Richie searches for his father and ends up crossing paths with a former croupier who, thanks to some frankly insane business practices, has ended up owing $5,000 to some unsavoury types.
Possibly this episode's biggest problem is you feel like you've skipped an episode. We get a throwaway line about Duncan and Tessa coming back from the island to explain away the fact he'd apparently retired into seclusion. Fine. But Duncan and Richie had two or three meetings in the pilot where they didn't get on, and Richie and Tess barely even saw each other. Suddenly they're on first name terms and living together like a surrogate family, with Richie fully aware of immortality? What have we missed?
This is an episode which possibly has more resonance in retrospect, once you know the mythology. Duncan must have a fair idea of what Richie's likely to find here, yet he knows he has to go on the journey and thinks perhaps he might find some semblance of family life, just as Duncan once did until his adopted father rejected him on learning of his immortality.
Joe is a likable enough loser and it's pleasing that there's no histrionics, even though Duncan is suspicious of him while Richie accepts him as his father: Instead, Richie works out the truth himself without any confrontation.
It does however have the problem that most of these non-Immortal episodes have. The villains barely qualify as two-dimensional and are hopelessly outclassed: As soon as Duncan turns up, he's the most powerful person in the room by far.
But it does a better job than the pilot of establishing Richie and it sets us up for the fact that not every episode is going to involve Duncan chopping an evil Immortal's head of and we're going to get mortal villains sometimes, so it gets credit for that.
Possibly this episode's biggest problem is you feel like you've skipped an episode. We get a throwaway line about Duncan and Tessa coming back from the island to explain away the fact he'd apparently retired into seclusion. Fine. But Duncan and Richie had two or three meetings in the pilot where they didn't get on, and Richie and Tess barely even saw each other. Suddenly they're on first name terms and living together like a surrogate family, with Richie fully aware of immortality? What have we missed?
This is an episode which possibly has more resonance in retrospect, once you know the mythology. Duncan must have a fair idea of what Richie's likely to find here, yet he knows he has to go on the journey and thinks perhaps he might find some semblance of family life, just as Duncan once did until his adopted father rejected him on learning of his immortality.
Joe is a likable enough loser and it's pleasing that there's no histrionics, even though Duncan is suspicious of him while Richie accepts him as his father: Instead, Richie works out the truth himself without any confrontation.
It does however have the problem that most of these non-Immortal episodes have. The villains barely qualify as two-dimensional and are hopelessly outclassed: As soon as Duncan turns up, he's the most powerful person in the room by far.
But it does a better job than the pilot of establishing Richie and it sets us up for the fact that not every episode is going to involve Duncan chopping an evil Immortal's head of and we're going to get mortal villains sometimes, so it gets credit for that.