Title: The Point of Vanishing
Directed by: Maurice Phillips
Written by: Paul Rutman
Air Date: April 5, 2009
Previous: The Quality of Mercy
Next: Counter Culture Blues
Guest Starring: Ophelia Lovibond, Danny Midwinter, Julian Wadham, Jenny Seagrove, Zoe Boyle
"The Point of Vanishing" is the third episode of the third season of Lewis, aka Inspector Lewis in the United States.
A young man comes home one evening and is murdered in a particularly savage way, pushed head-first into a tub of scalding water and drowned. ID found on the young man give his identity as Steven Mullan, and Steven's roommate, a garbage truck driver named Alex Hadley, confirms. Detectives Lewis and Hathaway soon direct their focus to the Rattenbury family. Tom Rattenbury is an Oxford don who is also a militant atheist, who became a minor celebrity by writing books about atheism and appearing on TV debate shows. One night several years ago, Steven Mullan, who was both a fundamentalist Christian and drunk, drove his car into the Rattenburys' car. Mullan injured not Tom Rattenbury, but Tom's daughter Jessica (Ophelia Lovibond). Jessica, then a teenager and now a young woman, has been in a wheelchair ever since. Tom's wife Cecile has an ironclad alibi, having been at home with Jessica, but Tom is unable to verify his story that he was out for a drive. Tom and Cecile's son Daniel says he was out partying with his American student girlfriend Hope, but his alibi turns out to be full of holes.
The investigation is then turned on its head when Dr. Hobson gets the DNA results and discovers that the dead man isn't Steven Mullan at all. In fact, the guy with his face in a bathtub was Alex Hadley, and the person who made the ID at the station was the real Steven Mullan, who has been using Hadley's name. The cops then turn to a Marc Cotton, the employer of the real Alex Hadley (the dead guy)—it turns out that Hadley was having an affair with Cotton's wife. But then the genuine Steven Mullan is murdered for real...
In personal news, the detectives in the unit have a celebratory dinner because one of their own, Fiona McKendrick, has been promoted to Detective Inspector and has been given a plum job at Scotland Yard. Hathaway is not thrilled about this, first because of professional jealousy, but more importantly because he and Fiona were dating and she broke up with him after landing the new job.
Tropes:
- Bridal Carry: Hope has to climb out a window and down a ladder for her date with Daniel, because she is the daughter of an American Cabinet secretary and has bodyguards that watch her constantly. Danny picks her up off the ladder, then makes a big show of continuing to carry her away.
- Creator Cameo: One of many many cameos by Colin Dexter, who wrote the Inspector Morse novels that inspired Lewis. He can be seen being wheeled around in a wheelchair at the art gallery.
- Death Equals Redemption: Tom, who blames himself for what happened to Jessica, says in his goodbye message to Cecile that he will redeem himself by dying to protect Daniel. Too bad Daniel didn't do it.
- Driven to Suicide: Tom Rattenbury deliberately drives his car into an oncoming truck. He thought Daniel was the killer, so, to save his son, Tom stuck a confession into his pocket before killing himself. It turns out Daniel didn't do it.
- Food Slap: After Professor Canter makes a smarmy sexual comment towards Hope, Daniel, who can't stand him, throws a drink at him.
- Hand of Death: Gloved hands of death shove the first murder victim's head into the scalding hot bathtub. Later more gloved hands stab the second victim in the back.
- Headbutt of Love: Hope and Daniel do this while dancing at the club.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heard during the flashback scene that shows Jessica and Steven in the pool, in the scene that reveals how Jessica was in love with the very man who injured her and put her in a wheelchair.
- Hollywood Atheist: Tom Rattenbury comes off as strident, obnoxious, and off-putting in his denunciation of God and religion (and like most Hollywood atheists he seems to only focus on Christianity).
- Intergenerational Friendship: Lewis forms a brief one with pretty young Hope Ransome. Hope takes a liking to him and offers to get him a job in the United States with her father (who happens to be the American Secretary of State).
- Lady Drunk: Cecile is angry and bitter about a lot of things, like her daughter being maimed and Cecile having to give up her career to become her daughter's caretaker. She's shown drinking wine more than once during the episode and is visibly intoxicated near the end when she's having her final confrontation with her children.
- Love Triangle: Between Tom and Cecile Rattenbury and Manfred Canter, back in the day. It's the key to the solution: Tom won that contest decades ago, but Manfred is still in love with Cecile, and she used her seductive powers to get him to kill two people for her.
- Murder by Mistake: Manfred, who was doing Cecile's bidding but had never met Steven Mullan himself, killed the wrong man.
- Never One Murder: An ironclad rule for Lewis. Steven Mullan turned out to not be the guy murdered in the opening sequence, but he is killed later in the hedge maze outside the mansion where Jessica is having her 21st birthday party.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Tom Rattenbury, the Oxford don who wrote books about atheism and became a sort of celebrity atheist who went on TV debate shows to talk about how God is a myth, is obviously inspired by Real Life Oxford don and celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins
. - Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Lewis strides away down the street after getting Hathaway to go into Fiona's apartment and wish her goodbye.
- Redemption Equals Death: Steven Mullan, who has tried to atone for his crimes and live a good life and even wound up falling in love with the young woman he maimed, naturally gets murdered.
- Remember the New Guy?: Fiona apparently was a member of the unit long enough for her and Hathaway to have had a serious relationship that has already ended in breakup, but the character was never shown before (or after).
- Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Lewis and Hathaway do this with an audio recording, the phone message left on Alex's machine. Eventually they think they hear echoes indicating that the call came from a large enclosed space, and figure out that it came from the indoor pool where Jessica goes for therapy.
- Right Behind Me: Outside the Rattenbury house, Lewis asks Hathaway what he thinks about Tom Rattenbury's book about atheism. Hathaway, the former seminary student and still practicing Catholic, sneers that the book is shallow and uninteresting and that "it reads very well on a beach," and naturally at that moment Tom Rattenbury opens the door.
- That Man Is Dead: When regarding a picture of herself before her injury, able-bodied, Jessica refers to herself in the third person, saying "I don't miss her one bit."
- This Is the Part Where...: After Hathaway finds Fiona packing up the stuff in her office, she says "This is the bit where I clear my desk out under cover of darkness."
- Title Drop: The mysterious postcard the detectives find in Steven Mullan's room, the one of the painting with a cryptic message, leads the detectives to the local museum where they look at that very painting. Hathaway the intellectual says that all the figures in the painting are heading off to the "vanishing point." Later Manfred Canter, an art professor, uses that same term in his lecture.
- Two Dun It: Cecile manipulated her admirer and jilted boyfriend, Manfred, into killing for her.
- Wedding Ring Removal: Hope gives Lewis an envelope and asks him to give it to Daniel. Inside the envelope is her engagement ring.
