Continuity

    Despite Nick’s undoubted history with female suspects and witnesses, with the rumours that—one would think—would be inevitable, Tracy nevertheless seems not to have heard that Nick falls for pretty women involved in the cases he investigates.  If she had, she would presumably have been a lot less likely to have made the mistake of assuming Nick to be gay.

Two different instances in which Nick’s susceptibility to a woman in the case affects his judgment are cited in this episode.  In “Dead Air”, his attraction to an on-air pop psychologist inclined him to accept that a listener to her show was genuinely calling in from murder scenes, though Schanke and Stonetree suspected it to be simply a publicity stunt.  In that instance, Nick’s instincts proved correct.  However, he insisted equally strongly in “Capital Offence” that a convicted murderer who had escaped from custody must have been innocent, and that it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow her to be extradited to Texas for execution.  In that episode, it turned out that he had been suckered into helping a calculating, manipulative killer.

    The news anchor, Mark Seymour, has appeared in several earlier episodes.

    In this episode, Janette clearly intends to attempt to turn Guillaume into a vampire; but it is unlikely that she would have succeeded.  After all, in the first season episode, “I Will Repay”, she reminded Nick that she had never managed to bring anyone across, that “too much the glutton”, she always drains them beyond the point where it remains possible for them to make the change to the vampire state.  Of course, there is another episode, “If Looks Could Kill”, in which we meet a woman who credits Janette with having brought her over; but we do not actually see the circumstances of her metamorphosis.  At any rate, Janette does not claim the skill.  So, despite her protestations that she would never hurt Guillaume, it seems likely that she would have killed him.

Miscellaneous

    It was never made explicit in the actual series, but it is surely implicit that the vampires of Forever Knight have retractable teeth.  Certainly Nick and the others do not manifest fangs except when excited or hungry.

    I mentioned in the Notes to “Daddy’s Girl” that I had originally envisaged a different flashback, but had to substitute something shorter.  The original idea was not, however, discarded.  In a curtailed form, it turned out to be appropriate for “Cover Story”.

Plot

    If Deacon is (as seems probable) another Homicide detective on the Toronto police force, then naturally Natalie knows him.  She will have given him autopsy results and other forensic evidence, just as she does Nick and Tracy.  She is not, after all, their own personal M.E., for all that it sometimes looks that way, given the show’s inevitable emphasis on the cases that Nick deals with.

    Nick talks to Reese, Deacon, and the police in Brampton; but he doesn’t hypnotize any of them.  Partly, this is because he hates to use hypnosis on fellow cops.  But it is also because none of these people actually has the sole decision.  If he can’t convince them through words, therefore, he would have to hypnotize all of them.  Indeed, at this point, he would also have to hypnotize the Crown Counsel who had decided there was sufficient evidence to justify an arrest, and everyone’s colleagues to boot.  A major endeavour, in other words.   Perhaps he would have done that next; but LaCroix gave him different advice; and he decided to follow that.

    This episode covers quite a lot of time.  The Prologue takes place a couple of days before Act One, since Natalie is away then.  Act One takes place about a month before Acts Two and Three, with Deacon’s investigation in the gap between.  During this time, Nick and Tracy not only pursue the cases in the earlier episodes in this season, but also two others.

Furthermore, cases don’t go to trial immediately.  By the time it actually starts at the end of Act Four, both these investigations are long since over and done with—as much so as those detailed in the other episodes since Christmas.  Instead, Nick and Tracy have moved on to yet another homicide.

So when does the story start?   The twelfth of December.  And it continues, so to speak, until the airing date of this episode, probably some time in April.