The Republic of Doyle kicked off this season with a couple of changes. Leslie is “missing in action”, although obviously just undercover somewhere; there’s a hot Indian chick replacing her that Jake gets to work with; and Tinny is now a police cadet. The episode is written by Allan Hawco (yes, the same actor who plays Jake and who created the series and is the show runner), so it is pretty good with the characters. Rose, Tinny, Des, and Leslie have almost nothing to do, but it’s fun to see Malachy and Jake hanging out with a visiting brother-in-law/uncle and nephew/cousin from Ireland. Uncle Gerald is a buffoon, basically a complete caricature of a drunken Irishman, which doesn’t work at all (plus the actor is just plain annoying), but Jake’s cousin is basically a younger version of Jake. Running around, getting into trouble, hairbrained schemes, chicks, the drunk tank, etc. He’s a lot of fun to watch, although when he gets the Irish brogue going at top speed, he is a wee bit hard to understand.

Simple mystery of a local thug with a priceless statue that someone is stealing to pay off some other debts, yada yada yada. All works out in the end, and the hot Indian chick gets a free collar from Jake without having to do any leg work or even really get involved in saving Jake’s butt (which Leslie normally does). The one stupid note is Des…he was shot in the chest/stomach at the end of Season 3, survives with no after effects, but is on stupid crutches which he keeps dropping (cuz apparently that is funny to Allan Hawco) and he has some sort of weird “mystery” business deal going on that looks highly illicit but they go out of their way so much to not say what it is in any way, with lots of generic pronouns, you know it isn’t anything bad at all (turns out he’s buying a car). Stupid stupid storyline.