Line of Duty Thread 9, no spoilers! Watch along as we find out (?) wtf is going on!

[TedisnotH]

Reporting in, fellas. Let's fill up Thread 8 first though, ok?

@AnneShirleysNewDress

I'd go into witness protection for Jo's cottage.

I said to DP that I'd be a criminal for a house like that

Why are people still taking about H?

We’ve known for a while that there was no H, that there was a fourth corrupt officer facilitating things for the OCG.

Buckells admitted he was no mastermind, that he just acted as a go between between the OCG units and other corrupt officers (eg the prison wardens)

Yes I guess we hyped it up but it was always so very exciting so for the last episode to be so mundane I just feel cheated :-(

It was brilliant , honest and brave.

Davidson has been doomed to live in an eternal Matalan Autumn/Winter advert. That cottage looked lovely but Denise van Outen lives next door and she's always popping in for coffee.

Exactly - they needed one of the corrupt prison officers with them to tell them where to go for the ambush so they presumably made her stay with them and used her so the ambush-ers (?) didn't suspect it was a trick.

Yes that seemed obvious to me.

It had as much excitement as a wonky donkey! Ian Buckells - pah!

@User657849

Why are people still taking about H?

We’ve known for a while that there was no H, that there was a fourth corrupt officer facilitating things for the OCG.

Buckells admitted he was no mastermind, that he just acted as a go between between the OCG units and other corrupt officers (eg the prison wardens)

Exactly

@PomLikeTheBattle

It was brave not to be predictable.

What was predictable was that the last thread about the final would be full of anger and disappointment. I called that one ages ago (about the only thing I got right 😀

It was never going to be any of the mad crazy theories fans created with everyone related and Steve a ghost.

Yes, not what I was expecting although I thought that Ted might reveal that Corbett was his son.

IMHO Ted fessed up at the end so that he would add to the ‘institutionalized corruption’ line he has been trying to prove. He implicated himself so that Carmichael could not continue to ignore it. At risk to his own career ...

Secondly ... Lomax ... was his authorization of the prison transfer forged or did he do it?

I loved it ... hardly any strings tied up and I’m as baffled as ever, which is EXACTLY what I expected

I was expecting Carmichael to kick off or at least burst into the glass box interview.

@EsmaCannonball

Well, that was disappointing and sort of perfunctory. Lots of exposition and events the audience never got to witness. We never got invested in Gail Vella, Laurence Christopher, Darren Hunter and Thurwall. It's always a mistake to centre a series on things that happen off-screen.

Jo Davidson was a bit of a cipher, all backstory and no current story and it was very hard to understand her motivations. She was certainly no Lindsay Denton. There was very little point to the whole Steph detour or the Steve painkiller storyline.

I kept on expecting something really clever to happen or a brilliant twist or even a bit of action but it just felt like a load of filler. The fan theories are more interesting than the actual storyline. I was more intrigued by one episode Danny Waldron than seven episode Jo Davidson.

This x 1000000

Basically I’m more than happy for the corruption to remain covered up, and for the message that it’s an impossibility for the police to police the police while corruption exists etc, but this series has been built up and more and more exciting action twists etc I think this season has been very poorly delivered and has just felt underwhelming. I was hoping this evening would make up for the rest of the series but it didn’t.

I still don’t get how they did the van switch with the corrupt prison officer in it.

Thing is, I kind of don't mind the general story ending with the idea that you never really get to the bottom of corruption; that institutions are set up to perpetuate this kind of thing; that there's never going to be a big satisfying "tie it up in a bow, everything's better now" ending.

But that was just a mess, the writing and acting felt lazy, there was no tension, and parts felt dangerously cheesy. There was a point I genuinely felt like I was watching lego line of duty. If anyone needs witness protection tonight I fear it's jed mercurio, at the mercy of fans (myself included), who have invested waaaay too much in this series.

I quite like that it was Buckells in the end, as everyone and his dog thought he was 'just' incompetent and shallow.

It just wasn't Keyser Soze enough!

To be fair, I think LOD jumped the shark with the Dot Cottan morse code finger twitch, so I don't know what I expected really

Because you were assuming we were watching concurrent events but we weren’t

Is Ted, John Corbetts dad...? (Only Ted knows/suspects) 'I knew his mother very well'... 50k for his grandkids.

Nigel Boyle just posted this on twitter.

If 'Points of View' was still on, I'd be writing to them, signing off 'Disappointed of Lincolnshire'. There had better be a series 7.

@AC12theletterofthelaw

I still don’t get how they did the van switch with the corrupt prison officer in it.

AC12 stopped the van. Arrested the driver and the prison officer in the back and got Jo out. Then Steve drove the fan with one corrupt officer beside him who I assume they help them with Kate in the back.

Just some validation or concrete knowledge that if went right to the top but that they couldn’t stop it would have been better

I’ve been rewatching the old series a lot and seasons 2 and 3 were really exceptional TV. It’s lost its way the last couple of years, focussing on a larger complex conspiracy rather than individual cases where the ending is clearly worked out first then they work backwards from that.

The last two - three series they’re trying to write answers that deal with what has come before, which will never be as effective.

[quote tecatea]@cliffdiver like what? All the bad police were put away? [/quote]
Were they?

Osborne? Hastings?

Both still serving.

I loved it. Why expect every story to have every thread tied and question answered? Life just isn't like that. I'd like to think AC-12 will carry on with Ted, Kate and Steve, and imagine how effective they'd be with hard-boiled Patricia on their side.
Buckells' studied incompetence was great cover, and the clue was there: his demeanour when Lakewell was murdered in his cell was definately suspicious. And anyone who doesn't understand that idiots very often get promoted way above their abilities has never worked in big business.
I gave a huge cheer when our three heroes rode down in the lift together.
Btw, witness protection looks very tempting, what with cosy cottages and bouncy dogs.