Blue Heelers

This review contains spoilers.



I feel I want to like 'Heavy Traffic', but for me it suffers too much from clunky and over-convenient handling of the plot to really work.



The main problem with this one is the plotting. For the first ten minutes or so, with the visiting traffic task force, it seems as if there will be little real plot. Which is fine – an episode where there is no overriding plot might be fun – but the main meat of the episode, of the motorcyclist's death, feels introduced too late in to the story.



Likewise, prior to that, we get a scene of Nick drinking with a Billy and Sasha, couple he's friends with in the Imperial, and just by the way they are awkwardly yet blatantly introduced out of the blue, we know that one of them is bound to suffer kind of incident before too long.



Then there is the what seems to be a side plot of a local pharmacist, who comes to the station to report a string of missing tablets; after interviewing a couple of possibly suspects early on, this plot abruptly disappears from the bulk of the story. And this off-kilter plotting continues right through to the over-convenient conclusion. The discovery that the pursuit was incidental in the fatality, and that Nick's friend Billy was already dead on the bike by the time of the crash, suffering a stroke after taking some of the stolen medication, feels to be handled over clunkily, and seems far too convenient a conclusion to the story for my liking, especially regarding Wayne's dilemma.



As always for this period in the series, the character moments are well executed, and thankfully save the episode from completely falling flat. There are a few well-shot, exhilarating car action shots during the motorcycle chase, and Nick and Wayne's scenes over the questionable death and its cover up, are fairly good – but I can't help but feel there should have been more of it.



(By the way, I too noticed the Friday 15th April 1995 date given, as already covered on the episode notes, and found too that it was both set in the future, and not an actual date!)



In all, probably not the worst ever 'Blue Heelers' instalment, especially when compared to some of the later offerings, but compared to most of the other strong episodes at this point, sadly this one doesn't really do it for me. I can only motivate myself to give it a 7.5.