Hi everyone and welcome back to very bad news on Broadchurch. I almost didn’t believe it, but now I see I must. Rolling into the penultimate episode of Broadchurch EVER, I will miss Ellie and Alec terribly.

We ended last time with Mark Latimer (Andy Buchan) climbing into the waves, unable to deal any longer with the fact that he hadn’t been able to protect or avenge his son Danny’s death. That’s also where we open, with his left-behind boat bobbing gently in the moonlight and his estranged wife Beth (Jodie Whittaker) waking up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night to the call.

Detective Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) is already giving Alec Hardy (David Tennant) the gears; she’s over first thing at his house telling him not to let his daughter Daisy (Hannah Rae) leave, just tear up the train ticket! Here, look, she’ll do it! I’d say hide her suitcase but then I’m probably a bad parent. They have six hours until they have to release Ed Burnett (Lenny Henry), time’s a wasting, Alec!

Ed paces in a cell while Ellie breaks the news about the newest assault victim’s meager input; Jim Atwood (Mark Bazeley) runs a breakdown service, doesn’t he?

But…seasonally?

Oh jaysus, Mark survived his suicide attempt and he looks MUCH less happy now then he did drifting off into the waves earlier. Beth fills him in on what happened and how he was found; he tells them he talked to Joe. There’s nothing left for Mark, but what about them? If not Beth, then Chloe (Charlotte Beaumont) and his other daughter. Beth begs him to put this to rest, to live in the present.

Alec takes on Ed while Ellie asks Jim for all his breakdown invoices for the past two years. He seems nonplussed. Ed is even more confused by all the dates Alec is throwing at him; why can’t Alec understand that he would never hurt Trish (Julie Hesmondhalgh)? As for the sexual harassment allegation that Ian Winterman (Charlie Higson) made, why would Trish keep working for him if she was uncomfortable?

Every day I understand more the privilege I once had and still enjoy in so many ways, but I don’t think I ever was that much of a naif. People can’t always quit jobs that they need, whatever the conditions. People who think otherwise have never had to.

Time’s up and just as Alec is asked whether or not he’ll be pulling the trigger, his daughter Daisy (Hannae Rae) calls. She has decided to leave after all, but she wants him to drive her to the station at least. Good news bad news?

So what’s he going to do?

He’s going to release Ed on bail, that’s what.

Maggie Radcliffe (Carolyn Pickles) is dealing with head office again at the newspaper, but at least this time Caroline Hughes (Mariah Gale) has come to her. Maggie’s angry that the newspaper has chosen to run ads featuring hot bikini bods and the like next to her reporting on the sexual predator on the loose, how can Caroline call herself a feminist and do that? Caroline doesn’t call herself a feminist anyway.

Recently I read “Why I Am Not A Feminist” by Jessa Crispin but I don’t think Caroline is casting stones at the wholly commodified modern feminist movement, but rather probably thinks it’s old fashioned. You know, so over. We’re all equal! Except one or two genders in particular has to get their tits out on a regular basis just to be onscreen while another doesn’t at all. If you don’t understand how that is psychologically different, see above re: privilege.

I think I’ve gone too far over the edge, I’ve started to think we’re oppressing animals with our cages and wee domesticated lives. Somebody pull me back!

Daisy spots three lads sitting by the side of the road, she groans. Alec takes the red flag bait and goes to set the fellas straight. One is Michael Lucas (Deon Lee-Williams) but I don’t recognise the others. Alec gives them whatfor, then swings back to (figuratively) kick them in the wobblies, THEN lays a threat on top of that.

Then he marches back to the car and tears up Daisy’s ticket, hooray!

Ellie’s found out that second rape victim Laura Benson (Kelly Gough) used Jim Atwood’s breakdown service  just before the attack, they’re off into the chase. Jim and Cath (Sarah Parish) are just getting home when they ride up with bells and whistles a-blowing.

Leah Winterman (Hannah Millward) tries to convince her mum to go out, for a walk even! Anything. But Trish is angrily gardening and doesn’t want to go anywhere. And Leah’s not to go anywhere either; no woman is safe!

TANGENT: I’m reading a book called Unwanted Advances by Laura Kipnis and I know what you’re thinking: some more of my feminist stumping and you’re not wrong, but that’s not this book either. It’s actually a treatise AGAINST calling out rape culture and the like; suggesting that the insistence that it exists is just another method of control. All the more effective because it’s women enacting it on themselves and other women. I’m not finished the book, but it is definitely making me think. I like both books that make me think and also that allow me to not think; I was due for another feminist manifesto after Jessa Crispin’s Why I Am Not A Feminist (above). The tone has changed in the books I’m reading these days, more than one female writer weary of women being perceived as having no agency and constantly under attack.

Jim’s second (or third?) police interview mystifies him; he has no idea what he was doing on either of the dates the Alec furnishes him with; who remembers what they were doing a year ago on a specific date? Someone better have gotten married or hit by a car for me to remember anything on a particular date in the past and Jim fares no better. He does remember Laura Benson with some prompting, although technically it’s her car he twigs on. Hang on, he thought they were asking about Trish?

Alec and Ellie return to their offices; happy that they’ve shaken Jim up a bit. Alec tells Ellie that he took her advice and tore up Daisy’s ticket, although he doesn’t actually give her the credit. He’s figured out what he’s doing wrong!

Ellie and I: er..

They’ve got another person waiting to see them! It’s Ian and I WAS SO RIGHT!! He did install spyware on Trish’s computer, specifically a program that allowed him to access her webcam. Apparently Trish does what nobody does and just leaves her computer open on sleep mode and he could have a peek when he wanted.

Divorce, y’all.

Ian gives an extremely unconvincing explanation of how he gained access to Trish’s computer, not wanting to drag young Leo Humphries (Chris Mason) into the fray just yet. Alec loses it.

Ian has until the end of the day to come up with the name or he’ll be brought back under arrest for perverting the course of justice.

Maggie’s come to see Beth; she heard what’s happened to Mark but she promises not to print it. What you don’t print is almost as important as what you do print, right?

Alec wants to keep putting pressure on all their suspects, sooner or later one will crack. Ellie noticed that Cath wasn’t at all surprised when the police drove up to arrest Jim, what does she know?

Meanwhile, Cath’s having a look around at what she can find on Jim; turns out it’s quite a lot. Well. A couple of porn mags hidden in the kitchen (kitchen?) and the condoms in the glove box of his vehicle. She cries and then calls Trish to ask if her rapist used a condom. Yes.

Cath is at the police station with everything she found, wow. Not just because of the condoms, but because of the receipt she found with: on the day of her 50th birthday, her husband was buying condoms at 5 pm, hours after he had consensual sex with Trish. Bloody hell. They’ll be searching their house.

Beth is finally able to release some of her anger, dumping it on Reverend Coates (Arthur Darvill), who is probably just peeing himself to have someone coming to him for advice. Beth is furious with Mark, she thinks he’s taking all the oxygen out of the room with his showy grief: look at me! I’m so much sadder than you! It leaves no room for Beth and her grief and anger, “he is selfish and weak.” There’s even a small part of her that wishes he had died in his suicide attempt, that’s quite a lot to unload on a priest, Beth. Huh, well, he’s angry too, nobody knows what to do. He’s been praying for all of them for three years and he has nothing more to suggest.

Hey, guess who suddenly wants Maggie to cover local news, starting with Mark Lattimer’s suicide attempt? Caroline! I call total bull on that, my local paper doesn’t tell me ANYTHING about actual people. It’s her job on the line suddenly, and lemme see if I can find just the right gif to express how she feels about that. She speaks Murican!

That’ll do nicely!

Cath managed to track down calendars for both weekends when rapes took place; she was away both times, which means Jim was at home by himself. That’s damning, but I just don’t feel that it’s Jim. I’ve had to abandon my preferred suspect as well; the owner of the Axehampton house hasn’t been shown near enough to be a factor.

Back to Jim; they’ve got him in interview again, asking about the condoms. There was a young, fit waitress that had caught his eye, so he nipped out during his wife’s 50th party preparations to pick up some party hats and had sex with same waitress up against a tree later that night. Now, I was tied to a tree as a young child and still have scars from it, so Imma call bs but ANYWAY: he did ask Trish to hit it again but she declined. He wasn’t worried, there was a better option staring him in the face anyway.

I do love how Ellie is all righteous indignation about Jim having sex with two people on the same day; that’s usually reserved for women. He gives a Lads defense, unsuccessfully enlisting Alec, who thinks that men like him are the reason he’s worried for his daughter.

Former DC Katie Harford (Georgina Campbell who is in King Arthur: GREAT MOVIE!!!) goes round to see her father Ed Burnett (Lenny Henry) who is steadily drinking away the fact that she told the police he was a violent, dangerous man. Well, he was stalking Trish and he did beat up Jim, so she wasn’t lying and he cost her the job she had, so, even?

Clive Lucas (Sebastian Armesto) gets home to find his wife Lindsay (Becky Brunning) watching porn on his laptop; what is he up to?? This is where Michael is getting the porn from! Well, I hate to agree with Lucas, but really: porn is available everywhere. Like, EVERYWHERE. She pushes him; what else hasn’t he told her? He shoots back: does she really want to know?

Well I do

Ian’s come to see Trish, he wanted to explain about the spyware to her instead of the police. He just wanted to see her, he missed her. He knew he blew what they had and it helped him. Trish is left speechless.

Leah comes out just then, whatever is happening will have to wait because she and Trish are going for a walk. YES THEY ARE.

They walk down to the police station, where everybody is milling around. Hannah’s organized some kind of a Take Back The Night rally, Laura Benson and all of the police are there, along with most of the town.

Even Cath, who asks Trish for forgiveness in a powerful scene reminding us all of our own fragile resilience, ah Cath and Trish. Mates again.

I totally cried when they pulled the cameras back and we saw all the people holding up candles; Leah won’t let this bad guy win, Trish. Not in this town.

Ellie and Alec have tracked down the waitress Dana (Simone Ashley) who Jim claims he shagged that night; she admits to being into DILFs, but says there wasn’t much to write home about. He got too rough and she stopped him, which pissed him off, so now we have an angry, sexually frustrated entitled manbaby DIDWTF wandering around in the woods.

I get that they’re setting Jim up hard right now but A) the premeditation of the attack does not lend itself to last-minute anger and frustration and B) what about the timing of the season? It would have to be someone home from school (Leo?) or renting a house (but I gave up on him) or some way to make the cabbie fit. Surely Cath went away other weekends than just in the summer.

Ahhhh I was just talking about Leo and Ian’s just given his name to the detectives as to who installed the spyware! He’s brought in for formal questioning (honestly, everyone’s lawyers just sit there and look like they’re writing out a shopping list, not one ever says anything) and admits immediately to the computer shenanigans, blaming it on thinking of Ian like a dad. He tells a story of struggling after his parents separated, 15 was a hard year and he contemplated suicide more than once. If it wasn’t for Mr. Winterman..

Ellie doesn’t buy it for a second, rolling her eyes and asking what ELSE he lied about then? Oh and he was at the 50th birthday party of doom.

Ellie wants to arrest him, but Alec advocates caution, they can keep finding out what young Leo was up to after the party since his alibi is blown, but there isn’t enough to hold him right now.

There’s a beep: the sock that was found on the Axehampton estate has coughed up Trish’s DNA AND the DNA of one of their male suspects! Who??

We get a montage of the suspects going about their business, then we’re with Ed, who’s called Katie to look at some stuff he’s found.

I swear to all that is holy: she immediately starts pulling twine out of a plastic bag with her bare hands! BARE HANDS! No wonder she got fired, she’s the worst detective ever! She finds bloodstains as Lindsay goes into Lucas’s garage and starts poking around. She opens that packlock like it’s nothing and finds Trish’s keyring among the other trophies. WHICH SHE TAKES CARE TO TOUCH.

I swear, this show!!

We’re out watching Lindsay and Lucas stare at each other while she’s holding onto Trish’s keychain.

So. They really are making that move on Jim, but I still think it has to be Lucas or Leo. There isn’t much connection with Leo, except the timing and the part where he’s acting completely differently in interview than he was all the other times they’ve talked. Completely disingenuous. It’s just that they showed us Lucas’ trophy drawer far too early on for it to mean what it looks like it means, do you know what I mean? No way can it actually be what it appears to be because that’s an end-of-show revelation. Ian was a non-starter with me, they’ve not focused on him at all with regards to the previous rapes, so he’s just a red herring. Goodness. Just one left! Until then.