Radio Daze – Director: Ruba Nadda/Writer: Cal Coons
This one starts with Mary on the radio, describing a close call that a local woman had while walking alone in the woods. Mary reminds listeners to obey the law or they could suffer the consequences. Trudy and Bill are listening to the show at Wendy’s place and Trudy asks Bill to the movies, but he says he’s busy and suggests an alternate night. Back at the radio station, the local producer (Hewey) tells Mary how good she is and she gets all nervous. There does seem to be an attraction between them, but neither of them is all that smooth when it comes to conversation with the opposite sex. Trudy gets a visit at the office from Bill’s sister
(Velma), who says Bill’s been staying out late and coming home smelling of cheap perfume, so she wants Trudy to figure out where he’s been. Trudy figures he’s stepping out on her with some ho but doesn’t mention anything, since Velma doesn’t seem to know Trudy and Bill have been seeing each other. The next day, a woman named Ida Pike (played by Tara Spencer-Nairn from Corner Gas) asks Frankie and Trudy to find her husband, David. Ida says David is a courier for the bank and was supposed to deliver $7,500 to a company but disappeared with the money. Everyone assumes he just stole it, but Ida insists he wouldn’t just run out on her and if he did steal anything, he’d cut her in on it.
Frankie and Trudy head to the bank, where the manager (McLaughlin) isn’t happy to have detectives snooping around … especially female ones. He claims Pike hadn’t done anything suspicious before vanishing with the 
money, but his secretary (Miss Parsons) mentions that his desk drawer had been found open a couple weeks ago and he’d wondered if Pike was responsible. When Frankie checks the drawer, she finds bits of plant matter that shouldn’t be there. Miss Parsons tells Trudy that Pike was a letch, who hit on every woman at the bank and had a place in the Don Valley for his clandestine hook-ups. At the radio station, the lead actress in a drama production quits and the manager (Rockwell) tells Hewey to find a new actress. He asks Mary if she’ll do it and after a little coaxing, she agrees. Ida tells Frankie and Trudy her husband kept a hunting cabin in the Don Valley, but she’s not too broken up to hear it might’ve been her husband’s love nest. Ida claims she and her husband have “healthy appetites” and don’t much care where they get them
fulfilled. At the radio station, Mary is wondering about the script for the play she’s in, since it seems to be missing a lot of pages. Rockwell tells her she needs to be convincingly surprised and goes on about how radio is the wave of the future but he needs ad revenue to make money. At the cabin, Frankie and Trudy run into the owner (Tom Knight) who’s also looking for Pike to get the rent he owes. Knight is a dick, but says he hasn’t seen Pike for over a month. As they’re leaving, some carrion flies lead Frankie and Trudy to Pike’s body.
Ida is heartbroken to learn her husband is dead and mentions that this job at the bank was supposed to be safer than his old job, a guard at the Don Jail. 
Flo tells them Pike was shot at close range just a couple of days ago, which makes them wonder what he was doing between the time he disappeared and the time he was killed. They also wonder what happened to the money. Trudy notices a sour smell coming from Pike’s clothing and Flo says she’ll try to analyze it. At the office, Mary reads from the play, which is about a hostage situation where the victims use Morse code to alert the cops (which Frankie finds implausible), who then storm the building. Mary tells them Tom Knight has quite a record and did time at the Don Jail when Pike was a guard there. Frankie and Trudy figure Pike and Knight colluded to steal the money but Knight got greedy, killed Pike, and took everything for himself. At the station, Mary is concerned with the constant rewriting of the script and worries that it’s becoming too violent. Rockwell says realism will help sell the show and make it a hit. Detective Grayson drops by Frankie’s office to ask if she’s got any info on Pike. He suggests they work together to find his killer and
Frankie mentions her theory about Pike and Knight being in cahoots. Grayson says Knight has an airtight alibi for the day Pike was killed, so that pretty much shoots that theory to hell. Trudy has dinner with Bill and follows him when he leaves, trailing him to some woman’s place. Flo lets Frankie know the water from Pike’s clothes contains a lot of tannic acid, which is used to preserve leather. But in this case, it would’ve slowed the decomposition of Pike’s body, meaning he could’ve been killed the same day he disappeared with the money … so Knight’s alibi no longer means anything.
Frankie and Trudy find a pond full of tannic acid dumped from factories and figure that’s where Pike’s body was marinaded. They confront Knight, who basically tells them to fuck off. Frankie finds some burrs outside the cabin that look like the plant material she found in McLaughlin’s desk. At the station, Mary is nervous about the show, wondering if people will freak out 
and think it’s real. Hewey assures her that there will be a disclaimer read at the beginning of the show so listeners know it’s fiction. Frankie and Trudy go to the bank and mention the burrs they found to McLaughlin, urging him to tell them what he’s hiding. He admits he wrote the emergency combination to the time lock on a piece of paper that he taped under his desk, which is completely against protocol. At the station, Mary overhears Rockwell arguing with Knight on the phone, but before she can phone Frankie, she has to go on the air. She’s ready to leave, but Rockwell threatens to shoot her (and Hewey) so she has no choice but to go ahead with the show.
While waiting for Mary’s show to air, Frankie and Trudy speculate about how Pike must’ve gotten the vault combination from McLaughlin’s desk and how Knight then killed him. Rockwell cuts the broadcast during the disclaimer, so when the show comes on, listeners have no idea it’s just a
radio play. With the gunshots and dramatic description of a hostage situation at the Don Jail, the cops think there really is a riot going on there and head out en masse. Mary taps on her mike stand in Morse code to let Frankie know that Knight is robbing the bank. With all the cops gone to the Don Jail, Frankie and Trudy head over to the bank to stop Knight. Rockwell figures out Mary’s plan and brings her to the bank in case he needs a hostage, but she locks herself in the vault. Before Knight can open it, Frankie and Trudy show up and knock Rockwell out before grabbing Knight.
Frankie and Trudy let Ida know her husband was used to get the vault combination and killed because Rockwell needed the money Pike was transporting to keep the radio station going until they could pull off their 
master plan. Mary apologizes to Hewey for putting him out of a job, but he says he’s talked the Toronto Star into buying the station and wants to broadcast live sports events. Yeah, Hewey is actually Foster Hewitt. Grayson gives Frankie shit for not sharing the facts with him, especially since she solved the case and the cops ended up looking like idiots. Trudy confronts Bill, who tells her he’s been taking dance lessons because he wants to take her out dancing. She’s skeptical but after an impromptu dance, she believes him and he suggests it’s time his family knew about her.
This is another good episode, with Frankie and Trudy showing what good detectives they are, while Mary and Flo get to use their own ingenuity to
help crack the case. Mary and Foster Hewitt seemed to have a bit of a vibe going on and it’s nice to see Trudy and Bill’s relationship moving forward. I’m still not sure what’s going to happen with Frankie and Grayson; the adversarial thing usually turns into romance, but maybe they’ll go against that trend with these characters.
Noticeable Things:
- Trudy invites Bill to a movie at Allen’s Theatre on Danforth, which was a real theatre in the early Twenties. It was bought in 1923 and changed its name to the Century, so this episode must be set before that. (It’s known as the Danforth Music Hall now.)
- The radio station Mary works at is CKRR, which as far as I can tell never existed. Foster Hewitt did work in radio in Toronto in 1922, but it was at CFCA, which was owned by the Toronto Star and did become the first station to broadcast live hockey in early 1923.
Favourite Quotes:
- “Like screen doors banging in a hurricane.” Ida Pike describing her and her husband’s “appetites”.
- “If he doesn’t come clean, make sure he knows you brought your gun.” Frankie’s advice to Trudy about confronting Bill.