Wow, last night, I watched Channel 5 from 10 pm to 2 am!
I love crime thrillers, or so I discovered last night. And last night appeared to be a crime thriller fest.
CSI - this show caught my attention at first because it was about a 6 year old boy called Jesse Matthews who was abducted from a playground. It's every mother's nightmare. As a mother of a young child, I can identify with this theme and so I was reeled in. As the plot unfolded, I was held captive by the many twists and turns in the plot.
So this mom claims her son was abducted. Poor thing, since her husband died in military service 4 years ago. Then an eye witness claims that a man in a blue baseball hat seemed particularly interested in the boy. Then the neighbour says the boy always leaves toys around, and that the mother killed his dog 4 years ago for barking at her son and digging in her yard. Then the investigators realise that she was not on speaking terms with her in laws, a retired Colonel and his wife. According to the Colonel, she blamed him for her husband's death. At the funeral the Colonel gave the boy a toy soldier, and she lashed out at them and never spoke to them again.
Then, the child is spotted with a man in a baseball cap and his wife in a petrol station. The alert shop assistant delays them and the police arrive and arrest them. The child appears not to recognise Mrs Matthews and cries out for the abductors. The abductors provide proof that the child is their son, with photos and DNA. Mrs Matthews insists that the child is her son. The photos of herself and Jesse that she provides shows that they are doctored from photos that she had surreptitiously taken of the other child. So what happened 4 years ago?
Turns out, she was suffering from post partum depression, taking strong anti-psychosis medication. Her husband dies, and she has a violent argument with her in-laws at the funeral. When she gets home, she poisons her own son, thinking that she would rather he die now than to grow up and die in a battlefield. She buried the child in her own backyard and killed the neighbour's dog when he tried to dig up the decomposed remains. For the past 4 years, she has been meticulously creating a fantasy world of kids' toys and drawings, as though the son was alive.
Scary huh? This episode seems to have been inspired by ancient Greek mythology - Medea, who was the wife of Jason (who hunted the ram with the golden fleece). She too killed her own children, partly in retaliation when Jason abandons her and partly because she would rather they die by her own hand than by others'.
Criminal Minds II
7 girls had been kidnapped, abused, mutilated, and left to die in the woods. A tape of their torture is always sent to the police. The police noticed a trend in the modus operandi. Another girl is again kidnapped and they are now trying to solve the mystery before before another girl is harmed.
They believe it has to be a team of at least 2 working together. One stronger, one weaker. One smarter and more aggressive, one a submissive follower.
They narrowed it down to Joey, the quiet ex-convict, who repairs cars, because the victims' cars are always meticulously stripped apart and the parts sold. When they try to arrest Joey, he kills himself. The other guy, his cellmate, was away at work when the police visited his home. His dimunitive blonde wife appears not to know anything when the police arrive. Whilst the police wait for this guy to return home from work they ask the wife to leave as they may want to question him.
He doesn't turn up and so they go back to the police station, when the wife arrives with a badly bruised face. She says he beat her up, he is violent. She says that she believes he may have something to do with the murders.
The guy gets arrested and brought in. He refuses to say anything. They bring the wife in, who talks to him and manages to get him to confess and say where the girl is located.
Then, one of the investigators notices that this guy has a troubled history, abandoned by his mother, low intellectual ability, hard to think of him as an aggressor really. Then, another one views the torture tapes and hears a female voice in the background. They look at the tape of the wife talking to her husband and notices that he is the one avoiding her gaze whereas she is steadily looking at him. She also doesn't appear scared by the gruesome photos of the girls in the room. They notice that she was giving him non-verbal cues on what to say and when to say it. They realise that the main culprit is her! But when they look for her, she had left. They track her down to a cabin in the woods, and rescue the girl. Turns out that she was abused by her father and brother as a child, and when she tried to seek help, her mother turns on her and said she was lying.
Ooh, another scary show, and again a similar theme of the perceived hapless female victim turning out to be the villain.
