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cloudsinveniceI think we can all agree that the problem at Gallows Gate is that someone thought to name the place "Gallows Gate" in the first place. It's just asking for trouble...
Ah, the English countryside. Two women drive through a rainy night, clutching directions to "Duncan's 30th Birthday Party" (it's pre-Google Maps, which is why they actually get there rather than finding themselves at a noted dogging hotspot), which turns out to be in a stately home and hosted by a guy with an awkward bleached perm who ambushes them in a graveyard. NOT FORESHADOWING ANYTHING.
At the party, everyone is so unbelievably posh that I have that momentary confusion sometimes experience with things in these sorts of settings: is this meant to register as normal or is it a commentary? After that scene with the soldier on the snooker table, probably the latter...
Anyway! Of the two girls, one is very obviously Duncan's ~regretted last love who he's still carrying a torch for (she's given him a self-drawn caricature of himself, the sort of thing you need to be close to get away with), while the other is kind of an also-ran whose present he doesn't even bother to open in front of her. How rude. Also, we are now at the point in the series where I start mentally anticipating how Jonathan will react to meeting the charming people involved, i.e. with withering disdain.
Anyway, after drunkenly discovering the caricaturist (Fliss, we learn) in flagrante with another guy, Duncan does a dramatic, teetering walk along a balcony before intentionally plummeting to his doom. The funny thing is that nobody reacts remotely normally to his suicide threat even when he could fall off any second - Fliss and her new squeeze are restrained and low-key (or is this to do with class-based behavioural norms, like it's a terribly embarrassing bore to have your friend and host on the point of killing himself a few metres away from your bed of passion?), the dialogue is weirdly perfunctory - is it meant to be an elaborate faked death that everyone is in on, or are they just that jaded?
We cut to Jonathan, at a village fete, where he and Adam are "pressing the flesh" in hopes of collaboration with Hughie Harper, the blind jazz superstar who, as Adam will shortly inform Jonathan, is not actually blind (had corrective surgery eight years ago, but don't tell anyone, he'd lose his mystique, etc. etc.). Maddy, meanwhile, has been burgled - naturally, when Jonathan phoned last night, he got the burglar, whose sneaky "I'm not sure when she'll be back" led him to imagine all sorts of unspeakable things. Jonathan, YOU could be doing unspeakable things with Maddy IF YOU TRIED A LITTLE HARDER.
Meanwhile, Fliss is not doing well. I'd like to note here that Jonathan Creek is probably the only series ever to have expressed the depths of a character's grief by showing them flipping through animation cells of a giggling octopus while playing the audio track of said giggling over and over again. Anyway, Fliss confronts the guy she bonked (I know, so 90s, but this show has that effect on me) on the night of Duncan's death, who turns out to be living with someone, and who -spoiler!- never loved her.
Notes from Adam's life: he has a much older sister, Kitty, in Dumfries, except that she has unexpectedly turned up to stay. She turns out to be the Scottish granny everyone wishes they'd had, and she calls him Chester and is completely unfazed and practical in her disapproval of his keeping a tiger as a pet. (I sometimes wonder if people who haven't seen the series ever skim these posts. Honestly, what must they be thinking at this point? And I didn't even attempt to explain Mr. Ramis and his conjuring trick...!) The only surprise is that she doesn't take a moment to upbraid him for that utterly hideous shirt - it's like something the production designers for The Tweenies would've vetoed as too bright and clashing.
Following an evening out with Hughie Harper, Jonathan and Maddy mooch home to her place (sign on the unlocked front door: "To all burglars: don't bother, I've already been done"), where an actually heartbreaking scene occurs - heartbreaking because we see a rare moment of Maddy's vulnerability. It's all because the first thing she does on walking in is to unfold the camp bed she's thoughtfully placed there earlier, which Jonathan has to immediately bitch about (and her not even turning on the light! the hussy!). SHE JUST THOUGHT YOU'D BE EXHAUSTED, JONATHAN. JESUS, IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT EVERYONE WHO SHOWS YOU A BIT OF CONSIDERATION.
Then he switches the light on and sees the mess she's somewhat re-organised. She apologises fairly gracefully (for Maddy: "I know you'd be totally useless if the burglar did come back..."), saying she's just relieved to have him there that night, in light of everything. He reciprocates by explaining that he might not be able to manage tomorrow due to his badger watch (and he invites her - he honestly wants her to come! see, THEY CAN BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!), which takes place... at Gallows Gate. 22 minutes in, and we have finally achieved our leisurely goal of having the plot strands intersect. Not that I'm complaining, mind! I feel like today they'd have to have knitted it all together in five minutes flat with hashtags and quick cross-cutting.
Anyway, Jonathan, Maddy and Kitty (Adam has commanded that Jonathan get her out of his hair so he and Hughie can have "the Rat Pack" round to, idk, eat s'mores and play Mousetrap or whatever it is hard-living showbiz types do in the absence of their big sisters) head off to see the badgers, which naturally puts them right on the scene of a murder. Separated from Maddy and Jonathan (any other two people in the world would take the opportunity for a clinch, but they're in a badger-viewing hut with other people, so...), Kitty sees, in the lit window of Fliss's cottage, a man strangling a woman.
Of course, this is viewed with skepticism: "He might have been performing strangulation as an act of love to heighten her state of arousal!" Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan. Look at your life. What are the odds that it DOESN'T involve a murder? You're like Jessica Fletcher. You no longer come to the murders, the murders come to you. To cut a long story short, they end up finding poor Fliss dead in her bath, and disturbing the crime scene, despite knowing better, because let's face it, they investigate murders as a replacement for dating.
And of course, the TBC of this episode is that Kitty identifies the murderer as Duncan Proctor - who killed himself three weeks earlier...
So, the recaps are back. Let's see how long before my head explodes from prolonged contract with a ship more doomed than the Titanic...
Ah, the English countryside. Two women drive through a rainy night, clutching directions to "Duncan's 30th Birthday Party" (it's pre-Google Maps, which is why they actually get there rather than finding themselves at a noted dogging hotspot), which turns out to be in a stately home and hosted by a guy with an awkward bleached perm who ambushes them in a graveyard. NOT FORESHADOWING ANYTHING.
At the party, everyone is so unbelievably posh that I have that momentary confusion sometimes experience with things in these sorts of settings: is this meant to register as normal or is it a commentary? After that scene with the soldier on the snooker table, probably the latter...
Anyway! Of the two girls, one is very obviously Duncan's ~regretted last love who he's still carrying a torch for (she's given him a self-drawn caricature of himself, the sort of thing you need to be close to get away with), while the other is kind of an also-ran whose present he doesn't even bother to open in front of her. How rude. Also, we are now at the point in the series where I start mentally anticipating how Jonathan will react to meeting the charming people involved, i.e. with withering disdain.
Anyway, after drunkenly discovering the caricaturist (Fliss, we learn) in flagrante with another guy, Duncan does a dramatic, teetering walk along a balcony before intentionally plummeting to his doom. The funny thing is that nobody reacts remotely normally to his suicide threat even when he could fall off any second - Fliss and her new squeeze are restrained and low-key (or is this to do with class-based behavioural norms, like it's a terribly embarrassing bore to have your friend and host on the point of killing himself a few metres away from your bed of passion?), the dialogue is weirdly perfunctory - is it meant to be an elaborate faked death that everyone is in on, or are they just that jaded?
We cut to Jonathan, at a village fete, where he and Adam are "pressing the flesh" in hopes of collaboration with Hughie Harper, the blind jazz superstar who, as Adam will shortly inform Jonathan, is not actually blind (had corrective surgery eight years ago, but don't tell anyone, he'd lose his mystique, etc. etc.). Maddy, meanwhile, has been burgled - naturally, when Jonathan phoned last night, he got the burglar, whose sneaky "I'm not sure when she'll be back" led him to imagine all sorts of unspeakable things. Jonathan, YOU could be doing unspeakable things with Maddy IF YOU TRIED A LITTLE HARDER.
Meanwhile, Fliss is not doing well. I'd like to note here that Jonathan Creek is probably the only series ever to have expressed the depths of a character's grief by showing them flipping through animation cells of a giggling octopus while playing the audio track of said giggling over and over again. Anyway, Fliss confronts the guy she bonked (I know, so 90s, but this show has that effect on me) on the night of Duncan's death, who turns out to be living with someone, and who -spoiler!- never loved her.
Notes from Adam's life: he has a much older sister, Kitty, in Dumfries, except that she has unexpectedly turned up to stay. She turns out to be the Scottish granny everyone wishes they'd had, and she calls him Chester and is completely unfazed and practical in her disapproval of his keeping a tiger as a pet. (I sometimes wonder if people who haven't seen the series ever skim these posts. Honestly, what must they be thinking at this point? And I didn't even attempt to explain Mr. Ramis and his conjuring trick...!) The only surprise is that she doesn't take a moment to upbraid him for that utterly hideous shirt - it's like something the production designers for The Tweenies would've vetoed as too bright and clashing.
Following an evening out with Hughie Harper, Jonathan and Maddy mooch home to her place (sign on the unlocked front door: "To all burglars: don't bother, I've already been done"), where an actually heartbreaking scene occurs - heartbreaking because we see a rare moment of Maddy's vulnerability. It's all because the first thing she does on walking in is to unfold the camp bed she's thoughtfully placed there earlier, which Jonathan has to immediately bitch about (and her not even turning on the light! the hussy!). SHE JUST THOUGHT YOU'D BE EXHAUSTED, JONATHAN. JESUS, IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT EVERYONE WHO SHOWS YOU A BIT OF CONSIDERATION.
Then he switches the light on and sees the mess she's somewhat re-organised. She apologises fairly gracefully (for Maddy: "I know you'd be totally useless if the burglar did come back..."), saying she's just relieved to have him there that night, in light of everything. He reciprocates by explaining that he might not be able to manage tomorrow due to his badger watch (and he invites her - he honestly wants her to come! see, THEY CAN BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!), which takes place... at Gallows Gate. 22 minutes in, and we have finally achieved our leisurely goal of having the plot strands intersect. Not that I'm complaining, mind! I feel like today they'd have to have knitted it all together in five minutes flat with hashtags and quick cross-cutting.
Anyway, Jonathan, Maddy and Kitty (Adam has commanded that Jonathan get her out of his hair so he and Hughie can have "the Rat Pack" round to, idk, eat s'mores and play Mousetrap or whatever it is hard-living showbiz types do in the absence of their big sisters) head off to see the badgers, which naturally puts them right on the scene of a murder. Separated from Maddy and Jonathan (any other two people in the world would take the opportunity for a clinch, but they're in a badger-viewing hut with other people, so...), Kitty sees, in the lit window of Fliss's cottage, a man strangling a woman.
Of course, this is viewed with skepticism: "He might have been performing strangulation as an act of love to heighten her state of arousal!" Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan. Look at your life. What are the odds that it DOESN'T involve a murder? You're like Jessica Fletcher. You no longer come to the murders, the murders come to you. To cut a long story short, they end up finding poor Fliss dead in her bath, and disturbing the crime scene, despite knowing better, because let's face it, they investigate murders as a replacement for dating.
And of course, the TBC of this episode is that Kitty identifies the murderer as Duncan Proctor - who killed himself three weeks earlier...
So, the recaps are back. Let's see how long before my head explodes from prolonged contract with a ship more doomed than the Titanic...
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 06:16 pm (UTC)If they're like me, they are boggled, but entertainingly so.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 06:26 pm (UTC)