LINE OF DUTY: cop-on-cop action TV procedural that demands analysis

"he's got fractured legs, pelvis, back, skull"

*in bed an unbruised arnott has a small plaster on his forehead*

― mark s, Monday, April 17, 2017 11:59 AM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^back at this lol

i had somehow forgotten how nuts s4 was they pack so much in!

*slaps roof of s4* "this bad boy can fit so much fucking balaclavamen in it"

easy with that s4 mate, do you want to put a Denton it

I watched the first three seasons last week. I guess I’ll watch S4 this weekend.

Rewatched or watch watched?

more top-notch comedy from buckells, my new favourite secretly quite smart character

tokyo r yr in fr a TREAT

Watch watched!

the series has always been at it's best when it's essentially a Columbo-like battle of wits between AC-12 and some specific devious individual - Gates, Denton, Huntley. This series has lacked that specific focus, and although the murder of Corbett was a great shock ending it also served to completely deflate the tension built up to that point.

Series 3 was a messy one too, perhaps even messier than this current series, but it still had that big denton energy

also, i know it's a horrible critic's cliche to be all "even at it's worst, this is still better than 90% of everything else", but i'm still thoroughly enjoying this comparatively weak season

Season 5 suffers from conspiracies and balaclavas being the weakest parts of LoD. Anyway despite the massive spoilers in this thread, I'm here for the H=Blobby reveal and will be mightily cheesed off if they put it into next season with a stupid cliffhanger.

if they *punt* it

https://www.instagram.com/p/BueD0cynX4O/

iii: some computer sex thing i don't want to think abt probably involving balaclavas and furries

― mark s, Sunday, April 14, 2019 11:42 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

DOT SAYS DOT DOT DOT DOT

When they mentioned Ted’s mother raised him Catholic because his old man left...children in mixed marriages are supposed to be raised Catholic?

I like the idea that his background would have been unclear due to his name - I knew he was Irish the first time I heard him speak!

Also do not want to think about his juggalo shame porn or whatever he was looking at.

bit of an Empire Strikes Back vibe to that last episode, everything left hanging

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/hastings/1263/

Can’t wait for next season when we find out Buckells is the 4th one

Gill Juggalo

_didn't think much of it but lots of speculation that it's a police exam_


Yeah, Ryan getting set up for some final-scene piano-backed montage putting on the uniform while Hastings goes to chokey

So wait, is Hastings bent/H or not?

it's pronounced huggalo xp

(terrific "villain revealed" scowls at the climatic point in a the interview-room-of-infinite-reversals also)

the four dots thing is rubbish
also if he's saying dot... dot... dot-dot then in morse code that's dash dash dot dot, right?

Also Carmichael smugly shows that dying declaration clip to 'prove' Hastings was H, but in it Kate says something like 'blink at the first two letters of their name' (?) ABCDEFGH - blink; H, ok - then ABCDE.... *no blink, carks it*
so the second letter definitely isn't A.

Absolutely loved the 'urgent exit required'.

Disappointed the computer was just porn as I'd been joking all along

dash dash dot dot is z

the big z

actually dot blinks on H and I one after the other
so probably meant Hilton who promoted him
or is just closing his eyes for the final time

I’m sure there’s a ZAZ or Mel Brooks gag involving an overelaborate dying confession in code. Touch of Cloth maybe?

Anyway, good season, surprisingly dismal last two episodes.

Glad that Mercurio realised the only way to win at "who is H" is not to play. Less glad that the explanation was stupid.

Solid enough episode except that it really needed the audience to waver on Ted's innocence and start to side with Carmichael. It was clear from the beginning that he was being set up, unless you're on the "he set up Gill to set him up to throw off the scent" theory.

Disappointed the computer was just porn as I'd been joking all along

Or so Hastings says, anyway. We still don't know the REAL truth. I assume.

Find the person signing off all the immunity agreements in exchange for no testimony of any actual use and you find H imo.

Are there actual shops with ‘computer disposal’ in big letters on the window? ‘Computer repair’ yes of course but disposal seems like a weird thing to advertise, almost like a admission that they can’t fix your laptop anyway, or maybe it’s a secret signal to craven smut-fiends like ted that here is a shop that will not judge you and your wanktomania. Obviously I don’t have a Dell full of steamy blobby-on-blobby action to get rid of though so I’ve never really looked. Also still puzzled as to why he bubbled wrapped it first and who the hell keeps bubble wrap in their hotel room anyway?

Other thing that troubles me is the four caddies thing is obviously a four candles reference and that corbett’s dad will turn out to be ronny

http://images.45cat.com/the-four-dots-dont-wake-up-the-kids-1959.jpg

That was a really rough failure to dig the season out of the hole it had built. As he died, Dot blinked to indicate the letter H, which in morse code is ••••, which he was also tapping with his finger, which Arnott realized from a freeze frame, in order to indicate that there were four police staff in league with organized crime: Cole, Prasad, Dot, Hilton, Fairbanks, and Gill?

Still unanswered: most things

Love these buddy interludes though.

FLEMING: Well, we didn't get much from that person we just interviewed.
ARNOTT: Could he have been lying?
FLEM: We won't know that until we figure out some real answers.
ARN: You're right, we still don't know the answer to the mystery that we're trying to solve.
FLEM: We better go find the next clue now!
ARN: Should we hurry?
FLEM: Yes, there's work to be done!
ARN: You're right, and it's urgent police work!

Hastings is totally bent.

I won't have any of that talk in here, fella

crap that the 'smoking gun' in the end was a conveniently recorded conversation between Gill and JC laying out the framing of Ted.

probably the most disappointing bit of the whole series.

hoping that in s6 they just never mention the morse code thing again.

and it's still not clear if/how the ocg had someone independently nicknamed H involved, from the start, or did Corbett start referring to an 'H' as top dog and it caught on?

I also have a problem with the idea that Ted’s debts and the fact he was interviewed over a missing woman wouldn’t be reasons for him to not get his DV clearance!

Looks like we're going to have to wait until next season to find out whether Steve's able to get an erection :(

1: we don't know i'ts porn and on the whole LoD abides by chekhov's gun -- in the absence of an earlier hotel flagging of ted's cranked hog this is a made-up red herring*
*2: unless we can er enhance his laptop screen once more
3: per google, computer disposal does exist as a trade but it's usually called something like "equipment recycling"
4: i think morse is also a red herring: with his mouth dot was beginning to spell out "hang on, it's on the tips of my fingers", with his fingers he was tapping out "dot dot, dot, dot, poor dot thou art undone" and the actual message is signalled by SEMAPHORE, which judging by dot's sprawled position is an "E". possibly for EDWARD HASTINGS…

https://storage.googleapis.com/welovesailing-117.appspot.com/images/sailing-theory/sailing-communication/semaphore-flags/sailing-semaphore-signal-flag-e-echo.png

i feel the plan of "remove huggalo via a wee witch™ of a bent copper WITH A TINY KNIFE" was never going to be the flawlessly baffling crime we've come to expect from OCG

(tho i guess there aren't as many of OCG left to criminally mastermind these things)

(in ted's cranked hog terms we DID know corbett had some stuff hidden with his wife, and the idea it was a back-up recording by him of the plan he was embedded in doesn't tbh seem a total stretch?) (it's less stupid than all the dying declaration BUT IN CODE stuff)

a thing jed is good at -- or let's say consistent at -- is treating the dramatic reveal in an interview as more of a tactical pressure point than tying up the entire story in a pretty causal ribbon: the underlying truth i guess is that the police don't really usually know what happened, they rely more on psychology and bullying and traps than FACTS and LOGIC, and that anyone in the interview-room-of-infinite-reversals who can keep their nerve is not in the bad position they seem to be, especially if they themselves can still arrest and charge someone unexpected

s6: the duty soliicitor turns to the camera, gazing out at we the viewer, and puts us all away for watching this silly nonsense through six whole seasons

q1: did ted get his actual real son killed via the OCG guy in pokey? not yet clear
q2: where is the rest of the £500,000? not yet clear
q3: what was on ted's computer? (a website on how to obtain bubblewrap if yr in a hotel)

don't think John was Ted's son? he wasn't in the RUC for long enough iirc.
what 500k? Ted had 100k, kept half and presumably gave it to John's widow

was that redhead stabber just using her own initiative to get gill or had someone somewhere given the order?

Find the person signing off all the immunity agreements in exchange for no testimony of any actual use and you find H imo.