'Burden of Truth' Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Joanna discovers her past, suspects Kodie's being framed in court
Spoilers for 'Burden of Truth' Season 3 Episode 4: 'Desperate Measures'
Finally, after weeks of being teased Kodie Chartrand's (Sera Lys McArthur) involvement in something dark and disastrous from Joanna Chang's (Kristin Kreuk) past, we may have hit upon the surface of what might have gone down between the two - something that still haunts Joanna to this day and has clearly not reduced her gratitude towards Kodie for helping her with the same. But the answers come with a heavy question too as Kodie's titular 'Desperate Measures' in Season 3's Episode 4 sees her fall lower in her custody battle. The last episode ended with Kodie running away with her two young daughters - practically stealing them from foster care and this episode reveals where she took them and the subsequent aftermath of the many illegal steps she took in the process. Now the question is, will Joanna be able to help Kodie despite her breach of custody agreement?
Confirming Joanna and our worst suspicions, Kodie did in fact run away with her kids, as we find out in this episode. Joanna, Billy Crawford (Peter Mooney), and Owen Beckbie (Meegwun Fairbrother) note how Kodie's kids missed their pick up from social services the same day that Kodie doesn't show up for work. Also, Madison (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) and True (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart), Kodie's two daughters, were last seen getting into a car that matches Kodie's. So Joanna, being the good friend she is, manages to get Owen a BOLO on Kodie's car instead of issuing an Amber Alert because the kids are not in danger from their kidnapper, but most importantly, that would only ruin her case further.
Joanna and Billy team up once again to hunt down clues about the Chartrands' whereabouts and that leads them to the proof suggesting True's anxiety disorder. A trip to the kids' family doctor also allows Billy to get a signed letter stating True's immediate need to see a psychologist, but Joanna is the one that actually wins this round. She manages to correctly guess where Kodie might have taken her kids, and sure enough, finds them at the Chartrand farm - the site where her family ran their illegal drug business from.
After much protest, Kodie finally allows Joanna into the farm and is eventually convinced of the gravity of her actions. Joanna is able to help Kodie realize that she must turn herself in to even have a shot at getting her kids back. Ultimately, it is however Kodie's upbringing in a foster system that gets her to change her mind; she grew up in one and doesn't want the same to happen to her kids. Her realization of what running from the authorities might do to her kids is also laden with Joanna's past, as we finally get a glimpse of what went down between her and Kodie. Seeing Kodie's fight for her kids makes Joanna admit how she wishes her own mother had fought as hard for her and that's when Kodie drops the truth bomb. Joanna's mom did fight, but given what her father did to gain full custody of her, those fights fell feeble. This drives Joanna to ask Billy for her file from family services and it all dawns on her. She did run away from home and that was the core of all crises her family went through thereon.
The emotional and sad epiphany is however cut short when Joanna realizes one of Mercer's men had followed her to the farm. They immediately take off for Kodie's cousin's place, who keeps the men away with a shotgun. Kodie is livid at first but comes around when she sees the fear in her kids' eyes and another epiphany takes over. She decides to hand herself over to the law, on the condition of getting charged in violating a custody agreement versus parental abduction. This is where it all boils down to wins and losses, and unfortunately, or perhaps just to urge the story further, things do not go as promised.
In court, the parental abduction prosecution is out and Kodie gets put under house arrest. When the prosecution lawyer leaves, she gives Kodie's defense a suspicious look - enough to suggest that Kodie's claims of being targeted by someone just to make her lose might be true after all. While we don't know who exactly might be ganging up on her, the fact that True's biological grandmother Marlene (Jennifer Dale) had tricked Billy's father to make false complaints against Kodie comes to mind. Could it be a scorned biological father? Some sort of tiff between Marlene and the Chartrands'? It's hard to tell, but at least now we know Joanna's reasons for supporting Kodie, a giant loss shouldn't be on the way.
'Burden of Truth' Season 3 airs on Thursdays at 8 PM only on The CW.