Mark Watches ‘Terriers’: Episode 12 – Quid Pro Quo

In the twelfth and penultimate episode of Terriers, WHAT THE FUCK. If you’re intrigued, then it’s time for Mark to watch Terriers. 

Well, Terriers has definitely been the show that most effectively crept up on me and shocked me. It is so weird to think about the pilot episode and realize that Lindus was connected to all of this. THIS IS WHAT BRITT AND HANK UNKNOWINGLY STUMBLED INTO. The escalation we’ve seen over the course of this season has been slow at times, but that’s okay. This is like an anthology novel, you know? Vignettes that are part of a greater whole.

And that greater whole is terrifying.

Putting the Pieces Together

This episode deals in disparate parts and relationships and how they come together. For the bulk of “Quid Pro Quo,” Laura Ross aids Hank and Britt in collecting all the seemingly nonsensical clues they have about the developments and land grabs across Ocean Beach. But it’s also about the fractured relationships, too. Britt and Hank are forced back together after the events in “Sins of the Past.” Katie seeks out Gretchen. Jason deals with Hank’s sudden appearance at his job site. These people matter just as much as the story does, and it makes Terriers a better show.

So let’s talk about those clues, because I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED THIS ENDING. Despite that, let me just say that the mystery’s resolution is so believable it hurts. If you’re not a video person (and that’s okay!), I’ll repeat what I mentioned there: the San Diego airport has been a problem for a long time. It cannot really expand, and because it is so close to residential neighborhoods just north of downtown, it cannot have flights land beyond a certain hour. Now, I personally enjoy the airport because it is one of the few airports I’ve ever been to that is very close to the downtown areas of a city. (Billy Bishop airport in Toronto wins, though; I got to fly into it last year when I nearly got stranded in Chicago during a massive snowstorm. It’s on an island in front of downtown!) (There’s a parking garage in San Diego that’s in the flight path of most planes that land at the airport, and it’s perfectly situated so that if you’re on the top level, it looks like the plane will land on top of your head.) But the very idea of a massive airport situated in a part of town that’s less “desirable” makes sense, and it explains why there’s such a frenzied interest in Zeitlin’s plans. Seriously, there are billions of dollars to be made off something like this.

Ocean Beach, which is a very real part of San Diego, is quaint and weird and awesome, and thus, it becomes a character in this conspiracy. We’ve seen glimpses of how strange it is, so it makes sense that Hank and Albrecht would want to fight anything that would wipe this odd place off the map. And initially, I understood why Britt entertained the idea of giving in to Zeitlin. He wasn’t a native, so the place didn’t hold the same meaning to him. But he was also tired of the way he’d been treated. Of course, this narrative worked for me because I believed that he had betrayed Hank, not that he’d been faking it to double cross Zeitlin. WHOOPS, I WAS WRONG.

Still, it was a tense and scary experience, especially we all knew what Zeitlin and Burke were capable of. But if we’re speaking of capabilities, we also have to address the ways in which Hank and Britt are increasingly willing to do… well, terrible shit. I’m mostly referencing Britt here, since his sexual relationship with Ashley is really gross. Granted, the show makes that a certainty, too, since he tricked her into that position while on a job. Yes, he may have been truly attracted to her – I don’t doubt that part – but his actions are complicated by the role he plays. He was hired to spy on her; a sexual relationship should have been out of bounds.

Hank, on the other hand, is willing to seek out Jason, despite the hard limit he and Gretchen set on contact with them. And I get why Hank pursues him. I also admired that Jason was willing to do what he could to expose Zeitlin’s plans, too! But what of Hank? Does he feel any guilt or shame for getting Jason involved? Or was he just collateral damage? How the fuck is anyone going to deal with this?

And really, that’s what this penultimate episode means to me. For the entirety of this season, Terriers has chronicled a mystery and a complex set of characters who have all been pushed to the extremes in a place where that seems so unlikely. I don’t see too many corporate and political thrillers set in a beachside locale like this one, but that’s one reason why this is so special. The livelihood of these people is under attack, but Terriers personalizes that drama. The infidelity, the lying, the betrayal, and the mistrust is built into the fabric of this story, too. We get it between the main characters, but we also see it in people like Albrecht and Lindus and Zeitlin.

I honestly don’t know how this will be resolved in just one episode. THIS IS DEEPLY UNFAIR.

The video for “Quid Pro Quo” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

Mark Links Stuff

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