Post by terryk on Oct 30, 2006 23:12:15 GMT
My first impression of Cracker was that Fitz was the flip side of Hannibal Lecture, a genius at intuiting what makes a person tick but someone who uses it for good not evil.
The deeper we get into Cracker the more we learn of Fitz: he’s the son of a miner, a bright lad fortunate enough to grow up when a bright kid without money could get a decent education without getting into debt. Dad was a hard working miner who loved mum. Fitz has inherited his dad’s values.
By the time we meet Fitz he’s grown old enough to be middle aged, and middle class. He has a big house in half an acre, two kids and a wife engaged in worthy work. He’s been going along with the programme and slowly becoming the sort of person that he despises.
But he loves his wife and like a good working class lad he wants to please her and give her what she wants, and that’s were we find him; hating the life he has but unable to do anything about it consciously. Instead he must try to loose the house and the wife through gambling.
But Fitz can’t go far without acquiring another beautiful admirer. It’s not that hard to see why. Fitz is brilliant but also he has great compassion, much of the time we see him on screen with the loved ones of victims, he is trying to help them cope with their loss and he is not afraid to lie if he thinks it will reduce someone’s pain.
He can be obnoxious, and his strongest vitriol is used on Jimmy Beck, Beck the man who can be careless, dangerous and very nasty. Fitz at his worst is when we see him almost driving Jimmy Beck into a heart attack, but for all the wrong Jimmy has done Fitz stops short of really hurting Jimmy.
Fitz loves his mother and wants her to have seen him on TV but she says she hasn’t. At least Mam will still make him better when he gets a nasty wasp sting. Of course what Fitz really wants is admiration from his mum and when he doesn’t get it, its back to Judith, (the Mother substitute who he must always rail against) to see what she will say. Freud may have been thrown out with the rest of those text books in series 1 episode 1 but here the wife is the mother that you can sleep with..
At the roulette wheel and in conversation Fitz can be reckless to the point of insanity. But he can be brave when needed, cool in a crisis and prepared to go way out on a limb with only his faith in his own ability. He values life, strives against those who will take a life and will risk his own life to save another. This is the behaviour that brings him back in line with his father’s values. And this is not just because he was born brilliant and fortunate, this courage is real character. This is why he does that Cracker thing, so why did he ever stop?
Detective stories are classically ‘whodunit’, Cracker is more about how, how did the perpetrator become the man he is. And about how did Fitz become the man he is.
The deeper we get into Cracker the more we learn of Fitz: he’s the son of a miner, a bright lad fortunate enough to grow up when a bright kid without money could get a decent education without getting into debt. Dad was a hard working miner who loved mum. Fitz has inherited his dad’s values.
By the time we meet Fitz he’s grown old enough to be middle aged, and middle class. He has a big house in half an acre, two kids and a wife engaged in worthy work. He’s been going along with the programme and slowly becoming the sort of person that he despises.
But he loves his wife and like a good working class lad he wants to please her and give her what she wants, and that’s were we find him; hating the life he has but unable to do anything about it consciously. Instead he must try to loose the house and the wife through gambling.
But Fitz can’t go far without acquiring another beautiful admirer. It’s not that hard to see why. Fitz is brilliant but also he has great compassion, much of the time we see him on screen with the loved ones of victims, he is trying to help them cope with their loss and he is not afraid to lie if he thinks it will reduce someone’s pain.
He can be obnoxious, and his strongest vitriol is used on Jimmy Beck, Beck the man who can be careless, dangerous and very nasty. Fitz at his worst is when we see him almost driving Jimmy Beck into a heart attack, but for all the wrong Jimmy has done Fitz stops short of really hurting Jimmy.
Fitz loves his mother and wants her to have seen him on TV but she says she hasn’t. At least Mam will still make him better when he gets a nasty wasp sting. Of course what Fitz really wants is admiration from his mum and when he doesn’t get it, its back to Judith, (the Mother substitute who he must always rail against) to see what she will say. Freud may have been thrown out with the rest of those text books in series 1 episode 1 but here the wife is the mother that you can sleep with..
At the roulette wheel and in conversation Fitz can be reckless to the point of insanity. But he can be brave when needed, cool in a crisis and prepared to go way out on a limb with only his faith in his own ability. He values life, strives against those who will take a life and will risk his own life to save another. This is the behaviour that brings him back in line with his father’s values. And this is not just because he was born brilliant and fortunate, this courage is real character. This is why he does that Cracker thing, so why did he ever stop?
Detective stories are classically ‘whodunit’, Cracker is more about how, how did the perpetrator become the man he is. And about how did Fitz become the man he is.