Just finished watching it. I can add my thoughts to some points on here before I get onto my questions.
Cinnamon's face wasn't smashed in before she died. I think the pathologist said it was damaged while in the suitcase from being chucked into the sea. Presumably being in the water wouldn't have helped either.
Regarding Robin being irresistible, I think the point (based on what we saw and my personal experience of being a woman of similar attractiveness to Elisabeth Moss), is that it's not about Robin. It's about the men. There are men who will always try it on with the woman they perceive to be the most available to them; Robin is not so beautiful as to be unavailable to them. Age, status, vulnerability, competition and (sometimes) marital status are more important factors than beauty. They also don't want to have a relationship with her - they don't even know her - they just want to fuck her and feed their egos/enhance their alpha male status. Robin is not unattractive and in real life men would be interested.
Right, my thoughts:
Why did they shoe-horn Robin Griffin from the most excellent Top Of The Lake into this completely unrelated story? Honestly it could have been a police drama with any tortured cop with a past. Take out the frankly ridiculous bit with Al (I found myself shouting at the TV "why are you standing there? Just leave! Just go!" long before he stood up and whipped his belt off to display a lack of control completely at odds with the character depicted in TOTL original), take out the TRAVESTY of the NZ flashback where they recast Johnno and changed his character beyond recognition, take out the bit with Mary being Robin's daughter which was actually unnecessary to the plot and you have a perfectly good and interesting story.
Now to the sheer bonkers bits:
The police couple (well he was still married) who are not together together but are having a baby via surrogacy. WHY?
The personal involvement of Robin and the surrogacy police in the case is just silly. It's so utterly unprofessional and there's a big part of TOTL that is Robin doing and being seen to be doing things by the book.
Robin was also always so in control in TOTL. This time round she was constantly being attacked and being in situations where she allowed people to attack her. It just made no sense.
The landscape and the lake were big parts of TOTL. There was none of that here. They should have called it something else. There was no lake and no dramatic atmosphere created by the landscape.
For me, it really feels like Jane Campion had a police story to tell, one about the underbelly of Sydney prostitutes and their exploitation, surrogacy and the abuse of women. That was going to be juxtapositioned with the ridiculousness of the white middle classes and their self absorbed natures, their therapy and medication and the dissatisfaction they feel with their pampered and privileged lives. Then someone said she had to do a second series of TOTL and she just squashed in a bit of backstory and this is what we get.
I did enjoy it, but as a standalone and not as part two of TOTL. There was also a lot of suspended disbelief about the police procedure and relationships. I thought the character development and depiction of Alexander/Puss was really interesting and really well done. I can completely buy him biting Robin on the face. He is a cruel misogynist. I like that at first we mostly see him from Mary's POV, then we begin to see him as being abusive and see him fully as a disgusting and dangerous human being. Later we see him for the cowering loser he really is. Finally we see him as a product of his own artifice who is only as powerful as his victims permit him to be.
Final thought: NK's performance would have been better if her face had been less frozen. The women can even frown. She was also massively under used and her character under developed.