Did Frank really go "too far" in killing the Polaroid Stalker?

[ethsnafu]

Dear Friend ,

I actually agree with you on all your points and have enjoyed reading them expressed as well as they are!

My intention was to note that we, the Royal sense, frequently discuss Catherine's reaction to watching Frank commit murder and negate to give any credence to the traumatic experience she endured prior to it. We often, myself included, state that her reaction is unfair considering Frank saved her life but preclude to give any narrative weight to the profundity of the torture she endured.

Catherine's reaction is irrational, immediate and ill-considered. Calm and applied logic dictates that what was required was a period of a catharsis within the marriage, the shared exploration of the experience rather than any impetuous rejection or sudden change. All I sought to do was create some empathy with Catherine's plight and note that trauma does not engender calm, considered, salient reactions in many people. Many victims of trauma are unable to verbalise their experiences for many years, their experience causes them to forge damaged conclusions and adopt patterns of behavior incongruous with people's established knowledge of them. I accept, readily, that with a calm overview of the situation Catherine should have concluded all that we often note but I feel we should afford her some leeway in understanding that events such as these are not always the best bedrock upon which to build logical reactions and responses.

I still assert she was a cow at times though lol.

[4th Horseman]

Dear Friend ,

I actually agree with you on all your points and have enjoyed reading them expressed as well as they are!

My intention was to note that we, the Royal sense, frequently discuss Catherine's reaction to watching Frank commit murder and negate to give any credence to the traumatic experience she endured prior to it. We often, myself included, state that her reaction is unfair considering Frank saved her life but preclude to give any narrative weight to the profundity of the torture she endured.

Catherine's reaction is irrational, immediate and ill-considered. Calm and applied logic dictates that what was required was a period of a catharsis within the marriage, the shared exploration of the experience rather than any impetuous rejection or sudden change. All I sought to do was create some empathy with Catherine's plight and note that trauma does not engender calm, considered, salient reactions in many people. Many victims of trauma are unable to verbalise their experiences for many years, their experience causes them to forge damaged conclusions and adopt patterns of behavior incongruous with people's established knowledge of them. I accept, readily, that with a calm overview of the situation Catherine should have concluded all that we often note but I feel we should afford her some leeway in understanding that events such as these are not always the best bedrock upon which to build logical reactions and responses.

I still assert she was a cow at times though lol.

i absolutely agree with you assessment of PTSS...i am sure there are many here who have friends who have fought overseas that still cannot bring themselves to talk about their experiences. I think that my greatest beef here is that Catherine sort of "made her own bed" by marrying Frank with the full knowledge that his life was different than most, and now that his nerve (good word??) has been tested to the ultimate degree, the rest of the saying would dictate that she "made her own bed, now she has to lie in it"....she refused the latter, possibly due to the stress of previous years of exposure to the darker aspects of human behavior. Personally, i think she was a bitch for leaving, but with a re-assessment of your PTSS claim, i can start to see, just a bit, how this could have pushed her "over the edge"...

I have just been in contact with Gunslinger (a staple to those who have been here for years) and he has agreed, from his law enforcement experience to come back to the board today or tomorrow and post comments concerning this issue. He will certainly bring haunting, chilling, and heartbreaking true stories of the complexities that police officers face on a daily basis...we welcome him back with the widest of open arms...he is doing this to let those who are interested know just how insanely difficult making that decision is, and yet it happens in the blink of an eye...

4th Horseman..

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Gunslinger? Hey thats someone i havent seen in years. love to hear from him again

[ethsnafu]

How amazing it would be to see him back!

I think you must be applauded on what is a wonderful idea. Much of our appreciation of narrative fiction is formed through supposition and thankfully few of us have any real experience of some of the more tragic and confrontational elements of Millennium. It is a superb idea to enrich our understanding using those with primary knowledge of a situation and extremely kind of them to offer to do so. I hope that this superb concept may develop to be a regular feature of the board, 'guest speakers' who take the time to embellish our appreciation and deconstruction of the Millennium universe would be a fabulous idea.

[liberty]

Something that really stunned me after watching the s2 premiere was the way in which Kathy asked Frank to leave, chiding him for perhaps going too far in his slaying of the Polaroid Stalker, and Frank himself wondering the very same thing. As a viewer watching the scene in question, from first knife blow to last, the kill seemed completely within the realm of what would be considered by most reasonable people to be justified self-defense. The Stalker did attack first, mind you, and Frank only survived by wresting away the knife and retaliating. Wouldn't you (i.e. whoever might be reading this) stab an attacker in such a situation more than one time, just to make sure he were dead? Now, what I think would have been very interesting, more disturbing, and a more appropriate lead-in to Frank's St. Augustine-style tortured ruminations of culpability and the-potential-for-sin-within-us-all, as well as Kathy's guarded reaction would have been if Frank had achieved hold of the knife and The Stalker had thus unconditionally surrendered, hands up...only to have Frank kill him then.

To summarize, what Frank did never struck me as an act of rage unleashed, but simple self-defense.

Moreover it's an act of self defense rage. Given the situation it is quite normal. We are governed more by our instincts / feelings, not some cold vulcanian.

Edited January 29, 2008 by liberty

[Guest massofspikes]

Admittedly, I wasn't being completely serious when I made reference to Frank using his "abilities" to help himself in wooing Catherine. I was in part thinking of a Stephen King short story found in the collection Night Shift entitled "I Know What You Need." It's about a loner-ish misfit who, since grade school, has been in love with a girl. (Both names escape me at the moment.) As the story begins, we discover that they attend the same college and that she has no recollection of him despite their attendance at various schools together throughout their lives, let alone his infatuation with her. In any case, as the story continues, we find that, in every situation, he "know(s) what (she) needs," so to speak. Despite his unappealing appearance and her beauty, she falls in love with him. As it turns out, he's spent a lifetime mastering some sort of b*******ization of voodoo and has been using this supernatural power to forsee her every desire. Once she finds out, horrified, she cuts off all ties to him. What's haunting is his declaration to her as she leaves, that she'll always be unsatisfied with every man she'll ever be with, because nobody will ever know her the way he does, by paranormal means or otherwise. The inevitable question is, of course--if ignorance is bliss, and she never discovered his clandestine machinations, could their love for one another really be considered "true"?

Edited January 29, 2008 by massofspikes

[Gunslinger]

First things first, howdy folks, I was happily surprised to get an email from 4th horseman today (great avatar as usual 4th), kind of hit me out of left field, and I started thinking about how much I miss reading posts on this site, so, 1st off let me apologize for my long absence. I don't really have any good excuses other than it seems like 24 hours in a day isn't near enough to do all the things I need. Coffee doesn't work like it used to and I'm too old and out of shape to pull all nighters...lol. To hippyroo, 4th, and all the other loyal millennium fans on the site, i hope you all are well and I will try to stop by a little more often.

[Gunslinger]

Gunslinger? Hey thats someone i havent seen in years. love to hear from him again

I am the one who is grateful to hear from all of you, thanks for the welcome HPD, as always it's good to hear from you and everyone hear on TIWWA. I won't pretend to be nearly as eloquent or well versed as 4th horsemanm when it comes to posting, truth is, if I could write half as well as 4th, I would have been promoted several times on the strength and content of your posts. this will be my twelfth year in law enforcement and I will admit, this topic is intriguing. For any of TIWWA members that are currently in the military or law enforcement, please feel free to let me know I am full of BS. My experiences are still very very very clear in my head and seem like yesterday but compared to what any active duty infantryman has seen in the last ten years, my experience pales in comparison ......11 BRAVO!!!!!, FIRST TO GO, LAST TO KNOW...LOL, Anyway having come in on the tail end of three officer involved shootings, and luckily never having to actually be in a gunbattle myself, for anyone who is interested and for what's it worth, here are my observations. Police officers do not enjoy shooting anything other paper targets anymore than anyone else, if you can find a police officer who says otherwise, he's in the wrong line of work. I have had the great fortune to work with some of the most professional police officers in the country, several of them involved in shootings where a life was taken, and have yet to meet one who did not hate him/herself just a little bit for having to do it, no matter what the circumstances were. I have also never met one who would have not had the situation turn out completely different, with someone going to jail and the police officer not going home with an incredible burden to bear for the rest of his life. Does it change someone? Absolutely. Not in the way you might think, and maybe not the person who is meeting the officer for the first or second time, but if you have known the officer in question for a while, had lunch with him, went into a domestic disturbance or met their family, then you can see subtle differences, nothing that is going to get someone hurt, but it's there. If anything, it makes the people around them stronger and more protective of the officer just to make sure they are doing ok and not thinking about it too much. I have had fireside conversations with a very good friend who is also a police sniper, he has had to make that awful choice to take someone's life, to protect that same person's young son and wife who were about to be killed with a high powered rifle. I was over 500 yards away when this happened, safely behind cover and it turned my stomach, not knowing who had been shot and who wasn't going home......that was a long 500 yard walk my friends, I kid you not.....In the end, the sniper in question ended up being named as a police officer of the year for our entire state any guesses on who nominated him?.......the family of the wife and son who were about to be killed by the man who claimed to love them. I sat next to my friend at the awards banquet and watched him as he stood up to accept the award, I watched a 17 veteran police officer walk up to the podium and say only that he wished it could have turned out different, quietly return to his seat and sit quietly until the banquet was over, however, if I had to guess, I would say that he was far away from the banquet, looking into his scope and seeing the whole terrible scenario over and over again as he made the fateful choice to take a life to save others. And there it is, the essential choice that any police officer has to grapple with, to be willing to take the life of a fellow human being at any given time on any given situation. Knowing from training and other officer's experiences that life as you know it will never be the same, colors will be a little duller, experiences a bit more jaded, always wondering if you made the correct decision. If you took the shot when you had to or if you had waited another thirty seconds would reason have prevailed and the guy decided to drop the rifle? You have just ended a son, father, brother, uncle's life. No going back and no do-overs. Now I know police officers are not drafted and it's volunteer work, you don't have to do this for a living, and I have come to believe any sane person wouldn't...lol, "mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be policeman."...Not exactly the right lyrics but you get my point. But there is also several more aspects of the job that are often worth the risk, this isn't saying much coming from someone who hung it up after 8 years, I very much enjoy my civilian crime analyst desk job and absolutely will not complain about it, at least not as much as I used to.......I have been to a total of 9 critical inciden debriefings in my career, all officer involved shootings, 4 times no one being shot, 5 times, bad guy shot and wounded and or killed. Thankfully I never had to attend one where a police officer was shot I'm not sure I could have handled that.....it is something that is in your mind 24 hours a day and knaws at your conscious like a itch you can't scratch, but that is a good thing, lest you become complacent and drop your guard, that is the day your shift supervisor has the task of paying a visit to your house or meeting your spous at the doors to the emergency room.

Ok, new paragraph, sorry everyone, if you remember me from the old days, you will remember that I am somewhat sentimental for a male and tend to ramble endlessly about good friends and old times, bare with me, I promise I will get to the point eventually, no comments here 4th horseman...lol, Catherine's reaction to Frank slaying the polaroid man is from everything I have witnessed, complete Hollywood drama. Of course, I have never had a case where a man was stalking the spouse of a police officer, so I don't have any first hand knowledge, but I have spent a lot of time with spouses whose significant other had to take a life on the job. The spouse is usually the one who if given the chance would change the situation more readily. It is the spouse who will see the damage inflicted by this terrible event more than co-workers. An officer is expected to return to work at some point and continue to discharge his duties, meaning the next call you go on, you might have to kill someone again. For this of course there is counseling and you don't have to go back on duty until YOU feel you are ready. The spouse is also the one who will most likely have the least amount of sympathy for the person who was shot. I think this is more than other the reaction I would expect. The spouse knows his/her significant other does not wake up hoping to shoot someone in the line of duty, knows they are a good person, knows they love his/her kids and knows he has a difficult job to perform. Bottom line......don't expect much sympathy from an officer's spouse who has had to take a life, they will usually defend them to the last, unlike Catherine who apparently thought "something was lost". What was NOT lost was her life, Jordan's mother's life, Frank's wife's life, Catherine's parents' daughter's life. Of course the person who is killed also has a family and the young son or daughter or mom or dad most likely will not understand why their mom/dad or son/daughter are gone and are never coming back because of something a police officer did. Try for a moment to put yourself in the shoes of a on duty patrol officer as he/she has 1 second to make the decision to take someone's life, 1 split second to make that decision, to draw, to aim, to fire, to know that the round you are firing cannot be taken back, to know that in this instant your life is going to change no matter the outcome of the next 5 seconds, to know that everyone you love may not ever see you again if the person has got the drop on you, to know that your young child is sitting in school safe and sound but may never hear "I love you" again because your instincts didn't kick in soon enough when you stopped this vehicle for speeding. To know that you did not want this to happen, but it has. To know that, in this instant, what you want more than anything else is to be in the park on a warm spring day watching your kids and holding the hand of your spouse and not taking a moment of that for granted. To know that your are just doing your job as best you can and this day is not going to end like any other day before. This......is who we are.

Thanks everyone, it's good to hear from all of you. It really is. Good night.....Gunslinger.

[Gunslinger]

I had forgotten what a bad speller I am, having read over that, let me apologize for the gratuitous amount of spelling errors in that last post, I see they have a spell check feature now, I shall make good use of it in the future..lol

[Raven Wolf]

1st things 1st... WOO-HOO! Gunslinger's back!!!

O.K. Here's my 2 cents on this topic.

#1 Yes, Frank's action was justifiable. I do not consider myself a violent person, but if someone was attacking me, or if I saw a loved one in danger, I would not hesitate. I guess it's the animal nature in me. The will to survive which has served me thus far in my life.

#2 While we all hurt for Frank when Catherine said she needed space.... I can also see this as Eth does. I've been through traumas in my life as well. Her reaction may not have been so much a regection of him, as a need to spend time alone with her child, to heal from this experience. Also, as she understood Frank, she knew this would have an affect on him as well. She even stated "I don't know if it's wrong what you did.... Because, Frank, I wanted him dead."

#3 Backing off from the situation to take a bird's eye view, it seems to me, that, when Frank drove off himself, he was agreeing with her that they needed time....and this is not ABOUT whether it was right or wrong to have done what he did. It was all about how HE felt about it. I think this was part of Frank's journey. The lesson he was here to learn. His test of the soul. Remember that the Siren asked him.... "So, was it good when you killed that man who took your wife, Frank, or was it evil?" and, in Luminary, the meeting that was set with group members. It was all about testing how HE felt. What HE believed was right...for HIM in his own life. That is what this trial of the separation from Catherine means to me. He is struggling with his own beliefs about good and evil.....since there is no black or white....Only a LOT of gray.....