2x05 Episode 5

[7.6/10] Ah, poor Ellie. Her story pulls me into Broadchurch more than any other. Cracking open the Sandbrook case is fine. And the machinations of Joe Miller’s trial are...acceptable. But the main draw of the show right now is this poor woman, scorned by her community (or at least beth Latimer and Susan Wright), rejected by her son (that Tom scene was hard), committed to the idea that if she cleans up someone else’s mess maybe it will make up for the one on her doorstep. Ellie Miller (think she’ll go back to her maiden name at some point?) is a walking open wound trying to stay professional, throwing herself into her work so as not to have to think about the rest of her life. That is heartbreaking and compelling at the same time.

And poor Tom. I understand this poor kid, who’s suffered multiple traumas of his own, not understanding the situation and blaming the nearest person he can think of. What he’s doing is so hurtful and so wrong -- unfairly pushing away his noble mum and blindly trying to save his despicable dad -- but my heart breaks for him too. One of the overarching themes of Broadchurch is that crimes have ripples. Their victims are not just the people who lose their lives, but in the loved ones and community who deal with the after effects. Naive, misguided Tom is a victim of his father too; the poor kid just doesn’t know it.

Plus hey! Jocelyn does something competent for once! Her dressing down of Susan Wright and picking apart her testimony is, perhaps, the first cogent thing she’s done on this show. It’s not much, but seeing her be a capable advocate gives her at least a modicum of appreciability in a courtroom setting short on it. We also see her speaking wistfully of missing out on the person she was meant (Maggie, presumably) to Hardy, something that humanizes her in a way nothing else so far has.

But then she gets into another snit with Sharon, and I’m just so done with it. Sometimes Broadchurch devolves into high drama nonsense, and the legal side of season 2 ahs featured more than its share of that. Sharon’s interlude with her poor beaten son in prison is supposed to make her sympathetic in the same vein. But just a few scenes before, we see her browbeating a friggin’ priest to try to speak to her murderous pedophile of a client’s good character. Maybe the suggestion is that Sharon wasn’t always this way, but that Jocelyn’s harshness and the loss of her son to the prison system made her this way. There’s a good story that could be told along those lines, but this isn’t it. This is a spate of bog standard theatrics with an unlikable character at its center.

On the more sympathetic train, I like what the show does with Beth here. She wantst honor Danny in some way, to help something good come from his tragic death, and thinks that helping reformed sex offenders might do that. But when she looks into their eyes, she can’t take it and runs away. It’s a very human response to a noble impulse that’s too difficult to handle emotionally.

On the other side, I don’t know what to do with Mark in this one. Somehow the show makes loving your infant daughter feel like a dereliction of responsibility when she’s callous toward Beth still trying to reckon with their son’s death beyond starting fresh with a new baby. And yet, he’s ready to go onto the stand to speak for his boy in a bid to get him justice. His suffering from having to endure the trial is relatable. Honestly, it’s the most I’ve appreciated Mark since the show began, which still isn’t very much, but it’s something!

Last but not least, Sandbrook continues apace. I’ll confess, it still feels like a cheat to me to turn Sandbrook into an open mystery again, especially with all the convenient details that get deposited at convenient times for our heroes to discover them. That said, five episodes in, and I have legitimately no idea who the culprit is. Granted, that may not be a shock if you saw my “top suspects” lists from last season, but it at least leaves me intrigued to figure out who the real murderer (or murderers) are, which is the least you can ask for from a mystery.

That said, it’s partly because the show keeps throwing random, oft-salacious details out of nowhere about characters we barely know. Apparently the families in the Ashworth duplex were all just schtupping one another, and nabbing rohypnol and possibly absconding to France. Some of this feels like stacking twist upon twist rather than building up the mystery naturally, but I can appreciate the pure pulipiness of it. Ellie's obsession (replete with spiffy new Crazy Carrie Board) helps the medicine go down.

Overall, this episode is an improvement, making Ellie’s plight and purpose that much more acute, adding at least a little merit to the legal side of things, and making the mystery, however implausibly salacious, a little more mysterious.