"Holy Cannoli!" It's a Shark Special in 'A Taste of Murder’s Finale
Joe on Sofia: "She brought so much joy into my life. So much love. So much hope when we had you. And then I lost her. We lost her."
It’s the finale episode of A Taste For Murder, and we’ll get some storyline tidying up, justice to be done, delicious food, and fishy business. Episode 6, Holy Cannoli! delivers, with a surprise ending and more than a hint of what’s to come in a potential Season 2. As usual, an opening sequence delivers the unexpected – the Coast Guard in pursuit of a suspicious boat manned by a couple of possible smugglers. Once ashore, the two men run and disappear, abandoning their cargo, a dead shark.
Angelica is scrolling through photos of herself and Daniele when her dad knocks at the door. (This is a recent development for Joe who would normally just walk into her room.) He reports test results prove she was drugged; Daniele will be charged. She admits Luca told her Daniele was dealing. Joe goes into avenging angel/protective dad/mad beast mode, going after Luca until told to stop by Gennaro. Meanwhile, Elena comforts her granddaughter in a beautiful scene with Phyllis Logan and Beau Gadsdon. Elena’s grief at the loss of her daughter, Joe’s wife Sofia, has made her desperate to hold those she loves close, and now she invites Angelica to stay on the island, continue with her education, and learn how to run the restaurant. Angelica thanks her but wisely does not make a decision.
Lara comes to find Joe to show him a shark, on display at the harbor. Something fishy is definitely going on – the flight of the two men, a boat with a large dead shark but no fishing tackle aboard. Joe starts protesting he isn't here to be involved in a non-criminal case, but changes his mind when body parts fall out of the shark’s mouth.
At the local university, Alicia Rotunno (Marina Fernandez) identifies it as an adult female blue shark, not a protected species, and pregnant. She can’t perform an autopsy until her boss returns from a conference, but doubts further human remains will be found. At the lab, Dr. Serafino (Marco Quaglia) confirms that the hand in the shark’s mouth was cut off after death.
On the way back, Curti and Lara ask Joe to talk to persuade Angelica to make a statement, discussing the hierarchy of Di Biasi’s business. Fabio Pigozzi, who sold Daniele drugs to sedate Angelica, is a high level enforcer, having served jail time for attempted murder. Bernardo Renzi is also a high level associate, using the canning factory distribution network for the sale of illegal prescription drugs. He also oversees Pigozzi’s street corner distribution. Lara also has to convince Gennaro, but Elena will support Angelica. Joe, finally accepting his family’s advice, writes an invitation to his daughter for dinner that evening and slips it under her bedroom door.
Lara works late that night, Sofia’s postmortem file sitting on her desk as Joe dreams about Sofia's death. In the morning, Joe apologizes to Luca for his anger, and the two of them hug. Luca offers to use his connections to find information on the shark, which has excited the town’s curiosity.
At the station, Curti pushes Joe to get Angelica’s statement, having realized that because of Daniele’s age, he can’t be held for much longer. Meanwhile, Joe and Lara explain to Daniele what they want him to do – he’ll be wired and sent to talk to his former buddies. Without cooperation, he’s looking at three to five years in prison with all the other sexual offenders. (Joe points this out with great pleasure.)
Daniele looks as though he’s about to cry but agrees to call Fabio and request a meeting with Bernardo, to warn him about a high-level police informant in his network. (Not technically a lie!) He’s taken to the meeting place, a cafe in a busy street, watched by Lara and Joe in a van with surveillance equipment. But Daniele evades everyone by escaping through a bathroom window, leaving his jacket (with its fancy hardware) behind. Frustrated, Conti orders Plan B.
But back to the shark! Joe and Lara rush back to the University where they beg Rotunni not to cut up the shark. The pregnant animal is carrying a huge amount of extra weight. The average blue shark weighs about 90K, this specimen is at over 120K, suggesting something very heavy is inside.
Lara has consulted Joe’s Interpol contact to examine the hand, belonging to one Omari Hassan. He wore a ring engraved with the Libyan alphabet, suggesting he was a gangmember of the Kings of Mahgreb. He was executed and his hand sent to Di Biasi as proof of his death over a lost shipment of synthetic opioid. The two men on the boat were supposed to deliver the cargo to a warehouse, but they panicked, ran, and were killed by Di Biasi. Clearly it’s time to cut the shark open.
On the way home, Joe is waylaid by Luca; the restaurant is under surveillance. Too late, Joe realizes he’s missed the ferry and is about to disappoint his daughter again. She is furious and tells him she has decided to stay on Capri, and her grandmother is helping her apply for a business course. Later that evening, she finds Joe examining a pair of tattered photos, one of his mother, the grandmother she never met. Joe tells her she left on his fourth birthday, and by the time he was 10, he was in and out of a series of foster homes. He never told Angelica because he didn’t want her to think he was damaged.
After her death Joe shut down again. Coming to Capri had brought back constant reminders and agonizing memories, but now he realizes he’s experiencing the love and memories Sofia brought him. They both laugh when Angelica says maybe it was the food. It’s a tentative step forward for them both, and then, because there’s nothing like dessert for dinner, they make cannolis, both of them happier than they’ve been in a long while. Joe is fully in support of her staying on the island. Elena would clearly like to gather Joe into her nest as well, but he’s unsure what he’ll be doing.
The following day, there’s a smelly raid on a warehouse, and Di Biasi’s men flinch and cover their noses as they haul the shark out. (Thankfully the chainsaw action is shrouded by a plastic curtain.) One of the men steps forward and picks up an item that shouldn’t be in a shark’s insides – a GPS tracker. The doors crash open, and Naples finest storm the warehouse. Curti is impressed. Lara inserted the tracker into the shark to lure in Di Biasi’s men, figuring it was full of money because of the shark’s weight. (The question which best remains unanswered, is how the Kings of Mahgreb inserted several gold ingots inside the animal.)
Curti offers Joe a job for a year as a special advisor, which Lara has been looking into. (Heaven forfend he should do his own research.) He teases Lara seems to think Joe’s the living embodiment of Salvo Montalbano and Magnum P.I. As she walks him to the ferry, he says he isn’t ready yet. But Angelica is staying, and they part on good terms. Lara’s phone rings with the news that Daniele has been picked up on a train, and he’ll be charged the next morning.
Back in the office, Lara goes through Sofia’s post mortem photographs and spots an important clue no one has noticed before. On the sidewalk next to Sofia’s body is a card with the symbol of the Bleeding Heart, which according to Joe’s Big Book of Bad Guys, is a Mafia symbol. She takes the police launch to Capri to find Joe, but arrives to find the restaurant is on fire. Panicked diners are making their way out amidst clouds of smoke, followed by Elena and Gennaro who were in the kitchen trying to put it out, and Joe rescues Luca. Pausing to catch his breath, Joe finds a playing card on a table, the Ace of Spades, and on the reverse, a Bleeding Heart. It’s a clear signal this was no accident.
All six episodes of A Taste For Murder are streaming on BritBox. Season 2 has not yet been greenlit.
A Taste for Murder
