"Top of the Lake" Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

The first season of Jane Campion's "Top of the Lake" was a mystery show and crime thriller that paid off for me in a more or less satisfactory way.  There was a definite sense of finality, and most loose ends were wrapped up.  The second season, however, offers none of these things and left me immensely frustrated.  However, while I don't think the series was successful at what it wanted to do, I can't stop thinking about it.

Detective Robin Griffin (Elizabeth Moss) has joined the Sydney police, where she's given a new partner, Miranda Hilmarson (Gwendoline Christie), and a new case.  The body of an Asian prostitute, dubbed "China Girl" is found in a suitcase dumped in the ocean.  We learn early on that the victim worked at a local brothel run by Alexander "Puss" Braun (David Dencik).  By coincidence, he's the much older boyfriend of a seventeen-year-old girl named Mary Edwards (Alice Englert), who Robin gave up as a baby, but has now decided to try reconnecting to.  Uneasily caught in the middle are Mary's adoptive parents Pyke (Ewen Leslie) and Julia (Nicole Kidman), whose marriage has fallen apart.

"China Girl" isn't a mystery in the traditional sense, because solving the crime is never the source of the real drama.  We already have most of the big pieces to the puzzle, and we know that they're all going to come together eventually.  Rather, the mysteries are the more personal ones, that are slowly unravelled through the examinations of the characters.  The central, and most fascinating one is the question of why Mary has fallen so obsessively in love with Puss, a horrible man who treats her badly and is an absolute menace to everyone else around him.  Mary is the one character who is present in all of the show's various storylines, and seems to be the most profoundly impacted by all the negative societal forces we see women contending with throughout.    

With the prostitutes at the brothel, Robin continuing to battle workplace misogyny and PTSD from her assault, and a surrogate motherhood storyline, "China Girl" continues to further Campion's examination of the abuses and exploitation of women.  However, the messages get very muddled, especially as most of them are delivered through a set of very imperfect female characters.  It's a little disappointing the series is ultimately more interested in examining white, middle-class female guilt and privilege than any of the sex trafficking or other more blatant abuses that affect the immigrant characters.  Mary learns that she can't simply step into the shoes of the girls at the brothel, no matter how much her self-destructive tendencies make her wish that she could.  We never hear much from the actual prostitutes though.  

The writing is mediocre stuff, full of too-convenient coincidences and odd storytelling choices.  The last episode in particular is a real head-scratcher, that gives us the requisite big, violent, external crisis, but doesn't bother about resolving any of the personal crises involving Robin or Miranda.  And while I understand the larger point of Puss's storyline, there's absolutely no sense of meaningful consequences, which made the whole thing feel abruptly cut off.  If there was a third series of "Top of the Lake" in the works, I could buy it as a cliffhanger, but I don't think that's what the show's creators were going for.  Also, frankly, I was disappointed that Nicole Kidman's Julia simply never got much to do.  Her rivalry with Robin is certainly well set up, but I thought "China Girl" lost a lot by avoiding so many direct confrontations and having many of the bigger moments happen offscreen.  The elliptical approach can certainly be compelling, but here it just left me deeply unmoved.

Still, I really enjoyed some of the characters in this latest series, particularly the complicated Miranda and innately decent Pyke.  Mary was absolutely infuriating, but I suppose that was the point, and it's a credit to Alice Englert that she remained sympathetic despite frequently provoking so much frustration.  David Dencik is rightly getting the most attention, similar to Peter Mullen in the first "Top of the Lake" series, for playing a very distinctive, very hateable villain.  Puss's look and mannerisms seem to be modeled off of Tommy Wiseau, but he's very much his own brand of malignant crazy.  Elizabeth Moss is decent, but her material here isn't nearly as strong as the first series of "Top of the Lake," and her character suffers for it.

Ultimately, there are plenty of intriguing ideas here, but the execution felt sloppy and more than a little half-baked.  It's rough seeing so much talent I respect put so much obvious effort into something that just didn't work.

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