At the turn of the last century, people lacked the enlightened perspective which William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) has. The white folk who dominated society thought themselves immanently superior to all other races, regardless of their rank or cast. Murdoch, as has always been established, has a very modern view of such things, but in past seasons I have been frequently annoyed by the lack of proper historically accurate feelings about the matter.
In the Great Wall, we see that, although Murdoch's views have transferred to his colleagues at his precinct, the other precincts in Toronto do not share this enlightenment. When a cop is murdered in Chinatown, Murdoch is asked to find the killer since he has such an excellent record for catching culprits. Had that inspector realized that Murdoch would strive to get the truth, regardless of where it led, rather than quickly arresting the first suspicious Chinese man, he likely would have gotten his own men to take care of the problem.
What I liked best about this episode was how well it showed the bond between Murdoch and Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig). Although Brackenreid still gets frustrated with Murdoch's crazy methods, he definitely respects the man and understands that those methods do get results. In some ways, he is very old school - not afraid of getting his own hands dirty or of using force to get the answers he needs, but Murdoch has helped him see that results are only useful if they are the right ones. Meanwhile, one can only hope that Brackenreid's understanding of politics will rub off on Murdoch before he gets himself into too much trouble.
Have you been loving this season?
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