Maybe I'm Stating What Is Completely Obvious And I'm Just Somehow Missing It, But I Don't Think Ian Has

‘United’ is my favorite movie ever. Seriously.

'And there shall be a great cry in Egypt, such as never has been or ever will be again!'

One of my favorite things about Broadchurch is that you always find something new that Chibnall has slipped in that’s a nod to some of the greats of British culture. Thomas Hardy not withstanding, one of my favorite moments actually came in S2, episode 1, when we see Alec being interviewed by Maggie and Ollie. At the point at which she points out the cliffs behind him and that they’re starting to crumble more and slide farther down we see him look behind him. 

We get a good look at the mess of the beach as the camera pans around his shoulder and we get a good glimpse of what it looks like to Alec himself too. What he mutters is that nod to one of England’s poets.

“Things fall apart” is just a small piece quoted from William Butler Yeats’ poem ‘, ‘The Second Coming’, the full stanza reading:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;    The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity.”

Yeats’s poem alludes to the poet’s belief that history runs in cycles of 2,000 years, and at the end of every cycle a new hierarchy would rule.

But Chibnall cleverly uses this line to show us just where his characters are following Joe’s arrest. Clearly nothing has gotten better. There’s still tension. People who have been best friends for years have had their friendships destroyed. Ellie has been estranged from her home, her town, and even her own son with the blame others have placed upon her.

And being the outsider, Alec can understand and see that perfectly. He’s still obsessed with Sandbrook and solving the case that had to have had split that town open at the seams. The irony of the situation of the cliffs starting to crumble away faster sets the tone of the story and understanding the poem from which Alec quoted is a clue as to how the story will go, I think.

“Mere anarchy” is the center of the storm and the guilty party himself: Joe Miller, and he sets up the whirlwind that threatens to flatten Broadchurch with his ‘not guilty’ plea. He fails to recognize his guilt in Danny’s death and tries to shift it onto others. In some ways he creates anarchy by refusing to stand up to what he has done wrong.

“The blood-dimmed tide” and “ceremony of innocence” can be nods to the victims of Sandbrook, Lisa Newberrie and Pippa Gillespie. Lisa dies with her blood all over the floor of the Ashworths’ home which in turn starts the Sandbrook case itself. For Ricky’s murder of Lisa, his daughter Pippa will pay the price. And of course the ceremony of innocence being “drowned” can only point to one thing:

“The best lack all conviction” can (mostly) be put towards Jocelyn Knight, who in the beginning of the story is apathetic to the trial of Joe and wants no part of the outside world. She’s lost her conviction in the light of her loss of eyesight and although she ultimately decides to take the Latimers’ case she starts it off unsure.

And of course Jocelyn’s hesitation and Mark’s secrets he keeps from the prosecution paves the way for the one who can only be labelled as the “worst with passionate intensity”:

Sharon Bishop really makes me mad. Let me say that.

At the end of the poem Yeats concludes by asking, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

The second series ends with Joe’s being found innocent and his banishment from the town but it appears that Ellie warning him away from his own sons is going to come full circle at some point soon.

What rough beast will be born from that?

Am I he only one who thinks that Desert Bluffs is one of the countless alternate Night Vales that’s just been warped and broken by the Smiling God? Just me? Okay.

Give me a random scrap of paper at work and I will quote Shakespeare on it.

Summertime in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“acephobia isn’t real”

hhmmmmm?

hhmmmmmmmm?

HHHMMMMMMMM??????

HHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMM?????

what the fuck do you call all of this bullshit then????

She'd never really noticed how often Daisy spoke to her father with her hands. It simply wasn't any of Ellie's concern and she had other things to worry about, like her job and her boys, and whether or not she would eventually snap and murder Hardy when he was being a knob. And today she was absolutely furious as she walked through her front door.

The absolute nerve of him! Brushing off that boy's concern like it didnt matter at all, practically ignoring him and handing it to Ellie to handle. Where did he get off acting like that? Her mood was not improved when she realized she didn't have anything for dinner, and that meant going to the store to buy something. With a curse, she grabbed her coat and headed back outside without even having had the chance to take her shoes off.

The store was on the other side of town, and of course she was caught in traffic on the way. Cursing to herself at this blatant ill luck granted to her by the cosmos, she happened to spy two familiar figures walking down the sidewalk: Hardy and Daisy, out buying fish and chips together. Daisy was in full conversational mode, engaged with her story-- but then Ellie noticed her mouth wasn't moving.

Her hands were. Quickly, precisely, and so casually that it was clearly habit, and what was even more amazing was that Hardy was doing it right back.

Ellie sat with her mouth open until a car behind her beeped for not moving forward.

She finally understood what it was Daisy did with her hands, and it wasn't simply gesturing.

*****

"So why do you need to use sign language with your dad, Daisy?"

She said it easily, without judgment, the next time she stopped by the Hardy residence. By chance, he wasn't home yet but Daisy was, which made it the perfect time to ask her questions.

Daisy wide-eyed her, sizing her up. "I don't know," she said smoothly, "why does someone need to know sign language?"

"Don't be so sarcastic," Ellie said, " that's your dad's job. My guess would be that you use it to talk to him because he's deaf, but he wouldnt be a detective if that were the case--"

"Partially deaf. It was an accident years ago, I guess on a previous call out. He suffered an ear injury, and he's almost eighty percent deaf in his right ear, a little below forty in his left. He's gotten really good at reading lips and studying body language, but it's easiest to talk to him using sign language. He doesn't have to work so hard to understand that way."

"Why didnt he say anything, the knob?"

"He didnt want you to think less of him, this ability to do his job because he's so hard of hearing. Are you going to be?"

"I--" Ellie paused before she tried to use some excuse. Of course she would have judged him; she was a little judgmental now, but she was also hurt. They'd known each other a long time now-- did he still not think he could trust her? "Do you have any books on how to learn sign language, Daisy?"

The sunny smile she got for that question told her she'd asked exactly the right thing. "I'll give you lessons."

*****

Of course she didn't tell Hardy she knew about his deafness, but the day she approached him and signed, How are you today, sir?, the way his whole countenance lit up was well worth the surprise.

so idk why but I headcanon Alec Hardy as deaf/hard of hearing but I cannot, for the life of me, find a fanfic about it! So if anyone comes across one or even writes one, please send it my way. I just love the idea of him using sign language with Daisy and Miller seeing and finding out he's deaf/hard of hearing and learning sign language to communicate with him. I'd write it myself but I don't think i'd do it justice!

Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s discussions are interesting in Good Omens simply because their such utterly different approaches to them. Now I really enjoy Crowley’s points but right now I’m focusing on Aziraphale’s side because despite the several years he’s lived on Earth and the books upon books he’s read he falls back on one simple reason for everything that happens.

Ineffability,

And maybe that reason works sometimes. And it certainly does; it leaves just enough wriggle room, just enough doubt, that his opponent can’t definitely say that he’s wrong. After all, in Good Omens God is real even if He hasn’t been seen or heard from in a few millennia. Crowley can’t say that there isn’t a Higher Plan.

But what he does do is learn how to counter-argue the Ineffability reason.

It seems to me that at this point Aziraphale is using the Ineffable Plan as an excuse. It’s like hearing all the churchgoers out there when questioned about God’s existence or why bad things happen to good people they simply reply, ‘You have to take it by faith, that’s all.’ Take it be faith, take it for Ineffability.

Which of course leads to Crowley’s logical rebuttals. That’s the key difference, I think, when looking at their conversations. Aziraphale relies on the possibility of the Ineffable Plan, while Crowley has taken the time to learn how to perceive an argument on all sides and come up with a counter argument for everything the angel says. His reasons make sense, which only highlights how desperate Aziraphale’s Ineffable argument sounds sometimes.

Which just makes it all the more brilliant when he uses the Ineffable argument to run circles around Metatron and Beelzabub later on in the story.

Wriggle room always wins an argument. He must have learned it from Crowley.

First Avenger