S02.E02: Episode 2

[alias1]

In the e-book about Ellie, which accompanied episode 1, it says Tom believes Ellie was behind Joe's arrest in order to get out of the marriage.

Seriously?  You have to read some kind of ebook before you get this?  I couldn't figure out why Tom was mad at Ellie, either.  They couldn't have Tom explain it to Mark in one of their scenes.  This just smacks of bad writing when you have to reference outside material to explain something on a tv show.  Sorry, staveDarsky, nothing against you here.  I'm glad you're giving us this information.

 

But all this conspiracy stuff about Ellie (between Beth and now Tom) is just cheapening the series for me. 

[staveDarsky]

No one HAS to read the books. They're for people who want a little more on each character. Certainly book 5, which is about the defense attorney, doesn't add much.

 

And of all the bits of information we get in the books, the explanation of why Tom's mad at Ellie really belonged in the show itself, right from the start.

 

About the wigs -- one big criticism from British fans was that the judge is wearing completely the wrong wig. LOL

[MaryPatShelby]

Re:  Beth's anger

 

I understand all the "she's lost a son" etc stuff, but I find it extremely hard to fathom that Beth, in her heart of hearts, believes that Ellie knew all along that her husband was attracted to boys, and had killed Danny, and that all the cop investigative work was to put on a good show.  Ellie needs to fight (not physically) back.

 

And I agree that we shouldn't have needed an ebook to explain why Tom is angry at Ellie.  (Why doesn't anyone seem angry at Joe?) We lowly viewers-only would have liked to know! However, is there an explanation somewhere about how Ellie's sister got over her addiction, or gambling, or whatever it was, just in time to provide Tom a decent place to live?

Edited March 25, 2015 by buffylew

[Eozostrodon]

I don't find it hard to understand Beth and Tom's reactions, but I didn't really see it as conspiracy-esque. It seems perfectly natural to me that two people who have just had their entire world destroyed would direct their anger at the closest target, in a situation where the person who's most responsible is not available. You have to lash out at someone. And Tom is probably in denial, which is a typical response. It's a lot easier to tell yourself that your mum screwed up and made a mistake and everything will be fine in the end, than admit to yourself that your dad is a child-murdering pedophile who's probably going to die in prison.

 

[LilJen]

OMG. Hardy REALLY IS the WORST detective in all Britain. Possibly the world.

 

Also, NIGEL, BUTT OUT!!!!

[hincandenza]

I'm out. What a goddamned disappointment this is, two episodes in.

I watched the first season on Netflix this weekend, binged it over two nights, and it was a revelation. Brilliant acting and characterization, a grounded- almost intimate- realism of the emotional and personal toil, and a satisfying conclusion that felt earned. If I had one complaint, it was the almost Twin Peaks/soap opera way every person had a deep dark secret combined with menacing music. Still, as soon as S1E8 finished, I immediately recommended it to a couple of friends, because it was so grippingly honest and well done.

So naturally I continued today with the first two episodes of S2, and bam- that's all gone now. The characters have become weird, alien parodies of themselves- none worse than the incomprehensibly horrid Beth- and the entire premise is like a bad movie sequel, where there wasn't any more story to tell but it was so successful they have to hamfistedly retcon the original and riddle this season with absurd plotholes.

As others have noted, there's NO reason the confession would be tossed out simply because we can't theoretically prove he wasn't coerced. The defense didn't even assert explicitly that he was beaten into confessing, the timeline doesn't work, the prosecution does nothing to refute it (why even have a strategy session to handle this eventuality when apparently there was no actual response prepared) and the judge just... goes along with it all, discarding a videotaped testimony by someone who literally turned himself in by activating the GPS deceased's phone?!? Pfft, as if the jury is going to ignore the confesssion to blindly let a child killing pedophile walk because of a totally understandable outburst by his wife. We know what kind of people are on juries, we saw them in season 1 when they hounded poor Jack Marshall to death. As an example of bad writing, it wasn't even clear if the jury had seen the tape; if not, why tell them to disregard it? If they had, why didn't the defense move to prevent them seeing it to begin with? It all makes no sense.

This case should be a slam dunk where even the defense attorney/casting cliché would just tell her client "Eh, you need to plead out". Why did she even take the case like it was some important quest, when there were no "discrepancies" to be found when we watched season 1? That was part of why S1 shone, that in the end Hardy got his penance... all of which is now in danger of being erased.

And don't get me started on the Bad Screenwriting 101 twist of the heart-wrenching and legally unfounded exhumatiom, or Beth showing up at the exact 15 minute window where she can cause Lee Ashworth to disappear because of Ellie's stupidity, or that Hardy even chose that location, or what his big plan was in any case- hope Lee promptly confesses everything as soon as he gets there? Nothing so far makes any sense, so I can only assume that the presence of the dependably Gollum-like Charlotte Rampling means the writing team from Dexter was brought with her to make papier mache out of the scripts.

It's like they set out to destroy the goodwill of a fantastic first season with this... utter shite. I guess if it's some postmodern way of making the audience experience the same anger as the Latimer family by retroactively undoing everything that made the first season great, then bravo. But my money is on the laughable screenwriting incompetence of rank amateurs.

I dunno, if any of you had the stomach to follow this dreck to the end, PM me if it turns out it became stupendously amazing in episode 3-8.

[smorbie]

On 3/13/2015 at 7:52 AM, LisaM said:

I didn't get the sense that Lee kidnapped Claire. She appeared to be too large for him to easily carry plus it all happened so quickly. Either she went with him willingly and is an innocent or she is somehow involved in the girls' deaths.

 

Not sure why Jocelyn didn't object more forcefully to the confession being thrown out but perhaps that is why she didn't want to take the case: she isn't the same tremendous attorney that she once was?

 

I just got the idea that the British court system is a lot more polite than the American one.  I'm writing this a year later, after the final season has aired, and I have to say I hated the court stuff in season two.  I DESPISED the woman who played the defense attorney and really hated the prosecuting one as well.  It was just a matter of degrees of hated between the two.  And, I usually don't care about appearances, but the defense attorney had an extremely large head and huge mouth.  Neither of those made me like her any more.

[secnarf]

8 minutes ago, smorbie said:

I just got the idea that the British court system is a lot more polite than the American one.  I'm writing this a year later, after the final season has aired, and I have to say I hated the court stuff in season two.  I DESPISED the woman who played the defense attorney and really hated the prosecuting one as well.  It was just a matter of degrees of hated between the two.  And, I usually don't care about appearances, but the defense attorney had an extremely large head and huge mouth.  Neither of those made me like her any more.

I also despised both lawyers. I think I hated Jocelyn a bit more because she was just so ineffective that I felt I could have done a better job than she did! And nobody in their right mind would ever want me as a lawyer.

I felt like the lawyers - and a big part of this is Jocelyn's ineffective prosecution - were so ridiculous that it took me out of the court scenes and made the whole trial completely unbelievable for me.

[smorbie]

Just now, secnarf said:

I also despised both lawyers. I think I hated Jocelyn a bit more because she was just so ineffective that I felt I could have done a better job than she did! And nobody in their right mind would ever want me as a lawyer.

I felt like the lawyers - and a big part of this is Jocelyn's ineffective prosecution - were so ridiculous that it took me out of the court scenes and made the whole trial completely unbelievable for me.

Jocelyn was HORRIBLE!  I know she couldn't see, but if her one assistant couldn't handle all the reading, she should have taken on another.  Here in the US, we always have law students eager for such a challenge.  She also had an air about her of someone who was superior, didn't she?  But, at least she held to higher ethics law is SUPPOSED to uphold.  Big head just made stuff up.  That's ambulance chasing behavior.  It's something I just can't stand.  We've seen a lot of it here in the last 20 year or so, and it often works, so they got that right.  But, it's awful.

[Roseanna]

Many have convincinly shown how weak was the claim that Joe was beating to confession.

I only want to add that Joe had plenty of time to revoke his confession but he didn't it.  

 

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 3:50 AM, Automne said:

They do have a fair bit of circumstantial evidence, don't they? Danny was strangled with Joe's bare hands, so they could do a match with the bruising with his hands. Plus, the shoes, whatever Owen's mother saw, etc. And what would be most effective is taking a timer and just counting down the time it would take to strangle an 11-year old child to death, which would be around 4 minutes (we were shown like 30 seconds, but Danny would have just passed out and spontaneously started breathing again in real life). Four minutes isn't long, but when it's illustrating somebody having their hands wrapped around a child's neck and depriving them of oxygen, it's a very long time. And it's hard to say it was an accident when it takes that long to kill somebody.

That. The procecutor dealt very lightly the circumstancial evidence.

Joe told already Ellie in S1 ep8 that it was an accident. But one can't accidentally strangle a person to death. And at least in our country, one can't say that "I didn't know that a person will die if I do him thus", if the fact is "supposed to be generally known".

[Roseanna]

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 0:14 AM, Automne said:

I'm amazed the confession got tossed. I'm surprised that in Britain, where Big Brother is always watching, they don't have surveillance cameras in confession rooms like they do in America. Here, everything would have been recorded, so there would have been timestamps of the recording and Ellie beating the crap out of Joe Miller and made it clear that the latter happened after the confession.

 

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 2:47 AM, joelene said:

This confused me too. Jocelyn said she'd "seen the tape" of Ellie beating up Joe, so there clearly was one. Or, what, there was a tape running with Joe sitting alone in the room but none when he actually confessed? The argument that he could have been assaulted earlier on would surely be laughable if they actually reviewed the tape. Idk, maybe this happens but it seems like a stretch.

 

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 3:50 AM, Automne said:

The other thing is wouldn't the defense team need to do more than merely suggest to get the confession thrown out? Like having a doctor, a psychologist, and other objective professionals examine the injuries and taped confession to give an opinion if the injuries could have occurred beforehand, if Joe seemed to be under duress or otherwise coerced to give a confession, Hardy's demeanor, etc.?

Letting a mere suggestion be enough to toss out the meat of what would get a child killer and budding pedophile convicted and put behind bars is a little worrisome. 

 

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 4:16 AM, staveDarsky said:

Well, the writing last week hinted big time that the confession Joe made to Hardy in the  backyard shed/garage wouldn't hold because there was no recording or witnesses. What I really don't get is the extreme anger at Ellie as if she alone blew the case. In fact, It seemed like Ellie beating on Joe would help others see how appalled she was over his actions. I could understand all the anger being focused on Hardy, because ultimately he neglected to process Joe fully and keep Ellie from beating up on Joe.

 

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 7:28 AM, rozen said:

I don't think the defense was disputing that Ellie attacked Joe after he confessed. She was insinuating that Ellie and Hardy may have purposefully had her come in and whale on him to cover up bruising from earlier, where Hardy beats Joe into a confession while in the shed. Which is comical, considering all of Hardy's health problems. Two hits and he'd send himself to a hospital.

 

On ‎13‎.‎1‎.‎2015 at 0:34 PM, Automne said:

That's a damn good point. Why didn't the prosecution have that information and use that to argue against the defense's insinuation that Hardy beat up Joe? Hardy had just been given a medical discharge that day because he collapsed while running after a suspect and had to be hospitalized. And he had just been hospitalized not long before that when he collapsed from little exertion. 

How exactly could Hardy hold up in a fight against a healthy Joe Miller? Is the defense going to sit there and say that Joe did not attempt to defend himself in this shed beating scenario?

 

On ‎14‎.‎2‎.‎2015 at 0:59 AM, truthaboutluv said:

Multiple officers saw Alex take Joe in from the shed, into the car and then into the station. If Alex had violently beat him into a confession, where were the bruises? Wouldn't someone have seen them? On top of that he changed into prison wear by the time Ellie found out what he'd done. Wouldn't the officers who oversaw his being processed see bruises if they existed or were they all in on this massive conspiracy? More importantly, there are video cameras in the interrogation room - if Joe had any bruises on his face, neck it would show and wouldn't he look hurt if he'd been violently attacked by Alex? Maybe walk differently, look like he was in pain? He didn't. 

Then there is the conversation when Ellie came in. She didn't just start kicking his ass. She asked him why first and he said nothing, never mentioned it's not like it seems, try to explain. This is his wife, she's a detective and he doesn't tell her that Alex violently beat him up to force the confession? The only tangible evidence of Joe being attacked was Ellie attacking him well after the confession was received. She didn't come in and beat him up on a suspicion of his guilt and then he confessed. He confessed and was brought in and repeated his confession on tape and later his wife, who just found out he murdered an 11 year old kid kicked his ass but that was enough to get the confession thrown out? Bull-freaking-shit.

All good points. 

Plus, why didn't Joe say earlier that he had been forced to confess? In prison he was safe from Hardy and Ellie, 

Joe's silence until the trial would make sense only if he had decided to protect someone who was very dear to him. But Tom had no sternegth to strangle Danny. And if a man likes his friends (in this case, Mark or Nigel) so much that he goes innocently to prison, he does so for some other reason than for a murdering a child which makes him lose his wife and children. 

Edited November 24, 2017 by Roseanna