I didn’t realize that either. I don’t think he probably does realize it. He seems a bit of a dim bulb.
This is one way of looking at it, but saying the older daughter “got herself killed” when the younger one resisted and survived can mean she blames the older one for her own death. Sick and twisted either way.
It can, or it can also mean that she blames herself and “got herself killed” was sarcastic/defensive. I think you’re reading too much into that line.
Maybe. Different viewers will interpret it differently–personally, I don’t believe that the writer/creator Chris Chibnall intended us to believe that Susan blames herself. I believe Chibnall intended the character to be part of the grander theme.
This theme may well account for the enormous viewership this show got in the UK. It’s not doing badly in the USA, either, despite the traditional difficulties that “accent”-heavy fare faces in that market.
The generally-superb acting, interesting setting, and well-delivered plot has a lot to do with the show’s success, too, of course. But the theme is the real grabber:
[SPOILER] Hint: we got a big dose of it with the revelation that D.I. Alec Hardy was in no way responsible for the scandal that’s been haunting him and subjecting him to career damage and contemptuous and dismissive remarks from the citizens of Broadchurch. For all those episodes, the audience was led to believe that Hardy was guilty of something disreputable.
But we found out that he was, instead, nobly covering up for the real Cause of Trouble: a woman.
Similarly, Susan is clearly posited by Chibnall as being responsible for what happened to her family. I believe that Ellie will be presented by Chibnall as being morally responsible for Danny’s death*—because of being so fatally flawed as a human being that she didn’t notice what was happening in her own family.
Hard economic times make stories scapegoating certain groups very, very popular. It’s not possible in the Western world in 2013 to sell a story about Those People being an inherent source of trouble if Those People are members of a national or religious or ethnic group…but it’s always possible if Those People are members of one particular gender.
It sells. [/SPOILER]
*I don’t know the ending—I’m just guessing.
Exactly my point: no one can draw any kind of real conclusion from that line.
My wife (doper Araminty) and I have a theory about whodunit… spoiler boxing purely in case others aren’t interested in our guess, no advance or inside information:
We think Miller’s husband (I think his name is Joe) is a baddie, and has been molesting Miller’s son (Tom?). All the tension between Danny and Tom was because Danny found out, threatened to expose Joe, there were emails to that effect, etc., and that’s what led directly to Joe killing Danny. Note that Joe is balding, so Susan could have mistaken him for Nigel on the beach. This also fits with Miller berating Susan for not having been able to see what was going on under her nose.
I’m leaning in the same direction.
Wow, that is feminist paranoia at its best. :rolleyes: Somehow, men being depicted as murders and child molesters (and not even as driven to it by the women in their lives) “really” amounts to a misogynistic attack on women. Good grief!
Fwiw, I didn’t see any ambiguity. It’s not an uncommon sentence structure, at least around London (the writer is a Londoner): Susan blamed her daughter, irrational as it seems. Maybe irrationality is the point.
Sherrerd - I have no idea where you’re coming from.
We (including you, BrokenBriton0 all agree that Susan blames her older daughter for “getting herself killed.” That’s not the ambiguous part.
The ambiguity lies in whether Susan is saying that the older one was stupid in the way she handled her dad’s advances. Either she was stupid for getting herself killed by finally resisting her dad when he probably wouldn’t have killed her had she just kept on giving in to him, or she was stupid for giving in in the first place because the younger sister refused his advances from the get-go and he didn’t kill her. Either way Susan is washing her hands of her daughter’s death, hence “she got herself killed,” not, “my husband, the murdering pedophile, killed my sweet baby.” Or Susan may be angry at her daughter because the husband wanted sex with the girl(s) and not with her. She may have felt the kid got what was coming to her.
Reading too much into it? Yeah, maybe. So?
oh okay. My take: Neither of the scenarios you describe bear any rational consideration not least because you can’t apportion blame to a child for a parents actions, esp. his kind of action.
However, the irrationality allows Susan space for denial, and that means she doesn’t feel guilty.
People keep mentioning the line “How could you not know …”, for me, it stands out as well as any line I can recall in a drama. For whatever reason it absolutely resonates with the audience.
That’s the thing. Susan can definitely blame her child, which absolves herself of guilt (in her own mind). And we judge her for that. I don’t know from experience, and I’m not a parent, but I surmise that the death of a child at the hands of the other, abusive parent might drive even the best, sanest patent to rationalize some way to absolve him/herself. While the rest of the world shouts, “How could you not know??” Which brings us to:
They do seem to be throwing it at us. And when Beth herself said those words… 
Missed edit window.
Did Danny “get himself killed”? That line could turn out to be the pivotal one in the whole series.
Even though it turned out to be who I thought it was, I’m pretty bummed. 
That was really hard to watch. (And I see why people were saying that it’s not obvious how they’re going to do a second series/season).
The thing with all the fires was really beautiful.
Yeah, as a mystery it is not exceptional IMHO. As you did, the culprit can be deduced ( though not confirmed I don’t think ) through knowledge of numerous shows that have come before. And some of it is even slightly roll-eyey, like dad getting access to the accused in a cell ( easily fanwanked as small town privilege, but still ). But I think what elevates it above run-of-the-mill is the consistently strong acting, especially by the central 4 or 5 characters. It makes everything worthwhile.
I was pretty satisfied, anyway.
I don’t think the main purpose of the series was so much a ‘whodunnit’ - it was more about the community’s reaction to events.
Olivia Colman was exceptional in the last episode. That scene in the interview room still haunts me, months later.
I didn’t think it wanted to be an exceptional mystery. I think it wants to be a small town police investigation conducted by pretty average police hoping for a break rather than super-sleuthing.
It felt to me like the murder was device, not an end in itself. Through the murder we got to know the character of Broadchurch (locals vs. outsiders - the reasons each came to Broadchurch was in itself interesting), the zeitgeist issue of media intrusion in the lives of victims and police investigations, and there was an interesting portrayal of the fringes of pedophilia (the killers delusional belief he wasn’t a long way down a slippery slope, Jack Marshall, Beth as a mid-teen mother, Susan and her husband/daughter).
It obv. wasn’t meant to be pacy or sensationalist, and indeed the one instance of that felt utterly incongruous (village idiot Nige and the dog). It felt appropriately ‘seaside’ paced.
I know I mentioned it before but I agree with Tamerlane, the acting in this was just sensational and, fwiw, I do think Chris Chibnall hit all his targets bang on.
It’s also worth mentioning this was a great result for non-BBC drama. I personally don’t like the 46-48 minute episode - I think the 60-minute (BBC, HBO, Scandie imports, etc) format really suits series drama - but it worked well and that again is down to Chibnall shaping it so well.