The Talking Dead

"The Talking Dead"
Season	11
Episode	1109
Airdate	December 11, 2017
Writer	Lori Spring
Director	Eleanore Lindo
Guests	Jay 'Christian' Reso as Leonard Stoker
Previous	Brackenreid Boudoir
Next	F.L.A.S.H.!

“The Talking Dead” is the ninth episode of the eleventh season and the one hundred-fifty-ninth of the Murdoch Mysteries series. It first aired on December 11, 2017.

Summary

After obituaries are published in advance of two men's deaths, Murdoch discovers more intended victims.

A banker, a gambler, and a nun – while it sounds like the beginning of a joke, unfortunately it is a growing list of victims of fraudulent obituaries published in the Toronto Gazette before their actual deaths. After Crabtree and Higgins bring in a boxer and pawnbroker to join the nun, a mother and her daughter enter the Station House with a copy of the Gazette. Murdoch puts them all under a voluntary sequester to protect them while determining their connection to the murders of the banker Harrison McAllister and gambler Murray Gibson.

Then, Detective Watts’ obituary appears in the new edition. Unexpectedly, the nun is killed in the Station House’s bullpen. Ogden finds a weighable quantity of a crystal alkaloid in the Sister Annamaria’s stomach and determines it to be strychnine, three milligrams in total, enough to kill a person quite rapidly. The murderer is now amongst them and the Station House is in lockdown.

Meanwhile, Watts and Crabtree search the gambler Murray Gibson’s apartment and find money issued by the Dominion Bank - this connects Gibson to McAllister. Watts is reminded of an old case of his, a bank robbery: a customer was killed and the man he arrested was hanged for the crime, but there was an accomplice who was never found. According to the case file from Station House No. 1, the man arrested was named Joe Thackeray and he had previously been a bank teller. The tenuous connection that the Sister Annamaria banked at the same bank managed by Mr. McAllister leads Murdoch to surmise that Thackeray was the disgruntled ex-bank employee who was fired by McAllister due to Sister Annamaria's complaint and, a month later, robbed the bank along with Gibson. Crabtree then concludes that they need to find out if the others know this Joe Thackeray. He is the lynchpin to solving the case but given that he's been dead for six months he's not the killer. The team discovers that each and every victim of the fraudulent obituaries “represents a rung in the ladder of Joe's downward descent taking him straight to the gallows” – the sequential killer seeks vengeance.

Character Revelations

• Nina asks George to go to Paris with her; he thinks Paris is a veritable den of thieves and cutthroats and that The City of Lights is Buffalo.
• George Crabtree prefers."...to love with the lights off", confessing that he is bashful to Watts.
• Detective Watts tells Crabtree go to Paris today, for tomorrow he might die.
• This episode presents a very different kind of criminal.
• While the Inspector does not like the French, Thomas Brackenreid met a young woman named Céline in Paris: "Her name meant heaven. Oh, and by God, Crabtree, she took me to heaven and back on numerous occasions." Crabtree gets his time off.

Continuity

• The Toronto Gazette's obituary page is used as a calling card to murder and the Station House becomes a crime scene.
• Constable Higgins loses a suspect yet again.
• If William and Julia are successful in their endeavors to have a child, "we must be sure to choose good godparents." George unknowingly enters on cue.

• Eddie Crawford from previous episode returns.

Historical References

• This episode takes place in Toronto 1905 – the Edwardian Era (1901-1910) is the time when King Edward VII rules the British Empire; It is also known as the Belle Époque era, conventionally dated from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
• The Moulin Rouge is the renowned Parisian dance hall of the late 19th century, famously captured by the nightclub's famous habitué Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Trivia

• A handful of story seeds are planted in this episode by the MM Writers Room.
• Showrunner Peter Mitchell revealed, "...bike riding scenes are hard as it is difficult to find any 'run' of usable heritage space in all of Southern Ontario (except if we go full-on rural). You'd be surprised how many ATM's there are."
• Craig Brown as Eddie Crawford was first seen in Toronto's Girl Problem.
• Hélène Joy wanted William and Julia to honeymoon in Paris, but they went to New York instead in Murdoch Takes Manhattan

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

Daniel Maslany as Detective Watts
Lachlan Murdoch as Constable Henry Higgins
Charles Vandervaart as John Brackenreid
Shanice Banton as Violet Hart
Erin Agostino as Nina Bloom
Craig Brown as Eddie Crawford

Guest Cast

Madison Brydges as Agnes Swift
Krystin Pellerin as Virginia Swift
Nancy Beatty as Sister Annamaria
Jay Reso as Leonard Stoker
Angela Besharah as Dorothy McAllister
Kevin Hare as Harrison McAllister
Ian Rayburn as Driver
Lauren Spring as Angry Weeping Woman
John Connolly as Weight Guesser

Non-credited Cast

Nathan Hoppe as Constable McNabb

Gallery

Scene of a crime

City Morgue: comparing obituary victims

Gibson joins McAllister

Other victims at Station House Four

Toronto Gazette

Crime scene #2

At the Blackboard

Joe Thackeray, lynchpin