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Paul’s professed amnesia at least sets up some tension for the viewer, offering the mystery of whether or not he’s faking it to get out of the crimes he’s so obviously committed. The Fall still has intriguing points to make, but they get completely smothered by all the sensory detail. In the second episode comes the most absurd twist: Paul is (spoiler) alive, but he’s claiming not to remember anything that happened to him after 2006. Paul’s spleen is removed (a metaphor, perhaps) in a scene of impossible precision, while Stella merely wanders around the hospital, seeming lost. Philosophically, there are interesting things happening here: The show seems to be fixating on the energy and effort that goes into saving a life, just as, in seasons past, it’s shown Paul taking them in similar close-up. But instead of offering answers, the first new episode is like a hyperrealistic episode of E.R., focusing mostly on the doctors and nurses who are battling to save Paul’s life. That scene, in which Stella rushed to Paul’s side and shrieked, “We’re losing him” as he gazed up at her, was how Season 2 ended, with the audience left to puzzle whether her desperation in the face of his grave injury was due to a desire for justice, or something more unfathomable. The third season picks up where the second left off, with Paul now in police custody, but having been shot by the jealous and violent husband of one of his clients. Both, it’s fair to say, become obsessed with each other. In another, he breaks into her hotel room, rifles through her clothes and intimate possessions, and reads her diary. In one episode, Stella gives a press conference in which she pointedly wears bright-red nail polish-a private signal to Paul that she’s noticed how he prepares and poses his victims after killing them. As a result, the intrigue of the show isn’t in finding out whodunit, but in the prolonged game of cat and mouse that plays out. From the very first episode, the audience is aware of the identity of the killer, with Paul shown meticulously stalking one of his intended victims. In the first season, which aired on BBC in 2013, Stella is introduced as a senior detective from the London Metropolitan Police Force brought over to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to oversee a review of the local investigation of a murder. The Many Faces of the ‘Wine Mom’ Ashley Fetters It’s that great 21st-century phenomenon: a show that’s more fun to think about than it is to watch.
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But for all its psychological, almost literary complexity, it loses much of its narrative steam. The third season, which was recently released in its entirety on Netflix, continues to probe the dynamics of the relationship between Stella and Paul. Stella isn’t a brilliant detective in spite of her gender but because of it both her acuity as a policewoman and her ability to infiltrate her suspect’s psyche hinge on the fact that she’s a woman. But The Fall, subverting the formula, has shown what can happen when a truly poisonous villain is paired with a woman, and in doing so, it’s become one of the most fascinating dramas on television. Popular culture is riddled with heroes whose antagonists are their perfect match, from Batman and the Joker (“You complete me”) to Sherlock and Moriarty. That these two dueling forces have proven over three seasons to be not so different after all should come as no surprise. Stella hates misogyny Paul hates, and murders, women. Stella is childless and romantically unattached Paul is a married man with two young children.
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Stella, all crisp white silk blouses and pale-blonde hair, is the yin to Paul’s yang, with his all-black combos, chunky sweaters, and implacable grimaces.
#GUARDIAN REVIEW SHERLOCK SERIES 3 SERIAL#
The Fall has never been subtle about the fact that its two primary characters, the police detective Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and the serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), are opposing sides of the same coin.