when she was a year old. Yvette tells Armand that CC has been paying for many hotel rooms in Montreal in the past year. She had been paying for motel rooms even before she moved to Three Pines. Lacoste says there are no forensics on the jumper cables although it is a common brand found in any garage in the province. It was long enough to run from the generator to CC so it could’ve been used by the killer. Armand says CC had to be standing in water, her hands had to be bare, she had to touch something electrified, and the current had to run through her body.

The blue puddle under her seat was washer fluid. Armand suspects it was intentionally placed there before telling the others how electricity works. When he says she had to be grounded, Yvette thinks that is impossible because the sole of her snow boots would’ve protected her from the shock. They quickly learn that she wasn’t wearing rubber-soled boots. Her seat was turned into an electric chair and she was executed. Armand returns to the scene where he watches a bird land on the chair before flying away. Lacoste approaches to tell him that Saul has been staying at a rental half a mile from CC’s place. The staff at the motel said he matches the description of the guy CC has been with. When they visit him, Saul says CC thought it’d be easier to finish the book if he was close by. He lies when he says their relationship was strictly professional.

He denies that she was meeting him at the motels since he is a married man. When pressed on it, he says they met there but it was about work. Saul tells them about the pictures he was taking and how the locals made CC feel like an outsider. After he agrees to give them the pictures from the curling match, he is told not to leave Three Pines. At the Bristol, they learn that CC ate there a few times and complained regularly. Myrna knew her well. Myrna (Tamara Brown) tells them that she talked to CC a few times about her book and how many copies she needed to order for the store. They talk to others about CC. When they reach Ruth Zardo (Clare Coulter), she curses them at the door. Armand recites some of her works and admits he and his wife are huge fans. Ruth says she moved out there to avoid huge fans. She claims she didn’t know CC better than anyone else. The property was empty for years before CC bought it.

Ruth doesn’t think there is anything to tell about the curling event. She leaves in a hurry since she is late for the book club meeting. They follow her to the book club meeting where Armand says he is having trouble getting a sense of what CC was really like. Peter tells them how CC was going to show Clara’s work to an influential individual but it came to nothing. The painting was supposed to be a way to thank her. They go on to say CC was damaged and didn’t know how to be grateful. Armand suspects CC upset a lot of people. He knows she was mad at Myrna for not hosting her book signing. Before they leave, Ruth says the village is the most welcoming place on Earth. If you don’t belong here, Three Pines will find you out and chase you out. Later that night, Pierre gets in touch with Armand to tell him Kevin’s truck was picked up by a traffic cam crossing the Brooklyn Bridge two weeks ago.

Then, it was caught again entering Red Rook which has lots of drugs and guns. Armand is sent a picture from the area with Blue and Tommy in it. Pierre is looking for the kid who posted it. After the call, Armand tells Lacoste he needs to go over to the Mohawk Community to speak to Blue’s family. She agrees to go with him. They tell her family about the picture. The family believes Blue would’ve called if she was still alive. They go on to say Kevin and Tommy were close. Armand knows he was selling cigarettes tax-free even though it was against the law. They do not believe Tommy could’ve convinced Blue to leave without her baby. She was starting college in the fall. They have the jacket Blue is wearing in the picture from two weeks ago. Outside, Armand admits it is hard to know whether it is the same jacket so they need to trace Blue. He wants an APB in New York.

While driving, a blue bird hits his windshield. He sees Blue just before waking up. The next day, Armand sets up a board with pictures of suspects. Meanwhile, the locals begin getting rid of CC’s books and pictures. He tells Yvette why he moved the pictures to the suspect list. He believes the monster is dead and the villagers are celebrating like Frankenstein. He wonders if it could’ve been all of them.

 

Three Pines

The first episode of Three Pines quickly set up multiple storylines with one focusing on the disappearance of an indigenous girl named Blue Two-Rivers. The other involves the electrocution death of a snobby woman named CC de Poitiers who had rubbed people the wrong way. Inspector Armand Gamache is put in charge of the latter case while he secretly volunteers to solve the disappearance.

The episode gave a glimpse into the future of Three Pines with some promising aspects and others that are less than spectacular. The scenery is undoubtedly a highlight of the series since Three Pines is beautiful and the solid camerawork complements that. However, Three Pines isn’t as promising as Cardinal was during its debut season even though this is only the first episode.

Many of the topics being covered aren’t particularly new or groundbreaking while the dialogue could use a lot of work. The accents and juxtaposition of languages have created an odd atmosphere for the show that ultimately has an impact on the chemistry between the characters.

Some of the characters are more like caricatures because they’re oddly inhuman. Inspector Gamache doesn’t stand out among other television detectives and can be bland at times while Yvette was quickly turned into the laughingstock idiot of the episode. It wasn’t necessary to single out one character and make them such a mess up at every turn.

Stretching a case over two episodes might be a problem since the pacing is already a bit sluggish. Three Pines may get better with future episodes, but it doesn’t have the same spark as Cardinal in its first season. On the contrary, Three Pines is a bit dull with too many characters and far too many clichés. The opening episode scores a 5.5 out of 10. Recaps of Three Pines can be found on Reel Mockery here. Have you found our recaps beneficial? Find out how to support us by following this link.