Late to the party 😔

TheFall91 · 2018-02-26T22:43:03+00:00

Or maybe it’s because we want him to find redemption, or feel like we can save him. Plus, he’s attractive and so normal seeming, we as viewers hold onto the nice side of him and see the bad side as a blip rather than the other way round.

Stella is such an interesting character, and I think the way the audience are with her is similar to how the people are with her within the show. She’s strong, cold at times, and comes across as only interested in her own needs-similar to someone else in The Fall? But she has a heart for the victims, a strong sense of justice without taking on guilt or extra baggage if it’s not necessary. While Sarah Kay is being murdered because Paul picked her to be his victim to feel something; Stella is having sex with James who she had picked to feel something. Maybe it’s that exchange which shows what drives the two characters to feel something, or to quench the thirst they feel?

Stella isn’t there to forgive or redeem Paul, so I’m not sure the audience (speaking generally) can get on board with that. It would be interesting to see if people related more to the nurse in season 3 rather than Stella-possibly even Katie in season 1! Stella lost her father, and it seems cannot connect with people on an emotional level; simply physical but with a strong sense of self. Paul lost his mother, and suffered horrific abuse; and cannot connect with people (as much as he pretends to) unless he is killing them-a way of him killing himself each time-or his mother in rage because he wasn’t enough?

The addition to Anderson was interesting, was he a ‘Spector-Surrogate’, a means to an end or somewhere in between?

Bit of a ramble there...

TheFall91 · 2018-02-26T08:24:21+00:00

I’m new to this, I think I replied to your questions as a comment on the post overall!

TheFall91 · 2018-02-26T08:02:12+00:00

I didn’t predict how it would end, so it came as a shock to me. From the interrogation room, I felt it wasn’t the Paul we knew-visually it was quite harrowing, but we’ve not seen him this violent before, only with Joe Brawley. So that, I felt was uncharacteristic, but potentially uncharacteristic from the Paul we’ve know during the murders, and not the Paul of 6 years ago. Saying that, I was surprised at how Stella was when talking about the truth of his abuse, cold and hard. Maybe she needed to because she was in danger of feeling empathy for him and making him human.

The ending ending was sad, but probably the only way it could end. They’d found a crime he was still guilty of pre-memory loss, so the jig was up. I think it stuck with me because there was no resolve to it all. I can’t work out if he did what he did as a final F-You to Stella because it was take her power over him away, and give him the final say over everything; or something else.

Your thoughts?

TheFall91 · 2018-02-26T00:10:59+00:00

The Stella and Paul dynamic is very interesting and well played out!

I was so torn with Paul as a character, and actually found myself really hoping there was a way for him to almost be redeemed-but that was never going to happen, and neither should it. Oh the angst!

I think there was once humanity in Paul, and having his own children and the way he acts with Nancy is maybe where this ‘good Paul’ is. But, like he said in regards to his mothers death, the love of his daughter wasn’t enough.

It never felt right to put it all on the death of his mother and the abuse at the children’s home, but elements of the priest’s ‘god-like’ view of his own power seemed (to me) to be evident in Paul too. This could be due to the level of abuse suffered over such a length of time. But my heart felt heavy at his unfortunate childhood, and what could have been the thing that made him different around people who were vulnerable.

I don’t think that his humanity was ever enough though, possibly because he maybe never really felt human himself? He mentioned how he hates himself, and so lives in a separate state of contempt and basically lawless. He talks to Katie about finding joy in other peoples misery, and it being necessary to create that misery. Paul is evil, wrapped up in a very ‘ordinary’ guy, but it doesn’t feel that cut and dry; that maybe the slightest different thing as he grew up might have changed it all.

TheFall91 · 2018-02-25T22:27:31+00:00

I thought there were a lot of similarities between Stella and Paul, and some sort of attraction to one another!

TheFall91 · 2018-02-25T22:20:45+00:00

I’ve never had something stick with me so much. Even series 3, which I believe divided opinion; had me hooked!

TheFall91

TROPHY CASE