More Secrets Exposed, Broadchurch “Episode 7” 

That was an excellent episode. Susan Wright has been such an enigma up until now. She’s been creepy and strange, but I had no idea she was hiding such a dark and disturbing past. Even when she’s “telling the truth,” Susan still has an agenda. She’s such an interesting contradiction. And Nige. We get major insight into what his problem with Susan is, but we still don’t know the whole truth about him yet. He was going hunting with Danny behind the back of the Latimer family, but why? What about Tom? Why were they fighting and why did Tom hate Danny so much? What did Hardy find on Tom’s computer and will it lead him to the murderer? We also discover the real story about the Sandbrook case. Hardy’s trying to protect his child and by default his ex-wife from the truth of it. I don’t know if I can wait until next week to find out how all of this ends.

Susan Wright

I really didn’t expect such a disturbing and sad story. Who sees beauty in death? A woman who has personal experience with the tragedy of it. Susan has absolutely no love or respect for the police. She had a family – a husband, two daughters and a son – until it was all taken away from her. Her husband was molesting the older daughter and had made a move on the younger one. The older daughter wasn’t going to allow her father to touch her sister and he killed her for it. He claimed Susan not only knew what was going on, but had a part in it. So her remaining children were taken away. Her husband was sentenced to life in prison and hanged himself ten months later. After the law changed, Susan was able to track her son down. The only problem? Nige had no idea he was adopted.

Nige Carter

Why would Nige’s biological mother accuse him of Danny’s murder? She wasn’t close enough to see his face, but she seems certain he’s guilty. Why? Because Nige is his father’s son. According to Susan, Nige has got that in him. Because Nige has been caught lying to the police more than once, he looks guilty of something. First he gave a false alibi for Mark that didn’t hold up for very long. His second alibi is contradicted by his mother and falls apart. Nige tells Hardy he was out stealing pheasants from an estate that night. He made it look like a break in so he wouldn’t get caught. But if Susan is to be believed, that’s not the true story either. But what reason would Nige have to kill Danny? And why would he go hunting with Danny and Dean and not want anyone to know about it?

Alec Hardy

We finally learn the truth about the Sandbrook case. Maggie and Olly find out about Hardy’s health problems and agree to keep mum about that if they give him an exclusive. What choice does Hardy really have? He wants to solve this case before he’s kicked off it or before it kills him so he agrees to the story. Not only do we discover he wasn’t responsible for losing a vital piece of evidence in the case, but we realize why he and his ex-wife broke up – she was having an affair. She had the pendant – the smoking gun – in her custody. She stopped at a hotel to celebrate, but her car was broken into and the pendant was stolen. Why did she stop at the hotel? To meet her lover. And Hardy took the blame to protect his daughter- a daughter who he keeps leaving voice mails for and who does not return his calls. He’s still looking for any other evidence in the Sandbrook case that will help connect their prime suspect to the crime. It’s still an open case.

Bonus: I still love Hardy and Miller’s adversarial working relationship. I love the push and pull between those two, I love that they don’t really see eye to eye and I love the way they have a hard time working together. I feel like they make each other better, even if they can barely stand to work together.

The season finale of Broadchurch airs Wednesday, Sept 25th at 10/9c on BBC America.