The Cutprice Guignol

There’s always got to be a last place. And, after spending the last few years watching every episode Inside No. 9 has to offer, I think I can say without a doubt that Thinking Out Loud is, by far, my least favourite episode the show ever put out.

The episode revolves around a collection of seemingly-unconnected characters – from Aidan (Shearsmith), a cancer-stricken father, Galen (Shearsmith), a Louisana-born serial killer, to Angel (Ionna Kimbook), an chirpy online vlogger. And you can probably guess, if you haven’t seen the episode already, what the twist for this one is – yep, most of those character names are anagrams of each other, because all of these characters actually exist as a manifestation of Dissociative Identity Disorder suffered by Nadia (Maxine Peake).

We’ll begin with the problems with the episode on paper – it’s a story about someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (which used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder), a mental illness that comes to exist via extreme and prolonged childhood trauma, murdering her abuser. And just looking at it like that, I already hate it – because God knows we’ve already seen this story done a hundred times before, mostly as pulpy thrillers in the vein of Identity and Split. It’s an illness which has been so unfairly treated by almost every piece of pop culture that’s taken it on as a byword for dangerous, violent lack of control, and to see a show with as much nuance as Inside No. 9 add to that? It’s just downright crass, the exact approach you’d expect to see genre fiction take to DID with no meaningful attempt to subvert it or tell a story that doesn’t end with the sufferer plunging a knife into someone. There’s enough stigma around serious mental illness as it stands, and this episode does nothing but add to it.

But, you know, even with a plot this tropey in the most predictable and harmful way possible, there could at least be a way to pull it off that makes the act of watching it somewhat enjoyable in a vacuum. But, if there is, Thinking Out Loud certainly doesn’t find it. The twist in this episode is announced with trumpets every twenty seconds, it feels like, with zoom-ins on the same letters moving around to spell different names, but still ends with a massive infodump after what, to me, is quite a self-explanatory closing sequence. The ending feels like a last-minute panic tack-on, just to make sure the point of the story was driven home well enough, a bizarre and out-of-place detail given that Inside No. 9 had a good five years of twists and expectation behind it by this point

Maxine Peake (one of my all-time favourite actors – my God, have you seen her in Funny Cow?) is totally wasted here with a blunt-force script, and the usually-excellent Steve Pemberton…look, I get this performance is fit for purpose. I get that he’s playing a version of what someone might think a crazed American serial killer might look and sound like, tropes and sneering and bad accent and all, rather than what that might actually be. But God, it’s so hard to sit through, downright cringy in a way that makes it hard to appreciate even as it fits into the story of the episode.

Thinking Out Loud isn’t just a bad episode because of the stupid, overdone, and outright insulting premise, but because of the way that premise plays out – I’m not sure there was ever a brilliant episode in this idea (and, frankly, I’d be glad to see pop culture as a whole find a new approach to DID that’s less keen to misrepresent and villainize the people who suffer from it), but the way this one plays out is certainly far from it.

If you liked this article and want to see more stuff like it, please check out the rest of my Inside No. 9 reviews. I’d also love it if you would check out my horrible short story collection, and, if you’d like to support my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

I know this is a really divisive episode for a lot of viewers, so I would love to hear about your takes on it in the comments below. If you’d interested in learning more about DID and supporting people with the disorder, I’d suggest checking out some of these resources.

(header image via IMDB)