Summer Travel Through TV: The Straits 1.09: "Dead Reckoning"

“I’m not teaching them to lie to the cops, Noel. That part of our life’s over.”
-Toni

The penultimate episode of “The Straits” really brought the drama. I find myself wishing that there had been more than one season, because while the show is super soapy, it is addictive, and I continue to enjoy seeing a completely different part of the world than what I am used to. It’s been long enough since the first time I watched “The Straits” that I can’t really remember much about how it ended, but after the events of this episode, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a good outcome for the Montebellos. We see them kind of have their last gasp of trying to keep complete control over the Torres Straits smuggling business, while meanwhile the family is crumbling from within. Sissi, because Joel is holding up a mirror, is getting more and more disenchanted with Montebello life. Marou now knows about Gary and Lola’s one-night-stand, and I don’t think he’s going to be forgiving. Noel is a fugitive. The end of the series is not going to be a win for the Montebellos, because family is everything to them and the family is about to break.

Noel has escaped from the transport van, and he’s hanging around the house where Toni and the kids are staying, being super stalker-ish. The police also have the house staked out, figuring that once free, Noel might make a beeline for Toni (they’d be right, obviously). Toni is hanging laundry when she notices Noel, and they talk in the woods. He tells her he’s going to South America, and he wants her and the kids to come with him. Surprisingly, Toni actually seems to be considering it. After that conversation, Noel calls Kitty and asks for money to help pay for Toni and the Kids to join him. Kitty says that they are tapped out, but she will see what she can do. Kitty and Bridget then go to the beach and dig up the package Gary and Eddie stole from Bridget’s brothers in the previous episode. While they are cleaning up from that adventure, two hooligans steal their boat, and in the confusion, with Kitty and Bridget yelling at the teens to return the boat, the package gets tossed overboard.

Back on the mainland, Harry comes home from the hospital, and he seems to really want to start setting things right. He wants to know where Marou is, but nobody in the family has been able to contact him. Marou is still in the motel room, next to Lola’s dead body, with a blank expression on his face. He’s carving “Lola” into his arm, and he seems rather suicidal. Anyway, back at the house, Kitty finally calls Harry, and they discuss the Noel situation. Kitty seems happy to hear that Harry has sent Natasha away, but they need to deal with the immediate crisis before they think about reconciling. Harry goes to the new bikie headquarters to try and work out a deal. He says Noel is going far away, and he wants the bikies to back off. Two-Stroke tells Harry that he (Harry) will be allowed to leave their headquarters alive, but if any DCs see Noel, he’s dead. That grudge is just not going to go away, which I kind of get considering Noel attacked them with a grenade launcher and all.

Out in the Straits, the Raskols Bridget’s brothers were working for find the hooligans who stole Kitty’s boat. Naturally, the Raskols think that the teens have the package, too. They kill one teen and threaten the other in their efforts to recover the package. The surviving hooligan and his father go talk to Kitty. The kid doesn’t really say much at first, although he (incorrectly) implies that the package is still on the boat. Kitty has Bridget bring her brothers over, too, and together, the whole group figures out that the Raskol who has been causing trouble for all of them is named Kingsten. They also know where they can probably find him. On a beach, Kitty holds court while Gary and Eddie basically waterboard Kingsten at the water’s edge. Kingsten keeps swearing he doesn’t have the package, and eventually the teen admits that the drugs went overboard. Once Gary and Eddie stop trying to drown him, Kingsten says he has been working for the Chinaman. Kitty calls the Chinaman to tell him to stop working the Straits, but the call seems rather ominous.

It doesn’t seem like Joel and Sissi have talked to each other since they had sex in the last episode, and things are a little awkward when they first see each other at the croc farm. The tension is broken when it is revealed that Joel taught one of the parakeets to say “sex goddess,” and he and Sissi immediately start making out. The happy moment is later soured when Joel catches Sissi packing up animals for smuggling. They argue over it, and Sissi’s role in the family business, but eventually they make up. I’m still not sure Joel himself is on the up-and-up, although he hasn’t done anything to arouse my suspicions since his initial appearance in the rainforest.

Noel is waiting for a friend, Squid, to pick him up and take him to the next stage of his journey out of Australia, when he has a run-in with some DC bikies. He manages to kill one of them, and wounds another so he can’t walk, and that is enough to allow him to escape. Squid eventually shows up, driving a beater that he defends as being less conspicuous than other car choices. They make a pit stop to get some sandwiches, and while they’re eating, they see even more DCs. To take things from bad to worse, a police car pulls up, too. They manage to evade the suspicion of the police, and Squid even gets the police to question the DCs, telling the police that he saw the DCs with a big package.

The proprietor of the motel enters Marou’s room and sees the gruesome scene of dead Lola on the bed. He is pretty startled when Marou stumbles out from the bathroom. He tells Marou that he won’t report what happened, and he’ll clean the room, but Marou needs to leave right away. Marou loads up Lola’s body into the car and finally heads home. While cleaning, the motel proprietor finds Lola’s stash of cash, which is certainly fortuitous. The word "Gary" is also written in blood on the television screen, which seems quite ominous considering that by the end of the episode, Marou is heading to Zey to see Kitty and Gary. When Marou returns home, he has a tearful reunion with Harry and Sissi, and he ends up telling them everything that happened. Lola’s body is currently in refrigeration at the croc farm, so that’s where they head next.

Unfortunately for Joel, he is finishing up a night shift when he snoops a bit too much and finds Lola’s body. He is completely horrified, and horror turns to panic when a beep goes off alerting him that a car is approaching the building. He quickly turns off all the lights and hides. He continues to be horrified as he sees Harry, Vince, and Marou retrieve Lola’s body, and he just barely escapes detection. The next day, he goes to a police station, intending to report what he saw, but he just can’t bring himself to do it. While the rest of the family holds a little impromptu funeral for Lola, Noel is on a remote island, gathering the supplies he will need for the next step of his journey (including a grenade launcher, naturally). We see that he left a ridiculously sappy note for Toni. If it were me, that note might make me reconsider rejoining my fugitive estranged husband!