Three pictures from 2013 has been resized in the Gallery, plus screencaps from Episode 4 of ‘Dirty John’ has been uploaded! Juno was not on screen for a long time, but she still had more than Julia Garner:) After the More tag, you can read my review of Episode 4!

Studio Photoshoots  >  2013  >  Session 008 for JALOUSE September 2013

Television  >  (2019) Dirty John  >  Episode 4 Screencaps

We took a dive into the past again, just like in Episode 3., but this time, the past is not really related to the present…

Let’s get the „now” out of the way, because that’s easier! Debra goes to the police with Veronica, and it turns out, the law enforcement have nothing to use against John, they can only observe him. So the two women go to the next stop, a hotel, where the mom is going to stay. She changes her clothes and wears a brown wig. Veronica removes the tracking device from the Maserati.

Here comes the interesting part: Our „heroine” starts to think that John is a liar, but he did nothing to her. To be honest, he did nothing rough, but he did took her 80.000 dollars and put it somewhere where she can’t reach it; plus he basically controlled her life. Add the angry outbursts into the mix too! After the policeman basically says „John did nothing wrong now”, and Toby says „he is a mystery”, I guess Debra woman’s instinct kicks in, the desire to know everything and she goes back to the hospital to confront the title character. The man is in shambles, he’s sorry for everything, he looks very sad, harmless and in need of care. Guess what happens next? (By the way, Terra was missing again, and I didn’t missed her…)

That was the plot of the present. Most of what we see happens in the past though, and the two timelines converge on the grandma. As it was hinted in the previous episode, Debra had a sister, and she was killed by her own husband, but the grandma forgave the man. Here we see how she tries to help their failed marriage by talking to them, but as with the conversation in the second episode, she’s on the man’s side again, not on her own children’s. I don’t know why she does this, but maybe the deep religiousness has something to do with it. More than half of the episode is about this tragedy and the very-very unusual aftermath. It seems like the guy walked away with no real sentence, thanks to the grandma, and now, in the present, he’s a free man.

There was this one scene I can’t understand: Debra goes to this guy’s house and she observes him, how he walks out to his car. That was all. As far as we know, the grandma didn’t talked to her about the man, she just said „I don’t want to lose another daugther”. Toby did talked about him, but what he said was not really something that could justify Debra’s strange behaviour. Maybe she will forgive the killer too? But why? And why now?

I think both of these women (the grandma and her daugther) are abnormal. The way the grandma told Toby about the tragedy was cruel. That shouldn’t be done like this, but I could accept that she tried to be as calm as possible. I can’t accept the behaviour Debra continues to show: At the police station, she just sits there quietly and looks incredibly confused, while Veronica does all the talking. She’s always like this, like an empty husk that’s dragged along on the waves of Fate… But the worst part was when she met Toby. She should have said „Sorry for not believing you.” She should have said that to Veronica too! Why does she act like she has no emotions? What is this?

It’s hard to understand the motivation behind going back to the hospital as well. What does Debra want here? What does she expect? Everyone told her, that John is a professional liar, and even if he would be honest, what does she gain from confronting him? Later, I’ve realized that it must be the fact that she can’t handle living like this, and giving up the big luxurious home, the fancy clothes and the handsome lover. She thinks that is happiness, she wants to go back there. Or she resembles her mom and likes to forgive unforgivable stuff, because John did those things. Not to her, but to others, and that means he is capable of doing them again. What bothers me is the way this was presented, because in the previous episode, the past and the present connected with each other, we saw that the title character is really someone you should avoid, and the „heroine” does exactly that. But here, we see how an almost fanatically religious mom forgives the killer of her daugther, and with this, she helps the man avoid his justified sentence; while in the present, after some unrelated conversations, Debra goes back to John. The two things are basically running side by side, but they don’t really connect.

Three things about the USA, which was interesting to see: The grandma’s huge house’s huge doors have no peephole, and she is nearly always surprised when she opens it. Why is such a little, no effort thing of safety missing? It seems like the laws are protecting the criminals. Right now, John did nothing that broke the law, but he did it in the past, and there are clues showing he will do it again. Yet, as long as someone doesn’t provide solid evidence, nobody – nor the police, nor the private detective, nor the lawyer – will do a thing. It’s really scary, if you think about it… The last one is how Debra forgets the missing 80.000 dollars. She wanted to get away from John, and yet, she basically leaves that money for him. Is this a handful of coins only to her or what?

In summary: The acting was nice, but the story bored me to no end. What happened in the past is really unusual, but as far as I see, it didn’t moved the plot forward. I’m disappointed.