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?

Can I join in, binge watched the whole 6 series in the last couple of weeks. Finally finished season 6 today. I thought the ending was disappointing but I don’t understand why people think that he’s H. In the final interview they mentioned that either not assisting with enquiries or confessing to conspiracy to murder would mean he wasn’t eligible for witness protection and/or immunity. That gave me the impression that he was covering for someone - I thought Osbourne. If he spills on Osbourne he knows he’s dead, if he confesses to cover up for him he denied immunity and if he says nothing he’s denied witness protection so he has no choice but to go back to prison and hope it gets covered up for him.

I personally thought season 2 and 5 were the best of the lot!

Love those YouTube videos, so funny!!
I'm going to miss LoD - fingers crossed for a season 7, see you all there 😁

Apologies if this has already been explained but why did Ted get rid of his laptop?

I don't think it was ever fully explained.

He claimed it was because there was porn on it. I can't remember if we ever established whether that was true.

I think the porn explanation was accepted when Ted was under investigation. I'm not sure how plausible it was though. We knew that someone was at the end of an online conversation and that person could possibly have been Ted (we know now that it wasn't). I think we're going to have to accept the porn explanation as there doesn't seem to be another obvious reason for getting rid of the laptop.

A loose end? Poor storytelling? I doubt we'll go d out for certain.

I'd forgotten about Ted's laptop.

MrsWhite I've been rewatching series 2 and it really is excellent. Keeley Hawes is so good.

Buckells is not H, H will never be brought to justice, he was just another Caddy.

So who is the big cheese turn

Who ordered the killing in front of buckells in his cell

@Pinkearedcow she really was. She brilliantly played the part of having the audience feel sorry for her at times but at other times being convinced she was bent.

I don’t think we’ll ever find out who really is behind it all. I’m really hoping for series 7 but I hope they start a fresh with a completely different storyline.

Apologies if I've missed someone else commenting on the same but it seemed like H had to be Osbourne? Maybe Carmichael has a rethink and joins forces with AC12 in series 7 to bring him down...
It wasn't the finale I was expecting.

I think the point is that, whether or not Osbourne is H (there may not even BE an H), as he's the big cheese Chief Constable, the buck stops with him, so he allows the existence of an H.

I agree with @IntermittentParps. Regardless of who H is, if there's an H at all, Osborne is enabling corruption (even if he's not bent himself which we know not to be true.).

But there is someone higher the buckells

He isn’t the mastermind behind this

He’s. A Thick plonker who talks with his dick

Is there a mastermind behind it in the police or is the mastermind one of the OCG?

We know that Osborne is bent-that was made clear in series 1.

Whether or not he is also acting for an OCG is another matter.

Just when I think I have got a handle on it, I read the comments here and I'm completely befuddled again 🙃

The more I think about it, the more I think there is no H and if there is, it does not have to be Buckells.

Although Osborne is bent, I don't necessarily think he's either H or the big baddie pulling the strings. If he is H then Carmichael is clearly complicit in covering up for him. Does that make her bent? Probably.

Personally I think there IS someone else pulling the strings and that person is outside of the force, within an OCG. The actions of the OCGs themselves are not within the remit of AC as AC is only concerned with bent coppers.

I think the "moral" of the series is that corruption is a bit like a hydra - you chop off a head and another grows back. it can't be stopped. Bentness can be overt - like Buckells - or less overt - like Steve and his inability to keep it in his pants, Kate and the affair with a suspect's husband. Is Ted bent because he gave dirty money to Steph? Yes, technically. Is Osborne more bent than Ted because of the cover-up of the shooting? Was Maneet bent for covering for her dim cousin and getting that information for Hilton? Yes - but she still died in the Line of Duty nonetheless (as I recall).

So everyone is either bent in some way or corruptible. For me at least, bentness is not about big baddies and massive reveals - it's about the subtler, institututionalised, everyday stuff that will always go on whilst there are people within the force willing to accept it and self-interested enough to maintain the status quo.

So no matter how much you want to stop corruption, it's always going to be a losing battle and Ted "the battle" Hastings has lost! He's out, AC12 is no more, Carmichael is in (for now) and Osborne will probably retire before any disciplinary action is brought against him.

Poignant, really.

Great post @Buggerthebotox

'think the "moral" of the series is that corruption is a bit like a hydra - you chop off a head and another grows back. it can't be stopped'

Yes that is the message it seems. Just seems weird that Mercurio has led us up the path and round the houses with a load of 'clues' including Dot's morse code dying declaration 🙄.

LOD was a victim of its own success. What started out as a clever drama on BBC2 seemed to evolve into an ott Starsky and Hutch style cop show with constant shoot outs. Tina the evil PC stabbing Bill bungalow in the loos being a low point imo.

I enjoyed it while it lasted, I hope they let it lie now.

I think the writers decided at some point to go down the road of morals and the bigger picture. Hence bringing in the blatant nods to all the real life cases.

Which would have been fine if it started as that. It didn’t though. So to completely change it in series 6 is just off imo.

But I think there wasn’t a H. There were just 4 facilitators who were in the pocket of the OCGs. I am not sure Buckells ordered the murder of Lakewell - I expect that was out of his hands. The OCG decided he needed to be murdered. Buckells just manipulated the police, turned a blind eye, was deliberately incompetent. Dot was the same - didn’t follow up on leads when he should have - and realised that he needed to protect the names on Daniel May’s character’s list because they included OCG members (eg Tommy Hunter). I think the ending was plausible.

Osborne as a PP has said was known to be corrupt from the start. As a consequence, Steve leaves in a huff for somewhere not corrupt in the police - except AC12 has its own corruption issues - most notably Dot but less notably, Ted and even Kate.

Completely agree @Buggerthebotox

And with that

There's only one thing left to say...

...urgent exit required!