Turn Season 3 Episode 8
All the regular characters on this season of Turn: Washington’s Spies appear in the latest episode, “Mended.” That includes the black domestic servants Abigail (Idara Victor) and her son, Cicero (Darren Alford), who become a crucial link in the Culper Ring’s intelligence network. Also back are Maj. Edmund Hewlett (Burn Gorman), suffering nobly through one more encounter with his beloved Anna Strong (Heather Lind), and Robert Rogers (Angus MacFadyen), skulking into New York in the guise of a one-eyed tinker. This scene is intercut with a conversation between Tallmadge’s counterpart in New York, Maj. John André (JJ Feild), and the British commander, Gen. Henry Clinton (Ralph Brown). Clinton is dubious about the letter André has received from Benedict Arnold (Owain Yeoman), asking for money and a face-to-face meeting in exchange for information. Still, Clinton uses that message to deduce the location of the Continental camp. Things don’t look good for the Americans. By the end of the episode, however, the Continental situation is considerably improved. The Culper Ring is back at work, Townsend’s very understandable personal grudge against Caleb Brewster (Daniel Henshall) and Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell) notwithstanding. In fact, one of the Setauket spies has learned about André’s intelligence coup. At the same time, Tallmadge has led one of the confused nighttime attacks the show specializes in, the biggest this season. Ottherwise, the dialogue by episode writer Andrew Colville is notably snappy, with one of the best uses of of the reply “I know” since The Empire Strikes Back. To be sure, Colville got help from historic sources: when Kahn says, “There is nothing more necessary than good intelligence…,” he is voicing words Washington himself wrote in 1756. Likewise, some of the details of battle preparation come right out of the Revolutionary War, though not necessarily the battle or even the army on screen. Director Kate Dennis uses tracking and panning to get the most out of Turn’s investment in sets or CGI. The episode’s final zoom-in is on a more troubled place, however: the face of Peggy Shippen (Ksenia Solo). Though this episode includes an onscreen death, it’s not as bloody as some other recent shows. It does, however, offer two urination scenes. J. L. Bell is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War (Westholme, 2016). In 2012 he completed a study of Gen. George Washington’s first campaign of the Revolutionary War, which included new findings about the commander-in-chief’s first successes and failures in espionage. Bell maintains the Boston1775.net blog, which offers daily doses of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in New England. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of the American Revolution and an assistant editor of the Colonial Comics anthologies (Fulcrum).
