Terry, meanwhile, makes an arrest in the case involving Toni’s hairdresser, which allows Sofia to lay some kind of matchmaking groundwork when he walks into her coffee shop. She drops hints that her mother is fond of him, and later teasingly goads her mother into complimenting is quiet demeanor, noting also how tall he is. It’s a small victory for Terry, though, as the depths of his department’s laziness and outright corruption grates on him.
This will only be made worse as both Toni and L.P. (the freelance journalist) close their noose on the department’s wrongdoings. L.P. is simply digging at the truth through the layers of lies and whitewashing done by the NOPD. Meanwhile, Toni takes out an ad in the local paper looking for people to come forward regarding abuses suffered at the hand of a cop named Wilson, who opens the episode by decking a bar patron for no reason. Add to that the fact that he was accepting a case of beer while on the beat and you have one bad cop, though not so bad that the force won’t stand by him. Toni knows this, and warns Sofia to keep her nose clean, especially because she’s still on probation.
That leaves us with Chief Albert Lambreaux. The Chief is wearing his mask at work and joking with his fellow workers about he will outlive them all, only to be cut down by the news that he has cancer. The disease would never have been found if not for the treatable, nonfatal cough he came in for. Now he’s looking at a 50/50 shot at beating his lymphoma. Given his “passing of the torch” moment from last week, it feels like he might be more at peace with this than we would expect. “I know I gotta die one day, same as you,” he said to the doctor, “Is this what’s gonna get me?”
In many ways this is a question that many of the characters should be wrestling with as the season goes on, even on the precipice of so many great achievements. Something’s gonna take you down someday, the trick is knowing what it’s gonna be, and steering around it.