A prophecy leads Cade back to his old job as a thief – but the big heist he’s helping with isn’t what it’s supposed to be.
(Originally aired June 18, 2000)
Written by Paul Eckstein
Directed by Holly Dale
GUEST STARS
Monika Schnarre – Harley Daniels
Christian Bocher – Richie Black
Robert Duncan – Dex
WHAT HAPPENED
A group of thieves is preparing to break into a vault. Their leader, Dex, is concerned about the new man, who’s been out of the thieving business for a long time.
The new man is
Cade Foster, who’s carefully examining the tumblers of the vault door. Harley Daniels, who makes contacts and gets jobs for the crew, brought him in.
Harley is also an old girlfriend of Cade’s, which bothers Dex. He warns Cade, "if you screw up, mouth off or go psycho, I will put a bullet in your brain."
Another old friend named Richie Black bypasses the alarm system, and Cade goes to work on the tumblers. He cracks the vault seconds before Richie has to bring the alarm back into the circuit.
Dex insists on going first. He stalks carefully around the first chamber of the vault, commenting that "the last thing I want to do is to walk into the trap."
It is indeed the last thing he does. As the others look on in horror and the vault door shuts behind them, a spear of metal springs from the ceiling and impales him. (more
spoilers)
ANALYSIS
"The Heist" begins as a straightforward caper story, but it takes a turn for the weird with the appearance of "Eddie" at the end of act one. The bait and switch is a little disappointing – the caper elements looked promising, and the surrealism falls a little flat.
Writer Paul Eckstein tries to give Cade and his associates archetypical nightmares, but that makes the images less surprising and no more effective. The low points are the hanged
Eddie and the feral clown, which aren’t scary no matter how much feeling Sebastian Spence and Monika Schnarre try to put into their lines.
The examination of Cade’s past works better. We see him using his thief skills every week, and we occasionally hear bits of his past history, but this is the first extended look we’ve gotten at the people who knew him during his misspent youth.
Harley, Cade and Richie come off more like the A-Team than a gang of criminals from lower-class Chicago, but you get the impression that running with them back in the good old days must have been fun. That sense of adventure has nothing to do with real life, but it adds a nice flavor to the First Wave stew.
The unhappier parts of Cade’s background also get some development. We learn a little more about his troubled relationship with his stepfather, and some more of the reasons why he went straight.
Finally, Richie’s story about the 250-pound safe builds up one of First Wave’s oddest bits of continuity. We’ve heard some of the safe story from
Hannah already – it’s becoming both a running gag and one of the definitive measures of Cade’s unbreakable determination.
WHAT WE LEARN
Cade’s abusive stepfather locked him in the basement when he was a boy, and he is uneasy in small spaces and darkness.
The job Cade carried a 250-pound safe down five floors for was the Griffin job. He and his crew lived large for a year on the proceeds, but Cade suffered two herniated disks.
When Cade was a thief, he was part of a ring with his childhood friend Richie and his first love Harley. He went to jail for two years because Richie panicked and left him holding the bag during a job gone sour.
Hannah was the daughter of Cade’s probation officer.
The Gua can create detailed illusions and false realities in human minds.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Why did Harley assume Cade was having an acid flashback at one point? Has Cade inhaled?
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK
Posing as a college recruiter, Cade exposes the Gua plot behind a high school football team in "Ohio Players".
What do you think? Send your comments to the
editor.
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