alright, i’m about halfway through top of the lake.

(aside: i know the new site isn’t live yet, obvy, but i have to populate it with something, so you’re getting midnight ramblings about television.)

i’m halfway through, and it’s midnight, and i’m not done yet.

first things first. elisabeth moss is shiny as protagonist robin griffin, a police detective who returns to her hometown to spend time with her ailing mother and unexpectedly catches the case of a pregnant 12-year-old girl gone missing. moss may be getting into that “i’ll watch whatever she’s in” territory. robin is strong and righteous and cheating and broken.

but hers is far from the only complex performance here. peter mullan as matt mitcham is dark, violent, delusional, charismatic, funny, both terribly sad and unfeeling in a way that seems almost sociopathic.

and i don’t know what johnno’s deal is, but i know that he has seemed like possibly the only decent guy in this town from the beginning, which has led me to the inescapable conclusion that he is not decent. i hope to be proven wrong. on the other hand, part of me would probably dismiss any such ending as hollywood-style drivel, an implausibly ideal resolution to the protagonist’s relationship with her love interest.

i mean, how could johnno turn out to be decent in a town with so little decency, where twelve-year-olds with unwanted pregnancies are not alarming, where sexual violence is normalized and largely unchallenged, and hangs over this place like a secret no one can outrun?

speaking of sexual violence, what is going on with the women at paradise? i find holly hunter’s GJ hilarious and fascinating. she says things i might say if i were that kind of guru, which is to say that she does not seem like a guru at all. but everyone treats her as one. it’s fucking weird (which i guess all culty formations are).

anyway, elisabeth moss is dope. bbc makes some good television. i’m going to watch (at least) one more episode.

ciao ciao,

y

p.s. i’m half asleep and not sure i’m making sense. i may not make it through an entire episode here.