#whatmighthavebeen
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 23, OR things Robbie smells like, part two.
*Contains mild spoilers for series 9, but mostly spoilers for things that DON’T happen, because this post is pretty hypothetical about what might have been*
Hobson: “I think I preferred it when you were building canoes.”
Lewis: “No you didn’t; I was a bad-tempered old grouch who smelled of wood glue.”
Hobson: “Yes, but you were MY bad-tempered old grouch who smelled of wood glue.”
I rejoice that Lewis came back for two more series after the “final” episode, but I have to admit that series 8 and 9 didn’t give Robbie a lot of character development. It is damned awkward to watch our beloved Robbie try to find his place again when everyone thinks that he should be sidelined. (I mean, each time Foyle came back he had new responsibilities or a new era to tackle, and the writers found plausible ways of keeping his and Sam’s paths intertwined, am I right?) I wanted to see Robbie building that canoe like a boss and enjoying retirement so much that Jean Innocent needed to drag him off a lake in a police boat. I wanted to see Robbie be lauded and heroic. When Hobson said, “I think you should talk to Robbie,” in regards to the hammer killer, I wanted the response to be “yes please Inspector Lewis, we need you to reprise our Graham Lawrie investigation!” But no, instead it seems that he missed an alibi and the lab bungled the DNA and everyone is like, “go away Robbie.” Ugh.
By the time series 9 rolls around, Innocent is not even there to champion Lewis. Chief Superintendent Moody didn’t add anything to the show, in my opinion. What if Lewis could have taken over for Innocent on an interim basis? Hathaway would have hated having Lewis as a boss again, and as Hathaway was pre-occupied with his dad, Lewis would have to step in- right on top of Hathaway’s toes. Or, what if Moody had been crooked? Hathaway would be eager to please his new boss and have blind faith in him, but Lewis suspects something is amiss. So when Moody tries to sideline Lewis ostensibly for his age, it is really because Lewis is the only one capable of finding out the truth. Lewis would get into a do-or-die situation with Moody, and Hathaway could save the day. Laura would still smack Robbie around for putting himself in harm’s way. But that’s not how it unfolds in series 9; instead it’s more of Robbie fighting to be relevant.
At the very least, I was glad to see scenes of Lewis happy at last with Hobson in series 8 (sniff, sniff, these are lacking in series 9). I imagine that, even if he paid someone to finish the canoe for him, Robbie will have other woodworking projects and Laura will be enjoying the fumes for years to come.
