The team combs through the new evidence found in the storage unit, Paul gets questioned by a neuropsych, Stella and Jim meet with the Director of Public Prosecutions and Sally Ann takes matters into her own fragile hands on episode three of series three.
Where on the continuum of his violence do these journals fit?
In the opening scene of the episode, we see faceless forensic lab techicians, in cordoned off rooms, each tasked with the meticulous effort of cataloging and examining each piece of new evidence retrieved from Paul's storage garage. It's stark, clinical and painstaking. We don't just understand that this process has the highest of stakes but it's also discordant. Once the team gets the perfectly put-together pages and images, their task is to make some sense of it. But looking at all of their faces around the table (Stella hides it the best) is like watching a piece of their souls dying in real time. The show has tapped into something to which we can all relate: when you come across crime details that go beyond what your mind can comprehend humans are capable of. It's an existential sinking feeling, a distant cousin to what Rose Stagg is experiencing.
Rose comes to visit Stella, to tell her about what happened during the moments she was kidnapped. She describes being frozen but, incredibly, she had the presence of mind to use every emotion she can think of to try and appeal to Paul, but to no avail. She absentmindedly touches her arm where there are little cuts in the skin starting to heal. She has no idea how they got there. Stella tells her when she opened the trunk, she thought, at first glance, it said 'I love you'. Rose is overcome by this. In whatever state she was in, she tried to send a last message. To her daughter? Her family? Herself?
Has that new life worked for you?
Paul is evaluated by Dr. Walden, a neuropsychiatrist, played by Andor's, Denise Gough. She asks him all kinds of questions, trying to determine the extent and nature of his memory loss. She asks him to describe what it feels like and I found myself searching every inch of his face while he answered. Did he feel put on the spot to come up with something good and believable? I searched her face, too, trying to see if this was the right kind of answer that people with memory loss give! Is this real for Paul? Dr. Walden gives him her wedding ring to hold and asks her to give it back after 15 minutes, a short-term memory test, which he does, perfectly, with no issue.
I can't believe you of all people are asking for us to treat Sally Ann paternalistically.
Jim and Stella meet with the DPP to talk about the case. Stella is the only woman in the room. She asks for Sally Ann's charges to be dropped, citing concern with Sally Ann's mental health and overall well-being. (She is proved right by the episode's end when Sally Ann drugs her children and drives all three of them into the ocean waves.) The DPP is more interested in making an example out of the whole case, possibly in an effort to overcorrect on the more disturbing aspects of Paul's crimes. I guess everyone has their own way of proccessing these details. Stella, on the other hand, is just fighting for her life in that room. Her own colleague takes a very cheap shot at her, twisting her request for Sally Ann against her own worldview about gender. Afterwards, we see Jim in the bathroom crashing out. The case has everyone's nerves frayed.
Did you want to come back to your body? Come back to life?
Paul makes his court appearance, on a closed circuit televsion from in a room in the hospital. The judge is a woman, by the way. Also, Annie Brawley is there. But what stuck out to me was when he was asked to confirm the address where he lives, he answers, "So I've been told." It's a passive-aggressive tactic that throws the proceedings into a bit of turmoil when it's then revealed that he doesn't remember the last six years. It might have been Healy's idea but it comes off really defiant. It does have the intended effect, though. The court now knows what they're dealing with when it comes to his state of mind. Did it garner any sympathy? We shall soon see.
In one of the episode's final scenes, Kiera ask Paul why does he think he was crying during surgery? He tells her about his 'near-death experience.' The show wades into some interesting waters here; how does a killer regard his own life and death? Paul tells Kiera verbatim what we have already seen in the first episode. A tunnel, his mom on one side and Olivia on the other, both calling to him. When Kiera asks him if he wanted to come back into his body, he answers no. He tells her what he realizes now, after this experience: I know that life is our only possession. What then, about other people's lives?
The Devil is in the Details
* Dedra Meero!!! I am laughing, thinking about Tony Gilroy watching The Fall series three while casting Andor. (I have no idea if he really did.)
* I'm sure I have mentioned this before but it never gets old the way the show burns Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan's name into the opening frames. It's so simple and so cool.
* The music, which series three has settled on a few recurring motifs, is brilliant at setting the tone. David Holmes, of both trip-hop album fame and many of Steven Soderbergh's movies, is just effortlessly cool with the show's music themes.
* Two times in this episode, Stella had the face of all faces. One, when she was told by the ICU advisor that Paul is suffering memory loss and two, when Jim took that shot at her in the DPP's office.
* Katie, who we're told has an arrest warrent out for her, was standing in broad daylight, outside of the courtroom!
* We meet Dr. Larson, the psychiatrist who heads up the forensic clinic where Paul will be sent next after hospital. He calles Stella late at night, to which she notes, and the two discuss Paul and the case. Both are a little cagey. Stella is looking at his credentials on her computer while they're talking. Good lord, he is like the expert of all experts on forensic psychiatry. This should be good!
* Tom discovers a murder committed by one of Paul's mates at the boys' home he was sent to after his mom died.
Quotes
Dr. Walden to Paul: "Have you heard of Facebook?" And a few moments later... "What about Twitter?" (Twitter, of course, famously had its biggest growth around 2009.)
Rose describing Paul to Stella: "His eyes were open but it was like he was in a trance."
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