City On Fire – Episode 2 “Scenes from Private Life” Recap & Review

Scenes from Private Life

Episode 2 of City on Fire begins in the past with Charlie celebrating New Years with Sam. Her father makes fireworks for a living and he has an intense hatred for New Year’s and also the Fourth of July. He wasn’t always bitter and twisted, Sam explains, but with everyone cutting costs, Sam’s dad blames this on his own issues, rather than Sam’s mum leaving.

In the middle of everything, right as the pair celebrate New Years, Sam wraps her arms around him and has something to say. However, she seems to steer away from the topic at hand and claims that she needs water.

They head into a club where Sol happens to be working. He’s not particularly happy and he encourages the pair to head down to the basement and lay low. Whilst there and alone, Charlie helps take off her trousers and top, but he’s respectful while she showers and he looks after her. “You’re really nice Charlie,” She says, before closing her eyes, resting on his lap.

Charlie leans forward and kisses her, telling the girl that he thinks he’s in love with her. The thing is, she’s not actually asleep and when Charlie raises his head to the heavens, Sam lets a tear fall from her face.

Fast forward to the present and while Mercer is arrested, Sam’s life hangs in the balance. There’s a bullet wedged in her brain, while Charlie rides home in his underwear, stopping by the Church to pray for Sam’s wellbeing. In fact, he ends up falling asleep on the benches.

In the police station, Detective Ali Parsa heads in to question Mercer. He stops to pray for her health before the questions begin, while Detective McFedden heads into the hospital to ask Sam’s father some questions.

Back with Mercer for now though, and with a half a gram of heroin found on his possession, Mercer tells the truth about the jacket and the events leading up to Sam being found. Mercer has been dusted for gunpowder residue and also has to supply his address and his fingerprint too. Oh, and he’s also not to leave the city either. But with all those conditions met, he’s free to go.

Meanwhile, Regan is a mess as she knows her father is about to be arrested on wire fraud charges. With loans due and the banks likely not to do business with the company anymore, they could lose everything.

When Mercer returns home, he confronts William about the heroin. He claims that 90% of what happened was police racism but the other 10% was the heroin. William is completely nonchalant to the whole affair, blaming this on Mercer going to the party behind his back and generally throwing out some twisted logic.

William decides to walk out, smacking Mercer out the way to do it and hurting his shoulder. Mercer struggles to hold it together, and William apologizes, claiming he’s tired and has a sickness. This is clearly a toxic, uncomfortable relationship but similarly, it’s not easy to let go of.

Outside in the park, Regan finds a dead bird on the floor. It’s been shot. Apparently this great blue turaco is not a common species and it may well have escaped from the Bronx Zoo.

Regan drops off the kids to Keith, in an understandably frosty manner. Regan is trying in vain to keep everything ticking by and after watching her father taken away by the feds in handcuffs, she’s not happy with Amory, believing he’s backstabbed the company.

Elsewhere, our two detectives begin asking around about Sam and her place at the residency. The only thing they have to go on is that she likes music so they decide to go ahead with that lead. Parsa shrugs off an old handgun found by the bridge, claiming it’s the wrong model.

While Charlie walks in on Sol and the gang testing makeshift explosives inside a bathtub, they subsequently knock him out for snooping. Meanwhile, Parsa goes hunting in the park after-hours, where he finds Charlie’s discarded trousers, which happens to hold that flyer for the band inside.

The Episode Review

So City on Fire returns with an episode that tightens the screw and starts to ask serious questions about who could be involved in this potential murder. I say potential because we still don’t know if Sam is alive or not, given she has a bullet wedged in her head.

There’s a fair few different moving parts here, including Amory’s role asking about Keith and claiming he must have had a “better offer”. It definitely seems a bit suspect.

However, it could also be one big accident too. The handgun being found just after we get the scenes involving the dead bird seems to indicate that someone may have just been goofing off and firing a gun into the air, and perhaps they hit Sam by accident? It’s a long shot I know because Sam was guided into the park but what if the whistling was for the birds and not for her?

Similarly, there’s still question marks over who could be responsible for all this, if it really is murder, with Charlie having incriminated himself at the crime scene. How the police didn’t find those trousers, given they’re right next to the bridge, is beyond me.

Also, how have the police not done DNA or checked the ground for footprints and bodily fluids? Had they done that, they would have seen a second set of footprints and also the urine too. Hopefully this gets brought up in the episodes ahead as it seems a bit sloppy.

The show is okay so far though but it really rests on how well this mystery is going to play out and whether it excels or falls flat on its face. We’ll have to wait and see for now.