I found Prime Suspect 7 to be immensely disappointing. I am heartened to see that so many others enjoyed it, and that it won awards. It was truly out of the mold of the usual Prime Suspects, which perhaps was a fitting change, bringing the series squarely into the 21st Century. Nevertheless, it lacked much of what, to me, made Prime Suspect so worthwhile, even though Prime Suspect itself seemed to devolve into a sort of Miss Marple-ishness in the middle of its run. I suppose it was good to concentrate so much on Jane's personality in this last episode, though I think that was evinced in the other episodes as a necessary side effect of solving a crime. But, frankly, I found the last installment largely unbelievable.
In answer to your question, one of the problems with this episode, to me, might just be that there wasn't enough motivation for the killer to have killed the victim. However, from what I have understood from criminals I have met, teenagers are unpredictable and capable of taking life because they are impulsive and don't necessarily understand the consequences.
I appreciate how people read things into the action, and seem to be devotees to the entire series, so aren't judging the episode only on its own merits. For instance, people see Penny as representing Jane's younger self, her limitless possibilities before she started her career, or, at the very least, her aborted child. I am rather glad to see that element come back to haunt her, although, of course, without the abortion, there wouldn't have been so much of the Jane Tennison we knew; and as Penny turns out to not be a model citizen, it almost, as an afterthought, justifies Jane's choice. (That last is a particularly harsh thing to say, and probably not the producers' intention at all.) People also saw a huge loneliness in Penny in attempting to enjoy her father's love, something I had not noticed, although I wasn't watching the episode with the sort of attention I did, say, with episode 6, which I feel, along with 1, was the real pinacle of achievement.
How would I have done this episode differently? I can understand the use of the score, it sort of builds on and caps what was done before, at least what I remember from episode 6, a score that underlined the entire episode and seemed to accelerate or crescendo when the action got heavy. Seven's score fit with the script but it didn't do much for me. However, I might have used it had I been happy with the script.
I think what I missed was the nuts-and-bolts procedural aspect that was what made the other episodes so compelling. In this last episode, I don't think anyone even worried about the murder weapon, with which the perpetrator could potentially have been convicted whether or not there was a confession. The link using the necklace at the end to me was disappointing because, normally, Jane or someone would have caught that much sooner. Asking the child about Penny's trip to the bathroom, as if that clinched how she got rid of evidence, also disappointed me in that there was probably no reason Penny might not have been there before, might not have made many trips to the bathroom, or might have had any reason to hide the necklace from her friends initially. I can't tell you, despite whatever your religious views might be, how disgusting it was for a cross to have been retrieved from what was essentially a sewage pipe, still seeming somewhat dirty. I'm sure there was some bathroom humor in previous episodes, but surely some alternative to something so obviously disrespectful could have been found. I'm sure stuff like this happens in real life, but I don't think it's an image that was well advised to be left with even the most unemotional of viewers, and certainly does Jane Tennison no good as her ultimate triumph. It seems a sordid triumph indeed, unless it was a metaphor for Jane's ultimate distrust in and lack of belief in God.
I found some of the implications of Jane's interest in Penny offensive, as evidenced here by people wondering about that. Allusions to a lesbian side of Jane have surfaced for the first time with her description of a desire to have a tattoo ... of an anchor of all things .... and, based on Penny's father's affair with her friend, I wasn't sure how Jane's love for the girl might have been construed. I can see how any woman who never managed to stay in a relationship with a man would begin to wonder about her true self. But, really, I can't see how the grand Helen Mirren and her character Jane Tennisen could even have been associated with some of the storyline.
Perhaps it was sold to her on its key points, and the writing, and directing, just didn't live up to the plot. Believe me, I don't wish to put anyone down, as I haven't written or directed a feature-length film; it is an incredible achievement and not one lackeys should put down. But, somehow, I feel the same effect ... of understanding Jane's loneliness and her retirement ... could have been accomplished with another hard-hitting police drama. I was gratified that one thing I didn't see coming, any more than Jane, was Penny's involvement; I was certain the culprit was the mother, which I felt would have been a hackneyed outcome. So the surprise solution was the episode's one redeeming feature to me. I can see how this was a good theme, the disappearance of a girl and the subsequent working out of feelings associated with children, to comment on Jane's shortcomings and failures. The series very compassionately looked at many disadvantaged groups: prostitutes, blacks, homosexuals, immigrants, even criminals among others. So I guess exploring the plight of teenagers, one of whom Jane's aborted child might have been at about that point, was a good idea. But some of that was explored, in a way, by the counterpoint with the working mom Lorna in the previous episode, and with the mother of the missing toddler in The Lost Child. I'm not sure I wouldn't have preferred a whole other breed of victim in this episode. Maybe a normal, everyday, garden variety criminal might have been nice for a change, too.
So how could the episode have been rewritten? That is a very good question. Had I been the author, I'm thinking we would have been paying much more attention to solving the mystery using good ol' police work. (I'm not even sure Jane would have been allowed to take Penny for rides in her car while on duty, or would have considered it a very good idea even when not on duty; I think she liked to maintain her objectivity, although that could have been a recent failing that showed all the more how it was time for her to go home.) Jane would have been much more the Jane we all knew, using her cunning in a straightforward take-no-prisoners way in the interview room. She might not have revealed herself as much as she did. Her prime suspect might very well have been the young girl from the start. A major departure in this episode is that Jane doesn't know who her prime suspect is, or has him wrong. In fact, she attempts to skewer the person she eventually begins to suspect ... her first prime suspect seems to be the victim's father ... on what seemed like absolutely no evidence, as his lawyer pointed out ... not something of which the former Jane ever would have been guilty for long. Telling Taff that his observation that the headmaster was a sanctimonious prick was good detective work was very un-Jane, in my opinion, too ... ordinarily, she would have been sending him on a, well, maybe one-day course to learn how to avoid making assumptions. ('Sides, I didn't take the headmaster that way.)
There are probably other complaints I'm not remembering, but one other major thing I might like to add is that, no matter how unable to control her drinking Jane had become, I can't see the real Jane having stooped to so much unprofessionalism. She turned into an aggressive drunk, which I don't think, based on her decorum in the previous episodes, would have been like her. What bothers me most is that she provoked the young man in the parking lot ... Jane was never, to my recollection, physical with suspects before, and she would not have let a personal epithet get to her ... that was really her credo. The fact that she flaunted police protocol and that caused a young man, no matter how likely to stray, to have killed, and a police officer no less, would have weighed on her to the grave. I think this depiction of Jane as having become an obvious drunk is overstated, and as someone else in one of these threads said, Jane just would not have gone off the rails like that. I think it would have been possible to show Jane as sinking into a far more subdued alcoholism, but one that might have been far more dangerous, as that is the sort of private hell from which a lot of retired police officers suffer. And, again, I think it would have bothered her very much that her actions pushed someone to resort to violence, and that violence resulted in the her old nemesis and then friend Ottley's death. She would not have kept still, waiting for her commanding officer to pull it out of her. I think she would have copped to it, perhaps admitting into the bargain that it was really time for her to retire.
Jane here seems to be a victim of what women's liberationists have always said: that a strong woman is viewed as aggressive, rather than just demanding. Jane was always the lady, as far as I could see, and men were always coming to her defense before. She'd be the quiet, unmoving target at the center of a storm, and the men would deflect some angry perpetrator from getting to her at the last moment. So this just doesn't seem to be the Jane we knew.
But I'm sorry to say all this because, again, I have not done an oeuvre like this, so I don't wish to judge. I'm glad everyone else seems to have loved it and maybe if I gave it more of a chance, it would grow on me. I hope my analysis does not keep others from enjoying it thoroughly and only hope if there is anyone else out there who feels somewhat the way I do, that they might let me know a little of how they feel. Thanks.
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