Maddox and Lewis Picking Things up From Morse

Here in the US, I've just watched series eight (numbered as seven here). Overall I wish the story lines were a littler stronger (got progressively better with each installment, but still…) and there are some issues with the rejigged format.

Does anyone else feel as thought the new Maddox character is being squeezed out and a bit wasted as a third wheel of sorts? With Lewis's somewhat credibility-stretching part-time return to employment, there are already two detectives, but I guess since Hathaway's an inspector, he has to have his sergeant. The thing is, I don't dislike the character but she does so little! At first it makes sense, with Hathaway having to learn how to delegate and give orders rather than take them, but then it just seems like there's simply not enough in the scripts for Angela Griffin's character to do. As if to lampshade this issue, the final episode of the season then has her comatose for about half the episode. A walking (or rather lying down) plot device! I guess meeting her husband is a little compensation for this, as we start to develop her personal life a bit, but it still seems like either laziness or, more likely, a lack of a meaningful role for Maddox in the stories. Plus, even though it's because of a text supposedly from her own husband, she still ends up looking kind of stupid for going off on her own and getting ambushed. Any thoughts on Maddox?

Thing number two: I've also re-watched a few episodes from series seven/six, and I've finality started to notice Lewis behaves and thinks more and more like his old mentor, Morse. I particularly noticed in the episode Rambling Boy, where he intuitively becomes fixed upon the unpleasant businessman. He follows intuition, indulges in considerable guess work, gets it wrong, and keeps coming up with new and sometimes unsupported theories as he goes along--all very much like Morse's instinctive, messy approach. And his instincts prove accurate, even if not quite in the way expected. I enjoyed observing this Morse-like wild streak in Lewis, who started out being much more of a by-the-book detective than Morse. He also seems to have acquired a bit of Morse's knack for, as Chief Super Stranger would say, "antagonizing the rich and the famous just for the sake of it". I think both Morse and Lewis have intellectual/academic and class insecurities--albeit Morse's were always much more camouflaged by his sense of erudition and sophisticate tastes.


Om Shanti