Hegarty’s World Begins to Crumble in the Gut Wrenching Sixth Episode of 'Criminal Record'

If things reached an emotional boiling point in the fifth episode, the show’s sixth outing entitled “Beehive” reaches a gutwrenching one. Once again, June spends an inordinate amount of time staring intently at her computer (this repetitive narrative device is the show’s achilles heel). This time June figures out that it’s Tony who is posting vile things about the new female Assistant Chief Constable Claudia Mayhew on social media. “Just watch; there won’t be any white or male coppers left when this whore has had her way” is a sample of the ever-charming Tony’s posts.

June confronts Tony, who denies it. June tells Tony if he tells her what happened when Hegarty got the confession out of Errol, she will keep the discovery of Tony’s online activity to herself. Tony is not having it. “I ain’t the problem. I’m the solution. You’re just a token copper,” he tells her. But after June leaves, Tony completely freaks out and sets about destroying as much evidence as he can.

Unfortunately, in the midst of all this, Errol’s mother, Doris, arrives at Tony’s house to confront him about taking away Latisha’s apartment now that Latisha is no longer feeding information to Tony. The already unstable Tony loses it even more and, in an attempt to escape the confrontation, he hits Doris with his car, killing her.

Now, this would be devastating in and of itself. But earlier in the episode, Doris visits Errol and tells him they are looking for Carla, who is the key to exonerating him. But Errol tells his mom he no longer can have hope. “Every time you do this, it makes it harder for me,” he tells her. “I don’t want your help. Don’t you get that?” Later, Errol calls his mom and leaves her a message telling her he’s sorry about how their last visit went. “You know I love you,” he tells her. He takes the time to look special for his mom on his next visit with her. But it’s his dad, who never visits, who comes to see him in prison to tell Errol that his mother has died.

Hegarty visits Patrick at the new apartment he secured, and who answers the door? Lisa. This sends Hegarty into a tailspin, and he and Lisa have an awful fight. “You’re not my dad. You’re my fucking dealer,” she tells him. (I mean, she’s not wrong.) Hegarty lists all the things he’s done to help his daughter — rehab, methadone, paying off deposits when she abandoned apartments. “I’m doing what I have to do to find a solution,” he tells her. It’s an ugly fight, which Lisa ends by doling out this devastating zinger. “No wonder Mom gave up. Who would go on living if it meant being with you.”

But then Lisa disappears, and Hegarty can’t find her anywhere and notices that all the heroin he keeps for his daughter is missing. He fears she has died, and we see more of his humanity. He looks everywhere for her. He calls hospitals and looks in places where known drug users hang out. He eventually locates Lisa. She’s passed out but still alive. 

After their terrible fight in last week’s episode, June wants to make things right with Leo. But Leo brushes her off, tells her it’s “water under the bridge,” and then looks for mustard. But June tells him that implying that her son and his friends had done something wrong is a “big deal.”. “That’s not a missed wedding anniversary or something. It’s quite big.” Honestly, it still seems like Leo doesn’t fully grasp the gravity of the situation. Men!

Throughout the episode, June is trying to figure out how Errol went from vehemently denying he had killed Adelaide to 48 hours later making a full confession. During those 48 hours, Hegarty took Errol to the crime scene. June wants to know what happened there. Why did they wait three hours to interview Errol after he was cleared by the hospital?

Tony killing Doris spells the end for whatever awful shenanigans he is up to. Besides, June has already gotten a warrant to look through his house. The police raid his home, looking through everything. Suddenly, Hegarty is there, saying he’s taking over the investigation. She can go home. He’s in charge now. But June knows something is off. They’ve bagged everything up. What does Hegarty know that she doesn’t?

They find a DVD of Hegarty’s interview with Errol, dated September 25, 2011, hidden in Tony’s beehive. June watches the recording, but she still can’t quite figure out what exactly transpired that day. “What happened that day, DCI Hegarty? It’s time to tell me what happened,” she says. “Yeah, okay,” a resigned Hegarty replies.

In all the previous episodes, there’s been almost a frenetic vibe to the action, with so many storylines and angles needing to be addressed. But “Beehive” slows the action down, providing us with a more vulnerable Hegarty who is watching his tightly wound world crumble around him.