Coroner Review: Christmas Eve (Season 3 Episode 9)

The holidays are a time for wrapping all of our deep, dark, family secrets in shiny paper and adding a bow. Both the Brownings and the Coopers prove this on Coroner Season 3 Episode 9, “Christmas Eve.” 

The episode is visually stunning from the moment we see Jenny and John Browning prepping for their Christmas Eve brunch. It’s so effective to juxtapose that with their son Caleb in a psychotic state riding bumper cars after he has supposedly murdered them. 

But there is barely any action at all until Caleb holds the psychologist hostage with a pen and demands to know the truth about if he murdered his parents from Jenny.

Most of this episode is just the exposition before the action that will probably take place on the season finale on Christmas Day. 

All of the characters within the Browning clan are suspicious.

I know we are supposed to believe Caleb killed John and Jenny alone at this point, but Flora and Aaron are not completely innocent of crimes. They have a sinister and untrustworthy air about them. 

Caleb is a difficult and dangerous person to live with, sure. But as of now, Jenny is right not to jump to conclusions about him. 

I couldn’t care less about River and her boyfriend. River is the best, but her man is creepy.

So, the only place to jump to is Peggy, the returning matriarch of the Cooper family. 

My heart goes out to Ross so much. It’s natural to want all of your family members to get along, especially your mother and grandmother.

But it’s also hard to understand why drama embeds itself so deeply into a family if you haven’t lived through the incidents. 

Ross means well. But especially because this is the penultimate episode of the season, I fear he has invited a catalyst to trauma into Gordon and Jenny’s home and all of this is going to end badly. 

Peggy appears to mean well enough, but if what Jenny says her mother did is true, we all deserve answers. An upstanding person does not completely abandon their family after the biggest tragedy they’ve ever experienced. 

Peggy has the right to be a flawed human and react to her own trauma in unhealthy ways. It’s the fact that she has never come back or called that is unacceptable. 

Since we are talking about Christmas dinner guests, let’s just get this out in the open — Liam and Clark both showing up to the Cooper house would add a much-needed fun kind of tension to the table. 

It’s completely intentional that we do not see them on this episode and even though that’s maddening, the choice makes sense. It’s a device to keep us watching. 

It’s just frustrating that I have no idea which way Jenny is leaning when it comes to her romantic life. Not that I blame her for being conflicted; she has an impossible choice to make.

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Coroner airs Thursdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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