Review of Netflix’s “Deadwind”

Review of Netflix’s “Deadwind”

This miniseries features two Finnish detectives in frozen Helsinki tracking down the murderer of a young woman. Her body is found on property owned by Tempo, a company dedicated to making wind power so efficient that we can stop using other sources of power and save the world. The detective duo of Sofia Karppi and Sakke Nurmi have a rocky start but eventually start to form an effective pair. The series makes a point of propagandizing leftist causes but inadvertently shows that this leftist and atheistic lifestyle is really a poor life choice.

The left teaches that career is the be all and the end all for women. In their eyes, nothing is more noble than the detective giving up everything in life except the pursuit of justice. And the character of the widowed Sofia’s models that world view completely. The detective’s work has priority over everything else in her life. She has no time to be decent to her co-workers and treats them rather poorly. Sofia has no time to spend with the two children in her care. She works all hours of the day and night and in one scene is counseling her son on his problems at school over the phone. She also has a teen step-daughter at home who she pays to spend time with her young son. The lonely and isolated step-daughter ends up getting seduced by a boy who posts a sex tape on the event on the internet. In the next season the step-daughter goes further downhill, by getting involved in selling and taking drugs. Eventually the daughter is forced to be a drug mule and ends up murdering the drug dealer who is using her. Unfortunately for her, the event gets caught on tape and as the series ends, it looks like her life is ruined. The series attempts to show that Sofia cares about her children, by her promises to spend some time with them and by covering up the murder by her step-daughter. But is Sofia really taking any meaningful steps to be there for them? She does not. She continues in her role as a tough detective, repeatedly risking her life to follow her mission. She’s been almost killed five times during the season. So not only does she neglect her children, but she constantly risks making them orphans. I realize the show is merely being melodramatic, but a loving parent would quit the 24/7 detectiving and find something that would allow her to be there for the children. The message that she sends to her children is that while she shows superficial interest in them, they just really aren’t that important to her. So the message inadvertently shown here is the you should stop being selfish and not think about what you want, but what others need.

Single Sakke is interested in becoming a good detective, but also interested in avoiding responsibility. He’s uninterested in having children because of the responsibility that entails. But a drug dealing woman seduces Sakke so he will protect her from the drug dealers she stole from. This works for a bit, until Sakke learns the truth and kicks her out. She is beaten badly and disappears for a couple of years. The woman appears again in the second season with Sakke’s one-year-old son. Her main goal is to hurt him and deny Sakke any access to his son. He says out loud that this suits him. We don’t know if this is true, but who here loses the most? Everyone. Sakke loses the satisfaction and fulfillment of raising a family. The mother looks forward to poverty and overwork as a single parent. And the son has a bleak future. Children do best when they have both a father and mother in their lives. That little boy is much more likely to be a drug addict or imprisoned and even if he avoids all of that it will most likely be a hard life ahead. The point proven is that using other people for your selfish needs is a poor choice. And let’s not forget what a poor choice drug use is, not to mention stealing from drug dealers. This perfectly illustrates the downside of hedonistic living.

The series also spends a lot of energy propagandizing timeworn leftist themes; Christians are stupid, Priests are evil, Corporations are evil, commercial nuclear power is bad, and so on. This tended to make this vapid series much harder to watch.

The series spends an episode investigating the mysterious past of the murder victim. They discover that because her parents were deeply religious they ignored signs that their Lutheran pastor was sexually abusing young girls, including their daughter. Those stupid Christians. I can’t speak to the state of the Lutheran Church in Finland, but I can speak to the fact that the Catholic church has focused heavily on this problem and there have been extremely few cases in the last two decades. I think it would have been more timely if the abuser had turned out to be a movie producer or TV news anchor. And just to make sure they’ve made their point, guess who the murderer turns out to be? It’s the son of the even abusing pastor! They didn’t feature any nuns spraying machine gun fire into innocent crowds, but there’s always room for a third season.

Another tired theme explored is that corporations are bad. Well, that doesn’t included idealistic corporations like Tempo, dedicated to making the world better by developing better wind power. In perhaps the most ridiculous episode of the series, the no good, evil, very bad corporation “Weltkraft” (world power) stores radioactive waste in a flooded, abandoned mine. No one bothers to explain how they got the waste or why they didn’t store it properly like all the other commercial power plants. It’s probably because they are an evil corporation! The only good corporations are the ones developing more effective wind turbines, like Tempo. But even that noble effort is sabotaged by “Weltkraft” with its army of lawyers who steal the technology for illicit nuclear waste storage. In additon to lawyers, Weltkraft even hires thugs to monitor the abandoned mine for intruders so they aren’t found out. And the thugs don’t just scare off the intruders, they try to kill them as well. Really? Really? I almost fell out of my chair in disbelief on the utter stupidity of this plot. Here’s a tip to all you evil corporations out there. Don’t store your illicit radioactive waste in popular diving spots. And stop being bad.

The investigation of the murdered woman eventually exposes the fact that the murdered woman was having an affair with Alex the head of good corporation Tempo. As Sofia and Sakke begin to discover many holes and contradictions in Alex’s story, Alex determines the whole affair is about to come out. So, Alex tells his wife. Running the one good corporation is not quite enough to get a pass from his wife. She throws him out and decides to get revenge by sleeping with Alex’s brother Roope. This doesn’t make her feel better, but it does give her a way to get back at Alex. This ruins his relationship with his brother as well as his marriage. What have we learned here? “Thou shalt not commit Adultery” turns out to be excellent advice and a top ten commandment. And if someone had heeded the “Thou shalt not Murder” commandment, we could have skipped making the entire poorly written series.