Charlie and I are currently watching a series on Amazon Prime streaming service called “The Fall”. Our neighbor friend Sandy recommended it. (Dammit!)
“The Fall” is a detective yarn set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and stars Gillian Anderson as the senior police investigator. There are a couple of plots and major characters involved in this story, but the main investigation concerns the hunt for a serial murderer.
“The Fall” ran for three seasons. The first season was okay; the second one, which we are watching now, is beginning to bore me, as the story line concerning the serial killer is becoming too hard to believe. The guy is just too clever and too lucky to have eluded capture and to have completely befuddled the Belfast police force. Viewers of any TV series are expected to “suspend disbelief” up to a point, and I normally do, but the current episodes that we are watching are an insult to our intelligence.
The serial killer likes to attack women in their homes and strangle them. He is not a locksmith or professional cat burglar so it is quite convenient that the victim always leaves a door or window unlocked so the bad guy can get into the house. The killer likes to stalk his victim, usually sneaking into their house, rifling though their belongings and such, usually while they are home. They never see him, of course, even though he gets very close to them.
The serial killer is married with children. The pervert likes to take trophies from his victims and even gives an unusual one (a necklace) to his 7-year-old daughter, who wears it all the time. The wife, who is an OB-Gyn nurse, never asks about the very adult necklace or delves into her husband’s lame excuses as to why he is gone all night or why he is unreachable via his cell phone. The wife is a gal who is smart at work but, curiously, becomes stupid as soon as she enters her home. Go figure.
As the police struggle to identify the killer by exhausting all leads, they miraculously happen upon a story about an ex-college coed who was almost strangled by her boyfriend at the time (many years before). The lead detective ends up interviewing this lady who, nine years after the incident, is married and has two children and is going about her life. The only information that the ex-coed can give the detective is that her boyfriend at the time was named Peter. So, of course, the writers find a way to accidentally leak this name to the serial killer who now goes by the name Paul. Everyone that ever knew the fellow until he changed his name called him Peter; however, once his old name surfaces, the serial killer immediately knows who ratted him out. So (I’m not making his up!), the bad guy quickly determines where this gal, married with a different last name, lives in a metropolitan area of 500,000 people. He goes to her house, which is conveniently unlocked, with husband home and snoozing on the couch and young daughter watching the serial killer creep around the house (she even talks with him), and kidnaps the poor woman. While the bad guy is doing this, he finds a way to let the daughter know that his name is Peter.
I’m not making this stuff up, folks.
I’m also not making up the fact that, in modern episodic police procedural dramas (like CSI and Law and Order: SVU), when the script writers run out of ideas, they begin to have the bad guys targeting the police detectives and their loved ones. So, while perps usually do their darnedest to avoid the cops, these killers and rapists unnecessarily put themselves in harm’s way to torment their pursuers or to settle scores. This only happens on TV.
So…
The lead detective on this case (Gillian Anderson) is staying at a hotel in Belfast. There must be scores of hotels in this large metropolitan area. The serial killer decides that he is going to visit the detective’s hotel room to look around or maybe to strangle her. Of course, he knows immediately which hotel that would be, goes to it, finds an alley door to the kitchen conveniently propped open, enters the commercial kitchen and immediately finds (a) a pass key to all rooms in the hotel conveniently laying on a table, and (b) sees a Room Service identifier of the detective’s hotel room on a nearby clipboard. (What luck!) He then goes to the room, enters with the pass key, and begins to rifle through the detective’s things. She returns to the room while he is there but, of course, he has just enough time to hide in a closet. And then, the Belfast police chief unexpectedly shows up drunk and proceeds to loudly unload a bunch of personal and case-related information to the detective… all of which is conveniently within the earshot of the serial killer. How lucky for him! And, of course, an argument between the two police officials conveniently allows the hidden serial killer to leave the hotel room without being seen or heard.
I don’t know how much more of this silliness that I can stomach. Sadly, we’re only at the beginning of Season Two!
By now, the serial killer’s wife knows that her husband is a sick fuck, has taken the kids and left him, but lies to the police detectives to protect him. A neighboring teenage girl, who babysits for the couple, knows he’s the serial killer but also won’t rat him out to the police. In fact, she creates alibis for him because she is infatuated with… the serial killer!
In last night’s episode, the police, who by now know the serial killer’s identity and have DNA evidence linking him to at least one murder, do not arrest him when they have him under surveillance at a hospital that he’s visiting to… (I’m not making this up!)… provide grief counseling (yes, he’s a licensed bereavement psychologist) to one of his victim’s who is recovering from his strangulation attempt. Oh, yes, my Friends, the gal conveniently has amnesia… she has no memory of his face!
(By the way, I’m just wondering: How did this serial killer know that one of his attempted victims was in that hospital? And, how convenient was it that this counselor, who was recently fired from his job, was then engaged to provide services to one of his victims… who was in police custody at the hospital while she recuperated! And, how did he know that she wouldn’t recognize him and loudly blurt out, “That’s the sick pervert who tried to strangle me!”? Luck just seems to follow this guy around!)
I don’t know where this foolish story is going next. The serial killer is a composite of Albert Einstein and “Lucky” Baldwin, smarter than everyone in Belfast and a fellow who happens to find winning lottery tickets in the street every day. And the Belfast police force makes the Keystone Kops look competent.
These non-sensical plot story lines upset the problem-solver in me, but Charlie is oblivious to them. I’m having to pretend to enjoy the silliness while my wife is lapping it up. I guess that’s part of the reason that we’ve been married for almost 48 years: we each put up with our differences (I’m big into “logic” while she is a “believer”) because we’re pathologically in love… we can’t help ourselves.
The only entertainment left for me, while watching this series, is to (silently) predict the next lame plot device the producers will use to stretch this “entertainment” out for the full 30 episodes. (I can’t do this out loud or Charlie will get mad at me!)
Maybe the killer will “Jump the Shark” like Fonzi did years ago on “Happy Days”? Or perhaps Gillian Anderson’s lead detective character will have been imagining all this stuff, like the Pam Ewing character did (in the “Dream Season”) on the 1970’s hit, “Dallas”? Even better yet, the writers could mine some gold from the preposterous happenstances like those that continuously appeared in “Forrest Gump”? Like the hero finding a mud-splotched tee shirt with a “happy face” on it. Maybe there will be a car crash and some guy will accidentally kill the villain. Or, better yet, there will be an identical twin who’s been doing all of this bad stuff, and the apparent villain Peter is actually a good guy. (That plot device has only been used a hundred times on TV crime procedurals!)
Peter Falk in “Columbo” was more believable: “Uh, excuse me M’aam, just one more question…”. He’d use that line in every episode! I can’t believe that these TV mystery script writers actually get paid for the uncreative drivel that they produce.
Wake me when it’s over.