MovieChat Forums > The Street (2006) Discussion > Episode 4: thoughts on the ending (spoil...

Episode 4: thoughts on the ending (spoilers within)


There have been a few threads on the fate of Billy in Episode 4, and what the audience is supposed to be thinking as the credits roll.

Rather disappointingly, the BBC's own site says this:

"The episode concludes with Billy back on a football pitch, his new girlfriend providing commentary for his blind father."

Which is pretty categorical, and suggests "happy end, lights, curtain, applause". And hardly fits in with one's image of what has gone before in either this episode or previous ones. Nor does it seem a particularly McGovernesque ending.

Since the opening of the episode shows the boy beaten up and in the ICU, and we then go into flashback, almost as if the opening sequence was being dreamt by Billy, I was inclined to read it more as the workings of his comatose mind than an actual full recovery. Personally I found that a more satisfying conclusion, for the moral of many of these sad little stories is the massive and often catastrophic ramifications of one small action by someone who is fundamentally "good", or at least not all bad: not looking while driving, taking a leak in the bushes in the park, nicking a pair of trainers...

The series was in my view on shakiest ground (even though Jim Broadbent and Sue Johnson acted out of their skins in this one) in the somewhat soapy dénouement tacked on - salvation through a little girl's smile, etc, etc.

Admittedly I've seen only the four mentioned so far, and the pattern may be broken in later shows, but right now I find the BBC comment, well - just lame, and not worthy of the programme itself.

It's not often television makes me feel edgy and uncomfortable the way this series does - the writer managed it a few times in Cracker, and Potter's Singing Detective certainly hit that spot, so The Street is doing something right.

Which is probably why it feels to me like the Corporation's PR people didn't know what they were watching.

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[deleted]

I also think it was a dream because if anything, Billy looked like could even have ended up blind like his dad after the shocking baseball attack.

The idea of his coach allowing him to play again, and his girlfriend forgiving him and giving his dad match commentary, that was all too nice.

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I think Billy's dead. In Joe's episode in the next series, you can see his dad standing in the street when the hearse arrives at the house, but there's no sign of Billy.

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