In tonight’s 10th episode of NBC’s Chase, Dallas finally got to play itself on TV. The opening scene showed our blonde heroine, crack U.S. Marshal Annie Frost, chasing a guy through the West End, and the screen told us that she was, in fact, in Dallas. Never mind that the building through which she pursued the fugitive and jumped to a neighboring roof was the West End Marketplace, the same building they used for Annie’s apartment in Houston a few weeks back.
Annie was most upset that she broke the heel of her boot kicking in the face of the bad guy, and she spent the rest of the episode dealing with the faulty footwear. It was a recurring bit of lightheartedness in an episode full of more dialogue meant as comic relief than any episode of the show so far. For instance, we learned that Annie’s middle name is “Nolan.” (Presumably her dad was a big fan of the Hall of Fame pitcher/current Texas Rangers president.)
This week’s arch-villains were a pair of bank-robbing women who forced their way into the homes of the managers of small banks and held the families hostage until they were delivered the cash that they sought. It was obvious from the first scene that the women were also romantically involved with one another, though the script felt the need to imply this fact repeatedly to the audience. I’m thinking in particular of a strange moment early on when the marshals were searching an apartment that they knew belonged to one of the women. Annie found two differently-sized pairs of shoes in the closest. Annie and Daisy exchanged a look as if to say, “Two women living in the same apartment? Must be lesbians.”
Another oddity is the way the Chase writers seem fixated on giving their bad guys oral fixations. The second episode featured a fellow who loved to chew Bazooka Joe gum. Last week’s episode (which featured a murder at a bar that was supposed to be in Safford, Arizona, but was actually near Bachman Lake, and which I couldn’t recap due to being away from all televisions because of Thanksgiving travel) had a cradle-robbing psychopath obsessed with spitting out sunflower seeds. And this week gave us Ivy, the younger and flirtier female bank robber who frequently had suckers in her mouth. If NBC is looking for more product placement opportunities in Chase (like the co-starring role they gave the Windows Phone last week), I suggest that when they finally produce the show featuring the much-anticipated pursuit of Annie’s own father, they have her old man popping an endless stream of Jolly Ranchers.
As for this week’s plot, the Thelma-and-Louise pair take their crime spree to New Mexico after hitting a bank in Houston. When another robbery ends violently, they cool their heels at a restaurant in Roswell, New Mexico (in actuality in South Dallas). But Ivy decides to run away from her domineering partner, Karen, and meets up with the abusive husband she’d deserted in the first place. Karen doesn’t like that and kills the guy at a motel in Roswell (filmed at this motel off Interstate 35E in Carrollton). Karen is able to sweet-talk Ivy into rejoining her, and they resume their life on the run.
For the second straight episode, the storyline takes us to Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s there that the marshals finally catch up to the pair, hiding out at a battered womens’ shelter. Ivy takes the fall so that Karen can slip away, but Annie Frost convinces Ivy that Karen has been using her all along. She gives them the tip they need to find Karen at a house near a lake in New Mexico. There’s a fun bit of business where Karen nearly pulls Annie with her over a cliff, but it’s really pretty easy for them to haul her in.
Then Daisy and Annie head off to get pedicures. “Inside my boots I got pretty feet,” Annie says as they kick back with a couple beers while their feet are being pampered. “Doesn’t mean I have to call it a mani-pedi.”
