Motive - General Discussion

[Trey]

1 hour ago, milner said:

Hasn't it been picked up by USA Network for a fifth season?

No, there is no fifth season.  Last night was the series finale.

[alias1]

2 hours ago, Trey said:

This is it.  Series finale aired just last night.

Boo hoo!

[babs1226]

Great final episode, but I am sad to see this show go.  I'm a fortunate American, I watch tv on the internet, so I didn't realize our networks tried to hide the fact that the show took place in Canada.  I always knew and never minded.  I love Canadian tv!  There was a scene in the very first season that stayed with me.  A suspect got loose and went a little crazy, and a cop brought him down with a beanbag gun.  Nope, definitely not the US. :(

[Trey]

I know! I am so sorry it is done. I won't give anything away, but it was a very good finale.

[DrScottie]

Columbo was one of my favorite shows growing up.  I still watch it from time to time. It's sad to see its excellent spiritual successor come to an end. Well, at least they didn't drag it out like so many shows and they tied up all the loose ends. 

Edited September 1, 2016 by DrScottie

[Trey]

Is Vega an attorney now?  Or was he doing investigation work for an attorney? Because I don't see how he could have become a lawyer in only 3 years. I liked that they were trying to set things right for the parents

I really enjoyed the finale.  I liked that most of the cops from the season were in the finale - Paula, Kenickie, the IA guy who is now the staff sergeant.  And I Iiked that Jack is still in Angie's life and that she is going to do another 3 year contract with Interpol, thus seeing more of Jack. And Manny is doing well on his own.

I can't say anyone is justified in committing murder but in the previous episode Lexi at least had good reason to kill the judge and the youth camp leader. But this episode, Trent did something that was very bad, but he wasn't evil and did not deserve to die for what he did. Lexi must just over-empathize with people - of course, she won't do it anymore.

[alias1]

I liked it, even though it was obvious to me right away that Chloe wasn't really Chloe and the detective was shady.  I didn't guess that the mother knew and wanted fake Chloe to help her die.  The older daughter was too overprotective, but the mother should have been honest with her.  There's a lesson there, for sure.  Now she's going to die alone, and her daughter is going to jail.  Sad.

I hope we get to see what Vega decides to do.

[mansonlamps]

I love the whole premise of this show so much, and the actors sealed my enjoyment.  I really don't understand why it never caught on.

[shapeshifter]

23 hours ago, mansonlamps said:

I love the whole premise of this show so much, and the actors sealed my enjoyment.  I really don't understand why it never caught on.

IMO, they never gave Vega enough lines.

[GaT]

Just got around to seeing this episode, & that twist at the end caught me completely by surprise. Now I wonder how long they lived in that house & what age Rachel was when she married him & where are her real parents?

[basiltherat]

At least there's an "explanation" as to why the "wife" seemingly condoned the "incest"! (sorry for all the quotation marks!)

[alias1]

I liked all the personal stuff between the main characters but the case of the week was just kind of icky.  And I felt like the show cheated on the setup.  In the beginning, wife #1 said (something like) she's old enough now to start contributing to this family.  Which led me to think she was the daughter (as the show intended, I'm sure).  So how was wife #1 "contributing" to the family if only wife #2 was expected to get a job?  It was an interesting twist, but seemed kind of off to me.

[Bort]

They never said that wife #1 didn't have a job, (since, clearly, Gross Disgusting Husband didn't want anybody going to college and learning how sick their situation was) she could've been a grocery store checkout clerk. Or maybe her contribution was the cooking and cleaning around the house -- which looked rather large, so it'd keep her busy. 

[Finagler]

My impression in the beginning was that wife #1 was the step mom and that was why she was pushing for 'daughter' Rachel to get a job.  She couldn't make her step daughter do anything and that was why she was telling the husband Rachel needed to start contributing.  Add me to the icked out club- I thought he husband was dad and believed to keep everything in the family.   (eww...going off to find some brain bleach)

As far as the lawyer, I thought he said he worked for an expensive firm but his boss made them take on ## pro bono cases per year.  I think Vega and Angie hearing their conversation was a mistake, the volume/speaker was inadvertently left on.  I think the bad lawyer still didn't get what he did was wrong; where Vega and Angie made a mistake, the lawyer was doing what he did on purpose- not caring if justice was served or not.  He just wanted to close the case so he could go back to his paying customers (i.e. billable hours).

Final note- Vega resigned/retired before he could get fired.  Good for him.  You could tell that the last 2-3 episodes he was going through some soul searching on where he wanted to be.  His heart was no longer in police work.

[J-Man]

It was strange that USA kept captioning and labeling this as the "season finale," when it was, in fact, the SERIES finale.

[alias1]

It was a good series finale.  I liked the interaction between all the regular characters and how they left the future open.  I'm not so sure about the case of the week.  At the end of last weeks show, I thought finally they are going to let someone get away with murder.  And if it was going to be Lexi, I was ok with it.  But no, they weren't going to let it rest there.  Instead of the kid killing his grandfather, Lexi did it for him.  That did not really make sense to me, but it did a nice job of wrapping up the previous week and again showing that no one should get away with murder (which the series did throughout).  I wondered what Lexi did with the cat (a shelter)?  All in all, a very satisfactory last episode for such a well written show.

[basiltherat]

I am so sad that, once again, my watching and loving a show has got it cancelled!  Seriously, I am really glad I started watching this show when it first showed up on ABC.  They sort of did write their characters into corners, though, so it was going to take some fancy footwork to get them all working together again.

I don't generally like men with beards but, in Oscar's case, he looked really, really young without his.  I think I like him with the luxurious beard and not just with the popular stubbly look.  Yum.

Angie confronting Lexi was a pretty glaring mistake on Angie's part but, really, Lexi did meticulously plan her previous actions and did not seem like a spur-of-the-moment killer.

It was pretty obvious from the start that this was not set in America because the police ranks (Staff Sergeant???) were not at all familiar.  I loved all the scenery from mountains to seashores to forests, and all the beautiful homes.

[Trey]

1 hour ago, basiltherat said:

I am so sad that, once again, my watching and loving a show has got it cancelled!

Not your fault! Kristen Lehmann did interviews about the series finale and said the network wanted to do another season so I think it was the actors who wanted to move on. Just my impression, nothing was said outright.

[torqy]

On 9/26/2016 at 7:55 AM, SierraMist said:

  I wondered what Lexi did with the cat (a shelter)? 

Mrs. Torqy swears that Lexi handed off the cat crate to a woman on a crowded sidewalk as they passed, spy-movie like. I rewound and watched a few times; I'm still not sure.

I'll miss this show. Someone above called it the "spiritual successor" to Columbo. I concur. There is a lot to like about Canadian shows (I'm USAan).

The ending shot reminded me, in a way, of the ending of L&O: Criminal Intent.

On 9/26/2016 at 9:19 AM, Trey said:

Not your fault! Kristen Lehmann did interviews about the series finale and said the network wanted to do another season so I think it was the actors who wanted to move on. Just my impression, nothing was said outright.

There is much to be said for quitting while you're ahead. Too many shows just seem to drag on for far too many seasons.

[vera charles]

Even if they never were explicit about it being Vancouver or Canada, they also never made any attempt to hide it. They showed license plates and money all the time. At least once, someone pointed out to a minor character that he would need a passport to go to New York.

I did like that they got to wrap things up and allow us to believe that everybody's life would go on. It was a nice finale.

[Neurochick]

On 8/31/2016 at 1:44 AM, TheOtherOne said:

Yeah, yeah, murder is wrong, but I still wanted Lexi to get away with it, right up until the point where she stabbed Angie, and probably even after that. Angie's stupidity was the sole off-note for me. Getting into the face of someone you believe is guilty of at least three murders when you're unarmed and have no backup? So, so stupid. In a show that often had sympathetic killers and unsympathetic victims, Lexi--multiple murders and all--was a very fitting final killer.

It's a slippery slope.  Lexi had no right to play judge and jury.  Lexi thought she was above everything and she got just what she deserved.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Neurochick

[MorganSte]

I am finally getting around to watching the rest of this season, and I got to say this episode was great.  I always like Alicia Witt and her character was so tragic!

[JakersWild]

On 7/18/2016 at 4:09 AM, Lord Donia said:

A season of rotating detectives could be interesting. At least I got the satisfaction of seeing the annoying Kennecki get canned. I like Mazur's talk to-the-hand attitude so far. No nonsense, indeed.

I am relieved that DiNozzo-lite, as I think of him, is gone for now, though I see in the episode info he'll be back for a few episodes later in the season. Yes, I'm way behind on this show. It was fun to see him ditched, to a job with none of the glory he was after also.

[JakersWild]

On 5/11/2016 at 2:27 PM, basiltherat said:

I must be nuts, because the ONLY person I felt sorry for was the stepfather!  The kid was acting out before S-D came on board because kid looked used to doing what he wanted. 

Can't speak for your sanity either way, but the guy was a tool. The wall was already painted. Let the teen have his art. Whether the wall is painted over now or someday when the teen moves out, what's the difference? He was overly aggressive for a step that should have been trying to make a new situation work rather than using any excuse to exert authority. He also implied he was going to leave them because he 'could not take much more of this' or some such. Total tool.

[Xeliou66]

I didn’t find the killer sympathetic at all, she was a complete nutjob bitch, the way she ran down the victim and bashed her  brains in while the victim was begging for her life was chilling. What a psycho. She deserves to be locked up forever. 

I did wonder if the mom knew who the husband was having the affair with, it didn’t seem like it when the daughter told her  about the victim, so I wonder if she just discovered the husband’s affair but not who his girlfriend was. I do think mental illness might’ve run in the family with the mom attempting suicide afterdiscovering the affair and then the daughter’s obsession with her friend culminating in murder, I think it’s likely mental problems ran in the family. 

[torqy]

We just discovered that this show is available on IMDB TV if anyone's still interested.