SGRoA: Forever Knight S01 E03: For I Have Sinned

Guys. It has been a day today, let me tell you. But! I am here for your recapping pleasure, putting aside my sprained toe and my weirdly-slept-on bottom to bring you cheesy vampire goodness. Let's begin!

We open with sexy sex between some dude in white boxers (because this is 1930, I guess), and a woman all dolled up in a corset and stockings. She gets up and says she has to leave, and puts on a big ol' honkin' cross necklace. She lives in Toronto. She knows what's up.

She's sexing the night guard at a department store, so he lets her out the door and she goes to her car, where she puts on her wedding ring (!) and is attacked by a ninja who's been waiting in her backseat. He pulls her cross off and tells her "You don't deserve to wear this" as he kills her. So we know whom we're after this week: the dude from Se7en.

Ooh! Nick's at Janette's club, The Raven. Nick's here on business, of course, because...well. You know the drill.

Two women are dead this week, one beheaded and one disemboweled. Honey Janette don't care, Honey Janette don't give a shit. They're just mortals, after all.

Schenke wanders in, because of course Nick left him in the car. Nick rescues him from a dead hottie, and tells Janette that if she hears anything, she should call him.

Schenke's not happy that Nick's keeping all the prime tail for himself. He claims he's a killer ladies' man, and Nick tells him he doesn't have the guts to cheat on Myra, his wife. Myra becomes a running gag we never see, which was popular in the 90s, wasn't it? Who decided that was an awesome thing to put in every show?

They go to another murder scene: a crucifixion. It's our cheater from the first scene. Nick can't handle it, though, and before even glancing at the scene he tells people to "cover her up and get her out of here!" But of course, he knows she was dead before she was crucified, because there's not enough blood.

Nat, before opening the body or doing any bloodwork, has determined that she died from a heart attack - "from sheer, unmitigated terror." She shows Nick the cross, and he shies away, because crosses work on him. She tells him to get over himself, because he needs it for evidence. All the women wore crosses, and all of them were Catholic.

So we're off to church, where no one's done any research into Catholicism whatsoever, because the priest says something weird to start confession. The sinner in the box is the killer, and we don't get to see his face, but he basically tells the priest that he's the killer and gives away his plan for the next murder: someone who "defiles this cathedral by her very presence". She incites lust, so she must be burned.

This would be a great place to go on a rant about how "modest is hottest" is not(est), but I am tired and kind of lazy, so I'll just let Jezebel do it.

Father tries to get the murderer to confess and to go to the cops, but Ninja Murderer insists he's the arm of God and will mete out His justice. Ain't that always the way?

Nick's trying to eat garlic cloves whole, and it is not going well. Probably because that's hella gross. And I love garlic, but no. Schenke calls to tell Nick that all the women went to St. John's, but don't call him back, because he's off duty. This makes Nick go get the cross - yes, the one that's evidence - and gaze at it while he goes off to flashback-land.

Oh! I remember this one! Nick knew Jeanne d'Arc, and you guys, it's Christina Cox, who was also Vicki Nelson in Blood Ties, which is based on a series of books by Tanya Huff. What was I saying about Six Degrees of Vampires? Yeah.

Jeanne knows all about vampires, and tells Nick he's cursed while he's trying to flirt with her and she's trying to pray. Nice. He holds his hand up to the cross in the flashback chapel and holds the EVIDENCE cross in modern times. The former sets his whole hand on fire, but the latter just gives him third-degree palm burns.

Father is asking his boss about the sanctity of the confessional. Dude, did they not cover this in seminary? You can't go to the cops. Especially because you don't know anything more than they do at this point. Father Pierre (his boss calls him by name) leaps to the conclusion that this means priests are powerless to stop sin. Seriously. How did you even graduate, Pierre?

Schenke, being off-duty and all, goes back to The Raven to dance with dead hotties. He kind of looks like this:

His Butabi shtick works, though, at least on a hungry vampire, and he's been propositioned in like, ten seconds flat. Good job, Schenk!

Nick goes to chat up Father Pierre about the murder victims. Nick can't go into the church, of course. Father Pierre can't give him any information, because...Nope, got nuthin'. Because he's obstinate? Because he's dumb? Because...

Yeah, that was my thought, too.

Meanwhile, Schenke is getting it on in the world's ugliest shirt.

Like, what even is that? I thought it was camouflage, but upon closer inspection, it has flowers, so...He cut up his grandma's sofa?

Janette comes in just as the fangs come out, and she tells Schenke to hightail it out of there and to never come back. An admonishment that won't stick, by the way, because it's so much funnier when he blunders into stuff that should tell him exactly what Nick is, but never manages to get through to him.

The woman who incites lust is Magda, who works as a phone-sex operator. Ninja Murderer calls her and tells her she should be consumed by fire. She wants to go to the cops, because someone just threatened her, but her boss thinks it's pointless. Boss sends her home because she'll be no good on the phone all jittery. Of course she takes the creepy way home, because who wouldn't, right? Ninja Murderer gets her, and Nick just happens to be driving by within vampire-hearing range. He rescues Magda, but gets shot in the process, and tells her to call an ambulance.

Nick runs after Ninja Murderer, but doesn't catch him. He catches Father Pierre instead.

They drag Father Pierre into the precinct to have him listen to the tape from the phone-sex line, and Nick's all butt-hurt when he won't violate the sanctity of the confessional. Or maybe it's Pierre's truly horrendous Canadian accent. Hard to say.

Nick gives Father Pierre all sorts of shit, so Captain Stonetree tells Nick he's "outta here!" Being impolite to a suspect in Canada apparently deserves an equal reaction to Stabler knocking one around in NYC. I'm not sure either one of those is proportional to the offense.

Flashback time! Nick is still macking on Joan of Arc, and offers her immortality. She doesn't take it, obvies. And then she's off to battle, leaving Nick to confront his lack of faith, or his sneering at faith, or something. Geraint Wyn Davies' acting in this flashback is so bad, you guys. I have no idea what he's trying to accomplish besides getting his fangs stuck in the scenery.

Magda runs into Nick at the station and asks if he's okay, you know, because he just got shot in the stomach. Just grazed, he says. He'll be okay. Good thing that ambulance never showed up, isn't it? Magda and Father Pierre are put under police protection.

Nick tells Nat the Jeanne d'Arc story, and he makes it sound so nice: "I offered to bring her over to save her life." Dude. No. You subjected her to some bad touch and made fun of her faith. You are not the good guy here.

Nat asks why Nick is tackling his fear of crosses now, and he tells her it's because he's spending the next day in a church. So we're staking out, I guess. Heh. Staking.

The devotional candles remind him of Jeanne's execution, and then he's staggering around the church looking for somewhere there won't be religious symbols, I guess? There's no sun coming in, so...Yeah. I dunno. He ends up in the priest side of the confessional, and a parishioner comes in to confess, so he pretends he's sleeping. It's kind of cute, really. The parishioner says she'll say 20 Hail Marys and let him nap. I wonder what she did. 20 Hail Marys is a lot, yo. At least it was when I was still going to confession under JPII.

Schenke comes in to confess, and Nick puts on an Irish brogue to get him to talk. Nick thinks this is a great joke, and is laughing his ass off, but dude. Schenke is clearly upset by his almost-infidelity, and wants to make right with God, and Nick's taking that away from him? Yeah, he lets on before Schenke gets too far into his story, but for fuck's sake. That is not funny.

Magda's playing gin with a uniform in a hotel room, then gets up to take a shower and says she'd have him come in and scrub her back, but there's probably a regulation against it, and it's the least-sexy come-on in the history of the world. Dude doesn't even bite, either. I mean, maybe he's gay, whatever, but she doesn't even say it like she even thought about meaning it. She must be great at her job.

Uniform offers to wait outside, which is great news for Magda, who really just wanted to slip out the bathroom window.

Uh-oh, Father Pierre is pissed when he sees Nick come out of the confessional. Because Nick is totally making light of everyone's faith in this episode. I'm with Father Pierre on this one, even though he's not supposed to be at the church at all because he's supposed to be in protective custody. Just like Magda, who comes strolling down the sidewalk. Schenke's about to get out of his car to get her, when someone punches him out and then goes in to sit next to Magda.

Wait a minute. They have cops all over the place - out front, inside, out back - but no one is sitting in the pews?

Anyway, the guy who goes in is Ninja Murderer, and he takes Magda out back to the church grounds to light her on fire on this big wood dais they've been building for a fair or something. Nick flies in and fights with NM, but in the course of knocking him out, the kindling goes up. Nick has to fly through the fire to get Magda, and then flies her out.

Magda forgives the Ninja Murderer, who I guess is dead? Because he was knocked out next to the fire, and then we don't see him again. Nick's amazed that she can forgive. Shocking. Magda gives him her cross, and then Nick and Father Pierre make up. Nick gives Magda's cross to Nat, because second-hand gifts from other women are totally what she wants. Good job.

And that's the end of that. This was not nearly as good as Se7en, tell you what. And Nick's a jerk about religion. I mean, I'm not its biggest fan, but damn. Have a little respect, dude. You were Catholic once, too - and I'll bet it meant a hell of a lot more to you than it does to anyone you'll meet in 1996 Toronto. This could have been a fascinating exploration of the way religion changes over time, and how such changes are interpreted by someone who's lived all of them. But it wasn't. It was just Jeanne d'Arc and fire and pretty girls getting murdered for being sexy. *yawn*

Until next week, Snowflakes!