#morsewatch

[dnickels]

Morse: my only solace is the opera...

Local serial killer who hates him personally: Not for long!

[dnickels]

Beating my breast, rending my garments, howling at the moon. He GETS it. Thank you for everything king <3

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I assumed that the end of Endeavour would involve the destruction of the House of Thursday-- of course, I was betting on deaths (several, in fact) but I do like what Mr. Lewis has done, leaving it an open wound. From the beginning my question was whether Morse really wanted to marry Joan, or her dad marry into the family-- the warmth, stability, trust etc. it represented. Those scenes in Fugue where Morse is too disoriented by his post-stab power nap to hide his grin at being at the dinner table, being next to the fire instead of lighting his matches and pressing his nose up against the glass were always setting the stage for the dissolution.

It does work for me that no one dies-- yes, the house is still there, but Morse can never go back, nor would he want to: the people who made it a home are gone. Yes, everyone is still alive, but he can't have that same kind of connection-- he'll never sit around that dinner table again, even if he could get them all in the same room. The kindest thing he could do for his not-family is refuse to ever see them again, for their own safety, and they'll never know. The biker thing doesn't quite work for me (I was thinking about how it might make more sense if Fred had killed another cop, wrt the danger) but the principle is sound. It's not the horrible yet complete catharsis of death, the definite sense of an ending, but an open sore that runs and runs. The places you can't go back to, the people you can't see. Fred can't pass into glorious memory, the knowledge of what he did is there (to borrow a phrase) like a stone in the shoe, digging at Morse. It can never be resolved.

and for me the open wound is knowing they'll never make television like it again!

[dnickels]

its so beautiful to me that morse tries as hard as he can to live in like the world of beauty truth and the mind palace and fred thursday is like the 40s are over when i Say they're over

.

[dnickels]

I was listening to a very good podcast and it come me thinking about Henry V and Endeavour-- obviously Russ (may I call you Russ, Mr. Lewis?) is having a little fun with Roger Allam's wonderful performance as Falstaff, but what does it mean, to position Morse as Hal in their definitive rupture? To draw that immediate and direct comparison (I know thee not, old man)? Thursday is a killer (a murderer, if the semantics are important) and has a number of other flaws we've known since the first episode, but is he Falstaff? Thursday's not a drunk. He's not a thief. He's flirted with prioritizing his own comfort and personal wealth over his duty, but he's not a coward. A bully, maybe, on occasion, but a bully in someone else's service and operating under an ideology of 'preserving social order', which doesn't make much difference to whoever he's beating up today but its relevant for literary critique.

So when Morse rejects Thursday, what is he meant to be rejecting here? He's hardly a Prince Hal himself, outside of his problem drinking. And Morse is undeniably a moral actor and scrupulously so, but Morse of his later years is hardly a white-horse-riding rousing-speech "the mirror of all Christian kings". I could see an argument for Morse as Harry in a negative reading of Henry V, where there are questions about the justification of his war and the single-mindedness with which he pursues it, or Morse deluding himself into thinking he's ever going to win his long, endless siege at Harfleur. He did spend his thirties desperately trying to die leading various forlorn hopes, and perhaps no longer knows what to do with himself.

But looking at the denunciation in the pub compared to Hal's dismissal (and banishment!) of Falstaff more literally, there's a thread to pull apart: the prince is putting away childish things to become a man, to finally clean his act up and take up the mantle of duty he's spent the play dodging. It's ludicrous to say Morse has been thus far neglecting his duties, but here I think we see the apotheosis of the cranky old man: rejecting Thursday, no longer looking the other way on his little (and big) peccadilloes, means closing his heart to everything the Thursdays plural-- Fred, Win, Joan, and Ringo-- brought back into his life after his breakdowns and directionless drifting. He's going to take up the sword. Hal ascends to Harry, but Morse seals his own fate. He'll make Inspector, but at what cost? If he starts to believe that Fred was his Falstaff, leading him astray, he'll lose that fragile ability to trust, to be open, to make a connection that lasts.

What infinite heart’s ease Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?

Long story short: Watch My Show

[dnickels]

I was just at work today thinking about how sad I was no one ever told Morse he was a wonderful name-- it would be somewhat inappropriate and rude because he obviously hates it so much, and I respect that, but it is great. But everyone who learns it begins immediately bullying him.

[dnickels]

If I was Joan, the number one factor I would have to take into consideration when evaluating Morse as a potential life partner is the completely insane thing he has going on with my (her) dad. That has to be weird for her, right? It's pretty intense for prospective in-laws.

[dnickels]

doing this to morse

This is (metaphorically) what God does to him every episode :(

[dnickels]

Inspector Morse update: I don't think I've ever seen him enjoying himself as much as he is over this dead guy's very-mildly-amusing Latin puns

Are you on the episode with the shady partying painter?? Morse LOVES con artists its my favorite inexplicable character trait of his (no idea if there's a book source but Russell added that decisively into season 3). He is always falling in love with a guy who does scams!! "Lewis I think my soul mate was this dead oxbridge schemer, he really gets me"

[dnickels]

Why do you hate Sam? 👀

The very first time we meet him, in the very first appearance he makes on screen, he is rude to Joan (the most beautiful woman in the world). Unforgivable sin. Death penalty.

[dnickels]

Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self;

Only eight lines down from "I know thee not"... if you have trouble getting into Morse because its so different from Endeavour, consider reading Henry IV parts 1 and 2, this will clear everything up

[dnickels]

hi I've seen your morseposts and frankly I don't know where else to put this. but I thought you should know. I came to Morse from Endeavour and was all, you know, 'hey, that's not Shaun Evans, I don't see the appeal'. and now I'm on s5 and fully 🥵 🥵 about that cranky old man

Yes! YES! You have fallen under the spell of that horrible old man! You GET it! It's impossible to convey in words or convince someone with an argument because so much of the performance is based on a look, a moment, a breath-- a stillness of being completely in the character and what starts out as "I don't think this is for me" ends up with a thousand rambling posts along the lines of:

^^ he has bewitched me

[dnickels]

Seeing Superintendent Strange getting posted by a blog catering to connoisseurs of solidly-built mature gentlemen...this is exactly what he deserves and I am so happy for him. It's big boy season. Get you one.

(Every day I think about how, with a different fandom makeup, there would be easily be 40-50 works dedicated to Strange and Morse as very old men who have decidedly gone to seed having the most eye-wateringly explicit sex imaginable, making groundbreaking advances in the science of bdsm etc. I am not the target audience for those works but I'm puzzled by their absence, I can theorize their existence by the hole they leave in the makeup of things. Maybe if IM got a big release on a foreign-language streaming platform, as has happened to my other grandma shows)

[dnickels]

I think I am going to take a one or two week break from tumblr because someone asked me what Endeavour was about and all I had on deck was "its about the most special and sensitive little boy in the whole world who is also a thirty-five year old man" which does not go down well offline!

[dnickels]

I picked up Idylls of the King because Russell's repeated quoting seems pointed (I think the line is dropped more than once, but I could be misremembering) and because Morse is a Tennyson guy, and while it's not my favorite overall I do think its fabulous both as a lens to view the show and a supplement to the text. The quoted line is pretty straightforward:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new

It both describes the social/political upheaval in the background of the series, and serves as a fun little wink at the audience from a writer creating a slick new prequel to an extremely beloved and venerable story. This line in particular is interesting, because its repeated twice-- by Arthur in the first poem, when he's just finished vanquishing the foe and is casting out the old order of barons, demanding they pay tribute to him, and then by Arthur in the last poem as he lays dying, Camelot lost, the kingdom fallen, the shining city undone by human failings.

The parallel with fresh-faced young Morse of the pilot and a defeated, jaded Morse (either of Exeunt of Remorseful Day, your pick) is obvious, but I want to dig into deeper than that-- there's an unspoken cloud hanging over Tennyson's Idylls, one that all the knights understand but never acknowledge: the Arthur's project is untenable, he sets standards for his knights that are impossible to live up to, he lives in a fantasy world and can't see the 'sins' going on under his very nose. Through that lens, we can see Morse's naive crusade against corruption as beautiful and doomed as a lost Camelot. Sir you are in a 1960s police force, perhaps the most venal and corrupt institution there is! The labor AND the wounds are vain!

I do think there's a level of intention, and its not a line quoted by chance (Thursday spends his last episode musing on The Lays of Ancient Rome, a key text of a certain kind of ideology we're about to discuss), Morse raising himself on high Victorian and Edwardian poems about heroic self-sacrifice, stainless knights, valor, stalwart righteousness etc despite the fact that everyone who genuinely believed in those ideals was killed on the Somme in 1916 (anyone who survived quickly jettisoned anything to do with Knights in Shining Armor) really fills in the picture of why he's Like That. I would absolutely describe Morse as chivalrous, with both positive and negative connotations-- he loves damsels, but cannot understand (or, as he gets older, tolerate) women who refuse to wait in a tower to be saved. He makes these impossible demands of himself, and its very noble, but he's vicious when other people fail to live up to the versions he's dreamed up in his head-- and most of the time, they're puzzled as to why he ever believed that highly of them in the first place. He is gracious, courteous, respectful but also fussy, hidebound, quick to judge. He's constructed this beautiful worldview that was antiquated ten years before he was born, much less at the height of the swinging 60s, and he's constantly being blindsided by the bare facts of the times he lives in (o tempora o mores etc). The old order changeth...and Morse gets left behind.

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: “Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world, And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.”

[dnickels]

anza-redstar

It was in Fat Chance, it didn't turn out to be all exciting, but after multiple "lady tries to flag down Morse and is brushed off" scenes, they started doing "someone starts to open the manila envelope she left on his desk, then gets distracted" scenes The frustration was audible

That would explain it that episode makes me ca-ray-zee I don't know if I could sit through it again. There is SO much happening there. The insanely cruel "fat people- should they be pitied?" main plot combined with the women in the priesthood controversy of the week mashed into a bizarre and confusing mystery that still has some of the BEST Morse moments of the mid-series. When I was convinced he was going to be nasty and cruel to the witness and instead busts out the world's most gentle "Lovely music" I die! This kills me! I die!! Also my man finally get laid and its with beautiful charming Zoe Wanamaker. She was good for him!!

My God they just don't make television like that anymore. "For some we loved, the loveliest and the best/ that from his vintage rolling time hath pressed..."