‘Criminal Record’s' Misinformation Leaves No One “Safe”
'Criminal Record' sees Billy unmedicated and June unmoored.
Last week, Criminal Record dropped the major reveal that Cosmo Thompson’s grant plan isn’t about detonating physical bombs (at least not yet). He’s more interested in playing with one of the most deadly parts of the current internet: misinformation. After using Rohaan’s wake to publicly declare the boy never existed, and the furor around his death is all one big conspiracy, the story is running rampant, with people spray painting “NOBODY DIED” in huge letters around the city.
Meanwhile, Hegarty and JP are working to get Billy back in the fold after Cosmo systematically took everything that made him feel safe away, including his brain meds and the necklace that doubled as a listening device. Billy is clearly already in withdrawal, freaking out when a burner phone is delivered by drone to his balcony, and freaking out at JP over the leak that he’d escaped prison.
Poor JP doesn’t know he’s lying when he promises Billy that none of them had anything to do with the leak, but the kid isn’t listening anyway. With Kieran on his way up to the penthouse, Hegarty grabs the phone and bullies Billy into submission just in time.
June is at her weekly couples therapy with Leo, and it’s not going well, with Leo basically tearing down June at every turn. (I’m not sure if we are supposed to like this therapist, but she seems painfully ineffective.) If that isn’t enough, when she gets back to the office, she finds JP in meltdown mode after Hegarty basically showed him up in handling Billy. She tries to get him to calm down, only for Kim to show up and, well, remind us why he was a bad guy last season.
Racist, bigoted, and clearly of the opinion that Rohaan deserved what he got, Kim also apparently has had it confirmed that the photo Cosmo won’t stop banging on about was doctored by the team Mullins put in charge of the investigation. June gets JP to calm down and go in, but Kim’s already called them out on their obvious attraction to each other, and neither can quite deny it.
Mullins calls June in, informing her that Rohaan’s mother, Zaynab Hussain (Hiftu Quasem), is on her way to be briefed on the investigation. She wants June to convince the woman to make a public statement that her son was a real person. June agrees, but she wants Sonya included, since she actually speaks Punjabi. Mullins immediately agrees. Sonya’s inclusion does help June get more information, including that Rohaan was prone to making remarks that suggested he was starting to lean towards Islamic fundamentalism. June tries to argue that he was a 15-year-old, and not necessarily a perfect victim.
June has her hands full with Zaynab, who takes some convincing, and nearly backs out at the last minute. But with a bit of pushing, she realizes that if she doesn’t stand up for her son, no one else will. The press conference is a doozy. Zaynab’s determined no one will throw her off message, and any questions her son might have been “radicalization-curious,” shall we say, are met with stories about a kid who steals your heart, bit by bit. She holds up his passport, his birth and death certificates, her baby book of his photos, repeating over and over, “Real. Real. Real. Real.” When asked about Thompson’s claims, she calls him out (though not by name) as being too online, and all but suggests he touch grass.
Unfortunately, she also has an earpiece in, helping her through the press conference, and when Cosmo clocks it, he races to respond. He tears her apart, declaring her an actor, and in the fight between the two videos, the next day’s headlines emphasize him over her. It is a disaster.
We’re eventually going to need to deal with the reveal that Kieran works as a preschool teacher, but the more important part of the story right now is that he hits the lockers, looking for his knife, and finds it missing. The CCTV shows JP and Hegarty, Kieran, tearing through the locker room looking for it, but when JP asks to be allowed to protect Billy, Hegarty refuses, telling him to stay the course. He, meanwhile, has the knife tested some more and comes up with a partial DNA match for one Marco Revelli (Gerry Lynch), an ex-army thug. He tells Kim and JP, ordering them to keep it quiet.
JP isn’t keeping anything from June, though; he knows Hegarty is deliberately trying to keep her out of the loop. June blows her top when Hegarty refuses to give her Revelli, and all but tells her their deal was never real. JP returns once Hegarty exits, and the next thing you know, we’re back at what I assume is his place, the two of them taking their emotional frustrations out on each other with a good old roll in the sack.
The poor boy is clearly much more into June than she is into JP, but that’s alright; considering what a jerk Leo is, she deserves a bit of worship from a younger man. He is also just a font of information today, telling her he had it confirmed: the photo was doctored. June leaves to go home, expecting Leo to be gone, or at least not speaking to her. Instead, she discovers they’re back to the apology cycle of the relationship, with Leo making over-the-top apology dinners, while she slides off to the shower to rinse off another man.
As for Revelli, it looks like he’s the missing bomb maker Cosmo needs. Kim caught him buying pounds and pounds of ice from the local grocer – ice needed to keep the bomb materials stable so they wouldn’t accidentally blow early. His apartment’s basically abandoned when Hegarty and Kim arrive, but a bag of nails, the kind used as shrapnel in IEDs, is enough for Hegarty to declare Revelli their man. Too bad they have no idea where he is.
It’s unclear whether Billy’s dreams of Cerys are born of guilt, withdrawal, or both by the time we finally get back around to him, still trapped at the penthouse. Either way, he’s dragged out to take a ride with Cosmo, who immediately starts ranting about invasions and other racist nonsense as the phone in Billy’s pocket magically turns into a listening device. Cosmo’s first destination turns out to be his childhood home, and they sit in front of it long enough as Cosmo works his charisma on Billy, talking him up, that Hegarty catches up to their position, and follows them on to the next one.
Cosmo has Nigel drive them down to the docks, to an area where a fw houseboats are docked. Inside one of the vessels parked alongside them, he shows Billy the real prize hidden in the boat’s storage container. It is (surprise surprise!) the missing detonators. As Nigel pilots the boat into the Thames, Hegarty calls in all units to follow that boat.
Meanwhile, back at school, Kieran is digging through photos from Suffolk Square and spots June in her uniform, and realizes she is the same lady who “owned” the apartment where they found Billy in Episode 2.
Criminal Record Season 2 continues with new episodes every Wednesday on Apple TV through mid-June.
