There are bad tv shows (Legends of Tomorrow), there are good tv shows (Justified), and there are great tv shows (Lost, GoT, The Wire). But there are also mediocre tv shows disguised as great (Vinyl), and there are good tv shows disguised as bad (Ozarks), but the worst offender has to be a terrible tv show disguised as great. And that, my friend, is where The Frozen Dead lies.
It has all the ingredients of a great tv show: It's French, it looks bleak and terrifying (on purpose), the acting is fantastic (we'll get into this more later), and the story is somewhat refreshing. The reasons it's terrible is because, even with all of this, it's stupidly far-fetched and our main protagonists do nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, to advance the story along. I could have done a better job solving the case from my bedroom than these two detectives. In fact, I did!
The show opens as you would expect a show like this to open, the discovery of a gruesome crime scene. The catch, however, is that it's not a human body displayed in a crazy, angelic way at the top of a ski slope...it's a horse. Well, most of a horse. And so our main Detective (I honestly can't remember his name and I just watched 6 episodes so we'll call him MARTIN?) shows up and he's unhappy. He apparently moved away from this town years earlier but for some reason his old boss wants him on this case. He is, of course, joined by a younger, pretty, female detective (Irene?) and we are off.
Martin says he'll give the case 48 hours but then he's leaving. They eventually find the rest of the horse and discover a human hair. They send the hair off for testing and it comes back positive for one Hannibal Lector (not really but again, I can't remember his name and he's supposed be a Hannibal Lector-type so we'll just stick with that name). But wait, it can't be Lector's hair, he's locked up in the mental hospital under 24 hour guard. Hmmm, Martin does not like this at all.
And while we're on the subject of Martin as a character, like I said, the acting is good. But what separates him from other detectives you might ask? Well, he's not a good detective. In fact, he's pretty terrible. He also smokes and drinks and takes forever to answer his phone which rings NON STOP. Oh, and he gets a bloody nose once in a while, has a daughter we barely see, and had an affair with his best friend's wife.
Meanwhile, at the mental hospital we are introduced to one of the new psychiatrists on staff, Helen? Helen is tough. We know this because she boxes. And she desperately wants to gain access to the A wing (where they house the dangerous psychos). More on her in a bit.
So Martin reluctantly goes to the mental hospital and meets with Lector. Lector has been expecting him. They behave exactly how you would expect them to. Lector says something with a smirk and Martin flies off the handle and leaves because he can't stand the sight of him. We do learn a few things: Martin and Lector used to be friends and colleagues (Lector was a lawyer?) but then Martin discovered that Lector was killing young girls and eventually caught him and locked him up. And now, Lector is up to something but Martin can't figure out how.
Meanwhile we learn that the partner, Irene, is a lesbian. I don't know why this matters. Well, it kind of comes up later.
Back to the case: So now Martin and Irene are convinced that someone must have killed the horse for Lector and placed his hair at the scene on purpose. I mean, I know I'm making it sound really dumb but at this point I was ALL IN. Note to self: stop giving writers so much credit. Fool me once (killing) shame on me...
And I'm not going to bore you with the details of every episode so I'm just going to break it down.
Lector tells Martin that someone will die soon.
Someone is murdered and castrated.
Martin and Irene are on the case.
We find out that Helen (the new psychiatrist) is really some other girl who changed her name and gained access to the hospital because Lector killed her sister years earlier. They never found the body and she just wants closure. Lector immediately recognizes her but plays along. He eventually tells her where to find her sister and she does. It turns out, the sister was buried and hooked up to an oxygen mask. When Martin caught Lector, Lector gave him a choice: let him free and he'll tell him where the sister was (possibly saving her life), or arrest him and he'll never tell. Martin arrested him.
Anyway, another person is murdered and castrated. Martin and Irene EVENTUALLY figure out that the two men murdered were suspected of molestation and rape of teenagers way back in the day. And the teens that were raped all killed themselves by HANGING. The entire city and police force saw three teenagers hung to death and said, yep, they killed themselves.
We come to find out that Irene (the lesbian) was in love with one of the teenagers (sara?) and always suspected that the reason Sara killed herself was because nobody believed her about the rapes. And she had this information THE ENTIRE TIME but never said anything.
So far these detectives have done ZERO to make progress with the case. You know who makes progress? The wife of the latest victim. She discovers VHS tapes in his office. So now the detectives watch the tapes and try to figure out the identity of the other men because they were part of some weird club where they all tortured and raped teenagers. Oh, and they murdered those teenagers and posed it to look like a suicide. So Martin is finally like, ohhhhh, someone is getting revenge.
At this point I'm still in on the show because I think it's going to wow me and I only have two episodes left. It does not wow me. At. All.
Martin starts to question how Lector managed to get him and Helen both back to this town at the same time. Well, he had help. Remember Helen (the new psychiatrist)? Her boss's name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth and another guy named Eric (?) are the ones killing these men and castrating them. And for some reason they need Lector's help with identifying them all. Dumb, right?
So, let's recap from Lector's point of view.
He gets caught murdering young girls and is sent to a pretty lax insane asylum where he's allowed to do crafts and have visitors anytime. His psychiatrist, Elizabeth, happens to have been molested when she was younger and wants revenge on these creepy old men (one of them is the Mayor, etc). So Lector tells her he will give her the names of the men in exchange for favors.
Favor #1 - locate and hire Helen. Huh? I thought Helen came to the hospital looking for him? Apparently he found her first? Makes no sense.
Favor #2 - pay some creeps to slaughter a horse and put one of his hairs at the crime scene.
Favor #3 - let him use a phone so he can call a judge he once did a favor for and have him make sure that Martin is put on the case.
With me so far? Because this is what happens for real on the show.
Eventually Elizabeth and Eric kill 3 of the 5 men and they want the final name so Lector asks for one more favor.
Favor #4 - kidnap Helen, lock her in some dungeon with an oxygen mask and film it so he can get off on it. And THEY DO IT.
So now Martin finds out that Helen has been taken but Lector will only
tell him where she is if he BREAKS HIM OUT OF THE INSANE ASYLUM. He has two hours to decide.
Meanwhile Eric gets killed by the police and Elizabeth must kill the last remaining rapist herself. She goes out to the farm but he was waiting for her and he shoots her dead. Martin arrives on the scene and realizes that the only chance of him saving Helen was Elizabeth but now she's dead.
So Martin basically gives up hope of saving her.
This was where I was yelling at my laptop "look at her fucking GPS in her car that's parked RIGHT NEXT TO YOU! It will tell you where she was keeping Helen!" But nope. It doesn't even occur to Martin because he's a useless piece of crap.
Instead, he breaks Lector out of the asylum and finds Helen at the last second and saves her but Lector gets away. Presumably leaving open a chance for more of this nonsense. I hate my life.
