Inside Man - General Discussion

[Madding crowd]

Just finished this and I enjoyed Stanley Tucci and his ‘recorder’ but the whole thing made no sense. No warden would let a death row inmate take cases like a private detective and Tucci found out things he would not have known about. The vicar’s entire story was ridiculous start to finish. I don’t know what the scene after the credits was supposed to mean unless there is another season. Janice was supposed to be so smart but none of her games or actions made any sense to me. Also she never asked for a bottle of water and must have been dehydrated as hell even before the space heater episode. And Ben would have immediately called his father to be let out. 

[Cotypubby]

On 11/11/2022 at 12:04 AM, SunnyBeBe said:

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by Cotypubby
this site update completely messed up this reply, deleting and trying again

[Cotypubby]

On 11/11/2022 at 12:04 AM, SunnyBeBe said:

What about the lady who was initially searching for her missing husband?  The journalist shows her the photo of a soil laden trophy and she looked shocked, then took off in her car.  Where?  So, did she murder him?  How, since he was last seen alive in a public place with many people, right?  

The husband just took the train home. No one noticed him in the station because there were other men from the orchestra also dressed in tuxedos. Tucci offhandedly said something about “being careful if you come home early,” so he likely caught her doing something and she killed him. 
 

I did not understand the final scene when Janice goes to see Stanley Tucci at all. She’s not married, they made a whole point to show that she has no friends and doesn’t meet people. Who the hell is this husband that she suddenly wants to kill!? She flies from the UK to America just to meet with him? I get that they are trying to set up another season, they made the murder of Tucci’s wife into such a mystery with no answers at all, but that last bit was just stupid and really did not at all fit with the characters.

[hatchetgirl]

The whole Janice/vicar/wife/son/pedo flash drive thing is so freaking stupid and nonsensical. I want to continue watching for the prison inmates, but I don't think I can continue down this road to stupid town. 

[Litnit]

On 11/2/2022 at 9:45 PM, Evagirl said:

I just finished episode 2.  I did nap in and out.  However, I am a little annoyed with the premise. Once it was discovered what was on the thumb drive, why didn't the vicar just destroy it and let her walk out the door.  There was no proof (as far as I could tell) that anyone in that house was a pedophile or had that kind of porn on a computer. So the only thing to back up Janice's story was the thumb drive.  Let her run to the police, where's the proof?  Am I missing something or could it have really been that simple?

I can suspend disbelief about lots of things, but yes, it should have been that simple. Also, nobody seemed terribly concerned that Edgar could escalate to hurting children (putting aside the real victims in the material). Why the need to protect him?

[lucindabelle]

The last episode was hilarious and on purpose- you don’t write lines like “murder there’s so much admin!” By accident. And it made me rethink the whole series.

the tUcci serial killer sidekick, the THE RAPIST joke- it ALL should have been heightened for laughs. Then we wouldn’t mind the idiocy if tge Vicar going to such lengths to protect the verger. 
 

u mean mary making whoosh noises with the bread knife and being instantly sorry.

 

ahe was the only actress who really brought the funny.

 

tennant looked panicked but it never translated to comedy. The final episode with less of him had me laughing out loud.

and then I know what works were in, and I knew ajanice would survive.

[millennium]

Do they not have IP's in England?   I know they have MP's ...

If they used IP's the police could have directly and credibly linked to Edgar to the kidporn downloads, had Janice gone to the police.

My favorite line of the series, from Mary:

"How does anyone ever get murdered?  There's so much admin!"

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by millennium

[Paloma]

On 11/19/2022 at 7:04 PM, raven said:

About the cell,  I have no idea.  Judging by all of the stuff in his cell, he looked like a "favored" prisoner.

Catching up several months later, my husband and I found the series interesting, especially when viewed as a black comedy, but had similar complaints as most posters here regarding the premise and how the characters behaved. But if you accept the part of the premise that shows a highly educated death row prisoner who is a Sherlock Holmes, it makes sense that he would be treated as a favored prisoner. The warden clearly does not want him to be executed, which may be as much because of Grieff's usefulness in solving criminal cases as because the warden respects his civilized behavior (presumably in contrast to most ordinary inmates) and wanting to atone for his horrific crime by taking cases based on moral worth. I don't remember how long ago Grieff murdered his wife, but I got the impression that he has been on death row for several years--long enough to form a somewhat personal relationship with the warden. However, it didn't seem like the guards treated Grieff with the same respect as the warden did.   

I just thought of another thing that did not make sense: When the father of Grieff's wife assaulted Grieff, the warden let it happen so he could get the assault on video and then blackmail the father to use his connections to either delay or stop Grieff's execution. The father was apparently a criminal boss, and the warden threatened to turn the video over to the FBI if the father didn't do this. But the father was British (as was Grieff's wife, I think), and I assume that his criminal activities were in England. Would the FBI even have jurisdiction? It would have made more sense to threaten to turn the video over to British police or Interpol, but I guess it's possible that the father's criminal activities were in the US. 

[JustHereForFood]

Well, this was something. Reminded me a lot of Harlan Coben's kind of miniseries - it was intense and had me wanting to binge the whole thing to see the result, but it was full of nonsensical contrivances, plus I just have to roll my eyes when people get into their self-righteous speeches about protecting their families by any means necessary.

The main story was interesting even though it had me screaming at every character to take a breath and think things through before doing the series of bad decisions.

But all of the rest, like the cases that the prisoner was solving, was complete BS. It makes sense that Moffat wrote this, it was just like with some Sherlock cases, he had an idea like "therapist" vs. "the rapist" that he though was just a brilliant pun and built a completely nonsensical case around it. So, a woman continues to live with her husband after she learns that he raped at least one woman, continues to sleep with him for whatever reasons she has - that part I can buy, sadly. But she just needs a therapy session after every time they have sex, not a regular appointment, not a one-time session, no, it has to be exactly after each sex. And she asks the secretary who was the rape victim to pay the therapist. And the secretary who thinks she wants to send the money to the husband, AKA the rapist, never asks about the payments or tells her not to use that word because it's traumatizing for her. Sure, that is how women work in Moffat's head. Could there be any more misogyny written into such a short case? 

I must be in a minority because I didn't find the rapist cellmate funny or cute, just disgustingly creepy. I don't support the death penalty on principle, but with some cases like serial rapists I can't really be bothered to care.

I got invested in the murdered wife's story after the prisoner (Tucci) said that it would become obvious why he killed her once they find the missing head. I had a theory that because her father is apparently some mob boss, she might have faked her death with her husband to get away from the father and they killed some other woman. I even thought that Moraq might turn out to be the wife. I guess it just remains a mystery, why he killed her.

[PurpleTentacle]

Don't get me wrong, I love Dolly Wells, but when David Tennant threw her down the stairs like that I was hoping this was a Scream-situation where she would be dead and all the marketing with her in it was just a red hering.

But regardless, after one episode this is very, very good.  Let's hope they keep up this level of quality.

Edit Episode 2:

Janice is playing an interesting yet dangerous game. It took me till the end of the episode to figure out what she was doing. She made a big deal to the wife about what she'd have to give in order to get the e-mail password, then she just gave the password to the vicar, leaving the wife to wonder what he might have given Janice in return, when in reality it was nothing, sowing mistrust. But I'm not sure what her end goal is here. At the moment it seems to me like she would have been better off to just wait it out and try to calm everybody as much as possible. Instead she is escalating the situation.

Episode 3:

I really think Mary is right, Janice thinks everboy but her is dumb and thus she is advancing the completely wrong strategy. Instead of deescalition, she has escalated this situation at every turn. By some miracle it worked out for her so far, when realistically it should have gotten her killed sooner, but it's still not a winning strategy. That would have been to appeal to the vicar's better nature and pretending like she came to believe him, after a while. She seems to be a good actress, she could have sold that...

Though since these dumbasses actually sent the e-mail from their own house, maybe she is right, maybe everybody but her is a stupid...

Episode 4:

Yeah her laptop and phone missing, that's the problem. Not that the police might check where the e-mail was sent from when people notice she's missing or presumed dead and it will come up as your house, as these e-mail providers log your IP adress forever.

Also for a supposedly super smart woman Janice doesn't seem to have much of a problem with a gas heater running in an enclosed space...

Man people fall down stairs and get hit by things in this show a lot.

-

This was a very good show. Characters acted stupidly at times, but believably so, well at least most of the time. Very tightly written. I'm a bit sad that it's over so fast but that's better than it dragging on for too long.

Also that last scene was a fun twist.

I'm wondering if there will be a second season. The brits sometimes take their sweet time, so that there isn't any news yet might not mean anything. But now that I've seen that it's written by Steven Moffat, I really don't want there to be a second one. He has a tendency, oh what am I saying, a rule, to flanderize his own work, that usually starts out great, till just a bad farce. I'd hate to see him do that to this show.

Edited September 10 by PurpleTentacle

[PurpleTentacle]

On 11/3/2022 at 2:45 AM, Evagirl said:

I just finished episode 2.  I did nap in and out.  However, I am a little annoyed with the premise. Once it was discovered what was on the thumb drive, why didn't the vicar just destroy it and let her walk out the door.  There was no proof (as far as I could tell) that anyone in that house was a pedophile or had that kind of porn on a computer. So the only thing to back up Janice's story was the thumb drive.  Let her run to the police, where's the proof?  Am I missing something or could it have really been that simple?

I guess they were worried about the accusations and rumours. It's also not like he conciously decided to trap her in the cellar, he wanted to talk to her and then things escaleted further and further.

What I found less believable was that Janice was supposedly super smart but acted super dumb at times. Did she really think escalating the situation was a good idea? Though that tracks with how Moffat writes "smart people". They are always assholes who never play nice, even if it could save their life. Also would she really think that an extremely smart kid would just knowingly hand her a thumb drive full of unencrypted child porn? Wouldn't she think that the vicars story is more likely?

On 11/17/2022 at 1:12 AM, BonnieD said:

Better yet, jump in and say I'll go with you so I can explain how I had this thumb drive. I thought perhaps he didn't feel he should betray the man's confidecne, but such criminal info any confessional sort of protocol goes out the window.

At least with the catholics the seal of confession can only be broken if you confess a plan to hurt somebody. Even serious past crimes like murder are covered by the seal. Not sure how exactly it is with the anglicans, but I assume it's similar.

But considering how far he was willing to go to protect his son, you'd think he'd still do it...

On 11/19/2022 at 7:36 PM, raven said:

I have to put aside the whole dumb premise that got them there.  The Vicar - excuse me, fucking Vicar - actually tells Edgar "they have ways of tracing these" when talking about the flash drive.   Well yeah, you idiot.  You didn't realize that a day or so ago?   Or maybe think that having that drive and whatever is on Edgar's computer would help find the children. 

You can't actually trace flash drives. That's something the fucking vicar made up to trick Edgar.

It also doesn't seem like Edgar is well enough connected or savy enough to trade anything privately. All the material he has will be publically availible and law enforecement will have had it for years.

Edited September 10 by PurpleTentacle