Shetland season 4
Mar. 15th, 2019 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAfter I finished season 3 of Shetland I decided that I was going to stop watching the show, but then the library got season 4 and the flesh is weak and I watched it.
My original plan was a better plan. Season 4 of Shetland is a mess.
- there are only so many times that it's an interesting twist for a show to have a female murderer, and "every time" is definitely over the limit. (In season 4 there are actually two murderers, and for the first time ever in four seasons one is a guy, but my point still stands.)
- holy dropped subplots, Batman. There are two big ones here: the murdered girl's flatmate Jo gets attached and injured so badly that she's in the hospital! and unconscious! and they're waiting for her to wake up so she can tell them who attacked her! but then they discover it was a white supremacist Norwegian and never bother to let us know whether Jo wakes up or not, maybe she just slips into a coma and dies, WHO KNOWS.
- the second dropped subplot is the white supremacist Norwegian who, they discover, is part of an organization plotting to blow up a cruise ship currently housing refugees, and one presumes that they tell the Norwegian police about this and the plot is foiled but it gets dropped like a hot potato as soon as they figure out what it is.
- also, the white supremacist they catch is the helpful boyishly handsome police officer who has been flirting with Tosh for the last two episodes. Once he's caught, a combination of lighting & make-up changes transform his looks from "boyishly handsome" to "Hitler youth," which is a neat trick but feels like cheating. He's had years of practice hiding his true loyalties while working with the Norwegian police; surely he could keep up an air of injured innocence in interrogation instead dramatically spewing all his white supremacist beliefs.
- but all of this is a red herring and the show tosses it away in the last episode when our hero Jimmy Perez has to arrest Duncan, his kind of friend who is Jimmy's daughter's biological father (Duncan and his wife divorced and then Jimmy married her), and actually this is a great plotline, A++ for the interpersonal drama and Duncan's feelings of betrayal as Jimmy wrests an embarrassing secret out of him, BUT the pacing is a mess and the writers needed to give themselves more space to wrap up the white supremacist plot line.
- Anyway, in the end the police figure out who committed the murders, which means they finally know once and for all that Thomas Malone, who was arrested twenty-three years ago for killing Lizzie Kilmuir, really is innocent. Tosh tells Thomas that he's been badly treated, and apparently this sympathy is too much for Thomas because as soon as she leaves the room he has a massive heart attack and knocks over his coffee cup and collapses on the floor foaming at the mouth.
Jimmy and Tosh find him not too long afterward and try to resuscitate him but it's TOO LATE, he dies, and the camera zooms in for a close-up shot of a single drop of coffee dripping off the tabletop which I can only presume symbolizes Thomas's soul leaving his body.
My original plan was a better plan. Season 4 of Shetland is a mess.
- there are only so many times that it's an interesting twist for a show to have a female murderer, and "every time" is definitely over the limit. (In season 4 there are actually two murderers, and for the first time ever in four seasons one is a guy, but my point still stands.)
- holy dropped subplots, Batman. There are two big ones here: the murdered girl's flatmate Jo gets attached and injured so badly that she's in the hospital! and unconscious! and they're waiting for her to wake up so she can tell them who attacked her! but then they discover it was a white supremacist Norwegian and never bother to let us know whether Jo wakes up or not, maybe she just slips into a coma and dies, WHO KNOWS.
- the second dropped subplot is the white supremacist Norwegian who, they discover, is part of an organization plotting to blow up a cruise ship currently housing refugees, and one presumes that they tell the Norwegian police about this and the plot is foiled but it gets dropped like a hot potato as soon as they figure out what it is.
- also, the white supremacist they catch is the helpful boyishly handsome police officer who has been flirting with Tosh for the last two episodes. Once he's caught, a combination of lighting & make-up changes transform his looks from "boyishly handsome" to "Hitler youth," which is a neat trick but feels like cheating. He's had years of practice hiding his true loyalties while working with the Norwegian police; surely he could keep up an air of injured innocence in interrogation instead dramatically spewing all his white supremacist beliefs.
- but all of this is a red herring and the show tosses it away in the last episode when our hero Jimmy Perez has to arrest Duncan, his kind of friend who is Jimmy's daughter's biological father (Duncan and his wife divorced and then Jimmy married her), and actually this is a great plotline, A++ for the interpersonal drama and Duncan's feelings of betrayal as Jimmy wrests an embarrassing secret out of him, BUT the pacing is a mess and the writers needed to give themselves more space to wrap up the white supremacist plot line.
- Anyway, in the end the police figure out who committed the murders, which means they finally know once and for all that Thomas Malone, who was arrested twenty-three years ago for killing Lizzie Kilmuir, really is innocent. Tosh tells Thomas that he's been badly treated, and apparently this sympathy is too much for Thomas because as soon as she leaves the room he has a massive heart attack and knocks over his coffee cup and collapses on the floor foaming at the mouth.
Jimmy and Tosh find him not too long afterward and try to resuscitate him but it's TOO LATE, he dies, and the camera zooms in for a close-up shot of a single drop of coffee dripping off the tabletop which I can only presume symbolizes Thomas's soul leaving his body.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-17 04:16 am (UTC)This was me with the last season of Dexter. Sometimes we should just follow our guts, lol.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-17 08:51 pm (UTC)