Van Der Valk Season 4 Episode 5 Review: Secrets in Amsterdam: Part 1

By the end of Van Der Valk Season 4 Episode 5, “Secrets in Amsterdam: Part 1,” three people are killed by a hitwoman– and possibly on the orders of a billionaire involved in finding a cure for cancer.

A man named Tycho is pushed off a building (after his neck is broken) and his mentor, Ray, is gunned down in the street. Both Tycho’s girlfriend Alis and Ray’s son Ruben are devastated, but still hide secrets about their loved ones.

Both men once worked for a billionaire named Freddie Klink. There’s no doubt he has the power to order killings, but his connection is weak until Ruben shows up at a lab and explains his father’s debts to Klink following a medical breakthrough.

Shortly before his death, Tycho tries to send a code via images in a short film. Though he claims to know nothing about it, a nightclub owner is also killed by the hitwoman shortly before she takes Lucienne at gunpoint and flees into the night.

Elsewhere, a conspiracy theorist named Inge comes into the mix and Piet starts the hour determined to force a resistant Hendrik to see a doctor. He eventually relents, leaving Hendrik’s treatment and potential life span up in the air.

Entering the last plot of this season’s trilogy, we’d typically expect an uptick in either the cases “flashiness” or its personal connections to main characters. Despite the calculated nature of the killings, that hasn’t happened yet.

We are getting a lot of characters thrown at all at once. Unlike the previous two stories this season, most of their backstory is being explained in the first half of this final installment as opposed to making us wait. In which case: what are we waiting for?

Though the cast is packed enough here that we don’t get much time with any one guest star, we do get time to at least feel sympathy for those losing loved ones or winding up in the line of fire themselves. I have a feeling more loss is coming down the line.

Will that expand to those we’ve known for longer than 60 minutes? Perhaps, but thus far I think we can at least set aside any fears of main character deaths. Even with Lucienne directly threatened, there’s no sense we’re losing anyone just yet.

I’m including Hendrik in that, but only for this season. Characters rarely refuse treatment or refer to the amount of time they “have left” without it hinting at emotional turmoil to come. But again, without a flash-forward or time jump, it’s unlikely to happen soon.

Still, Piet’s initial determination to persuade him to seek help suggests that, should Van Der Valk be renewed for season 5, the writers may try to wring every bit of grief they can for both those on screen and those watching.

In the meantime, we are left with stakes worthy of a season’s penultimate episode: a professional killer on the run, a potential mastermind whose wealth could make him untouchable, and the likelihood that we haven’t seen the end of the violence yet.

There’s still plenty of time to amp those up even more. Despite my relative confidence that everyone we know will make it through the next hour, the possibilities of a jarring plot twist are high—and, at the moment, could happen to anyone.

 

What did you think of this episode of Van Der Valk? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Van Der Valk airs Sundays at 10/9c on PBS.

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