Blue Lights season 3, episode 5 review: BritBox show sets the stage for a gut-wrenching finale

SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Blue Lights Season 3, Episode 5.

It’s difficult to forget that Blue Lights Season 3, Episode 5 is the next-to-last episode of the season. Plot-wise, “Ordo ab Chao” never loses the feeling of tying story threads together so that they can be wrapped up next time around. But the BritBox show can be forgiven that because the two cliffhangers it provides are more than enough to keep viewers biting their nails.

In terms of the crime story, this episode is simple and straightforward. After Lindsey named George McClelland as her attacker during Episode 4, the police go and arrest him on multiple charges. He refuses to say anything, but he’s still a liability to the bad guys, who immediately plot to have him killed—and Grace Ellis is driving the car that he’s in. On a more traditional procedural, that wouldn’t even be half the episode. But Blue Lights can slow-roll that because what seems like the subplots of the hour are actually the main stories.

Shane Bradley essentially has a Lethal Weapon moment. He informs his partner Tommy Foster that they have to face the ombudsman at the end of shift to find out their fate—which is a big red flag, like saying he only has one day before retirement. So it’s not entirely a surprise when Shane is stabbed while trying to talk down a woman experiencing cocaine-induced psychosis. What is surprising is how long the episode spends with Shane, Annie, and later Tommy and Sandra Cliff, really putting fans in the position of trying to save Shane’s life. The plot ends for now with Shane having made it through surgery—but that doesn’t mean he’ll survive, and if he does, he may lose the use of his leg… which would end his career. Other TV procedurals have done the “character suffers career-ending injury” storyline before, but Blue Lights does so in a much more visceral way.

Shane’s random attack, too, is neatly tied back into the main story as Tommy realizes that the suspect was using the mobile app that they’ve been trying to get access to all season. Blue Lights co-creators Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson are sneaky brilliant in how they take this story that seems just like an unrelated subplot and make it the way in to wrapping up their main case. There’s also a little bit of painful irony: Shane’s storyline started with breaking into someone’s phone, and yet it culminates in part with Tommy getting permission to get into someone’s phone.

And it’s Nathan Braniff and Katherine Devlin who carry most of the emotional weight in the episode, as poor Annie is traumatized a second time by literally having Shane’s blood on her hands. The shot of a quivering Annie left alone in the ambulance is some of Devlin’s best work, without a line of dialogue. They and Andi Osho dig deep in this hour, because before Sandra and Tommy get to Shane, they have a subplot about assisting an elderly man who happens to bring back memories of Gerry. After audiences are moved by Sandra hearing Gerry’s favorite Kris Kristofferson song, it turns out Raymond knew Kristofferson and plays the same song for his new friends.

This has nothing to do with anything else in the world of Blue Lights. It’s a pause for Sandra, Tommy and the memory of Gerry. It’s awkwardly placed given that Helen McNally tells Sandra (and reminds viewers) that the man involved in Gerry’s murder is likely to get out on bail. With that context, some fans might think it’s emotionally too much. But it serves a few functions. For one, it’s always good to see Sandra out in the field as she has been for two episodes now, when most police dramas pigeonhole their bosses behind desks. And for another, to see Tommy even catch on to the Raymond situation is a reminder of how good of a cop he’s blossomed into. The whole phone debacle has cast a long shadow over him, and then what’s happened with Aisling is obviously a major blow, so it’s nice to give him a win and a confidence boost. Plus, the fans get a little bit of good news while the show is messing up everything else.

Compared to all this, watching Grace and Sean Mulholland try to interview George while he just keeps repeating “no comment” is pretty bland. There’s only so much any writer can do to make that interesting. Even exploiting the weakness of George’s attorney Aodhan McAllister (whether it’s Tina or Collins doing the prodding) isn’t that compelling. It’s just getting the plot train further down the tracks. And while they’re useful, the C4 team have the personality of folding chairs. But that’s almost to be expected, because those characters are antithetical to the whole show.

Blue Lights isn’t really about special ops and big fancy rooms of monitors. It’s a character piece, and so what viewers follow is the emotional reactions of everyone involved, until the audience runs into those two cliffhangers. They know what’s coming. Lawn and Patterson aren’t trying to hide it. But that feeling of inevitability only makes it worse, because just as much as the physical survival of the characters, the audience is tracking their emotional survival. “Ordo ab Chao” is about raising the emotional stakes, and in that sense it’s a winner.

Blue Lights streams Thursdays on BritBox. Photo Credit: Peter Marley/Courtesy of BritBox.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.