In the fourth and final season of The Sinner, newly-retired Detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) and his girlfriend Sonya (Jessica Hecht) are vacationing in Hanover Island, Maine.  While she has been able to put the traumatic events of the previous season behind her, Harry has not.  He still feels guilty over killing Jamie (Matt Bomer), even though Harry did what he needed to do to protect his son Eli and Sonya.  Harry feels he should have taken a different course of action that would have resulted in a non-lethal outcome.  His nagging doubt makes it difficult for him to move on, even though he’s no longer an active law enforcement officer. 

Harry appears to have settled into a healthy relationship with Sonya, who is comfortable with indulging his appetite for rough sex.  (The ground rules being that it has to hurt and she has to mean it.)  Unfortunately, Harry has always been incredibly uncomfortable participating in everyday activities.  Even though he’s far from home, his past always finds its way into the discussion.  A lunch with one of Sonya’s friends quickly becomes distressing, so he wanders off to a secluded area near the shore.  As his thoughts turn dark, he notices a young woman nearby, a boat fisherman named Percy Muldoon (Alice Kremelberg).  She and Harry chit-chat, and her world-weariness comforts him.  Their conversation enlivens Harry’s mood just enough so that he forgets about suicide (for the moment).

When Harry returns to his vacation house, he admits to Sonya that he’s been off his meds for a while.  She’s naturally concerned with this admission, because without his meds Harry suffers from insomnia.  That night, Harry can’t sleep that night and goes out for a walk about town.  He observes Percy walking away upset from an argument, but he cannot identify the other person she was talking to.  He follows her out of town until she stops at a cliff.  From a distance, Harry sees Percy look briefly over her shoulder to a distant spot, then step off.

Harry reverts to detective form and contacts the local authorities.  Unfortunately, since Percy’s body can’t be found, she’s considered missing.  Percy has a history of skipping town before on short notice, so the belief is that she is still alive.  Given how Harry is not a stable person, he has to consider that he may have imagined the entire episode.  Harry locates some strange objects in the area where she was looking.  Did she kill herself as part of some strange ritual?  If so, what ritual was she part of?  Was she under someone’s control?

Eventually, Percy’s body washes up.  She definitely committed suicide, but nobody has an  explanation.  Her family, the Muldoon’s, basically own the town.  According to her grandmother Meg (Frances Fisher), Percy was set to take over the family businesses.  The Muldoon’s have plenty of skeletons in their closet, which makes Harry see each of them as a suspect (or catalyst) in Percy’s suicide.  Sean (Neal Huff), her father, is a drug addict.  Her Uncle Colin (Michael Mosley) is a hothead and devout.  The Muldoons have a fractious relationship with the other shipping family in town, the Lam’s.

As Harry digs into Percy’s personal life, he finds that she had connections with everyone in town.  Percy had a relationship with CJ Lam (David Huynh), something his mother and father did not approve of.  She also had been in a relationship with Muldoon employee Brandon, but broke it off suddenly two years ago.  Brandon is an unsavory type who is involved in an underhanded scheme that helps the Muldoon’s keep operations afloat that Percy had recently become aware of.  Percy’s mother, who Meg forced to give Percy up after she was born, lives in the area and could be involved.  Lastly, Percy had recently sought the help of Em Castillo (Mercedes de la Zerda), a dock worker who specializes in shamanistic healing rituals.

Being included in an investigation does wonders for Harry’s mood, to the point when Sonya notices his renewed energy and sense of purpose.  However, the more Harry learns, the more he puts himself and Sonya in danger.  Harry can’t help himself when he’s involved in a case that involves what he knows inside and out: guilt.  Somehow, Percy became involved with something that caused her to take her own life.  Was it something she learned her family was involved with?  Or something she knows about the Lam’s and their adversarial relationship with the Muldoons?  Or something Percy did that she could never forgive herself for?

I thoroughly enjoyed watching The Sinner and Harry Ambrose, a detective who can barely function when he’s not solving inscrutable crimes.  His psyche is so damaged and tortured, he can barely utter a few words to his own family.  And when he does talk, he always looks like he’s on the verge of crying.  However, when he’s confronted with a crime that involves twisted  motives, psychologically damaged victims and deeply held secrets, he pulls himself out of his slough of despond and comes alive.  As a genre, television shows featuring detectives have persisted because the people behind them always manage to invent a character unlike any who has come before.  Detective Ambrose is a unique creation, a person as troubled as any suspect he happens to be investigating.  The way he’s been able to draw upon the charred remains of his personal life to gain insight into a crime is fascinating.  For Harry, it takes a sinner to know one, as he is uniquely suited to understand the demons that lurk inside the hearts of men (and women).  Although this show was canceled, I’m glad I spent the past four seasons with such an indelible character as Harry.  In the era of “peak TV”, The Sinner was an overlooked gem.  Highly Recommended.

Analysis

Last season, Harry became ensnared in a Nietzsche-inspired plot that unfortunately  overwhelmed the story and his character.  Season 4 is a return to form for The Sinner in that it focuses on Harry more and gives him a mystery to solve.  Why would Percy Muldoon, a young woman with a promising future, step off a cliff in the middle of the night?  What would make her feel so distraught that taking her own life was her only option?  This question is tailor made for Harry, who often contemplates suicide whenever he’s alone with his thoughts.  He still feels guilty over the actions he took as a child that led to his mother being committed.  Even though he was young and desperate at the time, he’s never forgiven himself for what he did.  

Harry retired sometime between this season and the last one, a decision he likely arrived at after killing Jamie.  Although he did it in the heat of the moment and was genuinely fearful that Jamie would hurt others, Harry feels guilty about it.  Unfortunately, all retirement has done is give him more time to dwell on his actions.  While Sonya can relate to his mental anguish and offer a sympathetic ear for his troubles, she can only distract him from his despair temporarily.  She knows that she cannot absolve Harry of his guilt, but she hopes that he will let himself be happy for once.  Unfortunately, Harry carries his guilt with him at all times, effectively preventing him from experiencing joy under any circumstances.  He reminds me of Robert DeNiro’s character in The Mission, carrying a suit of armor with him wherever he goes as punishment for his sins.

With this in mind, it is not a coincidence that Harry would run into Percy when he flees lunch with Sonya and her friend.  Harry’s feelings of guilt overwhelm him and contemplates drowning himself.  It just so happens that the shoreline he finds is the same place Percy sits to contemplate her own sins.  They are both solitary, tortured souls who seek refuge outside society.  That the two would meet at that exact moment isn’t chance, but a metaphysical connection of sorts.  As they say, misery loves company.

Even though they just met, Harry and Percy recognize each other as kindred spirits with similar world views.  Both of them feel guilty and depressed over things they believe are unforgivable.  Both of them have tried various therapies to alleviate their guilt, and none were successful.  Both have contemplated suicide as the only means to escape the hells of their own making.  Both have used work as a way to cope with their guilt.  The primary difference between them is that Harry found a way to channel his guilt into his work.  For Percy, work only provides a temporary distraction.

Harry is energized after their chance encounter and takes solace in knowing that he’s not the only miserable soul in town.  That evening, Percy is once again confronted with the fact that her family has chosen to play a role in human trafficking to keep their business afloat.  When Percy realizes that she can never make up for killing CJ’s brother and never stop what her family is doing, she kills herself.  Harry happens to be in the vicinity to witness her actions, a plot device that is coincidental but also speaks to how the two are drawn to each other like magnets.

Because like attracts like, Harry is compelled to figure out why Percy committed suicide.  He must know what Percy was dealing with that made her decide to opt for death over continuing on.  She has taken the one action he cannot bring himself to do, even though he regularly contemplates it.  Percy had more to live for than Harry did, so why would she decide to end her life in such a dramatic fashion?

At first, Harry thinks she was being driven to suicide by someone else.  When she glanced over her shoulder before stepping off the cliff, Harry thought that she was looking back at someone who was commanding her to kill herself.  As it turns out, she was looking back at a mental projection of CJ Lam, who she accidentally killed years ago.  Like Harry, she can’t stop thinking about who she’s killed, wondering if she could have done things differently.  Her tragic act, like Harry killing Jamie, was an act of desperation and fear.  In both cases, they committed the gravest of sins, and Percy could find no way to atone for hers, let alone confess it.

As Harry digs into Percy’s past, he realizes that she has also sought out conventional and unconventional therapies as a way to combat depression.  She left home, took drugs, got into a relationship with CJ Lam, studied the Bible with Uncle Colin and participated in Earth-based healing rituals with Em.  Unlike Harry, she could never confess to killing Bo Lam.  As Harry tells Sean Muldoon, confessing your crimes is helpful.  Percy could never bring herself to do this and instead kept the murder a secret shared only with her family, denying herself the ability to move on.  Harry, on the other hand, has discussed what he’s done with others in previous seasons.  Perhaps this is why he’s never carried through on his suicidal thoughts.  He still feels incredibly guilty and depressed, but he’s been able to move on to a point where he doesn’t see suicide as necessary.

Another key difference between Harry and Percy is their altruistic need to change their worlds.  Harry has been a source of positive change throughout his forty-year career, allowing him to  partially forgive himself for his actions.  Percy, however, did not have that option.  When she discovers that Novak and Brandon are assisting with human trafficking, she is prevented from reporting it to the police because it would destroy her family’s business.  Instead of being a force for good, she was forced to look the other way forever.  Percy cannot escape her past, and the present requires her to do something she abhors to keep her family from ruin.  In the end, she opts for suicide because she cannot claim a single moral victory in her life.  She will forever be haunted by sins she can never absolve herself of.

Harry Ambrose certainly isn’t the first detective who can barely function when not on the job.  He may be the first detective who is as troubled as the people he investigates.  Harry’s personal experience with deep-rooted psychological trauma gives him unique insight into people who act  out of character.  His persistent feelings of guilt and shame allow Harry to empathize with a suspect or a victim at a level other detectives cannot.  Only he knows what it’s like to act out of desperation and live with the consequences.  He understands what it means to have sinned and then be faced with the choice of either spending the rest of his life atoning for it, or giving into the darkness and ending it all.

Unlike many detectives, Harry says as little as possible.  He hates having conversations and rarely puts more than a couple of words together in a sentence.  Instead, he listens intently on what others have to say.  Because his manner is similar to that of a wounded dog, the people he talks to open up to him because they don’t see him as a threat.  Harry’s shy, unassuming nature puts people at ease when he approaches them.  In keeping with the religious undertones of the series, people are comfortable talking to him because he has the demeanor of a gruff, world-weary priest and not a detective.  As such, Harry is able to elicit confessions from people because they see him as sympathetic and non-judgemental.

That Harry is such an intriguing and captivating character is due to Bill Pullman’s performance.  He has a knack for playing characters who I feel will somehow meet a bitter end by the end of the story.  This may be due to my familiarity with several of his early roles, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, Lost Highway and The Last Seduction.  The characters Pullman plays always seem to be on the verge of losing.  Even his friendly, happy-go-lucky characters have an air of sadness about them.  If The Sinner had gone on any longer, I fully expected Harry to be dead whenever it wrapped up.  That Harry is still alive at the end of this season is a relief, but doesn’t feel right.

Even though I enjoyed Season 4, I had a few issues with the plot.  The first is how Harry was able to get critical information about the characters using Scooby-Doo methods.  Several times he was incredibly fortunate to be at the right place and the right time to hear someone say something highly suspicious, if not outright incriminating.

Second was the abrupt end of Harry’s relationship with Sonya.  She was understandably upset when Harry admitted he wanted to solve the case even though it would put both of them in danger.  (Prioritizing a case over your significant other is always a bad move.)  I would argue that Sonya should have known by that point that Harry would always be a detective until it killed him.  Anyway, I expected there to be more closure for her character than her hanging up on Harry.

Finally, the season sets up the possibility of Harry becoming a private detective, but since the series was canceled, this will never come to pass.  The season ends with Harry finally solving why Percy committed suicide, but says nothing about where Harry will do afterwards.  His daughter and nephew were never mentioned in this season, and I wondered why.  The show should have had one more season to give Harry a proper goodbye, but unfortunately it was not meant to be.