Got a recommendation to watch The Fall a while ago (I think I heard about it on The X-Files Files podcast, too).
I'm a bit bummed that it's not out on Blu-ray, I've become somewhat snobbish when it comes to paying for sub-HD content.
If Netflix is available to you, its probably still free for the 1st month. You can check out "The Fall" and then "Orange is the New Black" before the free month expires.
Little things I've noticed on the season 1 & 2 rewatch.
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Sarah Kay (Victim # 3) and her friend the male lawyer who represented the bad guy that Detective Inspector
Olsen arrested (before spending a few lovely hours with Stella) both worked for
Beacon & Day Solicitors.
Michael Day, of Beacon & Day was the unlucky man who failed to pick up the pathologist at the bar. You remember him...
Day: 
"I am
not the waiter."
Gibson: "Then why are you standing there?"
It calls into question
why (besides the
obvious 
) he approached the Doctor in the first place, especially since despite his "line" to the contrary, he knew exactly who she was.
"Professor Reed Smith" AKA the person who did the autopsy on my junior associate.
Speaking of the
obvious, upon reviewing season 1, I noticed the dumpy, overweight female brunette detective was in a sense replaced in season 2 by a "more comely," much thinner brunette. At first I thought they just recast the character, but you still see the season 1 brunette in the conference table scenes in season 2, she just doesn't have any lines and doesn't go out with the mustachioed detective on calls anymore. It's an "Obvious" replacement because the audience would never consider season 1's brunette to be tempting to either
Stella or
Paul and in season 2 it looks like Stella
is interested (sitting down on the couch, reaching over to slowly take the hair pins from the brunette's bun) before we realize WHY Stella's interested.
Everyone notice how Stella's hotel room was upgraded from the Hilton to an
"Elegant" Belfast Hotel... at least that's what they called it in the newspaper article Paul handed wee Katie Bendetto when he was explaining who Gibson was in the investigation. I think they did it just to give Paul somewhere to hide when her "date" with Reed went bust.
Going back to
Dr. Reed Smith, in season 1 we learn she has at least 2 daughters... but do we know if she's still married? Stella can claim she didn't know about
Olsen's family connections, but I doubt she can make the same claim about Reed. If she is married and if Stella is kissing her romantically in a public place, then its pretty insensitive of Stella to say "so what" when Reed says Mr. Day knows who she (Reed) is and most likely who Stella is. And if all Stella wants is a "no strings roll in the hay", why when Stella learned Reed went to Rose Stagg's home to "talk" with the husband, was she upset? Was Stella merely worried about a "colleague" mixing the a potential suspect/spouse of a victim... or was she jealous because the "girl from Croydon" turned HER down?
Did you know when you google "I grew up in Croydon"... you get a slew of links to posts asking
what the heck that line means and
how crazy Reed was to turn down Gibson!
I loved the comment (where?) that claimed
KALINDA (Archie's character from the "The Good Wife") would
NEVER have turned Stella down!
Olsen was shot in
season 1 and was found to be involved with
Aaron Monroe and his gangster businesses. Olson's partner Breedlove shot himself in front of DS Eastwood rather than admit to his Monroe connections and his affair with Olsen's wife.
DS Eastwood was prevented in season 1 from arresting Aaron by Jim Burns, Jim then warned the daddy since daddy sits on the police commission and Burns thought he could leverage that warning into more support for his police plans. Eastwood confronted Burns at the
end of season 1 and called him a COWARD then. Burns did not melt down, however, until
13 (?) days later in season 2 in Stella's hotel room. We had heard an aside in a previous season 2 scene that Daddy Monroe was in the hospital and in ep 3 Jim was bemoaning the fact that Aaron had returned and was arrested trying to kill his daddy in the hospital. Why did the son try to do that you ask? One assumes all the Crack that went up Aaron's nose in season 1 had disconnected him from reality.
I loved
Gibson's later response to Jim's fears that Spector overheard him confess his concerns that Aaron would out him with Detective Eastwood. "Oh
forget your private embarrassment
for a minute... I'm pretty sure you referred to Spector by name."
Remember, Stella has a whole journal of "private" thoughts which have been read by a serial killer. And despite that embarrassment she
still did not hesitate in calling in her CSI team to disrupt her life and trash her privacy, all to catch a killer. Jim could learn a thing or two from her, if he tried.
At the end of episode 3, season 2... after Reed "pried" into Stella's personal life with Olsen, after Stella tried to get the (married mother of 2?) into bed, after Jim tried to do the same albeit
much more aggressively to Stella, we hear Jim talk about a
fall from grace. About a priest who was a pedophile that Jim arrested years ago. We hear about all the young lives the priest had ruined in one form or another and Jim asks a question. Was Paul Spector
just another ruined boy, more "fallout" from that priest's original fall from grace?
Falling from grace made me think of the 2nd season 2 ep, when Stella put her hand into Reed's so Reed could check out her nails. "Not very sharp" noted the doctor and Stella sighed... "
Not anymore".
What was Stella's
fall from grace? She confessed too readily to Jim about nearly crossing the line with Reed, so it can't be that. We know something happened with her father, but when? What? Will we ever know? And why did she start filing down those nails, why did she "pull in her claws?"
Will those answers be in series 3 or 4?
Inquiring minds want to know... and I'd prefer if we didn't have to wait another 17 months to find out.
