1x08 Episode 8

[7.5/10] So it’s Joe. Even after a good night’s sleep, I don’t know how I feel about him as the answer to Broadchurch’s whodunnit.

On the one hand, the show plays fair with the logistics of the crime. I like that, since he and Nigel have the same build, eyewitnesses mistook one for the other. Joe’s initial panic to try to dispose of the body at sea, only to return him to shore so that his family wouldn’t have to wonder what happened to him makes sense psychologically. The brief mention of his background as a paramedic helps account for him knowing how to scrub the scene. And the family being jet-lagged after returning from vacation, Ellie in particular taking sleeping pills to combat it, explains how he could pull this off without his wife knowing.

In short, the show plays fair with how it happens and who saw it. There was no moment where the details felt like a cheat, or his ability to get away with it as long as he did failed to add up. They even came up with a plausible explanation for the chase in episode 6, with him not wanting to confess to Ellie. In terms of the pure “How did he do it and how did he get away with it?” questions, the show more than lives up to its obligations to the audience to come up with sound answers.

In spite of that, I find the answer a little unsatisfying at a deeper level, if only because Joe hasn’t been much of a character up to this point. Is the story the finale tells about Joe plausible? Absolutely. A pedophile who fears being exposed by the boy he’s preying on, who commits a crime of passion when called out for his disturbing urges, adds up. Performer Matthew Gravelle does a good job conveying Joe’s sick attachment, his anger, and his panic, so the emotional quotient of the flashback works. Danny’s frustration with his own father sadly justifies him turning to Joe as a surrogate dad. If you read about it in the newspaper, you’d have to keep your breakfast from coming back up due to the depravity and tragedy of it, but you’d also buy it.

The problem is that Broadchurch didn’t do much, if anything, to build to this reveal from a character standpoint. We just don’t know that much about Joe beyond a few dribs and drabs of backstory and the image of him as a seemingly steadfast and kind husband and father. His employment history and sudden desire to go to church accounts for the logistics and his guilt, but we’ve never really had any prior hints as to his motivations.

The best the show comes up with on that front is that Ellie and Tom were both self-possessed and independent, with Joe’s life being to support them rather than steer the ship, whereas preying on Danny was “his” in a way that caring for his wife and son wasn’t. The logic there is a little tortured, but it’s the only thing that connects what we’ve seen of Joe in the past to this major reveal. Joe’s mainly been a blank slate, a one-dimensional character without any substantial hints that he’d do such a thing, so nothing about unveiling him as the culprit makes things snap into place.

But maybe that’s the point. Joe might not be much of a character, but Ellie certainly is. I think part of my frustration with this answer is it seems motivated less by a question of “What solution has the show built to up to this point?” and more motivated by a question of “What solution would make for the wildest twist?” The irony of the killer being the spouse of one of the lead investigators is a little cheesy, something you’d roll your eyes at if a friend described the plot to you over lunch. The twistiness of it, matched with the ho-hum job the show did accounting for Joe’s psyche until the finale, makes this finish feel like a triumph of shocking plot twists and high drama over lived-in-character work.

And yet, the character work in the show has been focused on Ellie and Hardy, and this resolution certainly works for its effect on them. This answer vindicates the personal tension between them over whether or not D.S. Miller was too close to the town to be objective in pursuing this case. More to the point, while there’s a frustration factor for the viewer never having hints that Joe would do something like this, it puts us in the same position as Ellie. We’re able to absorb a thousandth of her shock, to feel the tiniest sliver of what it’s like to have your world turned upside down in an instant.

There’s a bitter echo of Ellie’s own “How could you not know?” comment to Susan Wright between Ellie and Beth here. That, coupled with Hardy’s comment about never really knowing what’s in someone else’s heart cements a larger theme of Broadchurch -- that traumas and tragedies can happen under our noses, that noble people with good intentions can still falter and miss important things because they are, ironically, too close to them. To the extent this reveal succeeds, it does so on the back of Olivia Coleman’s virtuoso, gut-wrenching performance as a woman forced to confront some of the most horrid news imaginable: not only the truth about this grisly crime, not only that she missed an answer so close to home, but that the life she thought she knew has cratered in an instant.

What I admire most about this finale is that it doesn’t shy away from these difficult conversations. The clinical, unpersonable Hardy has never felt more like a human being than when he comes around the table to give Ellie the news and does his best to break something gob-smacking as frankly but gently as possible. We see him tell the Latimers the same and see them aghast that it was something so close to home. We see Mark confront the man who killed his son, no longer consumed by hate, despite his fiery temperament, but finding some kind of peace in pity. Lesser shows would gesture toward these scenes, conveniently cut away at their hardest moments. Instead, Broadchurch forces the audience to live with them in the same ways its characters do, and does it well.

I don’t like everything, though. Good lord, why is it that the psychic guy appears to, in fact, be clairvoyant and not just a charlatan? What kind of hacky nonsense is that? Hardy’s “I’ve got to solve this case before I’m forced to retire for medical reasons!” routine continues to be a bit hacky. I wish we got more time with Tom, to process what he was thinking and feeling during all of this, because it’s a major part of the emotional trajectory of the episode and one the show has tip-toed around to this point due to its plot-relevance. Frankly I wish we had more time for denouement all around. The finale understandably spends most of its time accounting for the how and why of the whodunnit. For such a wide-ranging story, though, it consigns most of the fallout to be conveyed in thumbnail sketch moments and montages rather than digging into how finally knowing the answer affects everyone.

Once again, though, the episode spends its ammo in the right place on that front. The focus is on how Ellie grapples with this terrible truth. One of the animating ideas of Broadchurch is that there are people who are not victims that are nonetheless wounded by crimes. Ellie has been on one side of the line, comforting people and trying to give them the solace of catching the person who caused such pain. Now she’s forced to be on the other, to know what it’s like to feel tainted and hurt by someone close to you, to have the rug pulled out from everything you thought you knew. The irony is bitter. The instant wreckage of a seemingly idyllic life is devastating. The suffering of this dear, earnest woman is painful.

Despite that, Broadchurch ends on a note of hope. As hard as it is to face, Hardy and Ellie caught the culprit and forged an unlikely bond, commiserating with one another as the “former detectives club.” The Latimers are finally able to lay Danny to rest, gaining some measure of closure after such a harrowing experience. Even mercenary Karen seems to have learned her lesson, and Olly ascends to the vaunted ranks of Maggie’s protege. For all the questioning of faith in the wake of Danny’s death, Rev. Coates concludes that the word is still good. (And hey, sorry for my regular accusations, mister vicar!)

The campfires that dot the countryside show that, for as much as this community was torn apart by tragedy, the men and women of Broadchurch are still a close-knit town, there to support one another in a time of need. Perhaps that’s the ultimate poetry of the show’s first season. The story suggests that there is unknown darkness lurking closer than we think, among friends and neighbors we believe we know, concealed in our blind spots. But it also promises that there is also a hidden light, strength and solace offered from unlikely places just as close to home, there to unexpectedly lift us up when we need it most.