Luther, Season Two
Reposting my reviews of the second season of Luther. I am still pretty underwhelmed, though there is some better writing than in the first season. What am I saying? This show is dead to me! INDIRAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Spoilers abound....
Episode One
What the actual fuck is going on with this show? The first season ended with a high-octane cliffhanger, and at the opening of the second … it's already resolved? This show's writers really don't like having to do any actual work, do they? Scenes and dialogue that might prove challenging are frequently skipped. All we know is that John is back on the job (in a new department), is now on good terms with the man who was previously investigating him, and he hangs out and plays chess with Mark. Both John and Mark now live in what look like abandoned buildings, probably to reflect the ~desolation of their souls~ at the loss of Zoe.
Alice is in a mental hospital, having possibly turned herself in, and has confessed to killing Ian Reed. She's attempted suicide, I'm assuming because she's bored. What actually happened is not explained at all. Neither is how John got himself a master keycard to cleverly slip to Alice inside an apple which she just happened to be in the right part of the grounds to immediately find. Uh-huh. John tells Alice he's planning on leaving the police force. I can't decide if this is true or not. What is John if he's not a detective? A guy playing Russian Roulette in his shabby flat, I guess.
Changes to the cast in the second season: No more Rose Teller. Damn. I liked her. But we do get DS Erin Gray, who seems pretty cool (and once guest starred on Torchwood, which is why she looks so familiar to me). She doesn't want to break rules or get into trouble, and she knows John's reputation.
So, plot: A masked serial killer with a flare for the dramatic is … drumroll … targeting young women! Whodathunkit? At least in this episode, the murders are more "tastefully" done than in the past. The women are killed quickly, and the camera doesn't focus so much on their terrified faces. They also change things up by not showing us the killer's face until 17 minutes into the episode, but we still know who he is before John does. The London police still have an extraordinary failure rate when it comes to saving people. It's a wonder there are any young women left in the city.
Also meanwhile, we get a subplot involving a woman whose husband John once arrested for murder, and her daughter who is a sex worker. And apparently needs to be rescued by a man for her own good. I get that she's in trouble, but the blatant paternalism of it bothers me. There are plenty of organisations which help empower women to leave prostitution if they wish to do so; John doesn't need to rush in and carry the girl out against her will like a sack of potatoes. She is not his responsibility, and he certainly didn't do more to make her who she is than her own parents did. I don't know where this plot is going, and it may be the season arc for all I know. So far, it looks like an excuse for the show to showcase the sexual exploitation of young women.
The end of the episode did manage to completely subvert my expectations for the show. When Erin went into the apartment with the killer's ex, I assumed he would be in there (and I thought the ex might be in on it; she seems a bit odd herself), since Erin is an attractive young woman in her own right, and must therefore end up in peril as soon as possible. But no! How the FUCK did the killer get into the car with Justin without him noticing?! Don't hurt Justin! He's a good kid!
Episode Two
For once, it's a man who is abducted, bound, and sadistically tortured. That's different. But in the end, Justin does free himself. Men continue to have agency and act in their own defence. Women continue to lack it. Alice needed John to free her. Jenny needs John to rescue her from a life of prostitution. Justin and Tim make their own daring escapes. Would it have been so hard for the writers to have Jenny ask what she could do to help herself? Or to make the child who escaped from the van a girl?
There was a line in the previouslies that I didn't pick up on in the last episode. When John visits Alice in the mental hospital, he says, "To keep you safe, I put you in here." John thinks it's his job to save young woman, including Alice. I hope the show is going somewhere with this. It would be a shame to have this much obvious paternalism in Luther's character and never address it.
I wondered why Pell continued to wear the mask in this episode. I mean, the police knew who he was, so it obviously wasn't to protect his identity. It was only after he parked the van in the disused factory and put his head down and sighed like he was psyching himself up that I realised he needed the mask in order to be the person who committed those crimes. So that was a nice bit of subtle characterisation.
I guess the Jenny story is the season arc, since, like last season it's the plot dealing with John's personal life, rather than his professional one. As before, the interweaving of the two plots feels clunky and distracting, since there's nothing thematic to tie them together. And what is up with Mark? He now just seems to exist as a character to go along with John's dodgy plans, including crashing his own car to help him out. Holding a young woman against her will was not the act of a Good Guy last time I checked, Mark, even if it is "for her own good".
Caroline is clearly a dreadful mother, so how her daughter turned out is really not John's problem or his fault. Jenny is better off without her mother. She could have couch-surfed off to another city and found a low-paying job. She could have saved herself. But no, because now John is going to take care of her because he needs someone to rescue, and she is more than likely going to give his place the feminine touch, cleaning and cooking and whatnot. The hug she gives John feels like something out of the White Knight rescue fantasy. I wouldn't expect more than an awkward "thanks" form her character.
So why is Alice interested in John? I feel like the writers want us to believe it's because John is ~so interesting~, but he's just … not.
I hope he's had his tetanus booster.
Episode Three
OK, so this is a good episode. What am I supposed to do if I can't complain?
The episode plot was compelling and very tense. How does one catch a killer who makes his choices based on the roll of the dice? He could be anywhere, do anything, and disappear by the time the police catch up. And when they do catch him, they have no way to ID him. My theory? He's not going to talk until the dice tell him to. Keep rolling, John.
It does bug me a little when fiction paints RPG players with the "looney" brush. I'm not a gamer, but I do consider them to be my people. I don't like seeing them treated like weirdos who can't tell fantasy from reality.
For once, we've got a killer who's not targeting women. What is this show coming to? Oh, but then there's the Jenny arc. Well, that's good. I didn't know if I could get through an episode in which someone didn't at least threaten to gut and/or rape a young women.
But Jenny fucking takes care of business! Yes! Finally, a woman to defends herself! Do not apologise for that, my girl. You did just exactly the right thing.
And then that ending. What the fuck is going on? This guy has a twin? What? I … am actually looking forward to whatever happens next.
No Mark in this episode, nor any Alice. Huh.
Episode Four
*smacks self* Of course if he's keeping score, it must mean there's another player. Now I feel like a fool. But I feel that if Luther is such a brilliant detective, he should have figured this out before I did. He spent all that time with the notebook, after all. And straight to the Gideon Bible? No one ever figures out the right book that fast. Oh, right. Luther has ~intuition~.
I'm not sure I really understand Robert and Nicholas's motivation. I mean, they both clearly wanted to win their game, and got a rush out of playing, but win or lose, they were both going to end up either dead or in prison. Maybe it's just that I'm not very competitive. I'll compete for awesome prizes, but the prestige of having won isn't enough for me.
Snagging Nicholas using the blog was a clever idea, but I'm not so sure something like that would work in real life. These guys are twins and very close; it's going to be nearly impossible to convincingly impersonate one to the other for more than a couple of phrases, unless you've had lots of time to study their past communication. The words we use, our spelling, our speech patterns, are as unique as our fingerprints, and for anyone who knows us really well, an out of character word or phrase or misspelling will be as jarring as a wrong note in a familiar song.
I'm also not sure the final confrontation was realistic. They're in an enclosed space which is quickly filling up with gas fumes. Lighting the lighter would be really dangerous, and they would both probably get very light-headed very quickly. And wouldn't there be a risk of the heat from the bullets igniting the fumes as well?
As for the season arc, it was starting to look like John Luther was going the way of Ian Reed, as the situation became more complicated and he had to do more and more to keep covering up what was going on. Telling Jenny to clean up crime scene was bound to be disastrous. She has no experience with that sort of thing, and she was bound to miss something, especially since she was in a hurry.
The resolution of this arc felt way too pat. I think I missed the bit where John got the body into the trunk of the other car. When did that happen? And now Toby's grandmother is all out of goons and essentially powerless? Somehow I thought she had a vaster empire than that.
Alice got a mention in passing, but still no Mark. In fact, there has not been even an indirect reference to the Mark/Zoe arc in these last two episodes. Jenny even asked John why he's not married when she already knows about the situation with Zoe, because Mark told her when she was cuffed to the chair. Has the show retconned Mark and Zoe completely out of the plot? Will we never see nor hear of them again, except maybe a passing reference to John's wife being dead?
I may or may not watch season three when it shows up on Netflix. Still feeling very lukewarm about this show.
Spoilers abound....
Episode One
What the actual fuck is going on with this show? The first season ended with a high-octane cliffhanger, and at the opening of the second … it's already resolved? This show's writers really don't like having to do any actual work, do they? Scenes and dialogue that might prove challenging are frequently skipped. All we know is that John is back on the job (in a new department), is now on good terms with the man who was previously investigating him, and he hangs out and plays chess with Mark. Both John and Mark now live in what look like abandoned buildings, probably to reflect the ~desolation of their souls~ at the loss of Zoe.
Alice is in a mental hospital, having possibly turned herself in, and has confessed to killing Ian Reed. She's attempted suicide, I'm assuming because she's bored. What actually happened is not explained at all. Neither is how John got himself a master keycard to cleverly slip to Alice inside an apple which she just happened to be in the right part of the grounds to immediately find. Uh-huh. John tells Alice he's planning on leaving the police force. I can't decide if this is true or not. What is John if he's not a detective? A guy playing Russian Roulette in his shabby flat, I guess.
Changes to the cast in the second season: No more Rose Teller. Damn. I liked her. But we do get DS Erin Gray, who seems pretty cool (and once guest starred on Torchwood, which is why she looks so familiar to me). She doesn't want to break rules or get into trouble, and she knows John's reputation.
So, plot: A masked serial killer with a flare for the dramatic is … drumroll … targeting young women! Whodathunkit? At least in this episode, the murders are more "tastefully" done than in the past. The women are killed quickly, and the camera doesn't focus so much on their terrified faces. They also change things up by not showing us the killer's face until 17 minutes into the episode, but we still know who he is before John does. The London police still have an extraordinary failure rate when it comes to saving people. It's a wonder there are any young women left in the city.
Also meanwhile, we get a subplot involving a woman whose husband John once arrested for murder, and her daughter who is a sex worker. And apparently needs to be rescued by a man for her own good. I get that she's in trouble, but the blatant paternalism of it bothers me. There are plenty of organisations which help empower women to leave prostitution if they wish to do so; John doesn't need to rush in and carry the girl out against her will like a sack of potatoes. She is not his responsibility, and he certainly didn't do more to make her who she is than her own parents did. I don't know where this plot is going, and it may be the season arc for all I know. So far, it looks like an excuse for the show to showcase the sexual exploitation of young women.
The end of the episode did manage to completely subvert my expectations for the show. When Erin went into the apartment with the killer's ex, I assumed he would be in there (and I thought the ex might be in on it; she seems a bit odd herself), since Erin is an attractive young woman in her own right, and must therefore end up in peril as soon as possible. But no! How the FUCK did the killer get into the car with Justin without him noticing?! Don't hurt Justin! He's a good kid!
Episode Two
For once, it's a man who is abducted, bound, and sadistically tortured. That's different. But in the end, Justin does free himself. Men continue to have agency and act in their own defence. Women continue to lack it. Alice needed John to free her. Jenny needs John to rescue her from a life of prostitution. Justin and Tim make their own daring escapes. Would it have been so hard for the writers to have Jenny ask what she could do to help herself? Or to make the child who escaped from the van a girl?
There was a line in the previouslies that I didn't pick up on in the last episode. When John visits Alice in the mental hospital, he says, "To keep you safe, I put you in here." John thinks it's his job to save young woman, including Alice. I hope the show is going somewhere with this. It would be a shame to have this much obvious paternalism in Luther's character and never address it.
I wondered why Pell continued to wear the mask in this episode. I mean, the police knew who he was, so it obviously wasn't to protect his identity. It was only after he parked the van in the disused factory and put his head down and sighed like he was psyching himself up that I realised he needed the mask in order to be the person who committed those crimes. So that was a nice bit of subtle characterisation.
I guess the Jenny story is the season arc, since, like last season it's the plot dealing with John's personal life, rather than his professional one. As before, the interweaving of the two plots feels clunky and distracting, since there's nothing thematic to tie them together. And what is up with Mark? He now just seems to exist as a character to go along with John's dodgy plans, including crashing his own car to help him out. Holding a young woman against her will was not the act of a Good Guy last time I checked, Mark, even if it is "for her own good".
Caroline is clearly a dreadful mother, so how her daughter turned out is really not John's problem or his fault. Jenny is better off without her mother. She could have couch-surfed off to another city and found a low-paying job. She could have saved herself. But no, because now John is going to take care of her because he needs someone to rescue, and she is more than likely going to give his place the feminine touch, cleaning and cooking and whatnot. The hug she gives John feels like something out of the White Knight rescue fantasy. I wouldn't expect more than an awkward "thanks" form her character.
So why is Alice interested in John? I feel like the writers want us to believe it's because John is ~so interesting~, but he's just … not.
I hope he's had his tetanus booster.
Episode Three
OK, so this is a good episode. What am I supposed to do if I can't complain?
The episode plot was compelling and very tense. How does one catch a killer who makes his choices based on the roll of the dice? He could be anywhere, do anything, and disappear by the time the police catch up. And when they do catch him, they have no way to ID him. My theory? He's not going to talk until the dice tell him to. Keep rolling, John.
It does bug me a little when fiction paints RPG players with the "looney" brush. I'm not a gamer, but I do consider them to be my people. I don't like seeing them treated like weirdos who can't tell fantasy from reality.
For once, we've got a killer who's not targeting women. What is this show coming to? Oh, but then there's the Jenny arc. Well, that's good. I didn't know if I could get through an episode in which someone didn't at least threaten to gut and/or rape a young women.
But Jenny fucking takes care of business! Yes! Finally, a woman to defends herself! Do not apologise for that, my girl. You did just exactly the right thing.
And then that ending. What the fuck is going on? This guy has a twin? What? I … am actually looking forward to whatever happens next.
No Mark in this episode, nor any Alice. Huh.
Episode Four
*smacks self* Of course if he's keeping score, it must mean there's another player. Now I feel like a fool. But I feel that if Luther is such a brilliant detective, he should have figured this out before I did. He spent all that time with the notebook, after all. And straight to the Gideon Bible? No one ever figures out the right book that fast. Oh, right. Luther has ~intuition~.
I'm not sure I really understand Robert and Nicholas's motivation. I mean, they both clearly wanted to win their game, and got a rush out of playing, but win or lose, they were both going to end up either dead or in prison. Maybe it's just that I'm not very competitive. I'll compete for awesome prizes, but the prestige of having won isn't enough for me.
Snagging Nicholas using the blog was a clever idea, but I'm not so sure something like that would work in real life. These guys are twins and very close; it's going to be nearly impossible to convincingly impersonate one to the other for more than a couple of phrases, unless you've had lots of time to study their past communication. The words we use, our spelling, our speech patterns, are as unique as our fingerprints, and for anyone who knows us really well, an out of character word or phrase or misspelling will be as jarring as a wrong note in a familiar song.
I'm also not sure the final confrontation was realistic. They're in an enclosed space which is quickly filling up with gas fumes. Lighting the lighter would be really dangerous, and they would both probably get very light-headed very quickly. And wouldn't there be a risk of the heat from the bullets igniting the fumes as well?
As for the season arc, it was starting to look like John Luther was going the way of Ian Reed, as the situation became more complicated and he had to do more and more to keep covering up what was going on. Telling Jenny to clean up crime scene was bound to be disastrous. She has no experience with that sort of thing, and she was bound to miss something, especially since she was in a hurry.
The resolution of this arc felt way too pat. I think I missed the bit where John got the body into the trunk of the other car. When did that happen? And now Toby's grandmother is all out of goons and essentially powerless? Somehow I thought she had a vaster empire than that.
Alice got a mention in passing, but still no Mark. In fact, there has not been even an indirect reference to the Mark/Zoe arc in these last two episodes. Jenny even asked John why he's not married when she already knows about the situation with Zoe, because Mark told her when she was cuffed to the chair. Has the show retconned Mark and Zoe completely out of the plot? Will we never see nor hear of them again, except maybe a passing reference to John's wife being dead?
I may or may not watch season three when it shows up on Netflix. Still feeling very lukewarm about this show.