The Pilot – Director: Leslie Hope/Writer: Carol Hay, Michelle Ricci
This one starts with Frankie and Trudy at an air show, where Frankie is fascinated by the planes while Trudy is more interested in the beautiful baby contest. Frankie meets an ex-RFC pilot (Greg Mills) and gets a bit flirty with him. Another pilot (Phillip Anderson) gives a speech about all the healthy and
unblemished babies (which has a certain “eugenics” feel to it), but while he’s picking the best baby, someone switches carriages and kidnaps his own son, Charlie. The kidnapper heads for one of the planes and Frankie chases him down on her motorbike, kicking his ass. She’s forced to let him escape in order to stop the taxiing plane with the baby in it. Naturally, the kid’s parents are happy he’s okay.
Greg (who turns out to be Anderson’s mechanic) offers to fix Frankie’s motorbike, since she kinda crashed it rescuing the baby. Frankie and Trudy 
suggest Anderson hire them to find out who tried to kidnap his son, but he’s not impressed by the idea of women being detectives, so he declines. His wife (Meara) on the other hand, seems more inclined to trust them. Later, Trudy tells Mary and Flo what happened and they discuss the Better Baby selective breeding contest. Frankie is at the office “training” with Moses, but they’re interrupted when Meara shows up to ask Frankie to ask if she’ll investigate the kidnapping … without her husband’s knowledge. The next day, Mary tells them there’s
nothing on the kidnapper or the plane, but the pram is one of only two sold lately, so the kidnapper must’ve had inside information to know which pram to get for the substitution. Frankie and Trudy talk to the nanny (Sylvia Frost), who seems very devoted to Charlie. They talk to the baby contest organizer (Mrs. Brown-Sherbon), who denies having anything to do with the kidnapping after they point out how the kidnapper knew to strike right when everyone was focused on the contest. Frankie goes to see Greg, who has fixed her bike and shows her the kidnapper’s plane. She finds a prayer card with an angel on it and a patch from the RFC 15th Squadron sewn to the back. She mentions her theory 
about the contest being a distraction and Mary offers to help get some info from them. Trudy asks Bill at City Hall for dirt on Sylvia Frost and he says she’s supposed to have died thirty years ago, so the nanny obviously appropriated her name. Frankie and Trudy stop by the Anderson house and find Meara unconscious and Charlie gone.
Miss Frost is gone too, but Meara doesn’t believe she would harm the baby. Trudy’s not so sure and takes a photo from Frost’s room. Anderson shows up (the police guards were with him instead of at home) and tells Frankie and Trudy to get lost. They decide to stay on the case and Frankie heads to the Aviator’s Club to see what she can dig up on the kidnapper. She’s told
she can’t get in without an escort, so she latches onto the first guy she sees … who just happens to be George Crabtree from Murdoch Mysteries. Trudy checks at the studio that took the photo she got in Miss Frost’s room. The photographer tells her it was taken near Bolton and the people in the photo are Tom and Margie Hunt. Mary has gone to the Better Baby place to snoop around, pretending she’s pregnant and worried about her baby. Mrs. Brown-Sherbon goes into a spiel about inferior babies and suggests abortion might be too extreme, but 
voluntary sterilization is just the ticket. At the Aviator’s Club, George tells Frankie he recognized her from the newspaper and offers to help in the investigation. He suggests a bar where barnstormers hang out and she finds out the card belongs to a guy named Johnny Angel. She talks to his girlfriend, who says he was supposed to be pulling some big job. She tells Frankie where Johnny lives, but when she gets there, Johnny is already dead.
Frankie recognizes Johnny as the guy she chased at the airfield, but there’s no sign of the baby at his place. Later, Mary tells them the eugenics freaks probably aren’t in on the kidnapping and they go to see Flo at the morgue. She tells them Johnny was shot with a .38 at least 24 hours before Frankie found him … which means he isn’t the kidnapper. Mary comes back with info on Margie Hunt, whose baby died, causing her marriage to break up. They wonder if Margie missed her own baby so much that she changed her name and became the Andersons’ nanny just to grab a new baby. Mary
mentions that someone matching Margie’s description was seen out near Caledon and promises to let them know if anything more turns up. Frankie and Trudy speculate on the case, thinking someone else must be involved. Frankie thinks Greg might be in on it, so she and Trudy go to the airfield to look for him. They follow him into the country and he leads them to an isolated cabin where they find him with a trunk full of baby clothes. Frankie chases a woman into the woods, but it isn’t Margie … it’s Meara Anderson. She tells Frankie the baby is somewhere safe, where her husband can’t find him.
Meara tells them Charlie was born deaf and her eugenics-loving husband lost interest in him immediately. He must’ve hired Angel to kidnap the 
“defective” baby so he could get rid of him without suspicion. Greg recognized the RFC badge as that of Anderson’s Squadron during the War, so he knew Anderson must be in on the kidnapping, otherwise he’d have told the cops. When Meara mentions that Charlie is with the nanny near Caledon, Frankie and Trudy get worried since the cops are searching near there and they told Anderson. When they get to Caledon, they find the nanny recovering from being knocked out and the baby long gone. She says he took the baby to the airfield, so Frankie and Greg head over there. They find Anderson getting ready to escape, but when Frankie confronts him, he threatens to kill his baby. Greg seems to get through to Anderson, reminding him that Charlie is still his son, deaf or not. But Anderson pushes the carriage away and takes off, heading for a plane outside. Frankie and Greg chase him, but when Frankie tries to shoot at the
plane, she has a flashback to shooting someone during the War and is too freaked out to fire. Greg shoots the lane instead and it crashes and explodes. Later, we see Frankie talking to her therapist Peter (played by Kris Holden-Reid) about her problem and he says she’ll have to deal with her trauma from the War sooner or later. We learn Meara is going to take over the airfield with Greg as manager. Greg and Frankie are still flirting hard and later, we see Frankie talk a tipsy Trudy into coming with her for a plane ride.
This was the first episode of the show that was filmed (hence the title with 
its double-meaning) and it certainly establishes each of the characters, but is mainly focused on Frankie. We see she’s very open-minded, adventurous, and unashamed of her sexuality (flirting with Greg while she’s obviously banging Moses). We also see that something traumatic happened to her during the War; she says an innocent person died because of something she did and she obviously still carries a lot of guilt over it. I’m kinda glad they held this episode back instead of airing it as the pilot, since we got a chance to get to know Frankie (and the others) before we find out about the trauma in her past. I think that makes more of an impact when we do find out, and I’m assuming we’ll get
more on exactly what happened in future episodes. It’s also cool to see Jonny Harris as George Crabtree (who made some wise investments after leaving the police force and became wealthy). This show is basically a spin-off of Murdoch Mysteries—though it’s set a couple decades later—so it’s nice to see one of that show’s regulars here to pass the torch.
Noticeable Things:
- The director Leslie Hope used a pseudonym (Alanis Smithee) but I’m not sure why; maybe she didn’t like the final cut.
- Greg Mills is played by British actor Laurence Fox, who was married to Billie Piper (and is apparently quite the asshole in real life). Anderson is played by Lucas Brandt, of Haven fame.
- When they’re talking about the RFC, Frankie says it was three years ago, which suggests this episode takes place in 1921, even though later episodes seem to be set in 1922. But RFC Squadron 15 was dissolved in 1919, so maybe that’s what Frankie was referring to.
- We know Mary’s dad was a Toronto cop, so does that mean George Crabtree knew him? That’s a story I’d like to see explored at some point.
Favourite Quotes:
- “A girl can admire the pilot as well as the plane.” Frankie letting us know that she’s not going to apologize for having a healthy sex drive.
- “I think he meant best left to the men.” Trudy summing up Anderson’s sexism.
- “Of course. What other choice is there?” Mary sarcastically agreeing that sterilization is the best way to prevent “inferior” children.