you overcompensate, miller

broadchurch screencaps and analysis (scotch eggs, seaviews and brooding.) SO MANY SPOILERS! hit "broadchurch analysis" tag for all commentary! (more tags on side page)

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work has kept me busy but I’ve been working on a bunch of analysis for yall - hoping to clear out the drafts pile soon! Much love and thanks for following! Hope everyone is staying safe ❤️

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“funny vicar” instantly became my favorite hashtag for this page

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hardy taking a dramatic, surly drag of tea

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sometimes you just need to cry in the bathroom alone

top: season one, episode one bottom: season two, episode one

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Every shot immediately after the Not Guilty verdict is read out, in order.

The intentional choice to leave Joe’s reaction till last (the next scene is him turning to look at Ellie before leaving the dark) highlights who Broadchurch wants to focus on. The verdict “literally” affects Joe the most, but the larger psychological impact is on those who watch him go free, and know that justice was not served. shooting close-up also emphasizes their facial reactions.

(and the only one who’s really happy about it is abby, because she is indeed The Worst.)

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season 3 episode 2

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katie is SO LUCKY that hardy calls for miller’s attention immediately after this 

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the devastation in ellie’s face tho

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scenes from s03e04: top - interview w/ aaron mayworth (suspect w/ sex offender record); bottom - mayworth sneaks up on katie in her car

aaron mayworth is so slimy i barely even wanted to screencap him!!

we’ve seen many examples of people who have been wrongly indemnified as sexual predators/accomplices by jury of law or opinion, such as jack & susan wright (and in the opposite ‘direction’, joe as innocent.) aaron mayworth is a counterpoint: he’s innocent of the rape of trish winterman, and might be innocent of the crimes he went to jail for (technically never verified)...but he’s certainly a sexual predator. there are different ways men rationalize and perform sexual offenses, and this season of broadchurch presents a full range. we see mayworth sexually harass katie (after waiting until she’s alone); he disrespects her boundaries & demonstrates a warped interpretation of sex and consent - believing that she is “enjoying this” - without shame. it’s easy to envision how he could ignore the difference between consensual kinky sex and unwanted sexual assault, and how he might really believe himself not to be a rapist. but his ideas could make him just as dangerous as the man who knocks out his targets with a cricket bat.

& i want to draw attention to the quick two-line exchange where, after already being told to leave twice, mayworth asks katie “your boyfriend leave you here alone, did he?” and katie replies “i don’t have a boyfriend”. it’s a socially ingrained instinct for women to sometimes engage with male harassers in that way, even if they don’t want to, because trying to express discomfort that way might be safer than inviting aggression. though he is repeatedly and unambiguously rejected, & ultimately physically removed, men like mayworth will read into those interactions what they themselves choose to believe.

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we get it hardy

you hate broadchurch

[mellicose]

He doesn’t.

It just … hurts.

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you’re right in a sense - hardy projects a lot of his internal angst onto his surroundings - but right now he’s telling us (and himself) that. 

also, screencapping hardy being grouchy is always a bit fun

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we get it hardy

you hate broadchurch

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an exquisitely heartbreaking bit of nonverbal work from charlotte beaumont (buoyed by olafur arnalds’ score)

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not often someone other than miller gets one over on hardy!

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top picture: susan wright to maggie radcliffe, s01e04 second picture: family photo, s01e07 2-frame sequence: susan in witness box after denying making threat to maggie, s0e05 final 6 frames: susan under interrogation (abridged), s01e07

susan wright is so enigmatic (& pauline quirke wonderful at portraying her contradictions). in just one sentence susan makes arguably the most spine-chilling threat of the entire show - “i know men who would rape you” - then under interrogation gives one of the show’s most devastating monologues. (the first and only time she’ll show such vulnerability.) she loves her dog & waits years to find her son, but leaves danny’s body in the surf. how could someone whose daughters were raped, so cavalierly threaten another woman with the same? (even if she had no intention of following through.)

who knows if susan was always this surly, but seeing her beaming in that old family photo (think she’s second from the left?), i’d theorize much of her coldness is a defensive tactic, direct result of what’s happened to her. i didn’t have space for the maaany screencaps of susan essentially saying “fuck the police”, but after her husband’s suicide, the media & the law are all that's left for her to take out her anger on. see how she tells ellie in the interrogation sequence above, “You people [the police] destroyed my family” (instead of her husband). journalists, police and child services twisted her words against her, called her a bad mother and took her remaining children away, so why should she respect or call them when she finds danny’s body? she sees maggie as emblematic of all media, who never understood her pain, so has no problem threatening her by invoking the exact sort of monster her husband was. and she’ll deny her threat in court because even if maggie isn’t lying, journalists lie, and susan won’t give them the satisfaction. [[edit: also explains why when susan meets ellie again at the trial, instead of sympathizing w/ their shared experience, she throws ellie’s doubt back in her face. “you must have known - we all know”]]

focusing on these enemies also allows her to push further from the spectre of her husband, and the personal guilt of not knowing or doing anything to stop him. (something ellie will also encounter - the show isn’t subtle about that parallel.) not many people would first describe a child’s corpse as “beautiful”, “peaceful”, but susan is used to distancing from death; what affects her most is how danny looks, because she’s haunted by what she didn’t see. (also remember, susan found out much later & never saw her daughter’s body.) in interrogation, susan says her older daughter “got herself killed” by standing up to the father; of course susan’s not actually blaming her daughter, but she can’t bring herself to vocalize the depths of her own failure. she creates tiny bits of emotional distance by referring to her children as if they hold no relation to her: the daughters are “the oldest” and “the young one”; “her sister was having none of it” and “wanted to protect her little baby sister”; later social services takes “the baby”. only when susan is brought to tears does she abandon these separations (here’s the whole quote): “When I was...looking at that boy’s body, I kept wondering if my girl looked that peaceful after he killed her.” wanting danny’s body, left untouched, to be evidence her daughter might have died without pain. 

but then again, pauline quirke instantly injects anger into her tears with that haunting “i don’t think she did”.