On Call – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Episode 3

Episode 3 of On Call begins with a chase. Diaz is chasing a man while Harmon drives towards him. Diaz chases the man across a rooftop parking lot. When the man pushes another man off the roof, Diaz stops to pull him up but his gun falls down in the process. The chase continues but the man jumps off the roof, trying to reach for a nearby flag. It doesn’t work and he falls down, breaking his leg.

While the paramedics are wrapping up, another rookie officer (and friend of Diaz) gives Diaz his gun back. He advises Diaz not to tell Harmon because he’s heard that Diaz got other officers fired, including Lasman’s partner.

Later, Diaz tries to get Harmon to open up about herself. He inevitably brings up the rumour that she got other people fired and Harmon gets annoyed at this. She asks Diaz where he heard this but he answers vaguely. Harmon then gets a call from her mother asking about her sister, a cop who lives in LA.

The officers then get called for a burglary incident. They reach the victim’s house and find a couple there who say that the robbers have gone. The wife says she came home and found her husband tied up and the robber went right past her.

Diaz checks outside and sees a man running away and into another house. Diaz hesitates to enter but Harmon arrives and they go together. They catch the guy but he tells Diaz that the husband contacted him through an app and offered payment for sex. They were meant to have (tied-up) sex, but the wife interrupted them.

Harmon later asks Diaz why he hesitated to enter the house to catch the suspect. Harmon thinks he hesitated because of the rumour about her getting cops fired. Diaz says he was just following the law. Harmon then gets a call from her old trainer, Detective Sergeant Koyama. He says there’s a spot on his team and he offers it to Harmon. He also informs her that they think Eddie Watson (Maniac) is in Mexico. He warns Harmon not to do anything stupid.

Wanting to confirm about Maniac’s whereabouts, Harmon drives them to a pub. She tells Diaz to stay in the car and goes inside, meeting with a man named Smokey. She asks about Maniac and brings up Delgado’s death. Smokey says that nobody was happy about the cop’s death and that it was “handled.”

Harmon assumes he is referring to Cortez’s death. But Maniac is the son of a powerful guy named Quentin. Smokey says Maniac is untouchable and warns Harmon to stop looking for him. Harmon returns to the car and hears Diaz speaking to his girlfriend on the phone. Harmon tells him that Smokey told her to stop looking which means that Maniac is still in the country.

They are then called away to another incident of a car being set on fire. The woman making the complaint says that it was a homeless woman and that homeless people have been causing more trouble lately. Lasman is there as well and pulls Harmon aside for a second. He says that a shop owner is suing the police for not protecting them during the mob incident (the one that happened in Episode 2). He blames Harmon for keeping Diaz on a leash and not prioritising the safety of civilians.

Diaz and some other officers search the homeless camp when a scuffle breaks out. Diaz’s friend Holt accidentally gets pricked by a syringe in the chaos. Diaz panics and gives him emergency medication just as other officers come and help. As Diaz continues to panic, Harmon helps him calm down at the end of On Call Episode 3.

The Episode Review

This is another good episode of the Amazon Prime show. We get a variety of different incidents from the hilarious debacle with the rich couple to the more intense incidents with the homeless camp and the man who jumped off the roof. Despite tackling several incidents every episode, the series is able to keep things fresh and interesting.

At the same time, this is balanced out well with the larger plotline of Harmon searching for Maniac. Harmon having a contact within the gang is very intriguing and it would be nice to learn more about the connection between her and Smokey.

On Call Episode 3 also dives deeper into our main leads’ personalities. We see a seed of doubt about planted in Diaz’s head and how that affects his demeanour, as well as Harmon’s attempts to clarify the situation and maintain the trust between them. The episode doesn’t linger on this too much but we will surely see the doubts resurface in future episodes.