Clickbait

Oh, this was genuinely a ride. A ride I had no intention of riding, and I saw through every single one of its red herrings. I don't know why a ride would have red herrings, but oh well. This miniseries is rough around the edges, a lot of plot holes, unanswered questions, and overall just a general lack of understanding I think from the creators of what the ending was meant to be. Right off the bat, this miniseries makes no sense, 5 million views would not take that long to get, especially in the current climate of the world where everyone is on their phone and everyone is looking for the next big thing. Especially considering how many people we see watching that, over and over and over again, I have no doubt in my mind that 5 million probably could've been reached in maybe under 5 hours of that one YouTuber uploading it to her channel. But criticizing this miniseries for being implausible is ridiculous, it is supposed to be a trashy, bingeable series that keeps you on your toes, like a thriller version of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. One positive thing about it is the incorporation of social media and the internet and utilizing it to exhibit most of the mystery. I genuinely liked how it was so easy to track down one person, or figure out certain things about a person like their name, phone number, address, etc. it shows the unwanted transparency that most people have on social media and on the internet due to corporations caring more about profits than the actual people using their apps or websites. I think that was the direction that the writers definitely wanted to take, some sort of social commentary on the downfalls of social media and how it is so easy to find someone's personal information based off of their name and their face. It utilizes this commentary on social media and personal information to its advantage, showing what could potentially (unlikely) happen when we are transparent about our lives online. Someone could use it to catfish, someone could use it to find your location, etc. etc. This show really did stick by its name, Clickbait, the alluring premise has no clue how to end, so it ends like that one scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where you are promised a sword fight, but the show just shoots the story in the head. But other than that, it really was a lot of clickbait, with different red herrings interwoven throughout the story that all have motives on doing these crimes. But let's not make it any of the obvious people, instead let's make the person who caused all of this a woman we hardly get to see until the end and the murderer, the husband to that woman with absolutely no motivation whatsoever in killing Nick. Doesn't that sound fun? Building up these suspicious characters until they all come crashing down and it was someone who we never saw coming because there were no seeds planted that allowed us to believe it was her. It's not an Agatha Christie mystery, heck, it's not even a Scooby-Doo mystery, it is a Pretty Little Liars mystery. One that builds up the suspicion of every single character, only to reveal the true culprit to be someone we had no clue of ever existed. THANK YOU FOR THAT. I JUST LOVE THE FACT THAT WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY 0 CLUE THAT IT WAS ED, DAWN'S HUSBAND. There was never an indication that she was married, she might've worn a ring, but I didn't see, why? Because I'm not a dedicated viewer who has watched this series for 7 years only to have it crash and burn in the end. This show isn't PLL with a dedicated following, it is a replica, a poorly done replica where the ending might slightly be better, but the premise is just slightly worse. And I would take an intriguing premise to a crappy end over a sub-par premise with a mildly fine ending. So the killer is Ed, Dawn Gleed's husband. Who's Ed? I hear you asking, I have no clue. We are given absolutely 0 information on his personality, he isn't protective over Dawn, and his biggest trait that we see is that he likes trains, making him more like Sheldon Cooper than literally any other murderer in any other story. We are only introduced to Ed in the series finale when it turns out, he's the one who killed Nick. It's an embarrassing end. I think the real killer should've been Matt Aldin, Nick's friend, whom he works with, not Dawn. Because they introduce this subplot that makes Matt look guilty, with him basically threatening a volleyball player with revenge porn, but that is quickly shoved under the rug when we have to get back to the real plot of who killed Nick? It feels like they only incorporated that plot into it to make Matt seem guilty, but then at the very last second, they chickened out and decided hey, let's make it not obvious whatsoever and make it the spouse of a character we interact with rarely. To be 100% honest, this plot was stupid. If Dawn was really chatting with others on a dating website, catfishing as Nick, he would've gotten the notifications. We literally see Dawn connect his phone to his computer, so how did he not get the dozens of notifications of Dawn casually romancing girls on different dating websites? And when we see Dawn set up Nick's computer, we see that he's already on a dating website, why would you guys write that? It's stupid. You've dedicated this entire miniseries to clearing someone's name who has been dragged through the mud, into a tar pit, and into Shrek's swamp, and you just decided that "hey, maybe he should have a dating profile. Oh, but he ghosted her, so it's okay". LIKE WHAT? Also, why would he go to Dawn's house right after leaving the van when he knew that she was the one who catfished Simon Burton and drove her to suicide? He knew that she was the only one he told, and yet he still went to her place with no thought or reason. Also, how does he even know where her house is? He doesn't have his phone with him, so I hardly doubt he could find his way around, especially in the dark, did he just happen to stumble into Dawn's house? How convenient. And when you saw Dawn, why wasn't your first instinct to, I don't know, run out of there? You know what she did, you know she caused everything, why didn't you leave? I feel like I'm victim blaming, and I am. This ending is stupid, it's stupid and I hate it. It doesn't make any sense and thinking more over it makes my head hurt.