The Girl Next Door

Episode 303 (037) - Sep 24 1997

Too late home to join Jim on a stakeout because his "classic" Volvo was playing up again, blowing smoke and oil, Blair discovers a young woman locked in the trunk of a car in the street outside the loft. She says her name is Iris, and she's moving into the building across the street. She says her "ex", Chance, got carried away but gets nervous when Blair tries to phone the police to report it because her parents were protestors in the sixties.

Blair immediately sympathizes because his mother Naomi was a protestor too. When Blair offers his help, she asks if she can take a shower at his place as they haven't turned her water on yet, and Blair agrees readily.

The next day, Jim is awoken by raucous electric guitar issuing forth from downstairs. In the living room he finds Iris with Blair's guitar and starts to introduce himself, explaining that he's sleeping off an all-night stakeout. At that moment Blair arrives and interrupts, introducing Jim as a road crew supervisor instead.

After Iris accepts Blair's dinner invitation and leaves, Blair explains that Iris is nervous around cops, and starts hunting around for the ingredients to make her a special Persian "aphrodisiac" meal.

Jim is uneasy about Iris, but writes it off as another "train wreck in the ingoing disaster that is your love life".

Back at the station, Jim tells Simon that he has a bad feeling about Iris, and starts to run the mug shots on his computer just in case. He eventually tracks down a criminal record on her - robbery, extortion, suspected drug trafficking and GTA. In the middle of dinner preparations at the loft, Blair gets a call from Iris saying that her car has broken down and he races off to get her.

She says she needs to stop along the way and pick up some money from a friend in a convenience store. There, Blair finds himself caught in the middle of an armed holdup when Iris and her long-haired partner Chance steal half a million dollars in heroine from a dealer called Art Parkman.

Later that night, after the stakeout, Simon informs Jim that Blair's green Volvo has been identified at a hold-up scene and the security video from the store shows Iris and a male accomplice with long, curly hair.

Jim identifies that it's not Blair and heroine crystals he finds at the scene indicate that Blair was forced into being the getaway in a drug deal.

But Jim and Simon's pursuit is frustrated when they discover a crashed school bus at the side of the road and must stop to help.

With Art Parkman hot on their tail, Iris prevents Chance from shooting Blair and they instead leave him at the side of the road and drive off in the Volvo. Coming along behind, Parkman picks him up instead. Frustrated at his inability find Iris and Chance, Parkman tries to terrorize Blair at gunpoint into revealing where they are.

Blair knocks Parkman down and escapes along a railway line, but runs straight back into Iris on a crossroad. She has now dumped Chance and picked up her brother Rob, an auto-mechanic, who has carried out some repairs on the Volvo. Her new plan is for them to tape the heroine to their bodies and smuggle it across the Canadian border.

Jim and Simon have also found an address on Iris's brother, and go to the autoshop where they find Chance and question him. Then Jim senses the special oil Blair uses in his old car and races off in hot pursuit.

At the train station, Blair tells Iris she'll never get away with it, revealing that his partner is actually a cop and is sure to be hot on their heels. While Iris and Rob are distracted and arguing, Blair grabs the gun from Iris, knocks Rob down and then has Iris use the tape to secure him.

But Parkman has also caught up with Iris, and they cut a new deal, deciding to kill Blair. Arriving just in time, Jim hears the altercation and races to the rescue.

Credits:

  • Written by Harold Apter
  • Directed by William Geraghty

Main Cast:

  • Detective Jim Ellison: Richard Burgi
  • Blair Sandburg: Garett Maggart
  • Captain Simon Banks: Bruce A. Young

Semi regular Cast:

  • Detective Joel Taggart: Ken Earl

Guest Roles:

  • Iris: Meadow Sisto
  • Chance: Michael Lewis
  • Rob: Courtenay J. Stevens
  • Artie Parkman: Jeremy Ratchford

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