Fred Thursday, to Morse: When it comes to a bird with a wing down you've got a blind spot a mile wide.
Also Fred Thursday: [catches Morse fainting into his arms] [coat-blanket] [repeatedly saving Morse's life in the nick of time in Big Damn Hero fashion] [defends Morse verbally to numerous people (esp. Bright) and never lets Morse know he's done it] [drives Morse to his father's house when he's injured and doesn't go home until the early morning] [tries to help Morse when he has PTSD] [moar life-saving] [sneakily pays Morse's neighbour for expenses needed to look after him] [Shoulder Touches Of Love] ["corned beef"] [boat-train to Venice to save Morse's life again even though they've not been on speaking terms for months] [drives out in lethal levels of snow to save Morse's life again even though his wife threatened to leave him if he did so given their son was missing at the time] [makes sure Morse knows that it's okay for him to take weeks or months off if it'll help him get help for his alcoholism] [drops an important case to saves Morse's life and lets Morse believe he did it for his (biological) family] [doesn't want to ever be parted from Morse and never tells Morse this for Reasons that doubtless make sense to him at the time]
Fred. Fred. Fred. I think you might just possibly have a wee "bird with a wing down" problem of your own.
While openly talking about one's feelings is a fate worse than death, bagmen still require validation on a semi-regular basis to be their best and brightest selves!
To make sure your bagman does not start believing himself to be abandoned by God while you are not looking, consider periodically affirming how much he means to you (pro tip: putting a car in between can help ensure you do not endanger your hard-won English repression in the process!)
Fundamentally the endlessly compelling thing about Morse is that he is selfless, determined, brilliant, courageous (even though he's very scared most of the time), nonviolent, loyal, devoted, awkwardly heroic, anti-bigotry, and compassionate. Also desperately vulnerable, possibly bi, and patently neurodivergent. There's a real sweetness to him - and I do mean Thaw's Morse as well as Evans's.
And he's *also* an absolute little shit who can be judgemental as fuck, occasionally misogynist, deeply arrogant, unbelievably awkward and stubborn, and so untrusting (for heartbreakingly understandable reasons) that he mostly pushes people away and will jump to the erroneous conclusion that he's being rejected by someone who cares about him even faster than he can fill in a crossword or quote some Housman.
He's complicated and real and exasperating and admirable.
I love him and relate to him and have so much sympathy for him and also spend a lot of time going OMG MORSE FFSSSSSSSS.
Oh Morse. The endless dilemma that is this: he constantly feels like he's been abandoned and is alone, from more or less the age of 12 for the rest of his life, but from the moment Fred Thursday chooses him in the pilot of Endeavour, he isn't. From then on he's loved, and constantly has people in his life who have no intention of leaving it; who either don't leave it (Max, Strange, maybe Dorothea, perhaps Joan though that's complicated, Lewis once he arrives), who do so without remotely wanting to (Fred and Win), or who just do for reasons that don't mean any lack of love for him (Jakes, Trewlove, Fred and Win as far as Carshall, Bright, Sam, I assume McNutt). Um, or who he himself fucks up towards so he loses them that way (Monica, Adele). Not to mention the existence of Joyce! He doesn't find a long-term romantic partner, let alone someone he can marry and have children with. But he's always got at least a couple of people who adore him kicking around. <3
I so love the moment in s9 of Endeavour when Fred points out that Jakes always thought a lot of Morse, and of course Morse disputes that, because Jakes to start with was an absolute dick towards him. But as Fred says, Jakes turned up on Morse's doorstep! (I think that exchange really is key: I mean, sure, Fred can be an optimist, but when we see everything through Morse's eyes (which is mostly what we're shown)... oh my do we miss things. Morse doesn't see how much Jakes' opinion of him grows and changes, and that we are given an insight into; what else doesn't he see which we therefore have to infer?
Due to a) his own trauma, b) circumstances, c) the fact that he is monumentally bad at receiving love (and can get really unnerved when people try, so they stop trying), d) that most of the people who love him are monumentally bad at making their feelings clear even when c) isn't in play... oh, but his belief that he's abandoned and alone is utterly sincere and painfully understandable, even while it's also sometimes frustrating to watch. "I'm being left alone, no one I'm close to will still be in Oxford!" MAX. IS. RIGHT. THERE. MORSE. "Thursday is going and I doubt he ever loved me." His heart is breaking, Morse, you're both just idiots and he did the worst fuck-up of his life while trying to save his son.
And honestly, that's... I mean, it's desperately relatable, isn't it? We've all been there, or at least, a lot of us have. In that space where we can't see the love that's in front of us, and where we see rejection where there's none. His trauma growing up and then at college, all the appalling lack of emotional intelligence or openness among, well, everybody around him. The fact that the people he gets on best with are all ultimately really fricking traumatised too and have their own Stuff. There are some agonising mistakes all round, but...
... but ultimately, Max was with Morse as long as he could be. And Lewis was a loyal friend to him from almost the first moment they met. And Strange was with him when he died.
And no one can tell me that Fred Thursday didn't miss him for the whole rest of his life. (Nor that they never wrote to each other! I still think they did. ;-) I also would be unsurprised if Morse gets letters from Trewlove, Bright, and Jakes. :-) )
