Close Call (CC)

Vampirgeschichten

Week starting July 16th, 1995

Michael Sadowski

Clay Borris

No guest star

The episode starts out in an alley. Schanke is following a man with a machine gun. Nick then flies up onto a balcony in the alley. Schanke and the man get into a shoot-out, and Schanke hits the man, and he appears to be down. What Schanke doesn't see -- but Nick does -- is that the man gathers up enough strength to aim his machine gun right at Schanke's head. Nick flies off the balcony, and knocks the man down. Schanke stands there, looking at Nick in disbelief.

Nick attempts to hypnotize Schanke, but it doesn't work all of the way. He manages to get Schanke to wash his Caddy, but doesn't manage to get Schanke to forget he saw him fly, or at least do something unusual. Schanke talks to Natalie, and vows to "find out who this Nick Knight really is."

Schanke then talks to Cohen about Nick, and Cohen asks him how he is -- how he feels about killing a man. Schanke is listening, but only to some extent, as he is having many flashbacks, remembering times Nick's behavior has been odd. Schanke then writes down on a paper "John Doe 199" and "Known Acquaintances." Under Known Acquaintances, he writes "Janette?" Schanke then goes to the Raven (in the daylight), and he finds the door locked. He remembers he has Nick's keys (he borrowed Nick's Caddy), and tries a key, and it fits. He looks for Janette, and cannot find her, so he goes into a back room. He looks in a trunk, and finds a very old photo of Nick, Janette and Lacroix. He also finds an old photo of Janette, and tucks in his jacket.

Janette is watching Schanke from the shadows. Her eyes are burning red -- she's ANGRY. She comes out of the shadows to get Schanke out of the Raven, but he tells her he wants to talk about Nick. She takes him out to the bar, and Janette explains that the people in the photo are actually grandparents. Schanke accepts that, and begins asking Janette if she ever noticed anything unusual about Nick (he has a flashback to when Nick hijacked a city bus). Then he asks Janette if he has ever heard of the Nightcrawler. Janette realizes Schanke's catching on way too quickly, and hypnotizes him, and it appears to work. Schanke leaves the Raven, and finds a cop outside, and asks him if the Caddy is his. Schanke tells her it's not, and he'll look for the registration. As he does, he finds a old New York drivers license for a certain Nicholas Forester. Schanke goes back to the precinct and asks Vera to run an archive check on the license. She does, and she gives him information along with a photo. Schanke looks at that, and then looks at the "Janette?" he wrote under "John Doe 199". He remembers EVERYTHING -- seeing Nick flying, and Nick and Janette trying to hypnotize him.

Schanke again talks to Nat, this time about Nick hypnotizing him. Nat just tells him to go home and rest. Schanke leaves the lab, but doesn't go home -- he goes back to his desk (after having multiple flashbacks in Nat's lab), and writes down more clues about Nick. Vera comes by and reads the clues, and then comments, "You're looking for a vampire, eh?" It dawns on Schanke that maybe Nick really could be a vampire... and he checks out books on vampires. While he is reading them, he has multiple flashbacks of other strange things he has noticed about Nick.

Schanke goes through Nick's desk and finds a photo of Lacroix, so he decides to go talk to him. Back at Nick's loft, Janette comes to tell Nick that Schanke is catching on, and he made the Nightcrawler connection. Nat also comes to tell Nick there's a problem. Both Nick and Janette head off to CERK HQ. Schanke arrives at CERK, and begins talking to Lacroix about Nick. He asks if Nick is a vampire, and if he (Lacroix) is. Lacroix asks what's recently changed in Schanke's life, and Schanke tells him that he recently killed a man. As Janette and Nick watch, Schanke says he's been an idiot for butting into Nick's affairs when he saved his life. Lacroix tells him that it seems the stress has taken a toll on him, and that his imagination is working overtime. Lacroix tells Schanke the Nick he knows is much like Schanke -- he doesn't like to kill people. Schanke leaves CERK, content that Nick isn't a vampire.

In the end tag, Nat is talking to Cohen, who tells her Schanke booked off. Cohen also said that Schanke said he had something very important to do. The show ends with Schanke washing Nick's Caddy (he was still hypnotized about washing the Cadillac when Nick first hypnotized him).

Nick has none, although Schanke has MANY flashbacks, remembering times when Nick did something out of the ordinary.

"Close Call" is an excellent episode. I enjoyed seeing Schanke slowly piece the puzzle together that was there all of the time, but he didn't notice. All of Schanke's flashbacks were put together in an interesting fashion that I enjoyed watching (seeing how many times Nick acted weird :)). I think this episode was unique because it did not center around a case as much as the others, and it made it one of the episodes where the focus was more on one of the characters than the case.

The biggest affiliation this episode would appeal to would be the FoDs. Schanke is constantly in this episode. It would also appeal to Cousins because of the Lacroix/Schanke conversation at the end. He did a very good job into confusing Schanke into believing Nick wasn't a vampire. Also, I may be wrong, but I believe this appeals to the Unsuiteds (hope I'm not mixing up the meaning of that affiliation), again, because of the Lacroix/Schanke conversation at the end.

Nick to Schanke:	"Listen. I don't tan, I don't burn, I implode."
Schanke to Nat:	"He made me forget, and that's all I remember."
Schanke to Nat:	"If I sold my soul to the devil he wouldn't make me sign so many forms!"
Schanke and Janette:	Schanke: "Yeah, we got caught in a shoot-out downtown. Guy wouldn't be taken alive so I had to 86 him." Janette: "How many?"

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