Bored To Death season 1 episode 5 review: The Case Of The Lonely White Dove

A film noir tale of love and Russian gangsters, this week’s episode of Bored To Death may be the best one yet. Here’s Stu’s review…

5. The Case Of The Lonely White Dove

After last week’s fairly pedestrian case, this week’s exotic tale is a very welcome change. This week sees Jonathan going in search of love, although this time it isn’t his own love, but the lost love of a client.

In this case, Jonathan must go in pursuit of a performer, Irena The Lonely White Dove, at a Russian nightclub on Brighton Beach (in New York, not Brighton, England) at the request of his client, a recently released prisoner called Dimitri, who fell in love with Irena after one night of passion, the night before he was imprisoned.

Dimitri’s passion and devotion to a woman that he has only met once clearly leaves an impression on Jonathan, who takes a look at his own failed love life and decides to take stock of things.Elsewhere, in an attempt to make his magazine more appealing to female readers, and at the recommendation of his therapist, George decides to experiment with bisexuality. George meets a male escort, and after a discussion about Klaus Kinski, and Woody Allen’s prose, they hilariously hit it off.

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This episode is certainly one of the most stylish, with lots of little nods to the film noir genre, with low lighting and long shadows in the seedy alleyways during the night scenes. The case itself is very noirish, with no one wanting to tell Jonathan who the dancer is, and the more he asks about her, the more danger he is getting himself into.

The scenes inside the Russian nightclub are very well shot, managing to make the club look like both somewhere you would want to visit and somewhere you would never want to go at the same time.

The humour isn’t really compromised by supplying such an engaging story, and I would say that this is one of the best episodes of the season so far, as it manages to walk the line between story and humour. The scene where Jonathan goes to use some brass knuckles against some Russian gangsters and ends up throwing it at one of them had me in stitches.

I would go as far as to say that this is probably the best all-round episode of the series so far in terms of plot, style, and humour. Jonathan as a character is taking far bigger risks than he was in the early episodes in his cases, and as a result, the show just goes from strength to strength.

Read our review of episode 4, The Case of The Stolen Skateboard, here.