[7.1/10] Fair warning, I couldn’t help but compare this episode to the ending of Broadchurch, the show Gracepoint is based on. The first season of Broadchurch, though, has a different ending, so if you don’t want to be spoiled on that, then I’d encourage you not to keep reading!
So it’s Tom! I had heard the ending to Gracepoint was different from the Broadchurch ending, but once we got halfway through the episode, I assumed that was limited to Joe killing Danny due to an unfortunate accident rather than deliberately in a fit of rage. But making it turn out that Joe was still grooming Danny but is covering is actually a really interesting direction to take this ending.
At first blush, I might like it better than the original ending? For one thing, it makes Joe into a more complicated character. Frankly, nothing we saw about Joe in the original made it seem like he had these sort of deeds in him. That fit with the theme of “You never really know someone” the show was playing with, but it made the answer to the whodunnit feel like a little bit of a cheat, or at least a little unsatisfying.
But here, you get the best of both worlds. Joe being a pedophile is still a gut punch and serves the “You never really know someone” theme of the series. But him not having committed the murder, and instead covering for the son who tried to protect Danny from him, is more in line with the glimpses of Joe we get to that point. It doesn’t quite make him a tragic figure, but it makes him a more complicated one, someone who already did a terrible thing to one young man and was planning to do more, but who is also trying to do a noble thing out of guilt and a desire to protect another young man. I’m generally in favor of story choices that make characters more complex, and this gives Gracepoint’s Joe a dimension that his Broadchurch counterpart doesn’t have.
Granted, the actual killing scenario feels a little contrived. It requires Tom showing up at just the right moment, accidentally hitting Danny in just the right way, and Danny falling in just the wrong way to kill the poor boy. The convenience of that makes the actual killing more complicated, which is a drawback. Character-wise, Broadchurch Joe’s character motivations were more out of nowhere, but the logistics of his crime were more sound and straightforward.
At the end of the day, I think I’ll tolerate a little fudging (or at least convenience) on the logistics to get a better character out of the deal. Plus, Broadchurch spent a fair amount of time on Tom feeling guilty and even responsible in a way that didn’t seem to amount to very much in the final tally. This pays that thread off a little better. So on balance, I honestly think I may prefer this ending.
I’m even intrigued by Ellie figuring out the truth from her son and swearing to Joe that they’ll keep it a secret to protect Tom. Her partner realizing the truth from looking at a piece of evidence only he has, thereby creating a possible fault line between him and Ellie seems a little too much like a setup for a second season that never came. But on a thematic level, in a story where everyone kept big secrets despite the notion that this was a tight-knit community, I like the notion that after everything, Ellie now has a big secret of her own, one that elides the justice system she’s sworn to uphold at the same time her life has been shredded to ribbons.
Look, based only on what I saw, I still wouldn’t recommend any Broadchurch fan watch all of Gracepoint. The show seems largely like a beat-for-beat remake of the original series, and key elements like chemistry, style, and tone are inferior to the British originator. But I think Broadchurch fans ought to watch this finale just to see this alternate take on how things might have gone. Oddly enough, pieces of the ideas here show up in a different Broadchurch storyline, and it’s not hard to see why Chris Chibnall utilized it again. The answer her complicates both Ellie and Joe Miller as characters, and their relationship with what’s true and right, which makes Gracepoint a worthy “What If?”, even if it’s the lesser rendition of the same story.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-08-04T01:47:54Z
[7.1/10] Fair warning, I couldn’t help but compare this episode to the ending of Broadchurch, the show Gracepoint is based on. The first season of Broadchurch, though, has a different ending, so if you don’t want to be spoiled on that, then I’d encourage you not to keep reading!
So it’s Tom! I had heard the ending to Gracepoint was different from the Broadchurch ending, but once we got halfway through the episode, I assumed that was limited to Joe killing Danny due to an unfortunate accident rather than deliberately in a fit of rage. But making it turn out that Joe was still grooming Danny but is covering is actually a really interesting direction to take this ending.
At first blush, I might like it better than the original ending? For one thing, it makes Joe into a more complicated character. Frankly, nothing we saw about Joe in the original made it seem like he had these sort of deeds in him. That fit with the theme of “You never really know someone” the show was playing with, but it made the answer to the whodunnit feel like a little bit of a cheat, or at least a little unsatisfying.
But here, you get the best of both worlds. Joe being a pedophile is still a gut punch and serves the “You never really know someone” theme of the series. But him not having committed the murder, and instead covering for the son who tried to protect Danny from him, is more in line with the glimpses of Joe we get to that point. It doesn’t quite make him a tragic figure, but it makes him a more complicated one, someone who already did a terrible thing to one young man and was planning to do more, but who is also trying to do a noble thing out of guilt and a desire to protect another young man. I’m generally in favor of story choices that make characters more complex, and this gives Gracepoint’s Joe a dimension that his Broadchurch counterpart doesn’t have.
Granted, the actual killing scenario feels a little contrived. It requires Tom showing up at just the right moment, accidentally hitting Danny in just the right way, and Danny falling in just the wrong way to kill the poor boy. The convenience of that makes the actual killing more complicated, which is a drawback. Character-wise, Broadchurch Joe’s character motivations were more out of nowhere, but the logistics of his crime were more sound and straightforward.
At the end of the day, I think I’ll tolerate a little fudging (or at least convenience) on the logistics to get a better character out of the deal. Plus, Broadchurch spent a fair amount of time on Tom feeling guilty and even responsible in a way that didn’t seem to amount to very much in the final tally. This pays that thread off a little better. So on balance, I honestly think I may prefer this ending.
I’m even intrigued by Ellie figuring out the truth from her son and swearing to Joe that they’ll keep it a secret to protect Tom. Her partner realizing the truth from looking at a piece of evidence only he has, thereby creating a possible fault line between him and Ellie seems a little too much like a setup for a second season that never came. But on a thematic level, in a story where everyone kept big secrets despite the notion that this was a tight-knit community, I like the notion that after everything, Ellie now has a big secret of her own, one that elides the justice system she’s sworn to uphold at the same time her life has been shredded to ribbons.
Look, based only on what I saw, I still wouldn’t recommend any Broadchurch fan watch all of Gracepoint. The show seems largely like a beat-for-beat remake of the original series, and key elements like chemistry, style, and tone are inferior to the British originator. But I think Broadchurch fans ought to watch this finale just to see this alternate take on how things might have gone. Oddly enough, pieces of the ideas here show up in a different Broadchurch storyline, and it’s not hard to see why Chris Chibnall utilized it again. The answer her complicates both Ellie and Joe Miller as characters, and their relationship with what’s true and right, which makes Gracepoint a worthy “What If?”, even if it’s the lesser rendition of the same story.