The Oxford University
of ITV/PBS's Inspector Lewis is
a dangerous world for academics, and in this series I bring you the lowdown on
who in the academic community is most likely to kill be or be killed.
This post gives the details for episodes 6-7 of US Season Two. Previous
posts in the series: Intro, Season One, Season 2 Part 1, Season 2 Part 2.
The final
two episodes of Season 2 give us one undergraduate victim, three community
victims (one an Oxford alum, though), and two—yes, two—faculty murderers (one
for each episode). So we’re back to the
Season One problem, it would seem, insofar as Oxford is in more danger from academics
than it is a danger to academics.
If it’s any comfort (and I’m not sure it is!), only in “The Quality of
Mercy” do the murders directly relate to university life; in “The Point of
Vanishing,” the murderer is just a murderer who happens to have “professor” as
his job title.
As this is
the last season 2 post, it’s time for some overall season totals. Over seven episodes, we have fifteen victims
(only episode 2.3 breaks the “two victims per episode” norm). Three of those victims are undergrads, two are
faculty, three are administrators, one is staff, and six are unaffiliated with
the university. Of eight murderers, four
are faculty members (two in episode 2.1, remember) and four are unaffiliated
with the university. A variety of
faculty, staff, and students assist Lewis and Hathaway in their investigations,
so the university isn’t all bad for the community, but I have to admit that
these episodes make faculty look pretty scary.
It’s even more worrying to this humanist that three quarters of the
faculty murderers are in the humanities.
And we like to think our fields of study improve our behavior
toward our fellow humans! The good news,
I guess, is that while grad school often feels like a kill-or-be-killed kind of
world, not one grad student has done either—yet (though to be fair it’s kind of
a grad student’s fault that everything goes so badly wrong in “The Quality of
Mercy”).
If you haven't seen the season, here's the Amazon link. It's included with Prime, if you have it.
Details for Episodes 2.6 and 2.7 below the cut. Contains spoilers.
Episode 2.6,
“The Quality of Mercy”
Original Air Date: October 11, 2009
This episode
is all about plagiarism… and Shakespeare.
So, basically, it’s the kind of stuff (former) English professors have
nightmares about. Only the students and
faculty at the center of the episode are in the theatre department, not the
English department. That hardly matters,
all things considered. Basically, the
student playing Shylock in a production of The Merchant of Venice is
murdered during the preview performance.
Lewis and Hathaway discover that college theatre departments are full of
sex, drugs, jealousy, and backstabbing (duh).
An alumna of the same college, now a reporter for a national newspaper,
comes to see the premier, which goes forward because Shylock has an unofficial
understudy. After the opening night
party, she’s murdered too. Why? Well, it’s because she’s about to expose that
the grad student who is directing the production had her boyfriend write her
dissertation, which has been lauded as groundbreaking (confused academic
readers, never mind the groundbreaking dissertation, just focus on the murders;
they make much more sense). The first
victim—we’ll call him Shylock—also knew about the plagiarism. But is the plagiarizer the murderer? Nope!
It’s the plagiarizer’s advisor, who fears that her academic reputation
will be ruined if her protégée is exposed as a fraud.
Now that I think about it, I kind of feel like academia’s reputation has
been ruined by this episode.
Totals: Two victims, one an undergrad and the
other an alumna of the same college. One
murderer whose academic reputation was threatened by the victims. Lots of students, grad and undergrad, assist
in or inhibit the investigation in one way or another (as they assist and
inhibit so much in life…).
Conclusions: Don’t plagiarize! And don’t try cover up plagiarism! You will be found out! Just
like your freshman comp professor told you…Episode 2.7, “The Point of Vanishing”
If things look bad for theatre departments in episode 2.6, they look almost as bad for art historians, here. I mean, there are no plagiarizers and no undergraduate murder victims here, but there is a fairly stupid faculty murderer. However, the two murders in this episode aren’t connected to university life so much as they’re connected to the murderer’s past and to a weird, long-term love triangle. In this episode, we meet the family of a prominent atheist whose daughter Jessica was paralyzed when Stephen Mullen, a religious zealot, pulled his truck in front of her car, believing her father was driving. Shortly before Jessica’s eighteenth birthday, Stephen is released from prison, only to be murdered, or so Lewis and Hathaway think. They quickly discover that the victim isn’t him, but his roommate, and that Jessica has been secretly seeing Stephen. The murderer figures it out too, and at Jessica’s party he kills the real Stephen, believing he is protecting Jessica. So why does an art historian murder the man who injured a girl he’s not even related to? Well, it turns out that he’s been in love with her mother since college, and said mother has him wrapped around her finger. And what’s worse, she convinces her husband that their son actually committed the murders, and said husband confesses and commits suicide. So basically, the murderer kills for love and the woman he loves drives her husband to suicide… because. I don’t know. This episode is not one of my favorites.
Totals: Two victims. Neither has anything to do with the university. One murderer, whose status as a professor is irrelevant to his crime.
Conclusion: You know those songs that say “Don’t give up on love”? They’re wrong. When the woman you love is married to someone else, you should stop letting your infatuation control you. Seriously.
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