S01.E06: The Frustrating Things About Psychopaths

[blackwing]

I think it is indeed Adrian Pasdar.  Wikipedia and IMDB could be wrong of course, but it does sound like him, especially after seeing him back to back on "Agents of Shield" which airs just before "Forever" on the same network.

 

I liked this episode, loved the Jack the Ripper elements.  However, my thought is that it was unnecessary to cram the Black Dahlia stuff in there too.  Felt really compacted, they could have saved that for a multi-episode arc.  I assume the father did both the Mary Kelly murder and the Black Dahlia murder.  Don't really understand his motivation for either, but whatever.

[rho]

I liked this episode, loved the Jack the Ripper elements.  However, my thought is that it was unnecessary to cram the Black Dahlia stuff in there too.  Felt really compacted, they could have saved that for a multi-episode arc.  I assume the father did both the Mary Kelly murder and the Black Dahlia murder.  Don't really understand his motivation for either, but whatever.

 

I thought it was rushed too. I was expecting a multi-episode arc introduced or recurring serial killer like ying/yang from Psych, anything to get away from the procedural aspect of the show. I don't love Adam's storyline but I think it is severely underused right now. The show needs something to set it apart from other cop shows and having this mysterious guy calling Henry every other episode isn't cutting it.

[Netfoot]

I wonder if his secret will get revealed to her by season's end?

 

It might make a good season finale cliff-hanger.

 

There's no way Henry would need burner phones explained to him. I'm willing to handwave a lot of stuff, but that was just dumb. I feel like the show sometimes thinks that Henry has just awakened after more than 200 years, rather than having been living for more than 200 years.

 

I think it's an attempt to reinforce the idea of his unusual age by showing old-fashioned tendencies.  He's been around so long he doesn't know a cell phone from a curling iron, sort of thing.  Unfortunately the old-fashioned vibe undermines the ever-youthful attribute of the character. 

[sinkwriter]

 

And I know Henry feels pain when he dies, but this was the first time it saddened me to watch him die. Probably because his death wasn't quick. He had to lie on the floor helplessly with a punctured superior vena cava (and lung?) and a fractured spine. And there was the real possibility that Detective Martinez was going to watch him fade away.

 

I agree - the other times he died it's not pretty, but it seems generally 'standard' to him. But this time he looked really upset, and of course that makes sense (who wants to die in that horrific manner) but at the same time I also wondered if he was upset because this person who seems to have the same 'affliction' as him is the one who killed him. The person that should be his kindred spirit is instead this violent person who has no issues with calmly and perhaps even gladly slitting a man's throat. So it was emotionally and physically horrific, to be completely vulnerable to this Adam.

 

I was heartbroken and disturbed, seeing him killed in that moment. It was tough to watch. I think I may have even looked away at the last second.

[sinkwriter]

I also think they showed it was much more traumatic for him because usually Henry appears in the water kind of flailing but that's about it. Not this episode. Instead, he came up in the water, flailing and clutching at his throat. The whole sequence from the murderer taunting him and pressing on his broken back up to this moment of coming out of the water was much more upsetting than Henry's usual deaths. It was disturbing.

 

Which is why I liked the added touch of Henry all bundled up at home, declaring to Abe that violent deaths put him off his appetite. He clearly needed some comfortable surroundings after such a terrible ordeal. Poor guy.