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TURN Season 3 Premiere Review
BY The Screen Spy Team
Published 8 years ago
By Chris B.
Turn’s season 3 return begins with a hanging and ends with a betrayal: this premiere is worthy of the Bard himself.
Sgt. Hickey and Major Bradford pay for their treachery with their lives, but not before revealing that Culper’s name is known to the British, though not his true identity.
Andre has gleaned the name of Samuel Culper from Ben Tallmadge’s personal notes; after passing along a compliment to Simcoe on the performance of the Queen’s Rangers at the Battle of Monmouth, he sets the beast after this new prey. Simcoe quickly deduces that the name could be an alias, and thus, all are suspect.
Abe and Robert Rogers form an unlikely and uneasy alliance. While Rogers blatantly claims that he is using Abe as bait for Andre and intends to kill him, Abe explains that unless Robert helps him swap out the correspondence of Hewlett for a forged return letter shunning interest in this “simple farmer,” and places the body believably to make it seem the courier died on his return trip from York City, then Rogers’s bait will be most undesirably dead: “If you want to use me, you going to have to help me.”
Cicero makes use of his reading skills, to the dismay of his mother. When Abigail catches him, she chastises him; the next time, though, it is Andre who catches him with book in hand. But the Major is not a brute, and so he encourages Cicero to practice reading on what he assumes is harmless correspondence from Ms. Shippen in Philadelphia, a message officially addressed to Rebecca Franks that is actually a thinly veiled message for Andre. What he could not imagine is its information of an engagement for marriage between Peggy and Benedict Arnold. This rattles Andre visibly, but he recovers, writing her a solid reply of love and assurances behind a mask of congratulations.
Richard visits his wife’s grave on this, the anniversary of her death. He apologizes to her for not being able to keep their oldest from dying in battle and for not doing a better job of raising Abe as “a moral man.” He promises to do better with young Thomas, swearing to dedicate his life to the boy, fixing the wrongs that he committed in raising Abraham, one he deems infected by that which truly vanquished Caesar: ingratitude. He begs her, “Grant me the strength to do what I must.”
The deed in question? It truly is what Antony would term the “most unkindest cut of all”: this father turns in his own son as a traitor. Et tu, Richard?
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