In 1887, British historian Lord Acton wrote: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. I would not classify mayoral candidate Chadwick Vaughan (Mark Caven) as a great man, but his seemingly unlimited power has certainly led him to become shamelessly corrupt and unethical. Literally getting away with murder has only furthered his moral decline.

When, in last season’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Chadwick Vaughan was recorded by Thomas Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) admitting to murder, we thought he was done for. Not so. In Only Murdoch in the Building, after some legal jujitsu and a bit of bribery and evidence tampering, he walked out of court a free man and bragged to Brackenreid, Fact that they think I’m a ruthless killer may end up being to my benefit. Then he threatened Brackenreid: Good luck to you in your career, Chief Constable. Just remember, the man who put you there is dead. And you’ve made more enemies than friends.

Picking up a few months later, it appears that the murder trial has done nothing to tarnish Vaughan’s reputation. In fact, he is now the front-runner in the mayoral election. His first order of business, he promises, will be cleaning up the corrupt constabulary and partisan Crown Attorney’s office. In this episode, writer Saleema Nawaz and director Craig Wallace explore the morality and psychology of a politician who, despite his obvious corruption, can’t seem to do any wrong in the public’s eye, and the Chief Constable who is opposing him with the tactics he knows best.

Sound Familiar?

Chadwick Vaughan has always been bad and corrupt, and getting acquitted in his murder trial has done nothing to change this. In fact, he now feels that God is looking out for him and that he deserves power and wealth. If any of that sounds familiar, that’s because it is clearly inspired by Donald Trump’s rise to power. Very, very much like Trump, Vaughan rages against politically motivated sham trials, wants to root out the radical elements in the justice system, is anti-woke and anti-DEI, makes up childish nicknames for his opponents (Noah Everett becomes Noah Ever-rat), and even milks an attack on him by wearing a sling, evoking Trump’s giant ear bandage. And it’s working, too: by the end of the episode, Vaughan is the new mayor of Toronto. No wonder Brackenreid can’t quite believe it: Who would have thought that news of a man’s crimes wouldn’t even put a dent in his reputation?

Moral Dilemmas

With the future of the constabulary and his own career at stake, Brackenreid jumps at the chance to throw a wrench in his campaign when Vaughan becomes a suspect in the murder of a young waitress and a prostitute. No matter that he has an alibi for the first murder, and that Inspector Choi (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), Crown Attorney Crabtree (Clare McConnell), Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson), and Detective Watts (Daniel Maslany) tell him they just don’t have the evidence to charge Vaughan. Brackenreid may be a good cop, but he’s not much of a politician or strategic thinker. When he feels cornered, he does what feels comfortable to him, and his go-to move is to collect evidence and make an arrest. He even feeds Vaughan’s dossier to the press. While it’s clear from almost the start that it can’t be Vaughan—it’s in the title, for Pete’s sake—viewers, like Brackenreid, are made to feel that this reprehensible human being has to be the killer anyway. We’re waiting for the plot twist that will explain how he did it, after all.

Mark Caven does such a wonderful job portraying Vaughan as a ruthless, shameless, deeply corrupt, and simply awful man that we’re almost ready to believe they should just put him in jail and throw away the key. Almost, because in an episode about corruption, it’s clear where the moral line is. Vaughan may be guilty of adultery, slander, threats, cruelty to women, attendance at illegal dogfights; however, he is in fact innocent of this murder case. For a moment, I thought Brackenreid would act out of character and plant evidence—If it’s evidence you want, I’ll find it myself—but despite his palpable frustrations, he stayed on the right side of the law.

Not-So-On-The-Nose

That’s not to say that Brackenreid didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, he may have very well given the idea to frame Vaughan for the murders to the actual murderer himself: too bad you can’t trap the rat giving a speech outside City Hall. The killer/ratcatcher (Calwyn Shurgold) was right under our noses all along, but in what I thought was a clever sleight of hand, I interpreted the emphasis on rats and vermin as a rather on-the-nose metaphor for corruption and hardly paid any attention to the man catching the rats. If I thought of him at all, it was much in the same vein as how I saw the census story with back-to-his-lazy-self Higgins (Lachlan Murdoch) and wonderfully naive Roberts (Kataem O’Connor): as a bit of levity in an otherwise dark episode. Kudos to Nawaz for making me overthink this. I suppose this is what happens when you force into the dark what you don’t want to see.

Now that he is firmly in power again, Vaughan will undoubtedly return in a future instalment (my money is on one of the final episodes of the season). Something to look forward to, indeed. Episodes where the Murdoch gang confronts corruption are usually exciting: On the Waterfront, Bl**dy H*ll, Hell to Pay / Up from Ashes, are among the show’s finest. I wouldn’t quite rank The Wrong Man among these, mainly because, despite Brackenreid’s actions, it never felt deeply personal for him. Plus, I really would have liked an explanation for why vile and criminal politicians remain so popular. But I suppose that’s entirely too much to ask of a TV show.