S09.E02: Magnum Opus

[photo fox]

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Lewis and Hathaway are called to investigate a body in some woodland. But realising three more murders are to follow, the team must hurry to catch the killer, before they happen. Hathaway is struggling to cope with his father’s illness, as he begins his search to find out who he was before the dementia kicked in.

[SusanSunflower]

Although listed as a 2-parter in several places, apparently each part is 45 minutes long and thus, are being shown as single 90 minute episodes, although this episode left "cliffhangers" regarding Hathaway and his sister (and father)  and Lewis' trip to New Zealand and I don't know if that red fluid thrown on the ground was actually deadly deadly red-red-red poison ... but it wasn't any red-color found in nature, boiled over a burner.  Aside from the fact that I thought the story was only half over, the ending was so quickly arrived at and the motive of "misguided vengeance" so unsatisfying, I ended up confused as to what happened and why -- was this yet again a crazy delusional murderER committing multiple murders under the influence of insanity/delusion?  and no one noticed? 

Edited August 15, 2016 by SusanSunflower

[sugarbaker design]

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Although listed as a 2-parter in several places, apparently each part is 45 minutes long and thus, are being shown as single 90 minute episodes, 

I always enjoy looking for the halfway mark, when the first episode ended in the UK.  It's hard watching Inspector Lewis so soon after watching Endeavour, E's writing is much better.  This season of IL, even my beloved Hathaway is boring me.

[graybrown bird]

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It's hard watching Inspector Lewis so soon after watching Endeavour, E's writing is much better.  This season of IL, even my beloved Hathaway is boring me.

I felt the same. About halfway through, I realized I was only vaguely curious about who the murderer might be, and bored with Lewis himself, Hathaway, and the other characters. Lewis just looks peevish all the time. Hathaway registers no emotion. Turned it off.

[starri]

I've really come to like Maddox, and I almost wish they were continuing the show as Inspector Hathaway just to keep her around.

I don't blame Kevin Whately for being checked out, because he's been playing Lewis for almost 30 years.  But I need Robbie and Laura to get a happily ever after, but something tells me they won't.

[SusanSunflower]

agree -- secret (Oxford/Cambridge) cabals have been done to death ... see also any number of messianic cults.  I am astonished by people who claim to hope that this spins off into a series "Hathaway" ... I got bored with his "existential crises" after the first season and this season, wrt to his father's care and dementia, I'm having a hard time (bad writing) deciding if Hathaway is in denial or if his sister simply wants to institutionalize her father for her convenience and conscience ... because in fact, Hathaway is NOT willing to interrupt / drop everything to deal with "Dad" 

[Lee4U]

Well, I checked in and Hathaway (and, the actor) is still (again, this season) like a blank space of zero-ness for me.  Just no there there. No emotion, no real acting, nothing.  But, then I have felt that way about the character/actor since forever. 

I was a rabid Morse fan and never the craziest about Lewis but at least he has a personality, whether it grates on me at times or not.  

I just wish when they decided on this show 10 years ago that they had chosen a different actor for Hathaway - as it is, his scenes bore me so much I end up losing the storyline along the way.  A more charismatic (or one with any charisma at all) would have likely kept my attention - 

But, I'll watch to the end.  I do hope they all come out unscathed.  

[whatsatool]

I liked the Inklings bit.

[SusanSunflower]

I remain confused about what became of Hathaway. My impression in the first seasons was that the actor, more than the writers, was uncertain as to the key to his character. Remember all the question as to his sexual orientation? Which never went anywhere and still hasn't except he doesn't appear to be on the edge or straddling any more.  The writers were making him a "Morse surrogate" minus the pleasure Morse took in many things ... and there was so much will he/won't he leave the force that I suspected the actor was not keen to stay in such a stodgy role (perhaps had higher ambitions) but he stayed .. and Endeavor and Shaun Evans arrives and blew him and his character out of the water (and the stories were better). 

Hathaway used to have a sort of snarky humor (which was important since Lewis has none and it would be out of character for him to develop one) ... this sort of endless teasing of his catholicism seems to be pointless, particularly for those of us (me!) who have no personal frame of reference. See also the "alchemy" texts and religious subplot of this episode -- was that "taking on of sins" a real thing or something the writers made up?  I'm guessing it's real (because to invent such a thing might be offensive to some) ... but it didn't achieve a realness or wholeness ... it could  have been a writer's invention. 

[attica]

I share the malaise of you other posters with this season. I found myself idly justifying the wholesale culling of Oxfordshire, just to rid us of these tiresome types po-po and perp alike. Maybe that was Colin Dexter's point! Kill 'em all!

I bet Honeysuckle Weeks was all "...and when they're all dead, ship me back to Hastings, where I can drive Foyle around!"

[SusanSunflower]

It's hard to understand this season ... the stories are better than they were ... but there's a purposelessness to the Robbie and Hathaway and their story arc ...  I was vaguely encouraged by the opener, just because it was a relative vast improvement but Sunday was a Midsomer Mashup ... that could have been transposed onto any pair of British detectives ...  I supposed we'll get some "closure" wrt Hathaway's future ... or not 

[statsgirl]

I wonder if the Hathaway problem is because Fox really doesn't want to be playing him any more but keeps getting roped in for "just one more season" of IL.  I agree, the character is just drifting and not in an interesting way.  The only thing he seems dedicated to is smoking.

[sugarbaker design]

10 hours ago, statsgirl said:

The only thing he seems dedicated to is smoking.

In a weird way, that's the one thing that is refreshing.  On American TV cigarette smoking is reserved for the black hats.

[SusanSunflower]

but he does it so badly ... 

[moonb]

Besides the question of Hathaway's sexual orientation, wasn't there some unanswered question about why he left seminary and joined the Oxford police? In previous seasons that seemed to be an arc that was leading somewhere. In this series he got family members to deal with - maybe to give him another backstory that was more similar to Lewis losing his wife? But yes, I agree that his character isn't going anywhere.

[pcta]

I'm loving Hathaway this season.  From costuming to expanded background story to relationships, he seems to have grown up, become less angsty and more comfortable with his life path.

[Driad]

Favorite quote (approximate):

Hathaway:  Do you have wifi?

Monk:  We're monks.  [pause]  Not cave men.

[AnnieBeez]

I felt like I had missed an episode. Didn't I just see Hathaway fishing and bonding with his dad the previous episode? Now he won't go visit him? I'm with a  poster on another thread: quit trying to tie everything up and send them all on their way. I'm fine with imagining them all continuing to go about their same lives without me watching. 

[SusanSunflower]

I felt we were somehow supposed to take sides wrt Hathaway and his Sister without being given nearly enough information about the father or the sister to do so. She's the one who put him in the "home" so apparently she's the one with that decision-making authority.  She's the one calling James from the home wondering where he is ... not the other way around.  

Dementia patients' behavior and thinking/recognition ability can vary a great deal day-to-day and other person-to-person.  For example, father may well respond differently to James simply because James is a man ... without recognizing James as his son.  A man may respond to a woman's "help" differently than they do to a man's.  Someone with dementia may consistently "recognize" one person and for no apparent reason fail to recognize another. Whatever, but if you're going to introduce such a weighty subject that many viewers have personal experience with .... write it better or at least more clearly. If the sister is to be "the bitch" ... let her be the bitch. 

Edited August 18, 2016 by SusanSunflower

[Mumbles]

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 Aside from the fact that I thought the story was only half over, the ending was so quickly arrived at and the motive of "misguided vengeance" so unsatisfying, I ended up confused as to what happened and why -- was this yet again a crazy delusional murderER committing multiple murders under the influence of insanity/delusion?  and no one noticed? 

I really like this series but agree, this episode was not good at all. When seemingly intelligent people act kook (alchemy? Christian cult?), I check out. Characters came and went. Plot point resolutions seemed tacked on (the older man and the young man being romantically involved? The car accident reveal at the end?) and sloppy.

[PJ123]

On 8/15/2016 at 10:36 AM, sugarbaker design said:

 It's hard watching Inspector Lewis so soon after watching Endeavour, E's writing is much better.  

Really?  I thought this last season of Endeavor was horrible.  It was like a whole new team came in without any knowledge of the characters, timeline or story up to that point.   I'll put Grantchester in that category as well.  Whats going on with our beloved Mystery shows?  :-(

IL this season was meh and it was time to hang it up.  

Strange seeing Foyle's assistant.  Sad the actress is going though some personal issues as of late.

[Corvino]

Okay, just caught up to this episode, recorded while I was away. So I'm the only one here who's a Charles Williams fan? I found the episode fascinating because of the (sort-of) evocations of Williams' writing and how it led to this group of Christians actually meeting to have rituals about bearing each others' burdens. The only trouble was that, as far as I know (just from reading and rereading Williams' seven novels and his Dante criticism), Williams' theology of substitution was not primarily about taking on someone else's sins; in the place where he demonstrated it most fully, the novel Descent Into Hell, it was about one character taking on another's burden of fear, so that while he fully felt her irrational fear she could look fearlessly at the object of her fear and see what it really was about. (It turned out she had been in fear all her life because she herself was bearing the burden of fear for an ancestor who had been burned at the stake; when she understood this, she accepted that burden retroactively so he could die a fearless martyr. Then she was fearless after that. I love this.) I'm happy that the character in this episode said giving her burden of sin to someone else worked (so she died happy? I wish, then, she'd been hit over the head and died instantaneously like the first victim, not strangled where she wouldn't have been so happy), and there's surely something about substitution of sin in Williams' Dante crit, but it's not his main emphasis in his most prominent works as far as I know.

But I thought it was a good mystery-- maybe only if you love Charles Williams?-- until the ending was too simple and thus unsatisfactory. Though his killing the others because they felt relieved of the burden of guilt for his father's death, and sparing her because she still felt the guilt, was almost religious enough.

But meanwhile, Hathaway still is doing snarky humour, I think. Lewis asks him if he has any tattoos, and he answers "I'm more of a piercings man myself." Obviously he's even less that, literally, than a tattoo man, so I took it he was making a joke about his allegiance to the man whose hands and feet were pierced with the nails.

It's true there was a discontinuity between the sweet ending where they're fishing with his demented father at the end, and this episode where Hathaway is dodging his sister's calls about seeing his father. As the survivor of years of caregiving for a demented parent, I got tears when he was listening to her message about how they waited and waited for him. I haven't watched the last episode yet, but I'll now see if this is resolved more than it is here. 

[Bythebayou]

I haven't seen this episode yet - does Lewis really ask Hathaway if he has any tattoos? It was just last season that Hathaway went in a swimming pool to get at a bullet lodged in the bottom and had tattoos clearly visible.

[jjj]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 10:24 AM, Mumbles said:

I really like this series but agree, this episode was not good at all. When seemingly intelligent people act kook (alchemy? Christian cult?), I check out. Characters came and went. Plot point resolutions seemed tacked on (the older man and the young man being romantically involved? The car accident reveal at the end?) and sloppy.

Yes, even though the four in the car were not charged, there certainly had to be police records of the accident and inquest.  That should have been an easy connection to make for someone with access to the police database.  And it was not that long ago -- despite the apparent stream of homicides in Oxford, a death like that would have been remembered (Robbie, I am looking at you).  And I thought the pairing of Honeysuckle and the undergraduate was a bit odd, partly because of the age/experience difference (Ph.D. versus undergrad).  But surely she would have been charged with the older drunk driving/vehicular homicide crime by the end?  And she should be. 

I felt quite bad for Hathaway when the priest told him that his father came to the abbey to talk about Hathaway.  I only have time to watch this a bit every day, so the writing did not bother me until the very end.  I am in the small minority who likes Hathaway and Lewis, with the freshness of Maddox.  But heavens, that new boss is obnoxious.  On to the final episode. 

[Bythebayou]

Well now that I've seen the episode...Lewis doesn't ask H. if he has any tattoos, he asks him if he sees any he likes in the shop window.

On ‎8‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 6:02 AM, MischaMouse said:

I felt like I had missed an episode. Didn't I just see Hathaway fishing and bonding with his dad the previous episode? Now he won't go visit him? I'm with a  poster on another thread: quit trying to tie everything up and send them all on their way. I'm fine with imagining them all continuing to go about their same lives without me watching. 

I have the DVD, US version. Weirdly, this (magnum opus) is the first episode on the disc , but the printed label says One for Sorrow is first. I wonder which is the correct order.