Countdown to Thirteen: Broadchurch: Series 2, Episode 3 (2015)

Decent interpersonal stuff, fairly good Sandbrook bits, and frustrating trial scenes.  It’s bumming me out that the trial seems to be shaping up to be the consistent weak link of the season so far.  However, while I’ve yet to see anything here that equals the best of series 1, there are still pieces that work for me.

Hardy’s gamble from the last episode leaves him unsure of where things stand with Claire and the Sandbrook case, and he needs Ellie’s help to try and salvage it.  In the trial, Ellie takes the stand and is treated to much the same style of ludicrous cross-examination as Beth and Hardy got.  And speaking of Beth, she faces a tremendously-trying situation with one of the last people she wants to do so with.

Sharon, man.  The judge is picking up what she’s laying down, and she seems to be successfully undermining the prosecution’s case, but I don’t see how.  So much of what she says when questioning witnesses feels so baseless and shocking for the sake of it.  I just don’t get why this tactic is working for her so well.  And I understand the point the show is trying to make about the broken legal system, which is fueling Hardy’s drive to be so off-the-books in his pursuit of justice for Sandbrook, but with Sharon as the main representation of that, it’s doing it so sloppily.  There’s still compelling material to be had in these scenes, since the main cast members are doing such a bang-up job while their characters are being hammered on the witness stand, but the actual construction of the scenes is just hamfisted.

In other news, we get a few more personal hints about Jocelyn and Sharon’s lives/inevitable secrets, and the Sandbrook stuff is pretty good.  I particularly like how much Hardy recognizes he can’t do this without Ellie’s help; even if the way he goes about asking for it leaves plenty to be desired, it’s still an acknowledgment of her skills, and it’s a reasonable way to give Ellie something strong to occupy her time.

Between the trial and the Sandbrook investigation, this season is in some ways broader than the one that preceded it, but it doesn’t really feel that way to me.  With most of the plot split between those two storylines (with smaller bits of other threads) and most of the screentime devoted to Hardy, Ellie, the Latimers, and the newer characters, I get less of a sense of Broadchurch the town and the people within in.  This episode feels particularly light on supporting characters like Maggie, Paul, and Becca, and it does make the show feel narrower than it did in the first season, despite the tighter plot focus there on Danny’s murder.

It’s an all-right episode for Beth.  She deals with something monumental here, something that’s even more of a head trip due to her lingering grief over Danny, and as I said, she deals with it under pretty much her least-wanted circumstances.  She takes a lot of anger out on someone, and while it’s at least somewhat misplaced, it’s also devastatingly understandable.