So what did the Adolescence psychologist’s report state?

[sideeyes]

I have been thinking about this for a few days. What do you think?

You obviously missed the whole point then

No, most 13 year olds are having sex.

Jesus, no they aren't!

One thing that nobody has mentioned is why it is even being considered normal or desirable for children to have sexual/romantic relationships at 13

If you lived through the 80s/90s then this should be very obvious. Capitalism has pushed sexuality on teens and pre-teens for the last 40 years. They all think it is what they should be doing. It's everywhere and if you're not doing it too, then you're gay or incel.

@CaptainMyCaptain Someone got out of bed the wrong side today! I can assure you I 'got the point' but still found it tedious and a waste of an opportunity to delve deeper into a toxic culture.

@Piggywaspushed without googling incel, I think it means a man who is involuntarily celebrate and angry about this. Rather than looking to themselves they instead blame women for rejecting them. I think an incel would view a woman as subordinate to a man which fuels the anger and hatred because she doesn’t understand her place in society as he sees it.

What does the term incel mean to you?

I’m going to Google it now and see if my own understanding is close.

I think he was just excited to be involved in a famous case. We didn't see him with the male psychologist so we can't know.

Could well be, but for a show like this with a clear aim and such a small cast, no character is there accidentally, no scripting is accidental, and particularly in a one shot take, no staging is accidental, which means he was there for a reason and his language and actions were chosen as part of a message.

Bit odd to have someone that so many women note as creepy, that encroaches on a woman's personal space when she's trying to do her job, in a show about violence against women and the men and boys that perpetrate it, if it isn't part of the message.

He was literally talking about body language and the truth people tell with their bodies while standing right in her ear, blocking her way to the door, while she was trying to ignore him and flinching away, which he didn't take as a hint. It seemed to me like an extremely deliberate choice in direction.

I thought the body language thing was him just trying to prove he knew stuff. I have met loads of people like him, male and female -a bit like the female teacher in episode 2 : an irritating background chatterer while people with 'real jobs' get on (which was something that annoyed me actually).

I don't actually think they were the same.

The teacher was making genuinely inane chatter while she was walking them around. She was filling silence that most people would fill with small talk because they were walking. She didn't start explaining to them about how she was reading all about police work and, well, they probably already know this but did they know X and Y about policing and crime? Irritating, sure, but not threatening in any way.

On the other hand he did what we see men do so often that we have a word for it and got right into Briony's personal space while he was doing it. If he'd been doing it from across the room and we heard him off camera I would have put him in the "just irritating and a bit weird" box too.

I'd be interested to see an interview with the actor.

Agree with this! There will always be as many interpretations as people, so it would be good to understand what was going on in his mind, what was direction, and what was accidental.

Re being an incel, part of the issue IMO is that you don't need to be a self-confessed member of the community to uphold and the culture and be part of the problem. You just need to be the type of man that blames women for not liking him.

Chances are he's never even heard the phrase, but I do think that men that behave like him are where it starts. The entitlement, the disregard for a woman's feelings when she has physically flinches away from him (surely a normal guy would apologise for the fright and step back!), the body positioning, the talking "at" a woman about himself and what he thinks because she's there to listen...all of those are common to it. It's the thin end of the wedge, despite the fact they think they're harmless. How many women have dealt with being called a "stuck up bitch" or an "ugly cow" or similar by a man that has hit on her in the street and she's brushed him off? It's all part of the same issue. Men blaming women rather than acknowledging it's their actions that caused it.

Well, quite. Its a bit of a stretch to assume the prison officer was unattached.

No, most 13 year olds are having sex.

No they're not. Average age to lose your virginity in the UK is 17. Certainly some kids will be but not most, stop talking bollocks.

I really enjoyed the final episode and thought that there were a lot of subtleties. The wife seemed a little nervous of the husband, the whole household was definitely controlled by him. Ok do agree though that a couple more episodes wouldn't have hurt. Maybe the girl's family as well as the trial?

I didn't like episode 2 actually. I thought it was a bit boring. I also used to teach secondary and that male teacher screaming constantly just took me back there. As well as the general utter chaos!

I haven't seen SG in much (I couldn't stand This is England - I saw a disturbing rape scene so that was my cracker) so I was surprised at how good an actor he is.

I suppose part of the reason they couldn't do the trial was the one shot real time format. A trial wouldn't last an hour

Urgh, we didn’t need to see either the trial or the report. There was no abuse, trauma etc. It was just a very insecure teen boy, who probably did have personality traits that made him more susceptible to the influences of misogynists. Who desperately wanted to be seen by others, particularly girls. The phycologists questions and the reaction of Jamie was enough. I’m glad it did not follow the usual crime procedural troupe, the show was about asking the question, the rest is up to us.

The last episode gave enough of an insight into what had happened to the family in the 13 months since the crime, it didn’t need to be rammed down our throats with a court room drama or intense hand wringing. It showed a tight knit family doing their best to stay tight knit. It showed how they were trying to make life as normal as possible for their daughter. It showed the heartbreak, the helplessness and the isolation of being the family of a child who murdered another child.

One of the running gags of the Big Bang show was that Howard could smell a vulnerable woman at 50 paces and that he viewed that as a superpower because he felt he couldn’t ‘compete’ —manipulate— their affections towards him any other way. Yes there’s a lot of misogynistic bs that happens in the shadows but there’s also enough in the mainstream that has continues to be mainstreamed.

I thought the psychologist’s report would say he understood what he was accused of and he was able to stand trial. The discussion here brought up so many nuances I may have missed.

I liked Ep3. The psychologist came back after the break without getting his hot chocolate and adopting a quiet but more authoritarian position.

The encounter with the teen/young man in the paint shop (while mum and daughter got to do the ‘girly’ things like spend some money and buy a plant) was also telling: here was another one who would not accept evidence, thought police had got it wrong (“it wasn’t anatomically possible” for the stabbing to have happened) and was on Jamie’s side.

Depends where you get your statistics. A judgemental stranger with a clipboard is going to elicit more conservative responses.

The sexual health alliance says it is 15, and when you account for 40-year-old virgins, that pushes the average down further.

I thought the body language thing was him just trying to prove he knew stuff. I have met loads of people like him, male and female -a bit like the female teacher in episode 2 : an irritating background chatterer while people with 'real jobs' get on (which was something that annoyed me actually).

Not the same at all.
The female teacher was trying to be helpful because a terrible thing has happened which involved students at the school. She wanted to make sure the police had everything they needed and was clearly anxious and stressed about the highly unusual and emotional situation. At no point was she offering up her knowledge of police investigations.

The male security guard was different. He in was in her personal space and wanted to make a point that he was knowledgeable too, that he'd read a book and knew stuff. It was a clear example of male insecurity and power play around an educated women, particularly young educated women.

No one ask teenagers whether they have sex by going around with a clipboard. No point in looking at the average age of loss of virginity. You need to find the statistic of how many 13 year olds have had sex. To save you time, not many.

As evident on this thread, and others, many people have been affected by it. Hence the hype. I cannot think of the last time a tv programme has generated the same response.

This thread really illustrates that people are watching this on different levels. Some people see a waste of screen time in an interaction between the guard and psychologist, or a conversation about the way his parents were at 18, whereas for others that is an invitation into the subtext, which is fascinating to them.

Why would you keep watching something so boring and then come to a discussion about it?

@Piggywaspushedit’s a shame we didn’t see the casting call for the prison officer. I don’t think it was an accident that they cast a man with an acne damaged face.

He might not be single. Plenty of married man who are not conventionally attractive are married, and plenty of married men also hold sexist, misogynistic views on women too.

We got a snapshot of an unattractive man’s interaction with an attractive, educated, important young woman. How do you think he felt about her?

I can understand people finding some of it a bit boring, but I found all of it had something that added to the story. Like the security guard thing - seemingly about what she was seeing on the screen, but actually more about him (and men like him) and his actions and attitudes to women. Also the journey to Wainwright's in the car - the conversation all added to their life story as a whole - it was seemingly lighthearted, but when the mum was reminiscing about the dance they went to and how all the kids were laughing at the dad, the dad repeated "they weren't laughing at me" - he didn't appear angry but I felt a bit on edge, in case she pushed the laughing too far. I wondered if I'd read too much into it, but then when he confronted the youths who'd sprayed his van, he shouted "Don't laugh at me!" - clearly being laughed at was a big thing for him, as it is for many men I think (I mean, I also hate being laughed at, as do many - but as with so many things in this programme, it's never about one thing alone - it's the perfect storm, all elements coming together). Also in that van conversation about the dance, when he was asked if he'd been in a fight, he said "something like that" with a tough sort of demeanour. He was just messing about in the dance, which shows playfulness and fun, but clearly there was also a need to act tough, and this fear of being laughed at.

I think we're meant to come away from watching this looking at all aspects of what went wrong, not identifying one main factor. No one in this programme was perfect - no one can be. But we have to be aware of ourselves, each other, society ... and be ready to examine and learn.

Mum with no voice or agency of her own

I think this can be accurate though. There are many women in RL and on MN who seem to cede power to men.

I disagree. I found the security guard incredibly creepy and sexist. He’s the kind of man I’ve had start speaking to me in public then when I’m not overly friendly back switches and starts calling me a bitch and saying he’s only being friendly and why can’t I just be nice back. He stared at her, stood too close and his attitude seemed to be you’re there to be leered at like a piece of meat and I don’t care if you’re uncomfortable. He was a great character and showed the every day lack of respect some men have for women away from the extreme of killing.

I thought less sex was being had by the younger generations than ever

Yes when it ended I was “erm what?” I thought it would go into more detail about him.

Thanks for that, I missed the contrast between mum and dad's teenage life and Jamie's. While watching it I was more focused on the daughter's reaction - parents were once teenagers (surely not!), they went to a disco together (cringe), they snogged (please mum and dad, TMI!) with tongues (let me out of the van now!).

I agree. I think a lot of people have missed the subtext and themes. Some need everything laid out for them rather than exploring the meaning behind things.