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

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Guest massofspikes

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It gives season 2 such the tragic hero ending in that after all that hard work, effort and energy, she dies. I think by the end of the season the writers were able to get the idea across that Frank and Catherine were getting closer, so to speak. I think anamnesis presented Catherine with some of the realities that Frank had been dealing with. Like another certain show, she was skeptical, but by the end, could not deny the reality of the situation. Siren basically has Catherine coming to Frank for what appeared to be a supernatural issue. If I were to make a secret copy of a patient's medical record......! Roosters has Frank and Catherine finally coming to some better understanding.

All of this marital reconcilliation and she dies....Arrgh!

As much as I disliked this, I have to give the writers some credit for not being predictable. I hate it when i'm about 10 minutes into a show and I already know that there is no way the "bad guy" or "bad guy turned good" will survive at the end of the show because it would ruin the plotline. A lot of Star Trek episodes, which I usually like, come to mind on this issue.

But yes, I agree, that she was pretty annoying in almost every season 2 episode prior to the conclusion of Roosters, with Luminary being the only bright spot for me. She stood by her man in Luminary when it looked like no one else was.

:rock2:

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  • Elders (Moderators)

Good points. But I wonder if they went too far by removing the two women who understood Frank, albeit from different perspectives. Season two seemed to be a season of two parts, and I wonder how significant it was that Luminary where, as you say, Catherine stood by her man, was written by Chip. I think there was evidence in season one that Catherine did understand, probably better than most, what Frank was dealing with in terms of his gift, though at that stage not what the MM group was about.

I guess, for me, the notion of casting a man out to face <whatever> alone works for a lone character, but not so much for a father of a young child.

Predictability and its converse is a problem for writers. (At least in Star Trek there was the red shirt phenomenon.) Sometimes plotlines are developed along lines that can be seen from miles away, and sometimes they appear almost out of nowhere. It's a difficult balancing act.

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Guest Bad Boy Dazza

Yes I agree having the child (single parent plots) sort of slowed the show down a bit. He would have been better solo like Batman when he went solo. They could have had a really hard and cool thing happening! So in a way it would have been better if he had lost both wife and child to the plague and dealt with how that affected him. Sounds terrible but I think season 3 would have been better for it.

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The thing is, without Jordan, there would have been little for Frank to live for, and as a parent who has lost a child in 08, I can tell you by seeing it from that perspective, Frank would have gone off somewhere alone away from everyone and everything. I don't believe he would have cared anymore about the catching bad guys.

On the lighter side, if there were no Jordan, we wouldn't have had the fan movie, Millennium Apocalypse, and Season 2 on the way as we speak.

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Guest Bad Boy Dazza

Earthnut, I am very sorry to hear about your losing your child. You probably have a better understanding than most about how Frank would have responded to that. I do still feel however that we could have had a solo Frank. Perhaps for instance the story could have jumped 2 years into the future, after he comes back to society, with a even darker characterisation of him. As a big fan of "The Dark Knight" I find that concept interesting.

But then the writers kept Jordan and that did add it's own unique quality to the writing of Frank as a character and I did appreciate those aspects in the stories. I do think that they planned, in later seasons, to get a lot of creativity out of the Jordan character awakening to her own gift, and how that impacted Frank.

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  • 1 month later...

Really interesting thread but here's my input for the original topic... Haha

This is actually one of the many reasons why season 2 starts off on the wrong foot with me. Catherine leaping to the decision of separation doesn't add up. Peter Watts and Franks sudden conflict in their working relationship and a few other factors. It all just doesn't mesh with me logically and frankly took me out of the show a bit for the first time right from the first episode of season 2. In the simplest way to say it is was jarring and not in a interesting way. Did he go to far? Yeah he was consumed with a rage, but what was fuelling that rage? Without that fuel she surely would have met her end. Catherine exhibited a bit more dimensionality in her thinking of the world in season 1 I thought.

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  • 2 years later...

One thing that has not been said on this point is that it is hard to imagine a person who has been the victim of a violent crime like Catherine was to want to be alone. It is clear that the Black family relationship is not as close as it had once been. How far do you need to get into season one before we see a kiss on the lips or anything more intimate than a close friend. This could have been a wake up call to Catherine that she could not do life on autopilot, but even at that why not have him sleep on the couch? I mean this is the house where Bletcher died in, and it was not too much before where she was saying she was not sure she wanted to go back. And even if Frank needed to leave, why did she not have a girlfriend stay or her parents or... well anyone really.

On the other hand, it is not like Frank was sharing the PS pictures with Catherine. And he did not even argue about staying with her. If it had been my wife, it is hard for me to think I would want her to be alone. I would have offered the couch as a solution.

This turn of events is nearly made my wife stop watching the show, it made her that angry.

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Frank was packing before Catherine even told him a thin about needing to be alone. I think it was a mutual decision. Had the Millennium Group not given Catherine orders about what happened? Perhaps she could have stayed with Frank. But that was the last straw I think, having the man lean in and tell her in a very threatening tone what the official version she was to swear to would be.

The target of that stalker was not Catherine. It was Frank. He was very disciplined about stalking them for years, never moving in too soon, etc. So on that note, ( puts on best profiler hat) the stalker did not rape Catherine. He tortured her, and he also showed her a fate for herself she was not ready to go along with, ( dying for Frank). Then he makes her believe her miracle of a daughter was dead. When Frank killed him, she wanted him to. And THAT, was the straw that broke the marriage for her. Not what he did, but what she became aware of about herself. She needed time to realize that she was not what she thought she was, and that She was weaker than she thought herself to be.

Add to that, watching your loved one, who held your child, and you, with his gentle hands, be so savage and so capable of absolute rage? Changes things, blurs that line between absolute good and absolute evil.

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I think Frank was packing and ultimately left because he knew he crossed a line, and did so in front of his wife. He couldn't keep the bad man away, for we all are the bad man. Also I bet he thought, if he distanced himself, he could keep his family safer. They would not be such a target.

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