Culprits – Season 1 Episode 7 “This is Our Exit” Recap & Review

This is Our Exit

Episode 7 of Culprits reveals what Dianne stole. After everyone left the vault, she stayed back and stole a key from another secure vault behind a large portrait. However, her plan suffered a setback when Right Hand caught her. He demanded that he be cut in whatever spoils Dianne would claim. Although she agreed, Dianne had no plans to do so. She called Fixer and asked him to eliminate Right Hand. In the present day, Joe goes through Devil’s phone to figure out where he is heading next. He finds location stamps for each one of the crew members.

There is one more in Kent…the trio’s next destination. Azar, Officer, and Joe dispose of the bodies in the stolen car in a junkyard. They take Devil’s body to a posh neighbourhood in Kent. A brief flashback involving Dianne and Joe follows Azar’s chilling reaction to hearing the recording of Malek right before he died on Devil’s phone. Joe asks Dianne if she killed her sister by locking her in a car and setting it on fire. She doesn’t react abruptly and calmly explains that she didn’t kill Marianne. It was an accident.

In the present, Joe takes Officer – now unbounded – to the house with him. Officer quickly adapts when a woman shows up at the door, concerned. Her name is Gwen Irving, the widow of Right Hand, a.k.a. Anton Irving. Joe forces her to go inside at gunpoint. They take Gwen and her children’s phones so that they can’t contact anyone outside. Joe threatens Gwen to reveal the truth about where Dianne is hiding. Gwen seemingly knows something but before she budges to Joe’s incessant questioning, Azar storms in, waving a gun around.

Gwen is completely thrown off and goes back into silence. Her phone rings; someone named Gareth is calling. After ignoring it a couple of times, Joe asks her to pick up. However, Gwen surprisingly remarks that it is for Joe. One of the kids has secretly alerted the neighbourhood about the unfolding situation. And now, Gareth has come to the front door with his gang of lads. The trio somehow manage to escape. Azar, who strikes one of the men with a photo frame hanging on the wall, notices something in it.

It shows Anton with Fuse, a.k.a Robert Yates. They served together in the army. Officer baits one of Robert’s relatives to get his current address. The trio reach his house. Azar and Officer go in one direction, Joe in the other. He finds Robert’s dead body in the outhouse and finds himself surrounded. He is apprehended by the gunmen and taken to the person who employed Devil; the person whom the crew stole from – Vincent Hawkes.

He is a billionaire whose entire wealth is encapsulated in a secure box. But the only key to it is in Dianne’s hands…that she stole from behind the portrait. Hawkes knows everything about Joe’s family and his dire circumstances. He openly threatens to kill them unless Joe finds and kills Dianne for him. Hawkes explains that Robert gave them a method to contact Dianne. Joe is to lure Dianne into a trap by telling her the place where Hawkes’ box is stashed, killing her, and then bringing the key to him.

The Episode Review

This is the worst episode in Culprits’ Season 1 that gives me no incentive to watch the finale. And it has come at the business end. In hindsight, I don’t think Jarrett is the right choice for Joe. It might be more about how badly the writers have messed up in shaping his arc than his portrayal. Either way, Jarrett did not deserve this treatment. He looks completely unconvinced and off his radar in the most pivotal sequences in the episode that aren’t interesting at all.

The “impossible choice” he faces is so boring that we already know how it is going to end. This is a familiar territory that regular TV watchers dread seeing a show go into. The scene at Gwen’s house is so amateurishly executed, you’d think that the writers have no knowledge of their universe and characters. 

Susan Eddie Izzard’s hotly anticipated cameo as Hawkes is wholly uninspiring. Her character was meant to be a segue to the finale where all the dots are connected to give meaning to the show’s plot. However, she is yet another in a string of incomplete and hollow characters on Culprits. 

It has not gone according to plan for the creators…and they only have themselves to blame.