Sky Atlantic’s Tin Star
Season 1, Episode 10: “My Love is Vengeance”
Directed by Gilles Bannier
Written by Rowan Joffe

* For a recap & review of the penultimate Season 1 episode, “Fortunate Boy” – click here
* For a recap & review of the Season 2 premiere, “Prairie Gothic” – click here
In a home, Helen (Leanne Best) is being taken care of, a wasteland of a woman after the alcoholism and the drugs. She’s now medicated, looked after, as best as money can provide. Whitey (Oliver Coopersmith) calls her, then hands the phone over to Anna (Abigail Lawrie). He wants Anna to tell his mother who she is, the daughter of Jack Devlin a.k.a Jim Worth (Tim Roth), that he left numerous people in his wake of shattered promises and lies. The girl refuses, even with a gun on her.
Meanwhile, Angela (Genevieve O’Reilly) is cleaning the blood off her floors, the walls, digging bullets out of the plaster. Out in the woods, Jaclyn (Michelle Thrush) and Elizabeth (Christina Hendricks) are pulling Gagnon’s corpse to a proper spot where they’ll dig a hole, bury him for good. Constable Denise Minahik (Sarah Podemski) calls, noticing the cameras are out at the Worth place. She decides to come check on them. Not great when there’s blood smeared down the stairs, all across the front of the house. Literally everywhere.
What does Angela decide on doing? Letting the house fucking blow up, opening the propane tanks outside, turning on the stovetop burners, then walking out. She watches it go up, no time to take anything out. She gets a quick call from Jim before Denise then arrives. She plays up the idea of having left the gas on to cover. Denise calls in the fire to Constable Nick McGillen (Ryan Kennedy), who’s planning on taking their Chief in for murdering Roger Crouch a.k.a Reginald.
Whitey says he doesn’t “deserve to live” for the murder of Petey, he gives her a gun and tells her to shoot him. She won’t, though. Underneath it all she cares for him, because she realises the effect her father’s had on his life, in such a tragic way.
At Randy’s (Lynda Boyd) Roadhouse, Angela meets Jim. Her husband has a surprise. Well, her other husband Jack does. He’s tied Randy and Frank (Ian Puleston-Davies) to a chair each. Ready for a chat. Frank only talks about his sister’s “wet brain” after she discovered his undercover lie, he insists Jack was essentially raping her. When things don’t go the right way, the London gangster gets a couple pool balls cracked across his knuckles. Things get really serious when he goes to work on Randy. Eventually the man cracks, revealing it was Simon, Whitey, who killed their little boy.
Afterwards, Nick shows up to arrest Jim and gets a bullet in the leg for his trouble, because the Chief and his wife are off to find their daughter before anything else awful happens to their family.
In other news, Jaclyn and Liz are attempting to get ahead of the story with Gagnon. This is when Liz admits to having nearly turned Jaclyn in to the man back in Little Big Bear. Nearly tearing the whole thing down. But the oil executive asks for one last bit of trust, to get things finished. Upstairs, she presents everything to the North Stream Oil board, the murders connected to Gagnon, every bit of nastiness. She bargains herself into a new position, one that might allow her to pump a few ethics into their business on her watch. Change, from the inside out.

“I answer to my conscience“

Now Jaclyn wants Liz to pay the reserve, or else she’ll tell the truth about Gagnon. So we’re seeing that while the executive woman wants to make change, feigning conscience and ethics, she’s really got none at all. She’s self serving, and I hope Jaclyn’s keen enough to know that for sure. If not, could get rough.
Angela and Jack track down their daughter. But the wife makes sure to trap him, so he can’t kill Whitey. She only wants to get their daughter back to safety. Yet she forgets, a locked contraption isn’t necessarily enough to stop Jack, he gets at the mechanism’s wiring in the police vehicle to unlock himself. Then he heads out for the cabin where Whitey and Anna are hiding, too.
Mom gets there to find her daughter near brainwashed by the young man, somehow forgiving him for killing her brother. Anna tries taking Whitey away, but mom puts a shot in his knee. This doesn’t stop Anna, she feels betrayed by both of her parents, not simply her father. Only mom lets her daughter take the shotgun and go; to stop Jack.
Jack gets to the empty cabin, only a spatter of blood on the floor. He heads into the woods, following the tracks. First, he comes upon Angela who pleads to “let him go.” They stumble onto Anna, Whitey in bad shape. So the daughter points her weapon at dad, calling him by the name Jack Devlin. She’s heard all his dark, dirty secrets, Helen’s miscarriage, every last little bit. And yet she doesn’t seem to care Whitey killed Petey. A tragedy.
However, Jack calls up old memories, he threatens to shoot. So Whitey pushes Anna out of the way, taking a bullet. After a few seconds, he takes two more in the chest before Jack tells him: “I love you, too, mate.” When Jack walks away, his daughter calls to him before pointing a pistol at him and firing.
Nice cliffhanger that takes us into the next season. Wow.
I personally couldn’t get enough of Tin Star. Just weird enough, slightly over-the-top at times, gritty, darkly comic. Tim Roth and Genevieve O’Reilly were just so good, as were many of the secondary players. So happy this was already greenlit for a Season 2. We need it. Bring it on! Love me a modern revenge Western with Tim Roth set in Canada. How could you not?