London Spy - General Discussion

[Captanne]

Yep, lordonia, Mr. Robot.  Thanks for the save!  I am a big rooter for Christian Slater and fell for his Jack Nicholson schtick years ago.  But I cannot with Mr. Robot.  I just can't.  The lead role is so Boy-Version-"Mary Sue" and I don't find the actor compelling.  I just re-read my comments I made in that thread ages ago and still agree with them.  Too abusive and misogynistic and too "outsider boy genius computer hacker goes rogue and takes on the Big Mean Corporate Establishment with the help of a strange mentor....."

 

OMG.  Spare me.

 

This show, oth, is a fabulous twist.  No misogyny (few women at all), no "genius boy hacker" who defeats the Evil Corporate Enemy by his genius boy hacker wits alone.  Et God damned Cetera.  

 

This show is creative and unique.

 

I lurve it.

Edited February 6, 2016 by Captanne

[zxy556575]

I swear, I will be heartbroken if Scottie betrays Danny. I do not think that will happen, but I cannot really tell with this show.

 

Ugh, that ultimate hurt would be too much for me. I am expecting that Scottie will be killed at some point, though. This isn't the type of show to end with everyone riding off happily into the sunset, and Danny must be made to suffer some more, again.

 

Mark Gatiss looks so different here than he does in Sherlock. I looked up the actor out of curiosity, and duh.

 

Hard to imagine the Saudis, the Israelis and the Chinese all happily on the same team as M16 and the CIA...but we shall see.

 

Yeah, I'm very curious to learn what the huge secret is that unites all enemies.

Edited February 7, 2016 by lordonia

[dargosmydaddy]

 

Mark Gatiss looks so different here than he does in Sherlock. I looked up the actor out of curiosity, and duh.

I spent his entire first scene thinking, "That looks kind of like Mark Gatiss... oh wait, is that actually Mark Gatiss???"

 

I'm not loving this show as much as I'd like, but Ben Whishaw continues to be so, so awesome. I just find myself wishing this was the third season of The Hour instead.

 

 

No misogyny (few women at all)

So a lack of female characters is a commendable thing?

[formerlyfreedom]

Let's keep the conversation on this show please. There are forums to discuss other shows in.

[freesia]

All the sex scenes I've scene are so discreet I've no idea whether Danny/Alex relied on monogamy for safe sex. If so, Alex could have been infected directly and Danny contracted the virus from him via one of the common routes. That fits the timing better. Not only does it seem more important to first discredit Alex, the infection process, an unexpectedly mandatory medical procedure involving a blood sample, could have provoked the suspicions that led Alex to hide his secret for Danny to find.

I don't think this is the case. Danny mentioned that he was very careful, and I got the sense that the only time they didn't use protection was with oral, which the nurse who took Danny's blood test admitted was low risk (though not without risk).

I guess my first thought was wondering whether he even had HIV in the first place. Couldn't the powers-that-be manipulate the results to make Danny think he was infected? He didn't see what the nurse did with his sample after he gave it.

It would also break my heart if Scottie betrayed Danny. Come on, Danny needs at least one person in his corner!

[sjohnson]

I guess my first thought was wondering whether he even had HIV in the first place. Couldn't the powers-that-be manipulate the results to make Danny think he was infected? He didn't see what the nurse did with his sample after he gave it.

It's hard to predict which clinic or doctor Danny would go to with certainty. And it would be impossible to predict where he would go to for a second test to rule out a falsified report. I'm afraid we can be sure he's positive. Nonetheless the time required for antibodies to show up shows the infection  too place earlier than the police test, assuming the show didn't just ignore reality to heighten the melodrama.

[Eliza422]

I knew this show had me sucked in because I was almost certain that test was faked. I kept yelling go look!!! I'm still holding out hope that it's been faked, or that they injected him with something that would cause a false positive.

THat scene was so heartbreaking, and Ben W is simply amazing. I just want to give him a big squeeze and tell him it will be ok - even though I'm sure we're not getting a happy ending....

[Wilson Cat]

Haven't heard my complaint here from anyone else, but watching Episode 1 on my Mac Air, On Demand, the lighting was so dark that it was like trying to find the bathroom in a mansion you've never been in, with nothing more than a single birthday candle for lighting.  Some scenes were almost entirely dark.  My brightness is turned to the highest possible.....I even tried going to my flat screen TV and watching it there, but pretty much the same thing.  Whazzup?

[Tara Ariano]

A new side of Alex's life surfaces that undermines Danny's relationship with him, but Danny soon discovers evidence he had overlooked.

[Primetimer]

'I've never said it out loud. I love you. Very much.'

Read the story

[zxy556575]

That was some lame-ass hiding, right? How is an abandoned warehouse someplace nobody can follow you? Island or not, ferry or not. I guess Alex had already done the "open fields for miles" anti-spyware thing.

 

Well. At least I had prepared myself for Scottie's death, although the method was unexpected and more devious than I had imagined.

 

The Big Secret was believably something that governments and regimes worldwide would want to quash. Alex's supposed brilliance aside, I didn't really buy it as an achievable invention, but that didn't detract from my involvement in the story and characters.

 

Damn, the acting on this show is uniformly amazing. The actor playing Marcus brought so much longing, grief, anger, and regret into his scenes with Danny.

 

Why did the police drag Danny to headquarters just to tell him he had been exonerated? (And oh yeah, sorry about the HIV, dude! Our bad!)

[Auntie Anxiety]

I wasn't sure if Scottie offed himself or it the menacing taxi driver (wasn't that the same one who drove Danny to the meeting with the Italian Stallion) was instructed to kill him and make it look like a suicide. Scottie knew they would be coming for him, so he might have left a note in anticipation of his demise.

I really do love this show.

[Knuckles]

Auntie,

I think it is the latter. The show made a point of showing us a partial face of the taxi driver, so clearly Danny's enemies are herding him and Scottie. Without Scottie's point of view, based on his decades of experience in Whitehall...Danny would have been left with his conspiracy theories, and been dismissed as just another look. Scottie's help actually made Danny more dangerous...he offered validation and perspective, as well as practical help.

Everyone should have as dear and wonderful a friend as Scottie.

Agreed...acting is amazing. Even the woman police officer, dismissing Danny from any charges, could barely keep her game face together. Ben Whishaw is just so believable as Danny and though he was very good, I did want to smash that waiter in the mouth, He embodied loathsomeness.

[sjohnson]

I suppose the service thought Scotty had gone renegade. No doubt they considered him the real problem. 

 

I'm not so sure that any security service would want to bury this. They wouldn't if they could monopolize it and use it selectively, only on their enemies. But if Alex had leaked its existence...

 

It does explain why they would go to great lengths to keep Danny from digging. It's not so much the murder as finding any evidence of the technique. Any foreign intelligence service that believed the UK had the technique and they didn't would be quite desperate.

[formerlyfreedom]

A note - if you're posting in episode 3, please do not discuss events from episodes 4 or 5. Thank you!

[formerlyfreedom]

Please see the forum Spoiler policy here. Also, please keep in mind; it does look like the show was edited between airing in the UK and here in the States. Your fellow posters may not know the edits, so they'll do their best (I'm sure!) to not spoil anyone. Please use the report button if you think someone may be violating the spoiler policy. Thanks for posting, all!

[rejnel]

Are we meant to think Alex slept with the skanky waiter/escort while he was with Danny? That's what the recap suggests, but I had been reading it as another "you were hardly his first" story.

[Auntie Anxiety]

Any thoughts on where Lester comes in? Is he just representing the American interest in the truth algorithm that Alex developed?

[sjohnson]

I think the professional was hired to try to lure Alex away from Danny. He managed to get Alex to passively accept a blow job it seems but nothing else. I'm a little surprised anyone thought the man had any charm. The display he put on in the restaurant was rather off putting I thought. 

 

When there isn't a dictator unleashing a reign of terror, ntelligence services are strongly inhibited against killing civilian citizens. Perhaps an instinct for self-preservation on the part of politicians who afraid a murderous spy agency might turn against them? Defectors, turncoats, renegades like Scotty, yes. But contracting out an action to a friendly foreign agency gives deniability. As I recall, the CIA man gave Danny the anti-HIV pill, suggesting now that he might have been part of the group who infected him (or Alex,) instead of GCHQ or MI whatever proper.

Edited February 13, 2016 by sjohnson

[Catherinewriter]

My On Demand for BBCA hasn't had a new London Spy since the first episode. Anyone else having this problem? Anyone know what to do about it?  Thanks

[zxy556575]

I had to create a manual recording for it. My guess is that since the original U.K. air dates are so far in the past, it's not classified as a "new" episode according to my DVR settings. Even when I changed the settings to record "all," it still didn't pick them up.

 

Same thing is happening for me with another U.K. show, You Me & the Apocalypse.

[Tara Ariano]

In the series finale, Danny uncovers the truth about Alex and the events that led to his death.

[Eliza422]

I'm so looking forward to this episode - and yet I dread it, because that means the show will be over...

[Primetimer]

The show is as great as ever. But the way Alex went out...

Read the story

[zxy556575]

For a few moments, I had hope.

But this isn't that kind of show and I was foolish.

I had to mute and watch with closed-captions during the suffocation scenes; the sounds of Alex's tortured, frightened breathing was too much. Almost as painful was Danny's matter-of-fact rejection by his parents. The only emotion his mother showed was for her own safety. The literal and symbolic silence of all three titular fathers was dreadful.

Second season? Please no. In my mind, Danny and Frances succeed in their expose and are eventually silenced for it. I don't need another Spotlight -- the show is of little interest to me without Danny's love stories, both Alex and Scottie.

Edited February 19, 2016 by lordonia

[Slovenly Muse]

This entire series... wow.

 

[phoe]

I enjoyed the finale, the plot was ridiculous from the moment they uncovered what the secret project was and it remained silly till the end. Why did they feel the need to torment Dany and harm everyone around him including bringing back his parents so they can take a picture with a flash that destroys memory sticks. Why not just kill him.

 

But besides that, I really loved all the character moments and the acting from Rampling and Wishaw was what kept me going.

[albaniantv]

Was expecting Rampling would be guilty of something since I don't think she takes the elegant mom parts anymore, right? For me there was a bit too much Ben W and not enough of everybody else, but otherwise, it was a compelling series.

[albaniantv]

Yes Dargo--let's beg for a 3rd season of The Hour!

[Auntie Anxiety]

I could have lived without the last scene.  Found it a bit jarring to end up as a buddy movie.  Just very out of character in my estimation.  Charlotte Rampling went from unhinged to affable in record time and the intensity of the series ended up being negated right then and there.  

[ahpny]

I thought they did a good job of coming up with a secret that would truly be game-changing and something that could credibly cause security agencies to whack people (even their own people), perhaps. But as with the recipe to make an atomic bomb, no one could expect to hold onto this secret forever. It's inevitable at some point that others would create it independently through their own research, or theft, or some combination of both. Even without stealing it, because Alex is hardly the only smart spook on the planet, others would eventually figure the same thing out.

 

It didn't seem logical to kill just Alex. That seemed half-assed. If you're so concerned about keeping this thing "in-house" for as long as you can that you have no problem killing (and actually torturing) your own people, then why not off the entire crew who knows about it or possessed it?

 

But the bigger problem I had with this episode was the implementation of Alex’s program. Having been subjected to polygraph testing several times myself, this just rang false. For dramatic purposes I have no issue with suspending belief that a brilliant spy would write such a program and that it would "work." But I have a big problem with the actual questions “Mom” asked him and the “LIE” shown on the screen. At least some of those questions asked about events that may or may not occur in the future. How can anyone “truthfully” answer whether they will speak with someone in the future? The program might be ingenious, but it’s not a crystal ball able to predict the future. This isn’t Minority Report.

 

In fact, none of the “lies” detected by the program turned out to be lies. Alex was killed. Thus, it would indeed turn out to be “true” that he would have no further discussions with Danny or do more work on the program. Perhaps they could have asked him “do you believe you can honor an agreement to avoid speaking with or having any contact with Danny for the rest of your life?” But they did not.

 

This isn’t merely a matter of semantics. It is why questions posed in real polygraph tests are generally carefully worded simple “yes/no” questions of past facts (e.g., “have you ever stolen from a prior employer?”). Moreover, even a perfect lie detector – as this program is touted to be – cannot really detect “truth.” Instead, it detects whether a subject believes he’s telling the truth, not whether he actually is telling the truth. And who is the final arbiter of objective “truth” anyway? An algorithm? Sociopaths would sail through this program as they now easily pass conventional polygraph tests because they believe what they say it’s true even if it is not. Because human memory is far from perfect, even non-sociopaths could easily give “wrong” answers in a perfect lie detector test.

[zxy556575]

I could have lived without the last scene.  Found it a bit jarring to end up as a buddy movie.  Just very out of character in my estimation. Charlotte Rampling went from unhinged to affable in record time and the intensity of the series ended up being negated right then and there.  

 

Frances sitting in the car grinning didn't sit well with me, either. She had decided to negate her life's work in order to go after the people responsible for killing her adopted son, so I would have expected some sort of cathartic release. But at her core she's still a very grim woman and the, as you say, affable persona was jarring.

 

I also agree about Alex's secret. It was an important enough invention that countries would believably kill over it, but not at all believable to me as something that could ever exist. I had to hand-wave it.

 

Since we got confirmation that Alex was kept prisoner for a while, I wonder how Danny was kept out of it? He and Alex were basically spending all their time together at that point and he could have popped in at any moment.

 

In sorry-not-sorry news, I hope Danny's parents continued to be relentlessly pursued and persecuted after Danny and Frances went public. Couple of sniveling asswipes.

Edited February 19, 2016 by lordonia

[Knuckles]

I was hooked on this show from the get-go. The vulnerability of Danny in trying to meet Alex a second time, and try his luck was so very real. I warmed to Alex, though he was more than a bit robotic, and loved Danny's relationship with Scottie.

That said, this show delivered some gory chillers. Alex's death scene had me muting the sound, I could not bear his tortured breathing. And Rampling as the apparent mother colluding with this monsters, made me want her dead. I was not moved that she thought she could save him, and revive her career...that torture was enough to want her, and that whole house of spy masters nuked.

And kudos to the design team...that blackboard room with endless math symbols was pure, claustrophobic horror.

Good place for Danny to lock his cold-blooded parents if he ever thinks of it. Rampling herself is terrifying as a cold and ruthless warrior...would she really join forces with Danny? I doubt it...I suspect an overdose instead in her immediate future.

[sjohnson]

As to the plausibility of the algorithm? Not very, not the way it was written here. I blame the army of style-impervious critics and reviewers who like to pontificate about how SF and fantasy are really the same thing. Of course the science in SF is fictional, the point is to write good fictional science, not to pass off lazy writing on the grounds it's all hokum. 

 

All this is typical however of most SF elements in near future thrillers, so it's hard to see how this badly styled SF element is somehow worse than others. But there is one big problem, which is, why wouldn't MI6 keep it secret for their own personal use? No need to kill Alex. This only makes sense if Alex was himself threatening to go public. Also, I don't think there was enough time for the HIV test to come up positive after the infection at the police station. Unlike the lie detection "algorithm" that's not just implausible as speculation, it seems to contradict established fact. 

 

On the other hand, Danny figuring out Alex's real motivation for the lie detection research nicely consolidates themes and motives. Also, Scotty is in many respects the real hero of the piece, To me it seemed that Frances' motivation wasn't just Danny but Scotty. 

[roomtorome]

My take on that last scene was that they may have filmed two endings - one if it was renewed for another season and the one we saw which was filmed in case it was not renewed.  Too bad they felt they needed to end it on a "high" - so to speak.

 

The torture scene was grotesque.  I find so much stuff now is just ramped up in an effort to shock.  Well, thanks to the real world and all the gory torture porn in films and tv, I really can't be shocked anymore - subtle is just not in the language of film anymore, it seems - for the most part (my opinion only, obviously).

[sjohnson]

By the way, everything everyone says under torture is a lie in the sense that they are saying what the torturer wants to hear. Even factual statements are modulated by this. So it is entirely appropriate that Alex's algorithm declares everything said under torture is a "lie," that is, a statement devised with another end in view, consciously edited for effect. Which is no doubt what the algorithm looks for, departures from simple statements of fact that don't require such mental efforts. 

[tenativelyyours]

I've read all kind of interviews and I still cannot figure out at what point not having a second series took place.  I've read some conflicting things from the show's own creator.

 

But when I watched the last two episodes it seemed to me that at some point during the writing and filming of the previous episode it suddenly became clear that the show might not get a second shot and by this episode, they knew it was a one and done.  Because so much seemed downright odd.

 

It seems odd they would kill Alex and kill him the way they did.  He is an asset.  If they can go to all that trouble to kill him, they can simply make him vanish into some intelligence hole and keep him working his brilliance for their cause.  Also it was odd they went the direction they did to set up Danny over and over again.  Alex "dies" in a car crash.  End of story.  Danny finds whatever Alex leaves him and someone easily swoops in and relieves him of it and the story ends.  So wonderfully acted story of course.  But the way they killed Alex and then set Danny up again was odd since his foster mother was in many ways complicit in his death.  And certainly in his cover up. 

 

The only thing about his death that would have made sense is if even up to the end, they had hopes a season two.  Because having Alex "die" like that could have been a big set up if they did want to make him disappear and have his foster mother think he is dead.  I'm not saying this in a way to lessen his death or anything.  It is just plot wise it was a weird shift for me and made little sense. 

 

But as stated above.  This was so not that show.  Alex being actually alive would have cheapened so much of what was at the heart of this show and that was love and loss.  But I don't get why she was brought in, why they cared about testing him and then executing him.  He is helpless and in their power.  If they fear he left loose ends in regards to Danny, it would make more sense to spirit him away and make sure those loose ends were taken care and then maybe killing him.  But since the poor guy had some slight social dysfunctions, it would also have been easy to commit him to a high security facility and use drugs to get what they wanted.   In the end going about it the way they did merely caused what supposedly they killed Alex to prevent. 

 

I hated the ending.  I would much rather have had Alex's real mother torch the maze and be the one to have gotten in the car with Danny.  I found the redemption of Rampling's character totally left field and way too rousing in the buddy movie ending.

 

Still the acting was stunning.  And the directing was spot on.  The flashbacks of Danny and Alex finding their way with each other and together was heartbreaking and both of the men acted it superbly.  I have never mourned a character so quickly and completely as I did Alex and yet the show brilliantly waits to actually show the real man and that only made it more poignant.  The scene in the street when Alex convinces Danny he is the one was masterful.  The simple scenes of the two by the fire along the river.  Too bad the writers didn't take a bit more time to figure it out.  But it still was so compelling to watch.  Creepy. Lovely.  Sad.  It mixed all into something that gripped me right to the end. 

[zxy556575]

In the end going about it the way they did merely caused what supposedly they killed Alex to prevent.

 

Which was the only satisfaction I as a viewer got out of this whole sad mess.

[paramitch]

I found this episode absolutely devastating, and was horrified at the lengths to which Danny's enemies will go. The scene in the doctor's office was incredibly real and upsetting.

 

Ben Whishaw is fantastic, and beyond this show's superb suspense and drama, it might as well be a love letter to his acting abilities. Jim Broadbent is terrific as well, and it's so interesting to see them working together again here (as they also share a significant portion of the underappreciated "Cloud Atlas" together as well). The sense of family and companionship between the two men is palpable -- like others, I'd be devastated if Scottie ever betrayed Danny, but I just can't see it happening, so fingers crossed.

 

Meanwhile, I couldn't believe that was Mark Gatiss -- he was nearly unrecognizable, and very very scary.

 

The female cop's constant, palpable contempt for Danny makes me want to throw things at her. A lot.

Edited February 21, 2016 by paramitch

[Auntie Anxiety]

Tentativelyyours, your post was a good one and made me think about what the point of Lester (from The Wire) was.  A red herring?  

[tenativelyyours]

I am going to start off saying that i am applying hindsight.  And that I watched last fall when it aired in the UK so I might be a bit spotty on details.

 

I think the guy giving Danny the pill served a couple of points.  The first was that as the series progressed we learn that several intelligence communities want all things Alex shut down and therefore want to discourage Danny from any further pursuit.  He either was working for the U.S. solely (from the comments about all the nations covert operation groups agreeing, they must have known.  Something I missed.  More below. 

 

So when we see the pill given it is meant to convey simply that things go deeper than Danny ever imagined and that they know much more about him.  Which intensifies his questions to the attic, Alex's reported death (still by this point we and Danny are not sure it was Alex in the trunk) and the presumed set up that is clear from the second episode -- Alex's body in a trunk set next to a heater to advance the decomposition as well as the attic space being designed to mimic Danny's sexual life in every way.   Then when we are told what the pill is for and then he gets tested and is suggested that Alex also was positive to throw in more confusion, it becomes clear that it was seen as a threat.  This is what they can do.  How far they can reach even though we still do not know who or what entirely.

 

The other aspect of this is that the story is told about a gay man.  And through Alex, and Scottie and of course Danny, it illustrates how they can still be threatened in ways that at least on the surface seem less for straight people.  Not that straight people can't be deemed 'perverts' in the tabloids or threatened with any type of STD.  It just shows that society is more apt to simply believe it and shrug it off in an isolating way.  Danny is simply more vulnerable in this day and age.  Alex is written off by the cops as 'deserving it" and Danny basically told he is lucky to not be dragged in further.  He is marginalized from Alex's life through his very death -- he does not get to attend a funeral and experience the cultural aspect of grieving in a way that gives him validation as a person.  The scene at his workplace when the scandal breaks. 

 

And there is also his vulnerability in regards to his own family.  While it is not unique to gay people, again there is greater chance that Danny finds himself alone and other than Scottie without resource of family due to his sexual identity.  The show did a great job of showing how just on the edge of security anyone can be but also how, despite huge advances and changes, gay men can still find it precarious to simply live in ways many might take for granted.  It is different and yet the same for any group that finds itself marginalized.

 

But I also don't know if the guy was meant for a greater role than just the weird show up along the river and the weird but effective way he left the pill. 

 

And that is where I want to know if I missed something.  I may well have.  How did the rest of the international intelligence community find out if Alex was taken and killed for it and he hid the stuff for Danny knowing he was under scrutiny that might prove deadly?  Again it made sense in the first three episodes but then the shift made it seem odd that with the cat out of the bag.  Even if still held tightly under all the intelligence communities listed to keep the public from finding out, they had to know one or more was still going to pursue it and try to use it.  So killing Alex made little sense.  Because while you know how to work it, you might want him around in case the other agencies start playing with and you find a war of truth being waged. 

 

So maybe they wanted a bigger plot element with American intelligence getting involved?  Certainly I think the people Scottie brought in and looked to be the ones to take on Alex's killers were meant to have a greater role and instead they almost instantly fizzled out.  Beyond the female professor providing a nice coda to Scottie's love for Danny that would continue to look out for him in some ways even after he was dead.   Maybe Rampling's character was meant for redemption right from the start.  But the two professors barely got introduced before they scampered away (and rightly so).  I felt Rampling was meant to be the cold pragmatic woman we are introduced to from the start.  And that the one person other than Scottie to stay with him was the female professor who had less to risk and yet wanted to perhaps revenge the murder of the love of her life. 

 

Again.  I think someone getting into the car other than Alex's foster mother was the original intention and the original intention was a second season; perhaps more of a sequel mini-series to the first than a flat out continuation.  Whether it was the professor or the real mother (though she is not the most effective player she might have had greater insight and that was put aside).  I just cannot help but watch the scene where Danny gets no answer and then we see Alex's horrific questioning and death.  It had an almost surreal quality to it that seemed almost at odds with the rest of the narrative.  One that for me went beyond being from Frances? point of view.  It completely flipped the scenes we saw of her when Danny figures out the feint in regards to her identity and then the reveal as to who she really was in terms of Alex's biological parents.  And in a way I had trouble with.  It did not match her motivation to keep Danny in ignorance the way she did.  And her emotional break down with Alex's death and subsequent redemption was just too sudden and too much of a turn in her character.  Especially when we know she was following Alex when he was with Danny.   So she herself was part of the group that saw Alex as a threat from almost the time Alex started seeing Danny. 

 

I'd have to watch it again to see where it was, but I remember watching and feeling that the entire show just shifted a bit on its axis and I knew, this is a one and done and I'm pretty sure that at the time, it had not been announced as such.  And I'm not talking about between one episode and the next but rather in, I think either towards the end of the third or shortly into the fourth.  It was just odd.  And in some ways added to the poignancy because it hammered home again the idea that this was not a show about happy endings.  I mean it was in a way with the ride into the night but still.  I still came away from the ending that the two were going down in flames and taking as much and many with them as they  could. 

[zxy556575]

I'm still thinking about this show a few days later. It burrowed into me for sure.

 

Also wanted to thank John Ramos for his insightful and moving recaps; they made watching more enjoyable for me.

[seacliffsal]

I must have missed it, but would someone please fill me in about Scottie's death? Was it suicide (if so, why?), or was it murder?

I, too, was surprised about the turn the series made. Alex's death was harrowing and elaborate-do they expect all of those workers to remain silent about the death?

[zxy556575]

I must have missed it, but would someone please fill me in about Scottie's death? Was it suicide (if so, why?), or was it murder?

 

There seems to be room for interpretation, but it appeared to me that Scottie was kidnapped, forced to write the note, then hanged to make it look like suicide.

[seacliffsal]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying for me!

[Neurochick]

That was a lame ass secret Alex was working on. Wasn't there a Fox show about something like that called Lie To Me? So what, big deal if everyone can sniff out lies, guess you'll have to tell the truth.

[Neurochick]

My problem with the show was, I just couldn't believe that in today's world, with people naked on the Internet, what secrets are there to kill for? Would people really care if someone developed a program to catch liars? Police departments, the FBI, would eat that up.

[atomationage]

I watched the first episode and I thought it was great, but then I found out it's a true story, and now I'm grossed out by the whole thing.  I may not watch any more.

[JustaPerson]

I just found this on netflix haha. I wasn't sure what to make of the escort's account of seducing Alex, but I feel like the scene between Danny and Alex outside of the restaurant where Danny suggests that Alex see other ppl to figure whether what he wants and Alex immediately bursting into tears at the thought of it ("I don't want to. I don't need to.") contradicts it a bit. Then again, we don't know when that flashback occurred and when the escort's alleged encounter was supposed to have happened. Anyway, their relationship is much more interesting to me than the espionage. Not that that isn't interesting either, but I'm sad we only get snippets of Danny and Alex's story. 

[Inquisitionist]

Well, I'd like those 5 hours back, please.