S04.E07: Good Man, Cruel World

[Door County Cherry]

Quote

The tables turn for Joe when an influential figure comes to town with a tempting offer as Nadia follows a hunch. 

 

[Spartan Girl]

What. The. Fuck?!

I mean, in hindsight I shouldn’t be that shocked, but still…WHAT THE FUCK?!

[Lebanna]

Yes! This is actually happening. 

Joe is just such a weak, evil, irredeemable bastard and the character needs to die horribly.

I’m so happy they’ve actually gone there after all the ‘what if he became a big hero’ stuff last half-season.

Nope. He’s a dirty, cruel, pathetic little wanker.

And all the time that bellend has been wandering around England narrating the story of how he’s just such a warm, long suffering good guy to himself. While staring blankly at people and then slashing them.

Love it. He’s got to go now. Allez Marienne.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Lebanna

[Anela]

It's been an awful week, and I almost fell asleep three times. I had to rewind, to where I kept dropping off. So, it really is just him. I was thinking we hadn't seen the cage this season. I also couldn't see them letting Marianne off that easily.

How long is she supposed to have been stuck in that cage? Is someone really texting him, or did he imagine that, too? He must have read about her dad coming to town, before she told him. I'm surprised he didn't hurt him, when he wrote in that book. Was he imagining her dad, too?

I was wondering why Kate didn't just use her dad's money for good. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Anela

[seacliffsal]

Kudos to everyone who predicted that Joe was imagining Rhys.  Although I had read all of the posts related to this it still surprised me.  The season finally seems to be picking up.

[Anela]

3 minutes ago, seacliffsal said:

Kudos to everyone who predicted that Joe was imagining Rhys.  Although I had read all of the posts related to this it still surprised me.  The season finally seems to be picking up.

Yep, I'm surprised it didn't clock for me, until I was writing here that you never see him with the other friends. 

For some reason, I thought this was premiering tomorrow, not today. I might just watch the last three tonight. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Anela

[seacliffsal]

4 minutes ago, Anela said:

Yep, I'm surprised it didn't clock for me, until I was writing here that you never see him with the other friends. 

For some reason, I thought this was premiering tomorrow, not today. I might just watch the last three tonight. 

I binged the whole thing today and think it will be worthwhile if you decide to watch them all today/tonight.

[Spartan Girl]

Poor real Rhys though. Another innocent casualty.

[Anela]

I'm still trying to figure out if he hallucinated Kate's dad, or if he really came to him, wanting Rhys killed. He knew who he was, when they met at dinner. 

[Door County Cherry]

Hey, it's Greg Kinnear.  I hadn't heard he had joined the series so that was a fun surprise.  I don't know if he hallucinated him too--or his knowledge of who Joe is and his asking Joe to kill Rhys.  

Ah Marienne is in a cage.  That was a cool surprise. 

[Glade]

15 hours ago, Anela said:

I'm still trying to figure out if he hallucinated Kate's dad, or if he really came to him, wanting Rhys killed. He knew who he was, when they met at dinner. 

Yeah, I'm assuming Kate's dad doesn't know who he is and didn't try to convince him to kill Rhys. With that kind of money he could certainly hire people to see through Joe's disguise/fake identity quite easily, but he could also hire a proper asassin, unless his point was to manipulate Joe into committing a murder so he could expose and put him in jail to get rid of his daughter's not-good-enough boyfriend. 

In any case, it does make sense that Joe is the 'eat the rich killer' and obviously didn't let Marrienne go.

[BlueSkies]

So Kate's dad and Rhys know who he is but no one else?

 

I figured my take on the ending was Rhys set up a look alike because he knew Joe would react like that.  He's always been a step ahead of Joe this series so he beat him to the punch kind of thing? 

[Door County Cherry]

1 hour ago, BlueSkies said:

I figured my take on the ending was Rhys set up a look alike because he knew Joe would react like that.  He's always been a step ahead of Joe this series so he beat him to the punch kind of thing? 

Nope.  That reveal was that the Rhys that talks to Joe is all in his head.  Joe killed the real Rhys, the one who actually exists. Real Rhys doesn't know Joe.  The Rhys talking to him at the end was Joe's hallucination.  It has been Joe's hallucination all along. 

One good thing is that they didn't wait until the last ep to reveal that. 

[BlueSkies]

3 minutes ago, Door County Cherry said:

Nope.  That reveal was that the Rhys that talks to Joe is all in his head.  Joe killed the real Rhys, the one who actually exists. Real Rhys doesn't know Joe.  The Rhys talking to him at the end was Joe's hallucination.  It has been Joe's hallucination all along. 

One good thing is that they didn't wait until the last ep to reveal that. 

Gotcha.

 

so Joe kidnapped Marianne then? It makes sense now that he put her in that chamber as he did in the past the other people that knew what he was 

[Paloma]

So I just happen to be editing a book about the DSM (the psychiatry diagnostic "bible") as I'm watching this, and if Joe wasn't aware that he was committing the murders and thought Rhys was real until the end of this episode, then he could have dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personality disorder). The diagnosis only requires two (though it can be more) distinct personality states; in this case Rhys the murderer is the alternate personality of Joe. Gaps in remembering important personal information and  traumatic events are common in DID, as are hallucinations. If this is what the writers are going for, it's kind of an easy way out of holding Joe responsible for all the murders since he came to London, as well as keeping Marienne in the cage. I'd need to rewatch the previous episodes of this season to see if all the scenes are consistent with Rhys being a hallucination.  

OTOH, I kind of like the idea that Joe was so determined to make a new start and stop killing when he moved to England that he had to hallucinate another person to continue murdering and frame Joe. I was rooting for Joe to stop being controlled for his obsessions and compulsion to kill, even though it was wrong for him to get away with murder. It's interesting that Joe has mostly been presented as a fundamentally decent guy who doesn't really want to imprison and kill people but finds himself either overcome by his obsession/compulsion to have the person he "loves" or in situations where a person "deserves" to die. So giving him a psychiatric excuse for being a murderer allows the viewer to continue seeing him as a fundamentally decent guy who was "forced" to do these evil things to save people he loved or to save himself. 

I have a lot of questions about this new scenario. If Rhys has been a hallucination all along when interacting with Joe, was the hitman hired by Love's father also a hallucination? IIRC, the hitman told Joe to kill Marienne because she was the only person who knew the truth about Joe. We saw Joe resist this order and then grab Marienne's necklace just before she got on the train, to give the hitman "proof" that he killed Marienne (since Joe supposedly did not want to really kill her and wanted to keep her safe). Was the scene where he grabbed her necklace and she got on the train imagined? Did the earlier scene where Joe found Marienne in the abandoned building actually play out differently than we saw, with him capturing her and taking her to his glass cage rather than letting her go? And when did he build the cage in the abandoned subway? I don't have a good sense of how much time went by between his arriving in London and finding Marienne. 

Also, if the hitman was a hallucination, how did Joe get the false papers that allowed him to start a new life and, more importantly, get hired as a professor? Were these all created by the guy in the Philippines who Joe had in the California cage but let go? I can see that guy being able to create good fake IDs, but creating a resume good enough to get you hired as a professor at a university without real references (who would normally be called) is a big stretch.

[BlueSkies]

1 hour ago, Paloma said:

So I just happen to be editing a book about the DSM (the psychiatry diagnostic "bible") as I'm watching this, and if Joe wasn't aware that he was committing the murders and thought Rhys was real until the end of this episode, then he could have dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personality disorder). The diagnosis only requires two (though it can be more) distinct personality states; in this case Rhys the murderer is the alternate personality of Joe. Gaps in remembering important personal information and  traumatic events are common in DID, as are hallucinations. If this is what the writers are going for, it's kind of an easy way out of holding Joe responsible for all the murders since he came to London, as well as keeping Marienne in the cage. I'd need to rewatch the previous episodes of this season to see if all the scenes are consistent with Rhys being a hallucination.  

OTOH, I kind of like the idea that Joe was so determined to make a new start and stop killing when he moved to England that he had to hallucinate another person to continue murdering and frame Joe. I was rooting for Joe to stop being controlled for his obsessions and compulsion to kill, even though it was wrong for him to get away with murder. It's interesting that Joe has mostly been presented as a fundamentally decent guy who doesn't really want to imprison and kill people but finds himself either overcome by his obsession/compulsion to have the person he "loves" or in situations where a person "deserves" to die. So giving him a psychiatric excuse for being a murderer allows the viewer to continue seeing him as a fundamentally decent guy who was "forced" to do these evil things to save people he loved or to save himself. 

I have a lot of questions about this new scenario. If Rhys has been a hallucination all along when interacting with Joe, was the hitman hired by Love's father also a hallucination? IIRC, the hitman told Joe to kill Marienne because she was the only person who knew the truth about Joe. We saw Joe resist this order and then grab Marienne's necklace just before she got on the train, to give the hitman "proof" that he killed Marienne (since Joe supposedly did not want to really kill her and wanted to keep her safe). Was the scene where he grabbed her necklace and she got on the train imagined? Did the earlier scene where Joe found Marienne in the abandoned building actually play out differently than we saw, with him capturing her and taking her to his glass cage rather than letting her go? And when did he build the cage in the abandoned subway? I don't have a good sense of how much time went by between his arriving in London and finding Marienne. 

Also, if the hitman was a hallucination, how did Joe get the false papers that allowed him to start a new life and, more importantly, get hired as a professor? Were these all created by the guy in the Philippines who Joe had in the California cage but let go? I can see that guy being able to create good fake IDs, but creating a resume good enough to get you hired as a professor at a university without real references (who would normally be called) is a big stretch.

Some of the murders as well I recall I think he heard screaming at or wasn't present?  Plus all the "texts" from Rhys?  Who puts Joe and Raold in the handcuffs then in episode 5 with the fire? 

 

The show already stretches the imagination as is.  But this is getting a little on the ridiculous side evener me if this is the case.

 

Nonetheless of course I will still watch 

[Paloma]

11 minutes ago, BlueSkies said:

Some of the murders as well I recall I think he heard screaming at or wasn't present?  Plus all the "texts" from Rhys?  Who puts Joe and Raold in the handcuffs then in episode 5 with the fire? 

I can handwave the texts because he could have typed them himself (though we didn't see that), or maybe they didn't exist at all--he could have just been typing the "answers" to non-existent texts of what was actually just in his mind. Also I noticed that there was a visual effect indicating "disappearing text" each time he read one supposedly from Rhys; I originally assumed these texts were intentionally sent by Rhys to disappear after being read (like Snapchat messages), but maybe this visual effect was meant to show they were actually thoughts rather than texts.

It did seem like there were murders he was not present at, but it's possible he did them before the bodies were discovered. Not sure about the screaming--I don't remember the details of each murder in this season. 

The hardest one to explain is Joe and Roald in handcuffs/chains, but if we assume that Rhys was a hallucination, either Joe was not really chained up or he made it look like he was so he would look like a victim (maybe leaving the handcuffs/chains unlocked). But that wouldn't explain why Joe didn't kill Roald (who had tried to kill him, so could be justified in Joe's mind) or why Joe would have started a fire that could have trapped them both if Kate hadn't found them. If he just wanted to look like a hero, why do it in a way that was so risky to himself? The writers better give us a plausible explanation.

[BlueSkies]

2 minutes ago, Paloma said:

I can handwave the texts because he could have typed them himself (though we didn't see that), or maybe they didn't exist at all--he could have just been typing the "answers" to non-existent texts of what was actually just in his mind. Also I noticed that there was a visual effect indicating "disappearing text" each time he read one supposedly from Rhys; I originally assumed these texts were intentionally sent by Rhys to disappear after being read (like Snapchat messages), but maybe this visual effect was meant to show they were actually thoughts rather than texts.

It did seem like there were murders he was not present at, but it's possible he did them before the bodies were discovered. Not sure about the screaming--I don't remember the details of each murder in this season. 

The hardest one to explain is Joe and Roald in handcuffs/chains, but if we assume that Rhys was a hallucination, either Joe was not really chained up or he made it look like he was so he would look like a victim (maybe leaving the handcuffs/chains unlocked). But that wouldn't explain why Joe didn't kill Roald (who had tried to kill him, so could be justified in Joe's mind) or why Joe would have started a fire that could have trapped them both if Kate hadn't found them. If he just wanted to look like a hero, why do it in a way that was so risky to himself? The writers better give us a plausible explanation.

Yeah the handcuff scene with Raold is questionable.

 

 

But even before learning Rhys was a hallucination it didn’t make sense to me how none of the other gang are now on to what Rhys is

[JenE4]

Kudos to those who guessed in the first half that Joe was hallucinating his relationship with Rhys. Clues in these two new episodes was Rhys “looking past” Joe when Joe was giving him a close, menacing look at his speech (when the stalker took his picture). And also the two times Rhys was in his apartment, they went to the trouble of showing Joe unlock the door—so how the heck did Rhys get in? Is Rhys even friends with this group, or does he just happen to be a patron of Soho House? I know we’ve previously discussed that no one is around when the two of them are talking, but I also don’t think we’ve ever really seen him talk to anyone else, either, right? So I guess he was never really there at all? There was that one group dinner that Joe was talking to Rhys and someone else chimed in excuse me, like are you saying something to me/us so it may have been an empty chair? I think that was when the theory started, right? Okay, so we thought Rhys somehow figured out who Joe is—but did Kate’s dad actually figure out who he is, or is this another hallucination? It’s not me choosing to kill people, it’s these other terrible people forcing me to do it to protect the people that I love (Marianne and Kate).

[Paloma]

52 minutes ago, JenE4 said:

did Kate’s dad actually figure out who he is, or is this another hallucination?

I'm inclined to think that Kate's dad does know who Joe is--not sure if he knows the extent of Joe's murdering, but at a minimum he has good reason to be suspicious just based on news reports that he or his investigator could have easily found once they had Joe's real name. Being such a rich and powerful corporate executive and being protective of Kate, it's not surprising her dad would check out any boyfriend not from "their world."

However, I'm not sure that Kate's dad really told Joe to murder Rhys. If he did, the motive is unclear (or maybe I missed something in the conversation, real or imagined). 

[Paloma]

Has it been explained why Kate's father is American but she has a posh British accent? I have a vague memory that her mother was a British model but neglectful of Kate, so maybe Kate went to British boarding school. But I thought Kate said something in this episode about spending time with her father as a child and/or teenager.

[KaveDweller]

On 3/11/2023 at 9:25 AM, Paloma said:

Also, if the hitman was a hallucination, how did Joe get the false papers that allowed him to start a new life and, more importantly, get hired as a professor? Were these all created by the guy in the Philippines who Joe had in the California cage but let go? I can see that guy being able to create good fake IDs, but creating a resume good enough to get you hired as a professor at a university without real references (who would normally be called) is a big stretch.

My take was the hitman was real, and that when Joe went after Marianne at the train station, he actually grabbed her and put in in the cage. But he remembered it as letting her go.

I can't decide if Kate's father really knows who Joe is or not. If real, it seems he defaced that first edition book from Winston Churchill with the address of where Rhys was staying.

[bettername2come]

I can't say I thought Joe was going to have gone full-on DID. Despite being crazy/evil/psychopathic, he's always been a fairly reliable narrator, so I Was expecting more of the same. I honestly assumed they had written Marianne out due to the actor having other commitments or something, so I wasn't expecting the cage reveal. 

[Scarlett45]

Damn y’all. This season is getting good! Thanks to everyone who called it in the front half that Joe was imagining his relationship with Rhys. 

 

On 3/12/2023 at 7:52 PM, bettername2come said:

I can't say I thought Joe was going to have gone full-on DID. Despite being crazy/evil/psychopathic, he's always been a fairly reliable narrator, so I Was expecting more of the same. I honestly assumed they had written Marianne out due to the actor having other commitments or something, so I wasn't expecting the cage reveal. 

Me either! I was shocked!! I thought she might show up in the last episode but I did think Joe actually let her go and move on with her life.