5 Point Discussions – Double Decker! 7: “Revenge Is Mine”

The story of Doug’s first partner and how he lost them to Esperanza, unfolds. Will Doug be able to resist attempting to attain revenge? Remember, if you like this article and 5 Point Discussions, please share it on Facebook or Twitter! It really helps. And if you’ve got any comments or questions, please hit me up @SageShinigami.

1. I’m gonna go ahead and say I hated everything about this. You thought the next episode would explain why Kirill’s brother crossdresses. Not that it needs an explanation, but given how they handled it it would’ve been nice to give some agency to the character and allow us to view things through their eyes and their perspective.
But nah, forget that apparently. Instead, let’s have the gang agree at Pink’s insistence to play a gag by not telling Valery’s boss Derick, turning Valery into a literal “trap” , because it’s “funny” . Gross. The only bright side to this is no one treats Valery as weird. Even Kirill is nonchalant about it, which I guess makes sense. He’s probably still more interested in why Valery abandoned him a decade ago.

2. We don’t see much of Bamboo Man and Esperanza this episode, but they do get enough of a spotlight to remind everyone they’re still lurking about in the background, an ever present threat to SEVEN-O and Lisvalletta as a whole.
Now that Zabel is dead, it seems they’ve begun to marshal their forces, and even the few members of the group who were captured were planned losses. Or possibly positioned in prison for the sake of it? In any case, while they’ve gone to ground, Doctor Apple’s started working on the barrier coats SEVEN-O wears, which hopefully means the next run in with the Bamboo Man.

3. The meat of this episode gets back to Doug’s “first partner” , a mystery to everyone because of Doug’s reticence to share his private life with others. Some snooping on Kirill’s part reveals a name: Pat Morino, someone who was killed by Good-looking Joe, a member of Esperanza from back during the gang’s more violent days.
The story gradually feeds us new information about Pat, forcing us to constantly revise our feelings about this character we never met. First we learn Pat wasn’t a cop, but an informant Doug worked with. This leads us to believe Pat died because of Doug’s actions, and Doug’s driven attitude throughout the episode is to make up for his mistakes.
Eventually, the full truth is revealed: Pat was Patricia Morino, a twelve year old shoe-shine girl Doug urged to get out of the business of selling information because it was so dangerous. He never bought info from her at all, but offered her a gun instead to try and protect herself if she wasn’t going to quit. She turns it down, reminding him that police officers are supposed to follow the rules, which helped push him into being more of a stickler for them once he became more experienced.
As this story unfolds, I found myself able to see the kind of character she was–charming, but stubborn. Someone who I might’ve been frustrated by because they constantly ignored obvious death flags and signs to do something safe. But even then I was wrong, because her death doesn’t even come about from being an informant. When Doug finally confronts Joe though, we learn it wasn’t even about her actions as an informant. She just shined his shoes the wrong color.

4. If the last point didn’t tip you off, the guy Doug’s hunting here is scum. He spends half the episode rattling cages looking for information. Good-looking Joe is now a decent ranking mob boss for certain areas of Lisvalletta, and he doesn’t take kindly to Doug arresting his drug dealers and asking too many questions, so he eventually tries to force Doug’s hand by threatening someone he knows.
The entire episode is built around whether or not Doug will take revenge on Joe or do the right thing and be a cop, and you’re never really sure which way he’ll lean until the very end. He gets pulled into a trap by Joe and has dozens of guys training their guns on him, and finally the moment of truth arrives. Taking advantage of Joe’s overconfidence, he uses a flash grenade to blind his gang members, and takes them all out non-lethally in a matter of minutes. All except Joe.
As he finally has the opportunity to confront a guy so cartoonishly evil he’d murder a child for shining his shoes wrong, it’s hard not to root for him to kill him. And ultimately, Doug at least attempts to do so, with the very gun he gave Pat to protect herself. But the gun backfires, forcing him to just arrest her instead.
Later, as Kirill and their boss Travis arrive, they help bring in the whole gang, and Kirill points out it was likely Pat’s way of telling him revenge wasnt a method a cop should seek.

5. This episode plays around with gender expectations quite a bit, and in ways I’d congratulate them for if they weren’t handling Valery with all the finesse of two clumsy teenagers on prom night. Still, this bit at the tail end was pretty funny. The first time Doug visits Pat’s grave, you’re thinking Pat’s some old dude, and he comes with a glass of whiskey to reinforce the idea. The second time around, at Kirill’s urging, he shows up with a flower and a giant teddy bear.
Doug takes his hardboiled detective act so seriously he’s bringing whiskey to a twelve year old’s grave. What a goof. And yeah, technically she would be 20 now, the legal drinking age for Japan. But wouldn’t her ghost be frozen at 12 forever? Aren’t those the ghost rules?
Double Decker! Doug & Kirill is available for streaming at Funimation.