'Broadchurch' recap: Episode 4

Finally! On last night’s episode of Broadchurch, we realize who really killed Danny Latimer.

Just kidding. Not only is the case more confusing than ever, but we’ve also got various suspects in the Sandbrook case to contend with. (Is Lee Ashworth guilty or not? Is Claire?)

We start the episode with DI Hardy having a terrible nightmare about drowning. Later, he reveals to Ellie that one of the reasons he can’t get past the Sandbrook case is because he found one of the victims dead in the river, and that she was the same age as his own daughter. (Who, and I’m jumping ahead, we finally get to meet later in the episode! She’s 15 and adorable.)

But back to the courtroom, where the defense is on full attack. Sharon, Joe Miller’s pitbull of a lawyer, gets Ellie on stands and starts accusing her and Hardy having an affair because she’d spent two hours in his hotel room the night Joe was arrested for Danny’s murder.

“We were only talking!” Ellie cries, shaken. The scene is maddening! Even though we now know that Sharon has an adult son in jail (and probably a good heart), she’s a beast of a lawyer. And every time the camera flashes to unrepentant Joe Miller in the dock, you really wish you could reach out and smack him.

But all is not lost. Ellie’s sister Lucy Stevens (and mom to the increasingly annoying young reporter, Ollie) takes the stands and insists that she saw Joe Miller walking down the street at 4:47am, putting something in trash bags in a dumpster, which puts major holes in his defense. (She’s lying, but still, it helps with the prosecution.)

Sharon and her junior lawyer decided to test Joe Miller out to see if he’d be good to put on the stands. He’s not. He’s awful, and his lies don’t add up. As soon as they’re done, junior lawyer turns to Sharon and says, “Shit, Sharon, he totally did it.” AHA! So, can I stop also suspecting that Nige, Paul (the priest with a secret), and even Joe’s son Tom may have also had a hand in Danny’s death? Or not yet?

Speaking of poor Tom—Mark Latimer, smitten with his newborn daughter Lizzie, tells Tom he can’t meet him to play video games anymore. That people will get the wrong idea. (Admittedly, it was a little strange at times.) Tom gets super upset. I feel for Tom, but why do I still feel like he’s hiding something about Danny? And why won’t he talk to his mom, Ellie? I still have a running theory that Joe Miller is covering something up for his son.

While half of this episode focuses on the Broadchurch murder, the other half takes us back to Sandbrook. Hardy and Miller go back to Claire and Lee Ashworth’s home to poke around, while Hardy talks to the mom of the murdered girl. She confesses that her husband had been “shagging one of the bridesmaids” the night they were together at a wedding, when their daughter was being murdered.

Apparently the husband had also slept with neighbor Claire. New evidence! Is the husband now a suspect? It’s also revealed that Hardy slept with Claire as well. Wha? Why, when, how? This is not properly explained, but no doubt we’ll return to this revelation.

Speaking Claire: Lee Ashworth. What’s up there? Is he guilty or not? Sexy or creepy? It’s so hard to tell! But we do know Claire can’t resist his charms anymore—while Ellie and Hardy are up at Sandbrook, she and Lee hook up again. And they have some pervy sex where she asks him to tie her up, which makes you realize he could be a sexual predator. Maybe he is guilty after all. Or maybe she’s guilty too. I’m confused again.

The show ends with trailer park lady Susan returning with that black lab, telling her son Nigel that she has cancer and is dying. He doesn’t seem to care. And then she says they “shouldn’t have gotten tangled up in that boy’s death.” Cryptic. Though, what exactly is the point of her again? I guess she knows something we don’t yet, and we’ll find out in episodes yet to come.