WARNING: This series of reviews contain massive spoilers
*takes deep breath*
Season 3 of
The Fall has not at all been the same like the others.
Silence And Suffering
After 2 fantastic seasons, and albeit not perfect, still a really great buildup in the season 2 finale, we get...
This?
I don't know how to feel about this one. On the one hand I can understand why it went this direction. After all, if someone has been hurt it's gonna take some time to make them recover. On the other hand, maybe they should have gone a different direction. Until the last 20 or so minutes, this episode was so boring I kept getting frustrated waiting for something exciting to actually happen. The countless surgery scenes and the excessive use of medical terms made me feel like I was watching a hospital drama rather than a crime show. With Paul in the hospital, the wisest choice would be to move the focus more to Stella, but at first she doesn't do very much at all. I'm thinking back to X-Files' Space, where Mulder and Scully just spent their time running around in the NASA center, and this is very similiar to that, with Stella just walking around in the hospital building, given very little development or involvement in the story. Sure, some of the wisecracks from Dr. O'Donnell were fairly amusing (and he has a very good monologue when he explains that you gotta treat all patients equally, no matter how evil they are), but he's not incredible enough he deserves more focus than you know, our lead character.
After a long time however, it does pick up, and we get to see a few people handle Paul being in the hospital, the most captivating of these reactions being Katie's. She's falled so far down with her love over Paul that she doesn't care he really is a monster anymore. She fights her mom, she's losing her friends, she forgets everything just to be with Paul, the Belfast strangler. Gillian Anderson shows why she is such an incredible actor, like in one scene where she tells Tom Stagg (Rose's husband) how someone realistically reacts when getting kidnapped, and near the end where an old woman is happy to see she's okay and Stella's almost on the verge of crying. I don't know if she's related to her in some way, but it's a small touching scene.
Because there are some positive points this is not a complete disaster, but for a season premiere it's a huge disappointment, considering what we've gotten before. So for now, I'd have to say this is my least favorite episode.
His Troubled Thoughts
I can forgive a disappointing premiere. That is, if the following episode immediately is a significant improvement. So once again I went into this with hope, thinking that now since Paul Spector finally has regained consciousness, the pace will pick up. So how did it turn out?
Let's start with the upsides. Spector has a bit more dialogue this time, whereas in the previous episode he only had 2, in a dream. It's nice to see him back, since he steals the show just as much as Stella. We also do get a little more insight to how Spector's hospitalization affects the others' lives. Olivia finds out even more about her dad's criminal activities (even though she doesn't really believe it), and Sally has to take her out of school for a few days since the other kids are picking on her. Katie's obsession with Paul finally ends once she finds out that one of her friends was a victim of his. Spector gets an exceptionally good lawyer, which puts pressure on the police investigation team. All of this is very good buildup with a lot of potential. But how much do they do with it?
Not that much, unfortunately. The Spector family situation is admittedly sad, but doesn't have the strong emotional punch that I expected. Pressure is put on Stella's team, but you feel so little of it that you don't get a huge sense of worry. Katie's now changed her motive and decides to go after Paul, but her scenes are very minimal, and the scene where she confronts her friend Daisy is poorly done. Why does she attack her with pepper spray??? It's not like Daisy started clawing at her for her accusations, is it? I know all of this is supposed to show how Katie is not the same person as before, even with her love for Paul dying out. But her over-the-top defense reaction felt out-of-place. I'm about to talk about one more problem however, which really is what brought this episode down for me...(edited)
Paul now has amnesia. Yep, it's our favorite TV drama gimmick. Since there's not very much you can do with a serial killer at the hospital (except show that he has a very strong grip, in a granted pretty startling moment), how about making him lose his memory? No. Please no. It's not thrilling, it just further draws out the plot instead. Why are we wasting time? Why are we not getting back to the root of the story, the intellectual investigative mind versus the woman-hating coldblooded killer? Now we don't even have regular Spector anymore, we have a poor confused man who doesn't recognize his own wife and son.
In general, it's a little better than the premiere, but still a long way from the show I loved. We have 4 episodes left, and they better take it back to the crime element and not just focus on the medical element.
The Gates Of Light
Stella finds a journal detailing Paul Spector's crimes, which she realizes can be used as evidence considering that he now has amnesia. Meanwhile, people talk, and people talk, and people talk, AND PEOPLE TALK...
Holy mother of God, you have got to be kidding me.
If you thought episode 1 of this season was slow, you've seen nothing yet. With the very first minute, I was already not the least bit hooked. And after 10 minutes, I was still not very curious about what would happen either. And after 20 minutes... Okay, look, maybe I described the plot a bit thinly. I mean, Paul develops a friendship with his nurse at least! Isn't that nice? Totally suitable for a gritty crime drama. Not to mention poor Stella is given absolutely nothing to do this time as well. Remember her speech about how she and her team are gonna do EVERYTHING in their power to stop Spector? Well, here she uuuuh... talks with a victim. Finds a journal, which surprisingly enough doesn't seem to matter to the story at all, since it's never shown in front of the court, despite the fact that it could be used as evidence... Really? This episode even had to have a plotline trick me this time.
The conversations between Paul and the nurse are boring as sin. Several other conversations are pretty uninteresting also, which shows if you don't have an engaging story, you can't write good dialogue either. This should be a given, Allan Cubitt!
But what pissed me off the most, and I mean the MOST, is not that Paul still has amnesia, but all the pretentious long stare shots. Paul is staring blankly all the time, Sally Ann is staring into the void, Katie makes a cameo appearance in one scene to stare with her angry goth face, and Jim Burns stares quite a bit as well. The only one of the main characters who actually keep the staring to a minimum is Stella. I feel sorry for these actors. They are so talented, yet they are insulted by the drab and unimaginative writing.
As for the ending shot, guess what they go with? Paul staring.
This is an actually terrible episode. The first two weren't bad, they were just disappointing. This is straight up awful.
Oh, The Fall... What happened? Mind that in the first two seasons, only one episode got less than a 9/10 from me. With this one, I haven't even reached a 7 yet. Please pick up soon!
Reply to Topic
