Recap of Season 2 premiere of Ripper Street “Pure As the Driven” (original airdate on BBC America Feb. 22, 2014). There’s a lot to be said for having one writer, one director, one cinematographer – it’s continuity. That’s what makes each episode of Ripper Street look and feel like a movie. Season 2’s premiere “Pure as the 
[SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read on if you haven’t seen Season 2 premiere yet] Chinatown has come to London and with it, opium, Triads and Chinese immigrants looking for a better life. When a sergeant from Limehouse’s neighboring K Division is hurled from a Whitechapel tenement window, Inspector Reid (Matthew MacFayden) and Sergeant Drake (Jerome Flynn) set out to investigate. Arriving at the scene, Drake realizes it’s a friend, Det. Sgt. Maurice Linklater, a sergeant with K-Division.
While searching the tenement, Reid and Capt. Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) find a photograph of a beautiful, young Chinese girl, and what looks like morphine.
At the hospital, while observing Linklater’s autopsy being performed by Dr. Treves, Jackson notices a fist-sized bruise on his sternum and an abundance of needle pot marks on his thigh. Sure, Jackson is American, but quite a goof is made here. After a comment by Dr. Treves, Jackson remarks, “knock your self out.” This saying wasn’t used much before 1942.
The Elephant Man in 19th Century London
Merrick is living at the hospital as a guest of Dr. Treves. When he travels around the city, H-Division is to provide him an escort.
Upon leaving the hospital Inspector Reid sees Merrick watching out his window and wishes him “good day.” Capt. Jackson asks Drake about Reid knowing “the elephant man” and Drake tells him the role of the H-Division and how it related to Merrick.
Reid orders Drake and Jackson back to the precinct and tells them he’s going to take tea with Capt. Jackson’s wife, knowing she’ll be able to provide information about the girl in the photo.
‘Long’ Susan & Captain Jackson
‘Long’ Susan (Myanna Buring) is happy to share what information she has on the pretty Chinese girl in the photo. She tells Reid that the girl has been in London for two years, arriving by Hong Kong steamer, but that she was not interested in working at the brothel and her “moniker” is Blush Pang. Susan rings a bell and one of her girls walks in with Reid’s shirts. Reid is concerned that Jackson knows about her doing his shirts, but she tells him not to worry.
Jackson, on the other hand, wants out of Whitechapel. He dreams of sailing off to Shanghai, Siam or some other exotic place and whispers this in Susan’s ear, now that all the debts are paid up, and all their enemies are dead and gone. But the mail brings a 
The Chinese Connection
Once back at the station, Capt. Jackson tests some of the morphine on a rat. They discuss Linklater’s wounds and the Chinese connection. Jackson relays a story to Reid and Drake about a monk, able to break bricks over his neck, timber cleaved in two. While examining Linklater’s clothing they find a Chinese gambling chip. Everything leads them to Chinatown.
While in a Chinatown gambling club, Blush Pang (played by KunjueLi) approaches a blonde man who’s playing dominoes at a table. She takes him by the hand and leads him into a private room. She prepares an injection while he removes his clothing. She no sooner injects him when she’s interrupted.
Someone has come looking for her. She leaves the blonde man to see who it is. She catches a glimpse of the person — it’s her brother, Wong King-Fai (played by Aaron Ly). When he discovers that she’s fled, he destroys the gambling house.
By the time Reid, Drake and Jackson arrive in Chinatown, the gambling house is destroyed, men are hurt, Blush Pang is missing and K Division is already on premise. Inspector Jedediah Shine (Joseph Mawle), head of K Division has everything under control.
When they discover the blonde man, now dead, his throat is cut down to his spine and his thigh is covered with pot needle marks. Reid finds a pocketwatch with an engraving on the back in German. Jackson examines him and finds a knife tip lodged in his spine with Chinese writing on the tip.
Shine spent 10 years in China as Hong Kong Police and confidently shares with Reid, Jackson and Drake his special knowledge; the writing and the warning about the Triads.
Sgt. Drake’s Happiness
Inspector Reid may have lost his wife, but Sgt. Drake is making a home with Bella Drake (Gillian Saker), who he saved from a life of prostitution.
Encouraged to go and visit his friend in the hospital, Drake discovers a shipping bill listing Blush Pang as the buyer, and his friend, Det. Sgt. Maurice Linklater, authorized to collect 300 pounds of raw tar opium.
On showing it to Reid, he tells Drake, “Opium is not yet contraband at the moment.”
Drake tells Reid: “Our friendship is trashed. Friendship is trust and I do trust him no longer.” With shipping bill in hand they go on the hunt to find Blush Pang’s opium.
The British Connection
Not only do they find Blush Pang’s opium, but they find her brother, Wong King-Fai, who puts a beating on both of them and then puts Drake in a serious headlock. While Reid is trying to keep Wong from snapping Drake’s neck, they discover that Blush Pang is his sister and that she was taken from China by a British Policeman and that he’s here to take her home.
Reid convinces him that Drake is not the policeman he’s looking for and he releases him, and runs.
At this point Reid realized that he has been deceived by Shine in every way. At the least he’s corrupt; at the most he’s engaged in illegal transactions. He tells Drake that Shine has been so eager to “blind me to the truth.”
Is It Morphine or Is it Opium?
Reid and Drake return to the station and find out the blonde man in the Chinese gambling club was a chemist. Jackson is hard at work, attempting to resolve some puzzling questions. His lab rat has been acting strange since he gave him some of the “morphine.” His experiments have him dumbfounded. So he reverse engineers the drug and, in the interest of science, he tests it on himself.
He ties off his arm, finds a vein, loads up a syringe, asks for privacy and shoots himself — and then promptly leans over a bowl and pukes. Then … nods off … drifts … dreamland. Heroin. Yes, heroin.
While Jackson is still drifting, but slightly more himself, he tells Reid and Drake just how dangerous this drug will be if it’s made available in London. How cheap it will be to make. How profitable it will be to sell and how it will make users desperate to get it. “Morphine is 10 fold the power of Opium. This stuff, stronger still. Comes up in you like lava, nothing to do but surrender. It is life, stripped of all judgment, no pain, no hunger, no sorrow, no tomorrow.”
Drake tells him to make some more and Reid and Drake go to Linklater and use it to get answers: Where’s the lab? What’s Blush Pang’s role? What about Inspector Shine? But before he can confess anything, he begs for the shot and Reid gives it to him.
Dr. Treves comes in, orders them out and sees an incriminating blood smear on the arm where Reid gave him the shot.
Pang’s brother rushes in, kicks almost everyone’s ass, grabs his sister and drags her outside. At that moment Inspector Shine pulls up and orders Reid to hand him over, but Reid tells him if he wants him, he has to fight him.
As Inspector Shine rolls up his sleeves he brags that “no man takes his tea blacker.” Wong blocks everything, frustrating Shine to the point where he picks up dirt and throws it in eyes, hoping to get an edge. Wong grabs him around his throat and while he’s choking him he says, “She was just a child, and you stole her.”
Shine replies, “She was never a child.”
At that point Blush stabs her brother in the back and says in Chinese, “My future is mine, brother. I make my bed here. With him to keep it warm.”
When she backs away and Reid sees that she’s killed her brother, he orders Drake to grabs her and Reid barks, “take her.”
Shine yells, “Arrest her, what charge? She was protecting an officer.”
Reid says, “Whatever I choose. Murder, theft of a boiled sweet. I care not. But you will not see her again.”
Blush yells at her lover that he’s a coward and a pig.
To tie up loose ends, Inspector Shine sneaks into the hospital under dark of night and ends the life of Det. Sgt. Linklater. To make matters worse, he shows up as Drake and Reid share a drink to tell them Linklater has died, from a narcotic injection, and hints that Dr. Treves has tied it to Reid.
What Shine does not know, is that Merrick saw him kill Linklater through the window. But that is for another episode.