Bend It Like Brackenreid

"Bend It Like Brackenreid"
Season	10
Episode	1006
Airdate	November 14, 2016
Writer	Michelle Ricci
Director	Cal Coons
Recurring	Charles Vandervaart as Johnny Brackenreid
Previous	Jagged Little Pill
Next	Painted Ladies

"Bend It Like Brackenreid" is the sixth episode of Season Ten and the one hundred thirty-eighth of the series. It aired November 14, 2016.

Summary

An old friend of Brackenreid’s is coaching the game to decide who represents Canada at the 1904 Olympic Games, the exhibition games between U of T and Galt, when an unfortunate tragedy takes place on the soccer field.

The murder of star player Robert Semple means it was all hands on deck on the soccer pitch, with everyone working together on the case.

But while Murdoch investigates the football player's death, Brackenreid gets caught up in the team's Olympic quest.

Character Revelations

• Inspector Brackenreid’s prowess on the soccer field is revealed and invents 'the wall'.
• John Brackenreid still wrestles with his father's "big shadow" to which Julia asks him, ""Surely there can be more than one kind of Brackenreid."
• Dr. Ogden attending the players foretells sports medicine and future team doctors.
• Miss James foreshadows the Canadian women's soccer team.

Continuity

• In Raised On Robbery, Brackenreid, with his Sheffield Wednesday 1867 tattoo revealed, states that he's a football (soccer) man not a rugby man.
• The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, see A Case of the Yips.
• Two up-graded hand-held Ultraviolet Light (Torch/Flashlight) are used, see A Study in Pink.
• Brackenreid has a new use for Murdoch's chalkboard--football tactics.
• Lost count of how many times Crabtree has to dig through garbage to find evidence– yet again.
• When John and Thomas Brackenreid return to Toronto as Olympic winners, it starts him on a different path altogether. MM writer Michelle Ricci suggests, "and a different sort of idea about what he may want out of life. That will take him on an adventure we have never seen before."
• While the mention of a speakeasy is bit ahead of its time, it does allude to the Temperance movement and Prohibition setup in The Local Option.

Historical References

• The University of Toronto (U of T, UToronto, or Toronto) situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in the colony of Upper Canada. Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed the present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution. 
• Galt Collegiate Institute (GCI), founded in 1852, informally known as "Tassie's School", gained a reputation as one of the top schools in Ontario. GCI has been designated as an historic landmark in Cambridge. The ' Porridge Eating Galt Invincible’s ' was really their nickname. They didn’t win another Olympic medal, but they won everything over the course of the next, five or six years.
• Smoking concerts were Victorian era social occasions to introduce new musical forms to the public, sometimes held at hotels where men would smoke and talk politics while listening to live music.
• Referring to a speakeasy at College & Brunwsick may be a nod to the recently closed pub, The Brunny.

Trivia

• Soccer (called fútbol or football in most countries) is the most popular sport in the world. American football has more in common with rugby (carry the ball down the field) than with soccer (kick the ball down the field).
• The episode title is an allusion to the film Bend It Like Beckham (2002).

Errors

• MM writer and avid soccer fan Michelle Ricci: "The game was a bit of a fudge because there wasn’t actually a game that decided who was going to the Olympic Games. The way it worked back then was, if you had the money, you could just go and compete. There was no qualifier,...that’s why there were only three teams in the 1904 Olympics. I think there were something like four Canadian teams that were going to go. Two of them couldn’t raise the funds and the third one was the University of Toronto team...they played Galt in these two exhibition games before the Olympics—one in Toronto and one in Galt—and U of T tied one game and lost the other one. After they lost the second game, they were like, ‘Why should we bother going to the Olympics? We can’t even beat Galt!’ So, they didn’t go."

Cast

Main Cast

Yannick Bisson as Detective William Murdoch
Hélène Joy as Dr. Julia Ogden
Thomas Craig as Inspector Thomas Brackenreid
Jonny Harris as Constable George Crabtree

Recurring Cast

Mouna Traoré as Rebecca James
Charles Vandervaart as John Brackenreid

Guest Cast

Shaun Smyth as Andrew "Nobby" Nobson
Alice Snaden as Harriet Harcourt
Daniel Henkel as Leland Harcourt
Benjamin Sutherland as Jack Gourlay
Jake Foy as Wesley Patten
Melinda Michael as Esther Fields
Austin Duffy as Robert Semple

Gallery