Whole Lotta Love (Season 3, Episode 7)
Premise: Detectives investigate the stabbing of a criminology student whose cold case seminar was studying an identical killing six years earlier.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 7
- Starring
- DS Henry Graff (Aden Young), DS Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe), Insp. Vivienne Holness (Karen Robinson), DCA Theo Forrester (K.C. Collins), Dr. Lucy Da Silva (Nicola Correia-Damude)
- Guest stars
- Shawn Doyle as Professor Garrett Poole, Anastasia Phillips as Sarah Nielson, Amanda Arcuri as Ivy Abbott, David Klein as Carter Harold, Kolton Stewart as Rob Murphy
- Director
- Chloé Robichaud
- Writers
- Tassie Cameron & Jillian Locke
Summary
The Case
“Whole Lotta Love” follows Ivy Abbott, a criminology student at Osler University, as she leaves karaoke early, tells campus therapist Dr. Sarah Nielson she will not run from her problems, and turns away her ex, Rob. At home her patio is covered in candles again. Heading to campus to find roommate Amy, she reaches an emergency phone and is stabbed once in the neck and six times in the back. Marks on her hand suggest she gripped something.
Amy blames Rob for the candles, but he has a bar alibi. Nielson says Ivy felt followed by a man in an army jacket, though she doubted it was real and her notes say “possible BPD”. The candles’ distinctive scent leads to karaoke bar worker Carter Harold, who admits leaving them and photographing Ivy, but says cameras put him at work by 11:15. He tells the detectives Ivy spent her days in a locked room in the criminology building.
The room belongs to Professor Garrett Poole’s Cold Case Club, a seminar on the 2019 killing of Queen’s student Kat Berman in Kingston, whose wounds match Ivy’s, including the twist of the blade in the neck. Student Morris Lemay, who practises the wounds on a pig, has an alibi. Former pizza courier Damien Aku says Ivy visited him the day she died; he remembered Kat’s secret boyfriend boasting of a red Newfoundland cottage, and Ivy hurried off to see her professor. Poole, who owns such a cottage, admits sleeping with Kat but denies killing her, and Ivy’s deleted email saying she knew is in his trash. Nielson gives him an alibi until midnight.
The Interrogation
When fibres in Ivy’s hand are traced to a key-card cord, Nielson admits Poole left her office at 11 p.m. and that Ivy had told her about their affair. Poole is arrested on his way to Union Station, but his fob tests negative for Ivy’s DNA, and he says the false alibi was Nielson’s idea and that she stayed behind alone. Her interview shows her hiding a temporary key card, and Poole’s acclaimed book borrows her own phrases about patience and watercolour.
A detective meets Nielson as if seeking her insight, shares a story of her own past obsession with a married colleague, then turns Nielson’s descriptions of Ivy back on her: ten years of loving Poole while he used her work and slept with students. Nielson calls Ivy a foolish child, says she told her to leave town, and admits she turned on Poole so that she would be the one standing by him in prison. She is handcuffed.
The ending
Spoiler: Afterward the detective concedes she used more hammer than watercolour. Kat Berman’s case is not formally closed on screen.
Suspect’s fate: Sarah Nielson, arrested.
Why it stands out
- The title is the Led Zeppelin song Carter Harold heard Ivy sing at karaoke, which also names the candles he left on her patio.
- Co-written by Tassie Cameron, who developed the Canadian series, with Jillian Locke.