A Sunshine State of Mind – Director: Ruba Nadda/Writers: Jennifer Kassabian, Keri Ferencz
This one starts with the gals gathered at Frankie’s office, complaining about the heat wave gripping the city. Trudy’s mom (Mildred) comes in to tell them she’s bought a place down in Florida, in a resort called Miami Springs. Mildred admits she spent a lot on the place (and some of Trudy’s aunts and uncles bought in as well), but she’s happy to have a nice vacation property and Trudy seems quite thrilled too. Frankie gets a call from her mom (Nora), who tells her she bought property in Miami Springs as well, and is the one who talked Mildred into investing. Unfortunately, Miami Springs is a scam; Nora isn’t worried about the money she lost, but she does feel bad for getting Mildred (and her family) mixed up in a fake deal.
Trudy’s pissed off that Nora got her mom involved in a shady deal and isn’t looking forward to breaking the news to Mildred. Nora says the guy who scammed her called himself Florida Jack and she met him at the King
Edward Hotel, so she and Frankie go there to talk to the waiter who recommended jack to Nora. The waiter says Jack gave him five bucks to steer women “of a certain age” his way, which doesn’t really help track him down. At the police station, Mary is asked to take a retired officer (George McKinley) home. He turns out to be an old partner of her father and Mary is looking forward to hearing some stories about her dad. Frankie drops by to ask her to look up some info on Florida Jack. At the office, Trudy tries to tell her mom about the scam, but when Mildred starts going on about how she always yearned for adventure but gave that up to raise a family, Trudy can’t bring herself to disappoint her. On the way home, McKinley tells Mary a few things about her dad, which makes her quite happy. On his insistence, she leaves him to find his way home and heads back to the station. At the morgue, Flo asks her boss (Coroner Thompson) to switch her from the day shift to nights, since she’s starting medical school soon and needs her days free to attend classes. But Thompson is a dick (as usual) and refuses to change her shift. Trudy shows 
Frankie the brochure Florida Jack gave her mom and they decide to track him through that. Nora offers to break the bad news to Mildred, but she can’t do it either. Frankie and Trudy check the office Florida Jack was using, but it’s been cleaned out. They do find some pineapples he was giving away as rewards and head for the only market in the city that sells pineapples. They find Florida Jack, but he turns out to be Joe Perry, the mobster who ratted on his confederates and moved to Duluth under a new name (in Whisper Sisters). Joe is the one who’s been scamming people, but claims he has a good explanation.
Joe claims he was living clean in Duluth until his landlady got scammed by Florida Jack. When he looked into it, he found out there was a huge network of scammers, all working for a Torontonian named C.C. Glendale. Joe wanted to get close to Glendale, so he pretended to scam a bunch of people
so he could meet Glendale and force him to return all the money. Frankie figures they can use Joe to get Glendale, but Trudy would rather just take the money Joe has accumulated and return it to everyone. Frankie convinces her that they can recover everyone’s money from Glendale, not just what he took from their families. Mary runs into McKinley in the park, but he apparently has dementia and can’t remember her, or even who he is or how he got there, so Mary decides to take him to his house. Nora’s not happy to hear that they found Florida Jack but aren’t going to get the money back from him. Frankie convinces her that Joe’s groundwork can get them close to Glendale, who’s showing up personally at the Hunting Club where Joe has set up some more people to be fleeced. Flo asks the head of her med school if she can juggle her schedule, but is told that she has to commit fully to school or drop out. Joe and Frankie prepare for their meeting with Glendale and there’s definitely still a spark there. At McKinley’s house, some of his memory comes back and he remembers Mary and her father. She finds a pile of money in the fridge and 
McKinley tells her he and his old partner stole the money when they busted some bootleggers years ago. He can’t remember if his partner in the theft was Mary’s father, but she’s worried her dad might’ve been crooked. She takes the money with her when she leaves. Trudy checks on Joe’s record in Duluth and finds out he was arrested there twice, which means he lied when he told Frankie he’d been living clean. At the Hunting Club, Frankie and Joe run their scam and rope in a lot of new investors. They meet Glendale, but Nora has already found him and worked her charms. At the morgue, Flo is trying to figure out
how to balance work and school when Mary shows up to tell her about the money. Mary mentions how her father bought a new house when she was a kid and wonders if he used his share of the stolen money. Flo examines the money and says it’s counterfeit, which freaks Mary out even more. At the Hunting Club, a mobster recognizes Joe and ends up shooting him before taking off.
Frankie takes Joe to the morgue for Flo to patch him up (which is déja vu for Flo). At the office, Trudy and Nora tell her about Joe’s arrests in Duluth and 
suggest leaving him out of things when they go after Glendale. Nora’s has found out that Glendale has a safe in his office and figures they can rifle it and get all the money back before Glendale decides to leave town. They’re interrupted when Armando Petrillo (Joe’s uncle) shows up to ask where Joe is. They won’t tell him, but he says he’ll find Joe eventually and kill him for ratting to the cops. At the morgue, Thompson catches Flo stitching Joe up and fires her. They all meet at Wendy’s speakeasy to go over the plan (and Joe has a glib explanation for his arrests in Duluth). Nora will distract Glendale by introducing him to a new investor (Trudy), while Frankie breaks into his safe. Mary offers up the counterfeit money as Trudy’s “investment” and Joe convinces Frankie he should go with her. Flo has an idea on how to get them inside. Mildred catches Trudy rehearsing her part in the scam and Trudy
finally tells her the truth, so Mildred insists on coming with her as another “investor”. Flo and Mary talk their way past the butler by pretending to deliver ice, with Frankie and Joe hiding inside the crate. While Nora, Trudy, and Mildred keep Glendale occupied, Frankie and Joe open the safe, which contains gold bars instead of cash. Flo and Mary are gone, so Frankie comes up with another way to get the gold out. She and Joe have to climb out the window to get away, but Glendale doesn’t notice because he’s counting the money. He doesn’t notice it’s fake, 
although there’s a tense moment when he gets worked up over a torn bank note. Glendale gives them a crate of pineapples to seal the deal and when they get back to the office, Frankie and Joe reveal that they stashed the gold in the pineapple crate. Most of the crew goes out to celebrate, while Frankie stashes the gold in her own safe, but a bunch of mobsters show up looking for Joe.
Trudy hides Joe in the bathtub and Frankie has a file from the cops that proves Armando has been feeding them info for years, so she offers to trade him the file for Joe’s life. Armando agrees and he and his men take off. Since Joe is leaving town tomorrow, he and Frankie decide to celebrate … by banging. At the morgue, Bart tells Flo that Coroner Thompson died of a
heart attack and Flo decides not to mention getting fired, claiming instead that Thompson wanted to switch her day shift with Bart’s night shift. McKinley is going to live with his daughter and gives Mary some of her dad’s old stuff, most of which is stuff she made when she was a kid. The next day, Joe and Frankie say goodbye as he leaves for California. Some time later, Frankie and the gals (plus Nora and Mildred) go to Florida for a vacation (although the beach looks more like Lake Ontario to me). This is a good ending to the third season, featuring Nora and Mildred (who are always fun) and a return appearance from Joe 
Perry, who Frankie has always been attracted to. The stuff with Mary and her father’s old partner was interesting and it’s nice to see Flo’s medical career moving forward (even if she had to use a little chicanery to help facilitate things). Florida real estate was a hot topic in the 1920s and I think there were quite a few scams (and even some legit places had trouble because of the unpredictable weather down there), so this episode fits historically.
Favourite Quotes:
- “Sweet banana pudding, that’s a lot of cash!” Flo’s reaction when Mary shows her the money she took from McKinley.
- “You’re talking to a professional.” Nora letting Frankie know she can still run a scam of her own.
- “Or looking up.” Flo’s reply when Bart suggests the recently-deceased Coroner Thompson is looking down at them.