Upamanyu Biswas
In season 1 of the Australian crime thriller show, ‘Troppo,‘ a dishonored former detective, Ted Conkaffey, teams up with an ex-convict turned private investigator, Amanda Pharrell, to investigate the disappearance of a Korean scientist, Jong Min Park, in the quaint wildlife town of Crimson Lake. Haunted by past accusations of sexual assault, Ted is in hiding after losing his sanity, family, and the prospect of ever clearing his name until Amanda finds him. The woman herself has demons in her past, finding a kindred bond with Ted as she proposes finding the truth behind the missing Jong Min.
As the pair digs deeper into the case and the Park family’s history, they uncover secrets, untold truths, and dubious associations that shed more light on Crimson Lake’s goings-on. They are constantly tormented on their journey by Inspector Lou Damford, who is displeased with the private investigation undertaken by Amanda and Ted in his territory and under his jurisdiction. Consequently, the show’s finale answers many burning questions, steering Jong Min Park’s investigation toward a new direction while exposing the shocking truth behind Amanda’s tortured past! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Troppo Season 1 Recap
Amanda Pharrell is an ex-convict who lives with Lars Hansen and his family after being released from prison. Several years ago, Amanda killed one of her schoolmates, Lauren Freeman, by stabbing her twelve times in the back of a car. After her release, Lars helped her get back on her feet while the rest of Crimson Lake shunned her for what she did. Subsequently, she greatly admired the man, often helping him with whatever he needed. One day, a group of river tourists witness a semi-naked Lars take a dip into the water and get eaten by a giant crocodile. The resulting mess causes distress to Lars’ family, and Amanda, who moves out of the house, is confident that it wasn’t a suicide.
She starts a private investigation agency in the backroom of the Shark Bar, the proprietor of which is a friend of Amanda. Soon, a Korean woman named Yoon Sun Park shows up at her doorstep, tasking Amanda with finding her missing husband, Jong Min Park, who works at the Dellagua Company. Desperate to prove that she is not inexperienced, Amanda promises that she has a grizzled consultant with the experience she does not have. To follow up on her word, she recruits out-of-sorts ex-cop Ted Conkaffey, who she ran into at a vet store. Ted is a former detective accused of being a sexual predator laying low in Crimson Lake.
The two join forces, finding common ground in their so-called criminal pasts. Their investigation into Park’s disappearance instantly attracts the attention of Inspector Lou Damford, who is disgusted by the idea of a former murderer and an alleged sexual predator working together to solve crimes. However, without due cause, he cannot arrest them. Consequently, they unearth a series of connections between Jong Min Park and his work at the Dellagua Company, which was highly sensitive. Additionally, Amanda pursues a personal investigation of her own into Lars’ death, sure that he would not commit suicide without any sign of foul play.
Troppo Season 1 Ending: Was Lars’ Death a Murder or Suicide?
For large chunks of the narrative, Amanda is convinced that Lars’ suicide death ruling is a wrong conclusion. Because she knew the man and understood his beliefs, she is vehement that he would not kill himself, knowing what it would do to his family. However, as he was witnessed by a contingent of river tourists who recorded his death, the evidence of his suicide attempt is hard to challenge. Still, Amanda persists with her staunch faith that something else was at play. She launches an investigation looking into his death, eventually learning the truth: Lars was murdered, but not the way anyone could have imagined.
As it happened, Crimson Lake was home to a mysterious man named Ezra Cole, also known as Twist. Amanda and Ted run into him at a Dellagua press conference, and later, the former meets him at Lars’ old air courier company. When she visits the man’s private lair in the forest, Amanda learns he likes to rear snakes and milk their venom for personal pleasure. While he was alive, Lars was working for Twist alongside another man named Bryce. The two would help Twist keep his venom collection in order and help around the place with the caregiving of the snakes. However, Bryce was stealing snake venom from Twist and selling it to prospective buyers.
Later, Amanda is invited back into Twist’s snake lair, where he forces Bryce to reveal the truth. He knows that his helper has been smuggling vials of venom as contraband for his illicit hustle, also adding that he played a part in Lars’ death. As it turns out, while Bryce was stealing from Twist, Lars found out about it and confronted him one day outside the snake house. Bryce threatened Lars to keep quiet and not say a word to their employer, but fearing that he might, he cornered him while walking his dog in the rainforest. He injected Lars with a high dose of the snake venom, causing him to hyperventilate and strip out of his clothes.
Before he lost control, Lars scratched the vial number of the snake venom on his dog’s collar. Subsequently, he approached the river and started hollering at the tourists, asking for help. However, his intoxication made him delirious, causing him to jump into the river, not knowing that there was a crocodile on the hunt. Thus, while he died in the jaws of the animal, he was actually murdered through an overdose of snake venom by Bryce. For payback, Twist makes Bryce put his hand inside a poisonous snake’s cage, where the creature bites him. He then leaves him on the floor, writhing in agony until he dies.
What Happened to Jong Min Park?
Although Jong Min Park’s case begins as a missing persons investigation, the surfacing of his dead body on Crimson Lake’s shore reveals that he had actually been killed through blunt force trauma on the back of his head. During his investigation, Amanda and Ted find connections between Jong Min and his work at the Dellagua Company, leading them down different avenues with varying degrees of success. Therefore, it comes as a shock when the private investigators learn that Jong Min’s killer was none other than his daughter Ah Rah Park, who struck her father with a wrench, leading to an accidental murder.
Initially, the most prominent link in Jong Min’s disappearance materializes in the shape of Olivia Di Grande, the head of Research and Development at the Dellagua Company, who was apparently working late nights with Jong Min. The private investigators suspect that Olivia was having an affair with Jong Min when Ah Rah confronts the woman during her father’s funeral. Later, Olivia admits it herself when Ted questions her and backs her into a corner. However, this turns out to be a falsehood intended to distract Amanda, Ted, and the police from the truth behind Jong Min and Olivia’s association.
While working for Dellagua, Jong Min developed a cutting-edge method of mining resources from the ocean floor. However, tests show that the fallout from the new mining practice causes lesions to develop in marine life. The company’s CEO, Roy Gilpin, had been informed of the project’s problems and limitations but brushed it under the carpet as he wanted to launch the product as soon as possible to satisfy their investors. Consequently, Jong Min and Olivia worked together to collect the evidence and data so that they could blow Dellagua’s operation from the inside out.
Therefore, the private investigators suspect that Dellagua’s higher-ups killed Jong Min as a way to shut down the whistleblowing operation and continue with their product launch. Before he died, Jong Min even stored all the information pertaining to Dellagua’s illicit practices in a USB drive concealed within the cork of a vintage wine bottle. However, additional detective work from Amanda and Ted reveals a new development, which was Ah Rah Park’s disappearance from her home the night her father died. Apparently, Jong Min had gone out to look for his daughter before dinner, a seemingly innocuous event that had gone unnoticed.
Ah Rah and Charlie, the son of Wayne Druff, the owner of Druff’s Adventures, were in love with one another. Jong Min had met Charlie at his house when the older man expressed disapproval of Ah Rah dating the boy. He wanted his daughter to focus on her schooling instead. The night Jong Min died, he went looking for his daughter, who was out with Charlie on one of the boats belonging to his father. While trying to extricate Ah Rah from Charlie and take her back home, an altercation broke out between the three, and Ah Rah struck her father on the head with a wrench. She did not expect to kill him, instantly breaking down into tears at her mistake.
When Jong Min’s car is recovered, an inscription in Korean saying “I’m Sorry” is written on the backseat window. At the time, the police, Amanda, and Ted believe it to be a message left behind by Jong Min apologizing for something he did. However, later, Ah Rah asks Amanda to tattoo her father’s ashes onto her skin with the same message. It’s only upon piecing the truth together that the private investigator realizes that Ah Rah was the one who wrote that message as an apology for what she did – confessing to her crime. Subsequently, she even wanted it branded on her skin as a reminder of the unalterable pain she caused. Therefore, in a twist of affairs, Amanda and Ted are saddened to learn that rather than a conspiracy, it was a tragedy that led to the murder of Jong Min Park.
Was Amanda Framed for Lauren’s Murder?
As Amanda and Ted pool their efforts into solving the murder of Jong Min Park, the two also embark on personal investigations of their own. Amanda looks into Lars’ supposed suicide; while dissatisfied with what she had told him about her past, Ted tries to find out more about the murder she committed years ago. With the help of Dr. Val and some encounters with people involved in the affair, Ted learns that during the party where Lauren was killed, Amanda was actually drugged and later framed to take the fall for her schoolmate’s murder in a sentence that was far longer than what she actually deserved at the time. The framing was done by none other than Inspector Lou Damford.
Damford and Lauren were in a relationship before the latter passed away. The two were very intimate and were even together at the party when she was killed. Earlier that night, Lauren and her friend Brooke had spiked Amanda’s drink with a potent drug as a prank. It was a way for them to punish her for crashing the party. However, while Lauren was meeting Damford in a clandestine manner in the cover of the forest, he told her to check on Amanda as he was worried she might overdose or need help. Intoxicated, Amanda saw Lauren approach her in the car but hallucinated her as an unknown entity in a mask coming to harm her. Consequently, she stabbed her, fearing for her life.
Later, a worried Damford stumbled upon the scene, looking for Lauren. When he saw her bleeding body, he assumed that she was dead, walking away, not knowing that she whispered for help in her final moments. Concerned about the affair being revealed and heartbroken that Lauren had been taken away from him by Amanda, he framed her by altering her blood sample to make it appear clean during the tests. He also intimated Brooke to keep the truth about Amanda being drugged a secret to save herself. Driven entirely by emotion, he forced the girl to take all the blame for the murder without any mitigating circumstances.
Upon learning the truth behind Damford and Lauren’s relationship, Amanda is cornered by the inspector in the forest. He threatens to shoot her at first, but after learning that he had walked away from Lauren without helping her the night she died, he is stricken by emotion and collapses under the weight of his guilt. Ted arrives just in time to save Amanda, shooting Damford when he points the gun at her. The two drive him to a hospital, where Damford admits that he is a coward before he is taken in for treatment. Thus, Amanda ended up believing she had killed someone for nearly all her life, not knowing that the blame for the event did not lie solely on her.
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