2x08 Episode 8

[7.4/10] Even knowing the answer, I don’t care about Sandbrook. I still don’t feel like we really know Claire or Lee or Ricky, so finding out that they all had a hand in the murder and disappearance of Lisa and Pippa has no impact. They were all blackmailing each other. Okay? They all worked to hide the evidence. Alright? They all had reasons to feel betrayed or cornered in the situation. Sure?

There’s nothing wrong with the mechanics of the answer to the whodunnit. It adds up as much as anything might. But reopening Sandbrook was doomed from the start. It required introducing too many new characters and motives without enough time to devote to any of it. The season 1 mystery got to be the focus, with anyone and everyone in the town reacting in ways that made the answer meaningful. Sandbrook, on the other hand not only has to jockey for time with the Joe Miller trial, but it has to fit in with the emotional/character material for Hardy and Miller which is more important and interesting.

In short, Broadchurch comes up with a perfectly cromulent answer to a mystery not worth caring about on its own terms.

But Sandbrook is worth caring about for its effect on Hardy and Miller. Even if the logistics and suspects involved feel like eating your vegetables, the show’s main duo continue to make the show worth watching. I’m particularly struck by Hardy’s reaction to finally solving the case. There’s a sense of relief, to this thing that has haunted him for so long finally being laid to rest. But there’s also an emptiness there, of having the thing that drove you for so long suddenly evaporating.

Now, all of a sudden, Alec has to figure out what to do with his life now that he has it back. It’s an interesting place to leave the character in, having exorcised the demon that brought him to Broadchurch, only to not know what he’s supposed to feel or what he’s supposed now that it’s gone.

Likewise, I appreciate Ellie getting the win here. It’s her sharp detective work with the receipts for flooring supplies, photo of the Ashworths’ home, and putting the two together that ultimately pins Lee down. It’s cheeky, but I love the moment when Hardy says, “Couldn't have done it without you,” and she responds, “I know. You didn’t.” Her hope with all of this was to bring another family peace even if she couldn’t do it for her own, and she succeeded. It’s nice to see her get the duke here.

More to the point, I admire how she comes away from this not broken. Hardy’s speech about love being a crock and everyone ultimately being alone is standard cynical pablum. If anyone would buy into it, it’s Ellie, given how much she’s lost and how deeply she’s been betrayed. But despite all of it, she recognizes the interpersonal connections, the bonds we share with one another, that provide strength and solace in the hardest moments. She tells Hardy that he’s wrong, reinvigorated from their work together and the healing of her own family and that of her neighbors as closure starts to come in more ways than one.

It must be said, I admire Broadchurch for having Joe be acquitted. There are consequences for the conflicts of interests and rough-and-tumble ways the case was handled in season 1. I am always appreciative of shows that force characters to face the results of their actions, however well-intentioned. That goes double for police shows which reveal that solving the case is only half the battle to bringing someone to justice.

Acknowledging that allows Broadchurch to remind its viewers that justice isn’t always done. Our system of law is built so that it’s a high standard to convict someone of murder. We don’t take away a person’s freedom lightly. The catch is that it means sometimes the guilty go free using protections meant for the innocent. The season two finale delivers a sliver of the righteous anger and sense of injustice a victim’s loved ones feel when someone they know in their bones is guilty is set free. It takes guts to deliver a blow like that, Broadchurch deserves credit for giving its audience what it needs, even if it’s not what we want.

The finale balances that out with Joe’s banishment. I’ll confess, I expected some mob justice to come through when Mark and Nigel tackled Joe in the church and started dragging him away. It would be understandable for the Latimers to take matters into their own hands, even if mob violence is exactly the sort of thing our judicial system was meant to avoid.

And yet, I like where Broadchurch goes instead. Don’t get me wrong -- dragging Joe to the location where he murdered Danny so he can be lectured by Beth and Ellie before being run out of town on a rail is a series of events which run on emotional logic rather than real logic. But I appreciate where each of these mothers ends things with the man who blew up their lives and their families.

Beth offers Joe a grim but ultimately affirming twist on the idea that “the best revenge is living well.” In a slanted way, she vindicates Ellie’s statement to Hardy about people not being alone. She tells Joe that the people he’s harmed will go on living their lives, continue forming those bonds that sustained them and give them solace through such difficult times. She tells him that he has not broken them or their ties to one another. But that when he dies, he’ll go unmourned and uncared for, having severed himself from such vital connections. His excommunication (assisted by a priest no less), is meant as a punishment worse than penitence and imprisonment. If Joe holds onto his freedom, he’s lost his community and his family.

Ellie makes sure of that. If you’ve been reading my write-ups (and god bless you if you are), you’re probably tired of seeing me praise Olivia Colman to high heaven. But if you’re watching the show though, you know that praise is more than earned. The raw righteous fury in her voice is incredible. She rejects Joe’s apology, upbraiding him for not pleading guilty if he truly wanted to make amends and accept what he did. More to the point, she makes clear that if he comes near their children, she will end his life and, unlike him, accept the consequences, the rare threat that is as cutting as it is scary. Ellie has been through the wringer and then some, but she’s retaken her life and will be damned if she’s going to let Joe tear it asunder again.

And yet, Broadchurch ends on a note of hope, as it did last season. Despite everything, the Latimers remain a family, taking Baby Lizzie to the beach to pay tribute to the brother she’ll never meet. They’re joined by the Millers (sans Joe, of course), the schism between the two families healed, now recognizing one another as mutual victims of the same man, forging a support system together strong enough to weather even this injustice among injustices.

That continues to be the overarching message of Broadchurch. Brutal crimes leave more victims than just those who pass away. But with the right care and consideration from one another, it’s possible to rise above them. Sandbrook was a big waste of time, but for the fact that it let Hardy lay some ghosts to rest, but only with the help of someone he intuitively trusted and relied upon. The trial was a miscarriage of justice, but one that helped Jocelyn see that she needed to let people back into her life in order to rejoin the world. And Danny’s death was a tragedy, but one that can be withstood, if not forgotten, from a community of friends coming together to support and protect one another through it.

There is cynicism in any show that would let a murderer go free, but hope in a finale that shows the people he hurt so badly sharing joy and solace together anyway.

A few odds and ends:

I hate hate hate the scene where Jocelyn tells Sharon she wants to work together again. I get what the show’s trying to do with Sharon treating this like the game after she’s seen her own son mistreated by the system. But what Sharon did was monstrous, and I wish the show treated it like that rather than halfway absolving her or otherwise treating her worthy of anything but a committed shunning from her former mentor.

Why the hell is Becca Fisher around yet again when major stuff related to Danny is going on? She’s the strangest, unavoidable third wheel on this show for some reason.

I didn’t mention in the last episode, but I like the hint from s02e07 that Phoebe Waller-Bridge is glad to have won the case, but seems genuinely stung by the young prosecutor telling her she’s a terrible person. It’s a small note of humanity, and Waller-Bridge plays it perfectly.

Kudos to Rev. Coates for doing what’s right even if it’s a little unorthodox. I’m glad we got some payoff to all his visits with Joe, and I hope he gets still more to do in season 3.