Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 20, 2021

I’m liking Briar Rose.

“Come on Sam, a nice cup of tea for the lady!”

Good morning™, everyone!

Tracy is thinking, “She couldn’t mean Sterling Eliot. He was Smith’s trusted employee.” Guess again, Tracy!

That department really does run on coffee!

What’s with the cough? Is Briar Rose planning something?

How did she know Eliot caused the ‘splosion? ✨

I hope no one thinks Sam is Tracy’s gofer. Tracy’s not finished, and they’re not going to allow Rose to go for her own drink. (And I would’ve preferred water.)

Good morning™, dry scratchy throats !

I’m going with parched. She is presumably, talking a good spell and the air in there may be on the dry side. I like the depth shown in Rose being dry and we get to see it. Adds a little humanity to the story.

Call me crazy but my Spidey Sense is tingling about that cuppa joe. Someone mentioned the other day about the Apparatus also having a mole in Police HQ — could that be our shadowy uniformed cop who’s maybe taken the opportunity to slip a mickey into the Colombian Roast?

And is it just me, or could Shelley’s new look for Tracy best be captured in a retro TV time machine by the great Claude Akins sporting some jaw prosthetics? Or maybe Simon Oakland??

Better shadowing today, but I guess the union painters ran out of gray paint! LOL!

Poisoned beverage? Any chance?

Why isn’t anyone saying anything about the coffee? What is she up to?

Um, how would Rose know that Elliot got ‘impatient’? He wasn’t about to tell anyone that he wanted to get the winning lottery numbers — he said/thought it would enable him to quit working for the Apparatus. (Stupid idea: No one resigns quietly from the Apparatus.) Since they know center of explosion (the time machine) and Elliot was the only one with it anyone should have known he could have been doing something that caused the explosion. (But, guess what, if you’re driving and your engine blows up there is chance it blew up because you caused it driving stupid, or it could have blown up even if you were driving safely and performed regular maintenance (although less likely if you were careful.)) Apparently Rose can read minds, since that is the only way she could have known Elliot got impatient and caused the explosion. But, if she is being shown as clairvoyant, why didn’t she read Ace’s mind and know she was going for a ride instead of a deli?

That mug is full of poison.

Mumbles explained. It’s a time machine to the past. Eliot was trying to see into the future. (Winning horses) It didn’t work!

You gotta luv this literary form, telling the story after the story is over.

Suspiciously dry and…who is that shadowy figure handing the mug through the doorway???!!!!!

Sam, Sam, Sam, you may be charged as anaccesory to ‘snuffing da’ fink’. That’s gonna take a wee chunk out of that pension.

WHO did she “hear” that from? There was no one around, and everyone close to the center of the blast died.

Well, someone from the future traveled into the past, and…just kidding!

1-DT: My theory remains in place – you blew up Smith Industries because DOIT TOIT SPURNED YOUR ADVANCES! SUKIE: BULL – COUGH – SH**!

2-SAM: Hey Cabbie. Here’s some coffee for ya. Thanks for bringing her in. OFFICER: I’M A COP YOU DUNCE!

3-SAM: Here Sukie. The cabbie didn’t want this.

SUKIE: You taste it first. The way you let cabbies run around here at will, I’m not sure I can trust it. It might be… SANKA !

Is she about to be poisoned by that cup of coffee?

So, I’m thinking this interview room has only one door, and the hot beverage was brought in from another room. We know others from the MCU are viewing the interview through the one-way window. The person outside appears to be a uniformed officer guarding the door – why? I guess this is who brought Briar into the room, and will escort her back to a cell afterwards. If the officer retrieved the beverage for Sam, he could have poisoned the drink, but would then be the most obvious suspect. So I think that one way or the other, the drink isn’t drugged.

Eliot tried to send the probe into the future. The probe was only to be sent into the past. The probe became unstable due to the time shift. Changing the present by looking into the future would cause the time line that the probe was looking at to become a alternate reality. This would disconect the probe from our reality and create a feedback loop, continously causing the probe to switch back and forth from one reality to the other. Result – power surge – explosion…

Maybe, instead of condensed vapor the irregular, sinuous shapes are disguised knife blades. I cannot imagine that the coffee is that hot and the room that cold. Otherwise wouldn’t there be ice formations on the walls, etc.?

Who wants to put money down that coffee poisoned?

I hope Briar Rose isn’t slated to die, Mickey Finn or otherwise. I’m really liking the character here.

She’s dry. Since this isn’t real life, I suspect a problem.

If that coffee’s just to have her do something with her hands, it reminds me of how people kept lighting cigarettes in old movies for no reason.

It’s really amusing reading comments from all these “detectives” who don’t have real jobs. Much more entertaining than the story.

Don’t drink the coffee. Cops got a mole, looks like.

The coffee is poisoned?

BABY!!! DON’T DRINK THE COFFEE!!!!

That dark shadowed uniformed officer who hands Sam the coffee certainly does look suspicious, if not sinister. I’d hate to see Briar get whacked, however. She’s one of the better characters Mike’s created recently.

I fear some paranoidal posters are over-thinking the cup of coffee. Sometimes a cuppa joe is just a cuppa joe. It’s not been somehow mysteriously poisoned by an Apparatus mole in the MCU.

Rather, the suspicious thing in today’s episode is Briar Rose’s Sudden Onset Dryness (SOD). Maybe someone who speculated about her throwing the hot coffee in Tracy’s face wasn’t too far off; but even that seems improbable if only because in that interview room MCU location it wouldn’t be very profitable a move. But I do think she has something devious in mind….

I’m wondering if we’re going to see a Himmler here, with a poison pill…

She’s just protecting herself. If Tracy thinks she caused the explosion, she’s guilty of 3 murders. If Tracy believes Eliot did it, she’s off the hook for the murders.

Toots Banks,The Brain’s girl,gets interrogated and thirsty in January 1975. Smilarities here.