Daemon's Roost... problems
Seems the new ep isn't shaking the recent trend of disappointing JC episodes....
Plot holes and questions galore...
And GO, IMDB GO!*
*please make me a list. I love lists.
Yes........please make me a list
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MovieChat Forums > Jonathan Creek (2014) Discussion > Daemon's Roost... problems
I did not understand the significance of Polly's friend, Nina, being married to a taxi driver?
shareThe significance of that was that we were all assuming that the black guy was her husband, not the taxi driver, it was basically a red herring and it was just a bit of a coincidence that she mentioned it to polly
shareAll a bit of a mess wasn't it?
I liked the references to several previous Creek episodes though.
Have had some digest/think time. Notes and thoughts - open to discussion, of course. Note I have only seen the ep once (it only wrapped up a couple of hours ago) so there are bound to be things I have missed...
I have focussed on the key mysteries, rather than character dynamics, acting, production value, comedy etc. I have plenty to say on that, but it's past midnight.... :p
1) We are introduced to POLLY'S FRIEND early on. I think this character is built up to become something (telling Polly she has something that would be right up JC's street) - and then there's the comment about what her husband does. What? I agree that the show even makes out that the security man could be her husband. Is this a comment on engrained racial presumptions? (Security man even comments before they dig up the grave that no one must tell his wife, or something along those lines). Please help. Or was she just a tenuous link to keep the scarecrow subplot together? Also, can someone please explain what JC meant when he made a comment about her going to the box to get thread? :/
2) For me the crux of the confusion for the CENTRAL PLOT was the film director and the movie shown at the beginning of the film. This completely confused me. The man who used to live in the house left behind a legacy of men being pulled into the portal as helpless women looked on, and this was replicated in the films. I found the link between these two stories utterly confusing throughout. The minute I'd seen the 'mock' hammer horror, I was thinking - as a low budget filmmaker, how would I do this? I would turn the camera 90 degrees and have someone fall. There was my answer. 5 minutes in. If this had been presented as a vision/flashback/creepy story, I wouldn't have come to this conclusion. The idea that he had re-created it on film (in the same chamber, it turns out), made this answer utterly obvious. Or have I missed the point? In general I felt totally foggy and confused about this storyline. Y'know. The main one.
3) PHONE-Y. Come on. Seriously? Everyone in the living room laughed at this bit.
4) HOBGOBLIN. I don't think this was a bad plot point, I think it was just executed badly. What could have been quite touching addition to the end just wasn't very clear. My initial conclusion was she would find out she was adopted, hence not having the condition. Nope, just 'you may die someday.' Pretty wooly. For the haemoglobin/hobgoblin, this was pretty neat. Reminded me of the term '65 roses' used for the condition cystic fibrosis. Shame. Wasted.
5) Twitter doesn't seem to have missed that JC CASUALLY COMMITS MURDER. OK, self defence, blah blah. Try and knock someone out and turn them over to the authorities. You only actually kill someone and lock away the key as a last resort. This felt completely out of whack. Plus... this whole thread felt pretty unnecessary. He was an unseen villain in House of Monkeys anyway, so it wasn't even a satisfying reprise (although yes, the refs to classic - much better - episodes, was nice).
6) It was the SECURITY MAN. Not a massive reveal really, it was always odd that he was there so was top of the list alongside the carer and the daughter. Was anyone else bothered he just got up and got away with it? And can we talk about the fact he dropped a box of matches at the crime scene - no super sleuthing required. Very weak. I remember classic JC finding out the perpetrator from a slip of the tongue, an affectation, the tiniest clue. Not the bloodied weapon being left at the scene with fingerprints on it.
7) This episode was promised to to be SPOOKY. It really wasn't. Remember Mother Redcap? The Three Gamblers? Ghosts Forge? Even The Grinning Man? THEY were creepy. This has a spring loaded ghost and gravity. There was promise at the beginning of this house of horrors. There was one horror. And a fridge that's at the bottom instead of the top (wait, what?)
8) The subplot for the POISONING felt more like classic JC. It gave you enough clues to come up with some ideas (probably due to having House of Monkey in my head, I was thinking poison on the edge of book pages, so when you lick your finger to the turn the page you ingest poison) yet the solution was crafty - apart from the obvious issue that if the water glass wasn't in the right position you'd be done for. But can someone help me explain WHY. Why did he essentially frame himself, then hire JC to find enough holes to get him off? What if he was too clever (I say that, he's a bloody chemist or whatever, it wouldn't have been hard) and figured out the double bluff. There are many other ways that this extremely complicated solution that could have gone wrong in so many ways (I know, I know, there wouldn't be a plot otherwise, MAYBE I can let this slide).
And as an aside.... this episode feels littered with casual and flippant sexism. Aside from the excellently rounded character of Maddie, an equal treatment of women has never been this shows strong-point, but I usually pinned it down to being 'of it's time.' For 2016, it sat very badly with me. Women were largely helpless, pathetic creatures (both in the man's films and in real life - his step-daughter), and JC's and Polly's relationship stank. I hope the joke about giving her a 'biscuit' for finding the underground lair (for lack of a better word) was a post-modern comment on sexism. I tend to think not.
What do you hear? Nothing but the rain.share
1. We were definatly meant to assume that the security guy was her husband, not just because they are both black, mainly because of all the comments about her husband told her about it and he said things like my wife better not find out about this, it was a red herring.
2. You probably got it a lot faster than most people due to your experience in those things, i only clocked on at the very point where jonathan clocked on
3. phoney was a bit of a stretch yeah
no other comments for your other points really.
I dont think there was much sexism in it, all the characters are shown to be a bit useless
1) The Taxi Driver was her husband, the same Taxi Driver we see in the beginning, and she said her Husband was working or had done some work up in the House. She had meant he had dropped them off at the house, not that he was the guy who was doing Security work. Jonathan had just assumed that he was the security work. The comments by the Security guy are all red herrings to lead us to believe that Polly's friend is his wife.
Polly mentioned she can go and pick the cotton, or something about getting the cotton from the thread box, and JC had stated that it was an un-PC quote, which has to do with Black Slavery and Cotton Picking being rather entwined in the 18th and 19th century.
2) I was a bit confused about this one... Your vestibular system allows you to feel which way is "up" all the time, it doesn't matter how hard you are strapped in. So that was a bit of "stretch"... in my opinion. It's one of the things about space a lot of astronauts say not being able to "feel" up, which can often lead to "space sickness" - https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast07aug_1/
3) I didn't get that one, and in reality wouldn't he look at all three? Rather than just through the door and the mobile phone?
4) Agreed it was wasted, could have been much used much better.
5) Yeah, and how the police reacted seemed a little like "He died? Oh well." Thought this would have led to at least a trip down the station... to explain exactly what happened...
6) I guess he was no criminal genius, and was more law-abiding, before his Cousin? Was killed by her husband. I always thought it was the husband, actually and I thought in the subplot that he had done it ages before the reveal and that he was going to do it to his next wife as well, but I guess he didn't need to when he read the letter and was going to let nature do it?
7) I thought it was more spooky than the previous few episodes, and more channelling the classic JC formula.
8) Agreed, really enjoyed that subplot. I don't know what the point of his whole "idea" was either.
I guess it was to give an explanation for the whole thing, and the fact that JC was fooled for 6 years to prove that he is not infallible?
1) Polly's friend - I thought it meant something like this about the cotton. It just felt very off colour to me. Like a poorly judged joke from yesteryear.
8) Poisoning - the more I thought about it the less it made sense.... I don't want to be caught. So I'll frame myself. But hire a super-sleuth to get me off. But leave a clue to myself. Does he want to be caught or not?! I remember thinking 'I bet antimony' is a word, I didn't know what it meant, admittedly, but it was just such a poor sign off it was terrible. This is where the solution seemed to have been retrofitted in spite of logical motivations.
Also, it's clever of you to think of gravity for as a special effect for that B movie (Z movie), but don't blame this show for that. It was perfectly obvious from the scenes shown here that your gravity trick was not actually used. They showed this (probably deliberately) as a very bad optical effect, shot probably with a blue screen. You can't blame working this out on the movie clips being shown.
I don't think I was being very clever, just logical. For me though it boils down to the central question - uhhh, what was it again? The history of the house or the filmmaker? I just re-watched the beginning and it looks as though it was the same chamber with the gravity trick. The automaton looked like a real person though (realistic hands)... and for me this is where the confusion is. Did the filmmaker film his movies in the actual chamber? If so the gravity answer has flaws, unless his films had bigger budgets than they were made out to. In camera optical effects are more likely that green screen on a film that age. If they'd cut this whole plot point it might have had a chance of making sense...
What do you hear? Nothing but the rain.share
id the filmmaker film his movies in the actual chamber?
It was a studio set at the start, different cage, massive chamber with tourches and candles on the walls and different table.
The actual chamber was a small square room, with bare walls.
The cheapest way to do the effect back in the 60's would have been to have a painting or a photo of the guy falling into the fire on a glass pane and slide it across the shot, as simple as that.
Which isn't what they did for the show as there was movement, but we can suspend our disbelief and pretend our B movie had some fantastic colour seperation overly going on. share
Polly mentioned she can go and pick the cotton, or something about getting the cotton from the thread box, and JC had stated that it was an un-PC quote, which has to do with Black Slavery and Cotton Picking being rather entwined in the 18th and 19th century.I was pretty confused by that part; I thought they were trying to say that there was something illegal about cotton now or something. I may have misheard Johnathan at some point, so I'll have to rewatch it (I have it saved on TiVo). Black Slavery isn't something my mind would jump to, unless it wasn't subtle and I don't think of Cotton Picking either - I think of it as a figure of speech more than anything, or whatever terms "Just a cotton picking second/minute" is (I don't I ever even cared what real Cotton Picking was). Bottom line is, that joke went completely over my head and I felt I missed something.
Edit: I rewatched it, and my confusion came from the fact that Johnathan said something like "You'll get us all arrested!" so the conclusion I jumped to was that cotton itself was illegal now, but he obviously meant arrested for racism.
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The security guy did *not* drop the matches. They were coincidentally taken (stolen!) by Warwick Davis (the reverent) from his jacket, in order to light the candles for the phone assisted exorcism.
Also, it's clever of you to think of gravity for as a special effect for that B movie (Z movie), but don't blame this show for that. It was perfectly obvious from the scenes shown here that your gravity trick was not actually used. They showed this (probably deliberately) as a very bad optical effect, shot probably with a blue screen. You can't blame working this out on the movie clips being shown.
There were two sets of matchbooks: the first which the Reverend found in the coat pocket, and the second which Polly discovered in the dungeon, which she used to murder Jonathan's stalker.
As for the gravity device, I realized the room was turned 90 deg. as soon as he said "or a relatively weak force". I also immediately realized Anti-Money was Antimony was SB was Stephen Belkin. Immediately. And not to continue to toot my own horn, but I also immediately realized that "foot" referred to the quatrain's iambs, although I had no idea what the significance was.
All in all, a much better episode than the previous season's.
All in all, a much better episode than the previous season's.
Well that wasn't going to be difficult was it? share
I hope the joke about giving her a 'biscuit' for finding the underground lair (for lack of a better word) was a post-modern comment on sexism. I tend to think not.
I don't think it was a sexist, or anti-sexist, joke.
He was just gently winding up his partner because she'd just performed the role of a (sniffer) dog.
It ain't a funny gag in the slightest, but it would have been equally (un)funny, if said by Jonathan to a male, or to a female.
It would perhaps have been slightly funnier if Polly (or especially Maddie) had said it to Jonathan. But really it needed a better set up to be funny (and probably a better punchline too; so completely different joke in other words 😃 ).
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3) PHONE-Y. Come on. Seriously? Everyone in the living room laughed at this bit.
I didn't mind that. Its cheesy, but it was made by a guy who could have passed as Vincent Price's older less subtle more hammy brother.
The guy made films that during there worst days Hammer would have refused to touch with a barge pole.
If he was going to drop a clue, would you expect it not to fit his reputation?
Women were largely helpless, pathetic creatures (both in the man's films and in real life - his step-daughter),
To be fair about the films. They were clearly parodies of Hammer films from the seventies. Which exactly known for strong women.
And apparently based true events involving a rather intelligent and theatrical serial killer.
I hope the joke about giving her a 'biscuit' for finding the underground lair (for lack of a better word) was a post-modern comment on sexism. I tend to think not.
I thought it was just a joke at the fact she was on her hands and knee's searching for something, you know like a dog.
Honestly can postmodernism comment on anything as concrete as sexism? They have enough trouble excepting abstract things exist. share
Great episode as usual.
A homage to Vincent Prince and Rodger Corman.
Wasn't any more darft or silly than previous episodes, felt more like the older series than recent ones. I still don't like Polly very much and it's a bit sluggish at times.
Who hid the letters that the step dad wrote?
Was it the carer, the step daughter's husband or the phoney CCTV installer?
It was specifically stated and shown to be the husband, hence why she found them in his bag.
Why? The guy was a gold digger who was after her money. Finding out she had a fatal blood disease while on the verge of inherit a massive valuable property and mountains of collectors memorabilia was a dream come true.
He just had make sure it held together until he could either out live her or get rid of her.
It has been discussed here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118363/board/thread/264660545
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