W.C. Fields was Right

W.C. Fields once said that anyone who hates dogs and children cannot be all bad, and the title borrows the joke for an episode about a series of incidents involving exactly those two things. Bulman is drawn in once the incidents start to repeat, and the investigation takes him into the tangled business of a community's young and its strays. The phrase W.C. Fields was right is a promise the episode keeps: things are never what the sentimental version of the story would make them.

But the premise is the sort that could go soft, and the episode wisely keeps it rough-edged. Murray Smith wrote it, Sarah Harding directed, and the show trusts its regulars to carry the material without pushing the sentiment too far. Don Henderson's Bulman approaches the case with the same plain manner he brings to everything, which is exactly what it needs. Siobhan Redmond's Lucy McGinty is the warm presence in the partnership, the one who keeps the human side of the inquiry in view. The incidents are investigated with the show's usual thoroughness, which keeps the episode from ever feeling exploitative.

Children and animals are the two subjects guaranteed to make a grown man's case complicated, and the episode leans into that. The incidents are unpleasant in the way real life is unpleasant, and the answer is not as simple as blaming the obvious suspect. The show has never needed a villain in every room, and this hour works because it is willing to look at the messier reasons people do bad things. The answer, when it comes, involves grown-ups more than it involves the children, which is usually the way.

A thoughtful hour that earns its title, even if W.C. Fields would have been appalled by the company he is keeping. It is not an easy hour, and it is better for that.