THE MISSING IS BACK - part 4

[MrsderPunkt]

As part 3 is full.

I'm having a day off due to illness, so am planning a re-watch from the beginning as have got used to the time switches that confused me at first. Quite looking forward to it - will pay extra attention to all things yellow, legs in fireplaces and anything else that you suggest. Probably cover my eyes at the drilla moment again though!

Ah, thanks for the clarification re the Swiss photo and the computer thing.

Who was the body in the boot of the car right at the end?

Loved it

Baptiste knew the cabin was in Switzerland as the photo of Driller and his uncle in front of the cabin had Switzerland written across it.

nokidshere The body in the boot was that of Jorn - right where Gettrick had left it early in Ep 6? in the aftermath of the drill incident.

Ahhh I thought he had buried him under the floorboards!!!!

Thanks

Lovely Jorn was in the boot.

I did think that for a soldier Sam wasn't very good at moving covertly through the woods .

Have just refreshed my memory on the Natascha Kampusch case, and how complicated things have (inevitably) been for her since her escape in 2006.

I had not known (or remembered) that her captor's minivan, amongst hundreds of others, was traced and inspected by police on the basis of eyewitness reports of the abduction. He didn't have an alibi for the time she was taken, but fobbed police off with a story and he was ruled out of the enquiry. There seem also to have been red herrings concerning Natascha's home life which may have distracted the investigation.

So chilling to think of this really happening to a real person.

I too think the actresses should have looked more alike. My eldest is 26 and has hardly changed since she was 11, and she has had orthodontic work and her hair is dyed. Those girls had no such alterations. Usually a child will have at least one feature from a parent or sibling, eyes, nose, whatever. Its not just that the parents wanted to believe, there were lots of comments about how similar the girls were. When sophie was with the brig in the garden i think she was asking him how could he live with himself knowing that he was aiding her abductor and sentencing her to further misery and danger. I believe the brig has dementia but has more lucid periods than he pretends. I too think eve took him for questioning/arrest, though she will get nowhere with it. Re the photo of the cabin, i think drilla could easily forget about it, its just part of the furniture. And the waiter bit, sophie lived in that area for at least a year, its not unlikely that someone would have noticed her. I will miss this thread nearly as much as the show, fingers crossed for a third season.

Agree re the girls. The Nicholas Barclay case in "The Imposter" isn't a good comparison as there's a strong suggestion that some of his family were involved in his disappearance or at least knew something about it. So they went along with the deception.

My 20 year old son has not really changed in a decade- he's a young man of course and his features are thinner and more clearly defined but his eyes, hair, skin tone, nose, body shape are the same. His resemblance to me and his dad is even stronger in adulthood. I do think they could've got actresses who were more similar.

Perhaps Eve took her father home to prevent him being implicated. As an act of love because she remembered the good times.
But who knows?

Agree about the utter implausability of the parents believing Sophie was Alice. I reckon they must've just struggled to cast similar looking actors!

Although I would say Gemma wasn't convinced. It was only Sam. And he seemed to just desperately want it to be her, so didnt look that closely. That, combined with him having spent a lot of her childhood away might account for it.

I also found it annoying that the actresses looked so different, esp. Sophie being so unusual looking.

I've reconnected with a lot of all old friends via facebook and the vast majority haven't really changed even though we are now in our 40s but a few are totally, utterly unrecognizable. Sam kept saying to Gemma "just because you want something to be true doesn't mean it is." The irony is he was the one believing what he wanted to be true. Gemma did recognise her child after 11 years, on a rollercoaster photo when she is not facing the camera and is pulling a face. She did exactly what most of us think we would do which is to recognize her child.
If the Brig didn't genuinely have dementia why would he risk mentioning Alice when Sam was looking after him?

In episode 3 (I think) Matthew visits Kristian Herz in prison to “keep his promise to Sophie-as-Alice” and apologise to him – what was that about? It’s as if Matthew knew Herz was wrongly accused?

Teenage Matthew looked totally different from the little boy in the first episode.

iheart Alice(Sophie) made him promise to visit the butcher and apologize but he didn't know what he was apologizing for.

Matthew was fulfilling a promise made to whom he thought was Alice but was really Sophie.
Sophie knew the butcher was innocent.
She also knew the doctor was innocent and had tried to help her and so she put the flowers on his grave.

I thought it was a great ending to a brill series. Love Baptiste - definitely hope there's a series 3!

I think the Brig must have dementia otherwise why would he have given some details away? Think he's definitely playing on it when it's convenient though. I thought he maybe already knew he had it but hadn't told anyone, then when Drilla threatened him he pretended he'd just been to the doctor and told Eve, a) because he knew it would come out and wanted Eve to remember the good and b) so he could start to play on it if necessary.

I agree Alice and Sophie didn't look much alike, but I guess it was a desperate plan from Drilla. He didn't abduct Alice to pass Sophie off as her. I did think adult Alice and Matthew did look like siblings though.

I liked the last episode, but would have liked to know more about Lena and the story behind Sophie's abduction.

Brute I think he had symptoms but hadn't acted on them but as soon as he knew there was a danger of his Iraq past being exposed he got diagnosed and began to use his confused state whenever he faced a situation he didn't like.

Ah ok, I'm obviously misremembering about it being a section scar that tipped off the docs that Sophie had been pregnant. That makes more sense then.

Sophie's relationship with Gatterick was never semi consensual, though she might have thought so.

Well, that's pretty much what I said, Elendon, to be fair. Relationships between abductors and their victims can be extraordinarily complicated, as in the Kampusch case for example. It's clear that the only way for Sophie to reconcile the situation in her own head was to believe that she was happy to be with Gettrick, that they were a family and he loved her as his partner.

One other point I don't really buy - why did Sophie put flowers on Reed's grave? She only seemed to meet him for the first time when she was semi-delirious with peritonitis, I doubt if she even caught his name. When did she learn that he had died, and understand the situation enough to know that he had been wrongfully killed, and feel guilty about it? That doesn't make sense to me.

The whole thing about whether the girls looked alike isn't really the issue though, it's more, are they both believable grown up versions of 11yo Alice, and I think they are, Sophie more so. I know it's different but I've taught children of 11 and met them years later and not known them, one or two still haven't been recognisable even after they'd told me their names! I know it's not the same as a parent but years of hoping etc, yes, I think it's possible.

Did anyone else notice the name of the Interpol friend who Batiste phoned, who traced Gettrick's connection to Vaaren? Baptiste says 'Mark Walsh? How's the new job going?' The name was really emphasised, so I checked - Mark Walsh was the Emily Hughes' new husband, the British policeman in series one.