The Fall recap: season two, episode five – at last, Spector vs Gibson
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Version 0 of 1. Spoiler alert: don’t read on if you haven’t seen episode five of The Fall. Read Vicky’s episode four recap here. It’s been an at times frustratingly long dance to get to this point, but we’ve finally arrived at Spector v Gibson, a fight in which both hold important cards. Stella has the evidence, still mounting, that ties Spector to two crimes; Paul, crucially, knows where Rose Stagg is and whether she’s still alive. Now we’ll see how that battle of wills plays out. Of course we had some high-stakes surveillance first: Spector making for the botanic gardens on foot after (correctly) assuming that he could outrun a load of policemen who spend all day in their cars taking pictures and talking about suspects “running loose”. We never did see how he managed to leave the park without anyone noticing, given that there were cars on every gate, but let’s presume he jumped the fence. Luckily, Jimmy and his late righthand man were there to completely botch an execution in the street, allowing Ferrington to keep an eye on Spector, before handing him over to Tom Anderson. There were a couple of nice bits of direction here I thought: confused relief of Spector as Burns allowed him to walk through the police cordon and towards freedom, and the long, slow shot as Spector was escorted into the police station. I also like that we’re not seeing Stella face Paul directly across a table – at least not yet. Gibson has apparently intuited from a brief meeting at last week’s crime scene that Anderson is the man to conduct the interview, while she reviews all the evidence and pulls the strings. Burns’ trip to see Jenson means the police now have a fair amount of information on Spector. They know about his childhood, his name (Peter Baldwin), his record for breaking and entering as a teenager, that he keeps a journal - although most of that now appears to have been destroyed. Also, of course, that he has named himself after his father, a murderer held in Canadian prison. It was a good piece of writing that saw Spector destroying the evidence that would link him to earlier murders while the police sat outside staring at his drawn curtains. I’m presuming that he has intentionally left the videos on his phone to taunt Gibson, given how thorough he was at destroying his laptop. And that there might not be anything to link him to the first two murders, leaving Gibson with a resolution – Spector in prison – but not the result she would have wanted. It of course remains to be seen whether Katie successfully managed to burn the lock of hair, or flush the memory card. We haven’t seen even the smallest blink of tension from Spector in the interview room. His response to the videos of Rose was to lean back and place his feet on the table, and he was apparently unmoved by Sally’s arrest. (See also Jimmy demanding Spector find Liz’s address with a gun pressed to his head.) But Gibson’s reaction to Rose was profound: her impassive face streaked with tears as she watched her beg for her freedom. Rose Rose’s pleas were extremely distressing viewing – Spector’s defiant “Why are you watching this?” a question apparently aimed as much at the TV audience as Gibson. And I did pause. There was Spector, still in control, while the women whose lives he has devastated were arrested, mourned, or still missing. It’s pretty grim viewing. We’re no clearer to knowing whether Rose is still alive – thermal imaging showed no signs of life on the Goodall’s farm, including at the derelict building the police seemed very relaxed about: “We’ll take a look later today.” But I’m presuming that the boot of Rose’s car is filled with the mannequin rather than her remains. The family Investigating the impact of a killer’s actions on his family should have been one of The Fall’s great strengths, but somewhere amid the flit to Scotland, move to Bleecker Street Hotel and manipulation of Katie, that got rather lost. But now we begin to see the fallout: Sally-Ann arrested for lying about where Spector was, Livvy asking her gran whether dad’s on the phone. The contrast between Sally-Ann, emotionally confessing everything, and her husband, silent and arrogant, was marked. I feel like the bit we’re missing here, however, is a picture of the Spectors when they were happy: the relationship between Paul and Sally-Ann is obviously now broken, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really understood it. Katie Arrested doing Paul’s bidding, and now refusing to see her mum. I’m not sure that a 16-year-old who hasn’t been in trouble before would be so cool, even if she was infatuated with Spector. It also brings us back to that thorny question of whether Katie really believed he was responsible for the murders. Her behaviour suggests that was the case. I do my usual eyeroll at this storyline. Thoughts and observations • Gibson using Gail to unsettle Spector seemed an unlikely dramatic flourish. Were we meant to infer he was looking up directly at Gibson in the camera? • Tom Anderson talks at the same pace as Stella Gibson. I hope they don’t have scenes of loooooong conversations next week. • The mystery of Spector’s money was solved. Well, partly: we still don’t know where it came from. • How Spector could possibly have got through all the necessary checks as a counsellor when he was basically invisible before he got married, and is using a different name? • Some worries in the comments last week about where Dani Ferrington had gone. Luckily she returned to take a bullet for Stella (literally) – “Sorry ma’am, we’ve had a contact” – and deliver Spector to Anderson. • Talking of that scene: the man phoning in the 999 call seemed particularly nonchalant, just hanging around at the window without a top on. • For some reason the “serious crime suite” makes me giggle. I can’t help but think of a set of palatial hotel rooms, rather than the world’s dingiest, greyest building. • Has the Burns corruption storyline actually just gone away? I know I was glib about it last week but it does seem to have completely disappeared, leaving him to go and shout at unrepentant priests. |