Thoughts about Death at Victoria Dock

This episode is about Phryne helping a friend of aunt Prudence when his daughter goes missing. His dock workers are striking and while Phryne is at the dock, a young Latvian man is shot to death and dies in front of Phryne. Of course she gets involved in the investigation of his death and crosses path with anarchists and Jack. Even though he seemed to soften towards her in Green Mill Murder, he is most reluctant to do so now. Can it be out of fear that she will be killed? The anarchists tries to do so a few times during the episode after all.

I know people want to see Phryne as this "larger than life superhero" and of course I love that aspect of her too, but I love even more when she is human. When she allows herself to stop her otherwise hectic tempo and reflect and react with emotions to the things happening around her.

This episode is one of those times. She is deeply affected by the death of Yourka and I love to see here. She might not spend so much time reflecting over things and she does not look back towards her past, but she has emotions and she does care about others. She has a lot of empathy and I so very much love her for it.

"It'd be a tactical error to think you had me pegged just yet, Miss Fisher"

~ Jack Robinson, Death at Victoria Dock

Like I said above, Jack still tries to avoid working with Phryne in this episode and he is frustrated that she has constable Hugh Collins totally wrapped around her fingers. But in the end he tells her not to judge him yet, a sign that he is slowly accepting her more and more. He also acknowledge that he is aware of how he has treated her and that he deep down wants her to stick around no matter how ambivalent his feelings are towards her.

Thoughts about The Green Mill Murder

In The Green Mill Murder, Leonard Stevens is murdered in the jazz club The Green Mill which Phryne and her friend Charles Freeman visit. It turns out that Leonard has made a lot of enemies by blackmailing them about their biggest secrets. Among them is Charles and he is the first one to be suspected of murder since he flees the crime scene.

"As far as I'm concerned, everybody should be allowed to marry whomever they choose. Though personally, I'm not the marrying kind."

~Phryne Fisher

Like in Cocaine Blues this episode partly deals with issues regarding sexuality that was (and still is in some countries) regulated by laws and how this can be used to give some people a hold on others. Charles is homosexual and Leonard Stevens is blackmailing him and his lover Robert Sullivan after having found out. The episode also portrays an interracial marriage between Noreen and Ben Rogers. The former is also blackmailed by Leonard.

The camera turn into Jack as he is excusing himself through
the crowd at the Green Mill

I like this episode despite the fact that the method of murder is a bit unbelievable. I think that there are just too many factors that need to be right for it to work. This is also addressed more in the book as far as I remember. The book also looks more thorough into the First World War and how it still effects society and its members ten years later. Charles's brother Victor is still living alone and in secret far away from his family, but his PTSD (called shell shock at the time) plays a much more prominent role in the book.

I love Phryne's flapper outfit and how the camera turns into Jack as he excuses his way through the crowd at the Green Mill to get to Phryne and the dead body. He is still a bit standoffish, but particularly at the end of the episode, we get a glimpse that he likes and is far more interested in her than he lets anyone (and perhaps himself) know.

Phryne takes a small interest in Tintagel Stone, the band leader of the Green Mill and I think he, together with Lindsay Thompson from Murder on the Ballarat Train are the sleaziest of the men she seems to at least want to have sex with. I am all for her being sexually liberated and I do not want to judge her, but those two men in particular would not be my own first choice because of their sleeziness.

Thoughts about Murder on the Ballarat Train

The second episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries finds Phryne and Dot boardering a train to Ballarat where they are going to pick up Phryne's new car. On the way there, Mrs Henderson is murdered. Phryne also moves into her new house and hires Mr Butler and buys a new taxi car for Bert and Cec. This is also the episode in which we are introduced to Jane who is sneaking aboard the train, comes across Mrs Henderson's jewels and gets accused of murder before Phryne, of course, sorts it all out again.

I really enjoy this episode. The plot holds up pretty well and I like it how the "family" is united more in this one than in the first (even though Mac and aunt Prudence are missing).

After reading the book, one thing I like less about the episode is that they have sort of degraded Eunice Henderson, daughter of the murdered woman, to a woman dependent on both her mother and her boyfriend. Book-Eunice is much more independant and the one who provides for herself and her mother so the latter can continue to live a more glamorous life-style despite having lost her money due to bad investement.

Another thing that I find less good about the episode is that it is the only time we see Ruth, who Phryne adopts besides Jane in the books. It seems odd based on how close she and Jane are. I wonder why she could not be one of the flower-maidens in Queen of the flowers.

There is a big Hottie-momen in this episode when they meet in the hallway of the train. That is one of my favourite with those too loveable characters. Looking at these early episodes, you can really see how much Dot develops.

Jack is still quite grumpy in this episode. He is not used to Phryne and her ways yet. But we get our first Phrack-moment with the scene in the murdered woman's compartment on the train and this episode also has the first night-cap between them.