"And here we have D.I Fisk, in his natural habitat; meeting informants, and threatening anyone going against him."
The Gang are taking down Linda Runcorn, a food critic who ends smaller food chains with her reviews if they don't pay up. The con is using her lineage to believe she has an estate and money. However, Dirty Cop D.I Fisk is on the prowl, and will use any means to catch the crew.
Tropes:
- An Offer You Can't Refuse:
- Fisk tries one on Mickey; hand over £50,000 in cash and Emma goes free, which is just a plan to catch him bribing a police officer. When this doesn't work he tries it on Sean, who is apparently more manipulable to freeing Emma.
- Fisk does this to Kat, a former friend of Sean and Emma from when they were younger, and threatens to throw her daughter into foster care if she doesn't comply.
- C.I Angela uses this with Mickey to catch Fisk.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: Referenced by Emma as the issues Eddie has of taking his rubbish from inside to outside. Due to new rules by the council, he can't take out rubbish before the following day's opening hours, otherwise he gets fined £200. And he now has to take bags out just before the bin men get to the bar, and he can't go round the back, as there's no access. Making things worse, is that Eddie has to do it just before opening hours, which means he has to get up pretty early to take out the rubbish. It's not a traditional example of the trope, as there is a way out (just not a reasonable one).
- Dirty Cop: D.I Fisk in this case. A corrupt cop in the London Metropolitan Police who takes money and bribes to catch criminals for his own interests, as well as planting evidence to victimise and use people as bait. He's not a nice man.
- Easily Forgiven: Once the con is over, Sean meets with Kat to assure her nobody blames her for being forced to work for Fisk, as they all recognise that her daughter had to be her priority.
- Exact Words: Chief Inspector Angela was tasked to bring Detective Inspector Sid Fisk "by any means necessary". She opted to interpret this as "Hire con artists to take down Fisk". Mickey uses this against her to walk free and to keep the dirty money Fisk had given him.
- Hated by All: One of the more detestable people in Hustle, as not only does he think he's above the law, he actively plants evidence, takes shortcuts to solve cases, and makes unwarranted arrests on innocent people, or otherwise sidelines the law as if he were a Cowboy Cop. He even threatens to put Kat's daughter into care if she doesn't comply with him to take the gang down. It's this reason that he's the one being investigated by the police themselves.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Due to being under Fisk's thumb, Kat is unaware of the gang taking down Fisk.
- The Reveal: The gang were working with C.I Angela after they ran into her after the nightclub con presented at the start of the episode. She herself made An Offer You Can't Refuse to Mickey to catch Fisk, a Dirty Cop that is making the whole department look bad. Sean's call to free Emma was also planned, and their reactions to one another are played for real, as the crew knew they were being watched by Kat and the police.
