'Snowfall' season 3 episode 4 review: Detective Andrew's plan gets Jerome beaten up while Franklin deals with his busted operation
Spoiler alert for 'Snowfall' season 3 episode 4
In 'Snowfall' season 3 episode 4 titled 'The Game that moves as you Play', we see Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) and his team face police crackdown and brutality. The episode features Franklin returning to Los Angeles with a gift for his mother Cissy Saint (Michael Hyatt), very proud that he was able to outsmart Avi Drexler (Alon Aboutboul) before he was conned out of his money.
However, the episode begins with him receiving one bad news after another. He loses out on a property that he and his mother have been working hard to acquire because someone made a better offer and he was not present to make a counter-offer. It doesn't stop there. Detective Andrew Wright (Marcus Henderson) has had it with Franklin and his gang taking over the neighborhood with crack and he wants to stop them so badly that he goes to his higher authority with a plan.
He wants to go ahead with co-ordinated raids at locations that Franklin is known to frequent with a warrant and instead of arresting him, Andrew goes ahead and targets Franklin's uncle Jerome (Amin Joseph). Franklin, who is busy wooing Melody Wright (Reign Edwards) who happens to be Andrew's daughter, only hears about the raid after Jerome is taken away in a stretcher.
Jerome did not give in when the cops arrived and forced entry. He swore at them and even punched one of the cops who was trying to arrest him and ends up getting beaten up by a group of white men and their rage is visually clear. The brutality is something that one would expect Andrew to react to since he is a black man himself, but he doesn't. For him, everything comes second to getting crack out of the streets.
For instance, when Andrew is looking at everything that the cops had acquired from the raid — the drugs, wads, and bundles of cash — a white cop tells him that he is glad that Andrew is one of the good ones and stereotypes the entire community as being criminals. It irks Andrew, but not enough to stand up for his people, because he was technically the one to go to the authorities with this plan.
But then, he doesn't struggle with this too much. We see Andrew teach his daughter how to shoot in a shooting range later. When she asks him about the bust, he explains that Jerome attacked a cop. She then asks him why he didn't stop Jerome from ending up in a hospital and his excuse is that "Bad things happen to bad people". There is no conflict within him then, and instead, we hear his conviction. Andrew's first priority is to keep his neighborhood safe, even if it means going against his own people.
Then we have Franklin taking stock of the situation. He is smart and has got all his boys out on bail, but he wants to know just one thing. How did the cooking spot get busted? It is a place that needs to be protected the most, but because one of the cooks brought in a girl, the location leaked. Franklin, who knows the truth, tries to get the same out of the man who did this mistake.
Instead, he lies to Franklin's face and ends up being shot by Leon. He becomes an example of what could happen if any of the others were to cross Franklin. It is clear that Franklin will keep them protected only if they do right by him. The transition from a boy who chanced upon this business to the businessman that Franklin has become is crystal clear at this moment. He is even ready to throw away his relationship with Melody over what happened to Jerome when all that she tried to do was explain why it wasn't a good idea to provoke the cops.
In Parallel, we see Reed Thompson aka Ted McDonald (Carter Hudson) deal with the mess that Gustavo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) made in the first place. Gustavo shot dead Soledad (Adriana DeGirolami) because he did not expect her to be the one to receive the consignment. Now, Reed has to deal with the guilt of putting her up to the task in the first place and clean up the mess so that his operation stays unaffected.