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The Sinner - Parts III & IV - Review: Pick A Number

24 Mar 2020

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"If feelings aren't the truth, then, what is?"


Hi there, I'm going to be catching up with the reviews before the finale, so I hope you bear with me. In the third episode, Ambrose tracks down an old roommate of Jamie's and finds out he and Nick were obsessed with Nietzsche's übermensch, someone who's transcended the slavery of the human condition and reached a new state of freedom and creativity, a "superior being" that creates his own moral rules and gets other people to follow them and conquer fear, a theory Hitler supposedly used to excuse the holocaust.

Jamie and Leela are not doing well, he's having some sort of existential crisis and she needs him to pull it together for her and the baby. He's becoming unhinged, he even drops all of his anxiety on his favorite student and having suicidal thoughts. When the baby comes things don't get better, he's still haunted by Nick and he has no idea how to get rid of him.

In a hallucination, he gives his baby to Nick and he crushes him, after that he gives Leela the baby and goes to Ambrose who's offered him help. They manage to get to the hospital and have an interview where he makes it clear he might be a danger to himself or others but they don't hold him and he runs away.

Ambrose catches up to him in the city, even if it's no longer his jurisdiction, but he feels responsible for what he might do. He finds him standing on a rooftop, deciding whether to jump or not. The game tells him to jump but he can't do it, so he decides to blow off some steam and Ambrose is not going to leave his side. How fast Jamie can turn that switch, just like Nick, he wants to prove everyone is a psychopath, that he and Nick were just one of the few awake enough to see it.

He plays along until everyone seems comfortable and having fun and then he tries to have an existential conversation with one of the guys, a connection that immediately makes everyone uncomfortable. They get kicked out and Harry tells him to stop indulging in this existential crisis, that everyone has dark thoughts and they just have to live with them, but Jamie's not sold, he asks what good has repressed his thoughts gotten him. Ambrose is tired of his speeches so he dares him to do something, though he might just regret that challenge.

So Jamie goes to a party his old student Sophie invited to and Ambrose follows him. There are a couple intense moments, one where a guy at the party, Kyle, says he sees Nick clinging to him and even mentions the prickly pear. After that Jamie gets into a car with Sophie and plays this game he used to play with Nick of going fast in the car and just refusing to stop, but Ambrose challenges him on it and as they're about to collide they both turn and stop abruptly. Then he takes Jamie home to tell his wife he needs help but the next morning he finds out there was a murder in New York, he goes to check it out and sees Kyle dead on the floor.

In flashbacks, we see Nick trying to coax Jamie into killing the artist, just a crime of opportunity, to make him cross that line, after which he promises freedom from the morality they've been taught, Jamie is clearly not sold on the plan which leads to the crash. After that, we get a new glimpse at Nick's final moments, Jamie's starting to have doubts about letting him die and was going to call 911 but Nick stopped him, he wanted him to watch him die, to face death, and keep going.

"We all have dark thoughts, we learn how to live with them."


What did you think these episodes? Let me know in the comments.