Mostly TV

[redfiona99]

I'm a bit out of the swing of things, mostly due to work. Okay, and the sport. Mostly the sport. Although there's been a lot of work too.

And fic writing. There's two fics with deadlines coming up, so that's why there's basically been radio silence on that front.

Also, I've had my first first author journal article published. This is a good time.

So while I get back up to speed, have my much delayed comments on the last episode of 'The Shadow Line'.

I think the ending of 'The Shadow Line' was that rarest of things, it was an ending that fitted, something far more important than merely happy or sad, no matter how much I would have preferred a happier ending for several characters.



The ex-ADC and the spy master learnt the quick way that if you're going to try and kill your most deadly and senior operative, you'd best hope he actually stays dead.

The evil conspiracy is a government conspiracy, we were all right about that. The unexpected twist is that it's using the drugs trade to finance police pensions. It's a really odd twist, but it explains a lot of things.

Then there's the kicker, for Gabriel, that it was probably him convincing (damn it, I can't remember the character's name and I can't find it anywhere) to go straight that caused his death.

Brilliant fake out from Bede to get his plan to work.

Yikes, that scene with Babur and Jay Wratten, and Jay showing up both Babur's hypocrisy and his weak point. Then again Jay, you might not want to antagonise your main importer too much.

Another OMGosh wow scene was Bede coming home to find his wife with slit wrists and the part that follows, because his wife loves him that much that she wants him to let go but, of course, Joe can't possibly because she is, quite literally, all that he has left because his flower business is gone, and so is Wratten and Co, or at least the one he knew.

Obviously, Jay Wratten is a hateful little creature, but you can understand why he did it because no-one would just walk away from the possibility of so much money. Except Bede, but we viewers are in a privileged position knowing that.

I don't think Bede would have survived even if he had taken the gun, but to go quite so willingly to his death ... Also, fab pieces of horrific SFX there, guys.

Then we get game, set and match to the bad guys, with the scene with Gabriel and Gatehouse. At first (as no doubt planned) I thought 'good thinking, Gabriel' and it explained why Honey was practising her snipping skills (unusual enough in a British police officer). And then the reveal, which made a few other things from previous episodes make sense. That was another great thing about this episode in terms of being a finale, it fitted in perfectly with the rest of the series.

Even the wrapping up of the loose ends managed to be tense, while providing the various epigrams - actually, this is one of the very few shows I ever seen get away with in speech epigrams.

It's a total victory for the forces of evil (or at least not good). Gatehouse is in his castle and has new minions. Jay Wratten has taken up his Uncle's drug empire, having set the plot rolling in the first place - it's heavily implied that he deliberately let himself get caught to force his Uncle's hand, which turned out to be revealing the existence of Counterpoint.

The only people who know about the plot are either powerless to do anything about it (Gabriel's wife), implicated (Honey) or a profiting from it (Paterson).

The one possible fly in Gatehouse's controlled ointment is that Jay seems to think that he might be able to avoid his own retirement twenty years hence. The rat might well be able to pull it off, because Gatehouse will be ancient then, and is the only one of his generation of characters not to have an obvious deputy. Not that I can see someone quite so control-freaky being able to cope with needing a deputy.


In short, good, yes.

Comments

[opera142.livejournal.com]

Congrats!

[redfiona99.livejournal.com]

Thank you.