‘Murder in a Small Town’: Cassandra’s Decision Could Cost Karl Big Time

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Murder in a Small Town Season 2 Episode 7, “This, That, and the Other Thing”]

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere of Murder in a Small Town, series creator Ian Weir teased that there’d be a double kidnapping case that went “100 miles an hour right out of the gate and just doesn’t let up,” and boy, was he right about that when it came to Tuesday’s (November 11) new episode.

In addition to a dizzyingly complex and demanding criminal case, the episode also saw Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) make a political choice that directly affects Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) and could very well have catastrophic consequences for him and his police team.

In the episode, Karl, Sid (Aaron Douglas), Laila (Bethany Brown), and Isabella (Savonna Spracklin) had a whopper of an investigation on their hands. After Isabella’s uncle just so happened to witness two kids being abducted by masked men outside of a pizza place while on the phone with her, it became a race against time to find out who’d taken the kids — a young boy and his babysitter — where they were being kept, and why. After gathering both sets of parents to question them, finding out there was someone with a grudge against the boy’s folks, and eventually rescuing the girl, who managed to escape her confinement and run to call for help, Karl started to realize something was amiss. This was no ordinary kidnapping situation, despite the convincing ransom calls.

Indeed, as Phyllis (Fiona Vroom) found out during a blind date to the ritzy Gibsons Club’s auction party, the kidnappers were actually just trying to distract the already stretched-thin police department. As police tracked down the far-apart ransom sites, the assailants moved in to hold up the party — with the help of one’s wife, posing as a cater waiter on the inside — and steal jewels and valuable art pieces.

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It almost worked, too, if not for Phyllis quickly calling Cassandra, who alerted Karl & Co. just in time to stop the armed robbers. Unfortunately, one of the men had already executed his sidekick — the pizza boy who knew the kids for their weekly visits was no longer needed, it seemed — and Laila had to fire her weapon after the woman in the crew drew a gun on Sid. As a result, Laila was left with the emotional scars of that encounter, compounding her fatigue and frustrations with work.

The most devastating development of the episode pertained to Sid, though. After the rescue, he got a call from his rebellious daughter to pick her up from an out-of-town party, and, although he and the rest of Karl’s team were all completely beat from the overload at work, he headed her way but fell asleep at the wheel and ran off the side of the road. What will come of him remains to be seen.

Even if Sid does walk away unharmed, his accident is bound to exacerbate the growing tensions between Karl and Cassandra after her budget meeting vote. Mayor Christie Holman (Marcia Gay Harden), who had major problems of her own at home with her troublemaking teen son, initially made a compromise with Cassandra to get her on board with the budget vote. The proposal would make some cuts to programs Cassandra cared about, but it would also give Karl’s police force some much-needed resources. At the last minute, though, Holman changed the draft to include sweeping reductions in social spending, and Cassandra successfully rallied others on the council to reject the measure.

Karl, who’d only recently begun saying “I love you” to Cassandra, was left furious and disappointed in her, and that was before anything happened to Sid. So, suffice it to say, there’s definitely trouble in paradise … er, Gibsons.

Murder in a Small Town, Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox