SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
The plot thickens!
Finally, we’ve gotten a few answers pertaining to Cora’s missing two months and exactly how she knew J.D. and what he was to her. But, like most – if not all – media in the mystery/thriller genre, learning more only led to more questions. The biggest of which here is: What happened to Maddie?
I’m glad that Cora wasn’t just willing do the sessions with Dr. Chang, but that she was eager. She didn’t run away from learning what happened to her during those two months she can’t remember. That’s pretty admirable.
It was clear that J.D. was the man she was talking about when she told Harry the story about what happened to her on the fourth of July a couple of episodes ago – she did use his name after all – and that he was the one who introduced her to drugs. But that he was the first person she had sex with was surprising, although it really shouldn’t have been given her upbringing.
So far I’ve assumed that her fourth of July outing was the first time she’d ever had any real freedom and thus was the first time she engaged in any “bad behaviours.” Especially anything sexual. As it turns out, Phoebe, the good, bad influence that she was, encouraged Cora to watch porn with her and to get physical with the boy next door.
Again, I really do love that the two sisters were close and I loved seeing Cora take care of Phoebe. Who, because of her illness, was in a unique position to know what was going on with her family. I don’t blame their father for cheating on their mother. He could have at least turned around and gone back upstairs when teenage Cora confronted him about it, however, and sneak back down later rather than just…brush her off.
Anyway, back to Cora and J.D.
Also surprising was the fact that J.D. had a girlfriend at the time that he met Cora; Maddie. We did hear a disembodied female voice telling him to give Cora more drugs, though. I fully suspect that it was Maddie who said that. Their relationship appears to have been completely one-sided in terms of the power dynamic and that J.D. was quite abusive toward Maddie.
I don’t doubt that he perhaps encouraged her to form the relationship with their ex-lover that Harry questioned. If not before it happened, certainly after he found out about it just for the sole purpose of stealing from her. That he – and possibly other – people hunted Maddie and Cora is further evidence to the abusive nature of their relationship and how absolutely twisted he is. Aside from entrapping, drugging and assaulting Cora for two months that is.
Maddie’s relationship with J.D. didn’t last very long after Cora came into the picture because she disappeared that same weekend! I have a theory. Cora was acting like she was trying to save Leah – Frankie’s girlfriend – when she stabbed him and the stabbing is a repetition of one she’d done before. Given the nature of J.D. and Maddie’s relationship, perhaps it was Maddie that Cora was trying to save in the original stabbing.
I also think that it was Maddie’s body that Harry found at the end of the episode. It could be the person that Cora stabbed, but I’m leaning toward Maddie.
Because Cora didn’t go into the water in her second session, I considered the idea that everything she said during was perhaps a lie. But Harry did find the school bus and a body, so perhaps it was true. Given that Dr. Chang said that this kind of this isn’t taken seriously, I’m hoping that the body gives credibility to what Cora remembers during her sessions.
Speaking of Harry, I love the man, but I hate how he treats his wife. He had two marks against him in that regard in this episode. First when he forgot about her miscarriage and how he’d comforted her afterward and when he took her out for a walk in the woods…while he was investigation Cora’s story from her sessions with Dr. Chang. I can respect multi-tasking, but that was just wrong.
He really isn’t putting that much effort into his marriage which, aside from his cheating, seems to be the major problem in his marriage. He says he wants to work on it, but episode after episode we see him not doing that. At this point you have to question if he truly cares about his wife and their marriage. That walk wasn’t about spending time with her, it was about doing his job. And that must be the root of the problem; he loves his job more than his wife.
If he didn’t though, he wouldn’t be trying so hard to get answers for Cora. I really do love how far he is going and how much he is doing for her. There isn’t much of a need, if any at all, for him to continue investigating but he is. You can’t exactly call it a friendship, but I like the bond that is developing between him and Cora and that she still trusts him even though Mason told her not to.
I wish that he’d stop pursuing and looking into J.D on his own. I get why he is; J.D. clearly harmed Cora in some way and he is adamant that he must pay even though he doesn’t know how he harmed Cora. But his persistence is frustrating. This whole venture is in no way smart and is absolutely dangerous. Especially going over to J.D.’s house to try and entrap him selling drugs.
Didn’t he think that J.D.’s wife or girlfriend, whatever she is to him, would tell J.D. about his visit? I didn’t think she’d tell J.D. immediately after he showed up (he was less than convincing with his excuses though), but J.D. was always going to know that he stopped by. Mason’s only antagonising him. I wouldn’t be surprised if J.D. rounded him some of his friends or cronies and went to attack, maybe even kill, Mason. He did all of that for nothing anyway. Caitlin wanted nothing to do with him or his evidence.
Random thoughts:
- You are not helping Cora, Mason.
- Does teenage Cora even know what an orgasm is?
- I love how much Dr. Chang hates doing this.
The season finale of The Sinner airs this Wednesday at 10 PM on USA.
The more I learn about Cora’s mother, the more I truly despise the woman. She did so much psychological damage to her that is clearly, obviously still affecting her. It’s not even that recently, really, that Cora escaped her grasp. As Harry said. 23 is pretty old to be a runaway. Whatever it is that happened to Cora in those two months, I blame her mother 100%.
That Cora spent such a long time believing that she was some degenerate drug addict who sold her body for a fix, purely because her mother fed her that story, on top of years – a lifetime – of making her believe that she was some evil person and building within her this complex of inferiority and self hatred…is really frustrating. I do believe the diagnosis of PTSD psychosis that the psychiatrist gave. It obviously stems form what she suffered during those two months. I would argue however that her mother’s treatment of her qualifies as a cause as well.
If only she hadn’t been in the court room at Cora’s hearing. If only she hadn’t turned around and seen her. If only the only person she’d laid eyes on was Mason. She was just about to plead “not guilty!”Or at least take back her guilty plea. Or something. She definitely wasn’t going to plead guilty. Her mother’s raising of her to repent for every little thing is why she plead guilty again. She committed a sin and it doesn’t matter why. She has to be punished for it.
Mason is trying to do that in his own way as well but I still think he isn’t going about it in the best way. As I said, it will end badly for him. He’s only just begun and he’s already gotten himself arrested. I don’t think that that was the bad ending though. He just went up to J.D. and confronted him.
Through Jamie’s flashbacks, as he laid dying in a pile of corpses, we got a glimpse into the Battle of Culloden from his perspective. Never was Prince Charles’ incompetence as a leader made so clear as when he, Jamie and the rest of the leaders of their forces were on Culloden moor, under attack, and he did nothing. Even at Jamie’s urging that he give the order to charge. The most he said in the episode concerned a cup.
I can’t have been the only one that shouted “Oh come on!” or some such exclamation when the Red Coats found Jamie, Rupert and the rest of the surviving members of the Jacobite army. I was so upset that Rupert died! Just last season he’d escaped death in the Battle of Prestonpans, then to die in the very first episode of this season. The one silver lining was that Murtagh wasn’t there to get executed like the rest of them. I’d rather he’d have died in the Battle of Culloden if he’s dead at all.
I think that not having seen Claire interact with the world as it was in her own time made the sexism she faced all the more startling and infuriating. You’d think that she’d have had it worse when she was in the 18th century, but she didn’t. Then again, she wasn’t exactly in the same kind of situations.
He did give her a choice to stay or leave him, but as we know from last season and the previews for this one, that she stayed. It was hard to see, given everything that was brought up during their fight, how they would or could have stayed together for twenty years and survived it…until the birth of Brianna.
In any case, Brianna’s arrival granted Claire and Frank their chance to start over and find some semblance of happiness in their relationship. Maybe even love. It was such a sweet and tender moment that gave me hope for how things would turn out for them. Then the nurse had to go and ruin it by asking about her red hair.
Premiere Date: October 27th
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Premiere Date: October 2nd
Premiere date: September 10th