'Baptiste' Season 1 Episode 5 Recap: "Lucy"

Baptiste's penultimate episode begins with the captive girls. (Remember them?) During a trip to the bathroom, Cristina grabs a shard of glass out of the bathroom window. It's the beginnings of an audacious plan to escape, but it all comes to naught. She stabs her captor, but the compound where they are held is locked, and the other girl who she makes a break for it with panics and reveals where they are before they can get out. Consider them a metaphor for everyone in this situation. Escape is an illusion.

Baptiste: I spent my career looking for the missing. I find a handful, and it's called "a great career." And then there is this ocean of the forgotten...

Edward's escape cannot be long-lived either, though the way Genevieve is freaking out at Baptiste, you'd think he had left for the moon. Baptiste isn't having it. Stratton's going off the rails every time Genevieve put him in a room with Constantin was proof he wasn't to be trusted from the start. It is as much her fault as anyone else's for relying on Stratton. With that, he storms out to check on his family when his car is found. (Stratton left a note that says, "Sorry." How considerate.) Genevieve then rounds on Martha, calling her a drunk in front of her entire staff. 

Stratton's plan, it turns out, is as brilliantly stupid as all his other heroically foolish notions. He's gone to the UK, traveling via drug runners, with the thought to grab Claire and run to someplace safe. It's a move made slightly harder by her having remarried in his absence, to Carl (David Michaels). They at least see sense when informed there are drugs, prostitutes, cash and Romanian gangs involved, and come with him. The Baptistes also move to a new safehouse. Before Julien leaves, he tells Celia about Niels, and that he only just found out himself. She takes this as a sign he doesn't think he'll come back.

Genevieve grabs Niels to help her track down where Edward went. Unaware of the insult to his mother, Niels asks Genevieve out for a beer. Awk. Ward. Though perhaps not as awkward as the breakfast with his mother the next day where Martha tells him the truth about Baptiste being his father. It goes exactly as badly as she assumed it would. Perhaps she knew her son better than Baptiste did.

While that's happening, Genevieve starts following Constantine. Of course, he notices, and it's only a matter of time before he joins her in her stakeout car. To her shock, Constantine tells her if she finds Stratton, he'll reward her. Genevieve realizes his superiors have no idea he lost the money, making him more frantic to find it than Baptiste. 

Edward's new hideout was almost foolproof. But Baptiste realized the danger Stratton's ex-wife was in and called in a favor to keep an eye on Claire. He's also figured out Stratton plans to buy Cristina's freedom, one last heroic thing for his substitute Lucy. Baptiste tries to talk him out of it, and when that fails, he offers himself up to play negotiator. Edward agrees this is wise, though he does not know Baptiste quietly takes a call to ask Martha for Genevieve's contact info. Left waiting alone with his ex-wife and her husband, Edward and Claire have it out over Lucy's death, and how Edward blames himself for not taking her back in when she hit rock bottom. As Claire (rightly) notes, if he had gone to therapy, none of this would have happened. 

Over in a nearly forgotten corner of the story, Greg is not taking Kim's death well, nor over the shock she was trans. He curses her when a posthumous letter arrives in the mail, telling him to look for the "truth behind the makeup." In his grief, he moves through her rooms, including the off-limits bathroom, where he discovers the vanity with the false back and her HRT vials. But there's also a little book and a key, which Greg grabs, realizing this is what she meant in her letter. The key leads to a storage unit, empty save for a single cardboard box. The top layer is filled with pictures from her childhood. Underneath there are file folders, including one marked "For Greg."

With Genevieve providing backup, Baptiste walks into the appointed meeting in a restaurant to negotiate. Constantine is slightly impressed to learn Edward ran off with the cash with hopes of negotiating the release of Cristina. But both he and Baptiste know there will be no dealmaking. Baptiste does demand Constantine promise both Stratton's and his own family will be left alone. That's fine, but as Constantine points out, Edward and Baptiste have interacted with him face to face, they are liabilities, and cannot be left alive. Baptiste nods and hands over the bag.

But there's no money. It's a deed of ownership for a top-of-the-line yacht, in Constantine's name. As Genevieve said, the money was never Constantine's; he was just supposed to launder it.  By using it to buy a yacht, Baptiste has made it so Constantine can no longer hide that it's missing, and he's made it look to the heads of the Brigada Serbilu as if Constantine embezzled it. It doesn't take long for Constantine to come around to turning state's evidence, packing frantically. But it's not soon enough; next thing you know, his body had been tossed out the balcony of his fourth-floor apartment, dead.

He's not the only one the Brigada Serbilu are cleaning up. When Edward comes home from the market, Claire and her husband are also dead, and the assassin, Nicolai, is waiting. Stratton once again proves smarter and faster than anyone would give him credit for, stabbing Nicolai and escaping. But who told the Brigada of Constantine's turning states evidence? Baptiste did not. Constantine would not. The only people who knew were Gevenieve, Martha, Niels, and Baptiste. And no one knew where Edward was, not even Genevieve. There was only one call that took place between Martha and Baptiste. Someone is a double agent, and it looks like it may be Baptiste's dear friend.