'Whitstable Pearl' Recap: Episode 5

Whitstable Pearl airs Saturdays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode. 
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A 70-ish woman, Rosie, sends her daughter Lynsey and teenage granddaughter Chloe out for a boat ride at the sailing club they own – Chloe is under the weather and the excursion might cheer her up. As Rosie waves them off, Chloe’s father Jamie, separated from Lynsey, hurries to the end of the pier, irate. “It’s my day,” he shouts. “I made a schedule!” Rosie nonchalantly brushes him off and leaves, assuring him, “They’ll be back soon.”

Jamie tries to call Chloe, but grows increasingly frustrated when he keeps getting her voicemail. Apparently she’s been ill a lot lately. “I’ll take care of you,” he says. He then leaves an angry message for Lynsey, demanding they return immediately. Suddenly his phone rings. It’s Chloe, frantic. “Dad, I think we’re sinking! Come now!”

At Pearl’s restaurant, Mike is eating lunch when the diners at the next table leave without paying their check. Pearl finds a note from them scrawled on a napkin – “Sorry! Emergency lifeboat shout!” Pearl and Mike take off for the pier where they find Jamie in a panic. A Coast Guard boat pulls up with Lynsey and Chloe onboard, wrapped in blankets. Jamie immediately takes possession of Chloe, and then angrily lays into Lynsey – it’s all her fault their boat sank. An older Coast Guard officer, Henry Wright, defends Lynsey and this escalates into a fistfight with Jamie accidentally punching Mike who is trying to separate them. (Jamie has clear anger management issues.)

Later at the restaurant while Mike ices his black eye, Pearl invites him to her restaurant’s annual New Year’s Eve bash. The party has four rules: “no kissing, no singing, no resolutions, just hard drinking.” Then Pearl gets a visitor: Rosie, who reveals that the Coast Guard found Lynsey’s boat – there is strong evidence of sabotage. Rosie suspects Jamie rigged the boat to sink so he could make Lynsey appear negligent, swoop in, and save the day. “But he didn’t save the day,” Pearl points out. “No, he could have killed them,” acknowledges Rosie, giving Pearl Jamie’s address. “Don’t fall for his charm,” she warns Pearl, adding that she shouldn’t be fooled by Jamie’s big house and flashy car – he is heavily in debt.

Jamie’s house and car are opulent as advertised. As Pearl enters through the open garage door, she notices a coil of thick rope and a large handsaw. She heads inside, and Jamie explains that Lynsey has turned Chloe against him, that Lynsey owes everything they had to him, that anything Rosie told her is a lie, and that the sinking was an accident due to Lynsey’s carelessness. As he is essentially telling Pearl to mind her own business, Chloe calls – windows have been smashed on boats at their club.

As Jamie and Chloe survey the damage, Lynsey insists to Pearl that the boat was sabotaged and thinks Henry Wright, who served as a father figure to Lynsey, might know who is responsible: his jealous wife Heather, sender of some past unhinged emails that Lynsey shows Pearl.

Pearl asks a reluctant Mike to sail with her to the rival sailing club. She wants to draw him into the case, despite him being on holiday. Tentatively, Mike accepts her New Year’s invitation. At the dock, she and Mike come upon another fistfight – this time, it’s Jamie and Henry, with Heather trying desperately to break it up. Pearl calls out Heather for the harassing emails to Lynsey. Heather claims she was angry back in the day at Lynsey for opening a rival business, but swears she didn’t sabotage the boat.

That night, Pearl decides to surveil the sailing club and sees a woman enter the boat house. It’s Chloe. Pearl catches her emptying a can of kerosene on one of the boats and lighting a match. Pearl talks her out of torching the boat and learns that it was Chloe who sabotaged the boat and committed the acts of vandalism – all in a bid for attention from her feuding parents.

Later at the restaurant, as a troubled Chloe sits in the kitchen listening to her parents loudly arguing, Rosie, noting that Chloe hasn’t eaten, offers a sandwich she made with vegan peanut butter. Sympathetic, Pearl offers to make Chloe a better meal than that. Chloe gratefully agrees, and Pearl heads into the kitchen, eating Chloe’s sandwich.

Later that day, Pearl is waiting tables when she suddenly becomes violently ill – rushing into the kitchen and vomiting into a soup kettle. It’s food poisoning…and Pearl has a sudden revelation.

Cut to Rosie in her home kitchen, making vegetarian shepherd’s pies. She reaches for a bottle from her spice cabinet and liberally sprinkles its contents onto Chloe’s dish before serving dinner to the family, back together again. Before they can dig in, Pearl arrives.

“I know what you’re doing,” she tells Rosie – it was Rosie who was causing Chloe’s illnesses after doing the same thing to Lynsey as a child – Rosie was lonely and craved being a caretaker, so she systematically poisoned them both. As the police arrive to arrest Rosie, Pearl sadly admits, “I really wanted to be wrong.”

Cut to Pearl’s after-hours New Year’s Eve party. Mike hasn’t arrived. It’s just the family, Ruby’s parents, and Dolly’s much younger boyfriend. The “hard drinking” part of the evening is underway.

Mike is at Nikki’s boisterous party, nursing a beer and clearly a bit bored. He leaves, arriving at Pearl’s restaurant just as the New Year’s countdown ends and Pearl has gone outside to watch the fireworks. Mike finds her at the end of the pier. “Everyone’s breaking all your rules,” he tells her. They fall into each other’s arms.