There were just too many bloopers and stretches of credibility for this season to suceed. Monving from New Zealand to Australia; the appalling character of 'Puss'; and casting Nichole Kidman alongside Elisabeth Moss were all big mistakes. The tall attractive Kidman steals every scene, and wipes the floor with the short unsmiling Moss. OK, Robin Griffin, (Moss) is supposed to be a loser when it comes to men, but to ask us to believe that she is the object of every man's is desire, even if it is only for one night stands, is too much.
Asking us to believe that the assertive mouthy Mary would fall blindly in love with a sleazy 47-year-old Charles Manson type in need of a good wash was just ridiculous. Had Mary been a shy introvert, and Puss being a handsome older man, perhaps, but Mary was a girl who ruled the roost at home with her grovelling parents as slaves. Perhaps parents in Australia are no longer allowed to slap their unruly children, but had I ever spoken to my parents with the disrespect she showed, they would have laid me out cold, as would the parents of every other child I grew up with.
The plot of China Girl was almost identical to 'Goldstone', the second of the Mystery Road films - Asian girls trafficked to Australia on the pretext of going to college or getting good jobs, then fored to work in a brothel. In this case, they were also surrogate mothers. In the episode where the fetus of the dead girl was found to have differing DNA from the mother, I immediately shouted 'surrogate mother' at the screen, but it took Robin and the pathologist half the the episode before the penny dropped.
Another problem I found was when a man was shown buried in the sand with a cardboard box over his head on Bondi Beach in a temperture we were told was 35C (it was actually 38C during the filming). As he had been there several hours before the box was apprehended, there is no way he would have survived in the hot sand.
I did like Gwendoline Christie, though I think a softer hairstyle would have been better. However, the office romance with her character, her boss, was a definite no no. At least Nichole Kidman is almost as tall, but she and Elisabeth Moss (5'3") should not be shown onscreen together.
Overall, this season seemed like a lazy attempt to cash in on the first season, a starring role for Jane Campion's daughter, and a vanity project for Elisabeth Moss, made in Australia so they didn't have to leave home. At least it had the right ending, where the parents using the Asian girls as surrogates had no claims on the babies as commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia. Tying it up with the aircraft being recalled and the girls being arrested would have been a totally false happy ending. Otherwise, too much bad language and sex.
No need to bother with a third season.
Asking us to believe that the assertive mouthy Mary would fall blindly in love with a sleazy 47-year-old Charles Manson type in need of a good wash was just ridiculous. Had Mary been a shy introvert, and Puss being a handsome older man, perhaps, but Mary was a girl who ruled the roost at home with her grovelling parents as slaves. Perhaps parents in Australia are no longer allowed to slap their unruly children, but had I ever spoken to my parents with the disrespect she showed, they would have laid me out cold, as would the parents of every other child I grew up with.
The plot of China Girl was almost identical to 'Goldstone', the second of the Mystery Road films - Asian girls trafficked to Australia on the pretext of going to college or getting good jobs, then fored to work in a brothel. In this case, they were also surrogate mothers. In the episode where the fetus of the dead girl was found to have differing DNA from the mother, I immediately shouted 'surrogate mother' at the screen, but it took Robin and the pathologist half the the episode before the penny dropped.
Another problem I found was when a man was shown buried in the sand with a cardboard box over his head on Bondi Beach in a temperture we were told was 35C (it was actually 38C during the filming). As he had been there several hours before the box was apprehended, there is no way he would have survived in the hot sand.
I did like Gwendoline Christie, though I think a softer hairstyle would have been better. However, the office romance with her character, her boss, was a definite no no. At least Nichole Kidman is almost as tall, but she and Elisabeth Moss (5'3") should not be shown onscreen together.
Overall, this season seemed like a lazy attempt to cash in on the first season, a starring role for Jane Campion's daughter, and a vanity project for Elisabeth Moss, made in Australia so they didn't have to leave home. At least it had the right ending, where the parents using the Asian girls as surrogates had no claims on the babies as commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia. Tying it up with the aircraft being recalled and the girls being arrested would have been a totally false happy ending. Otherwise, too much bad language and sex.
No need to bother with a third season.