The Fall episode 4 is “The Hell Within Him” is a collection of revolting developments. Beware the spoilers
We begin with Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) dreaming about Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) drowning her. Then she dreams she wakes up and her father is there, telling her to wake up. Finally she really wakes up and records the dream in her dream journal. Which is a reminder that Stella keeps a dream journal. Paul wrote in it (in Beauty Hath Strange Power).
Spector’s lawyers want to see the dream journal. They want to compare handwriting to make sure it was really Spector who wrote in Stella’s book. I’m going WTF about this, but Stella says to let them have it.
That isn’t the only trick up lawyer Wallace (Ruth Bradley) and lawyer Healy’s (Aidan McArdle) sleeve. They are going to argue that Stella seduced a confession out of Spector (in What is in me Dark Illumine). She shouldn’t have been doing the interrogation. She talked to him on the phone. Blah, blah, more BS about Stella mishandling the case.
The lawyers have Katie’s (Aisling Franciosi) diary, but don’t believe her to be reliable. Duh. She’s in custody for breaking bail. She got caught in the hospital trying to deliver a love letter to Paul.
Let’s forget about the nasty lawyers for a minute and go back to Sally Ann Spector (Bronagh Waugh) driving up to the ocean. She just parked there until the tide came in and began filling her car. Some passersby stopped and rescued her kids from the back seat.
Burns (John Lynch) doesn’t get why Sally Ann would do such a thing. Stella tells Burns that this is what women do with anger: they harm themselves or extensions of themselves. That rings true as one of the wisest things to come out of this series. Angry women turn on themselves and manifest depression. Damn right they do.
Stella visits the Spectors in the hospital. Sally Ann isn’t talking. She’s staring at walls. Olivia (Sarah Beattie) gives Stella a big hug. Here’s hoping Sally Ann gets through this and faces life again.
Burns has been secretly guzzling little bottles of vodka at work. I’m surprised they don’t smell it on him.
Dr. Spencer (Barry Ward) informs the lawyers that the MRI shows no medical reason why Spector might have amnesia.
Spector’s lawyers play him the tapes of him confessing. He acts suitably appalled and starts hitting himself in the head. Nurse Sheridan (Aisling Bea) rushes in to calm him down. She asks more questions about death. When he says he thinks that after he dies he will no longer exist, she disagrees. When he’s taken to the psychiatric unit for evaluation she gives him a note with a religious quote. He throws it away. Stella finds it.
Rose Stagg (Valene Kane) comes in to make another statement. Afterward, she asks to talk Stella alone. She tells Stella that there were more times with Paul, that they had a longer relationship full of dark sex. She only got out of it when she realized it was all about him. Stella tells Rose that she thinks Spector found out about Rose because she called him Peter when he called her (in These Troublesome Disguises). Stella has tears in her eyes when she confesses this. Rose is forgiving.
Stella gives a copy of one of Spector’s journals to the shrink (Krister Henriksson). He tells her that childhood trauma is what makes killers. He’s going to have to get Spector to trust him, but promises to try to find the truth for her and the courts.
Depression and anger are an interesting phenomenon for me. It’s an odd feedback loop. For me anger is more an expression of my depression than the other way around, but both feed into each other.
As an only child who never learned how to stick up for myself and fight for what I needed, my anger had no outlet. So I turned it on myself as depression. It took a long time to face up to the hard fact that if I didn’t like the way things were, I was responsible for doing something about it. Myself. So I get where Sally Ann is stuck right now, but I hope she works her way through it and takes control of her situation.