The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder
Episode 6 of Roar starts with two police detective, Bobby and Chris, arriving at the scene of a crime. The deceased victim has been murdered, propped up against a tree. There’s no blood pool though, and it would appear that someone has done this to make her “look pretty.” Whoever did this covered their own tracks. The victim didn’t put up a fight either. However, that victim actually happens to be a ghost who wanders into the crime scene. The culprit has also carved numbers into the victim’s arm, which read “551143.” The victim’s name is Rebecca Moss, who happens to be a Californian girl. The two detectives work to try and figure out Rebecca’s life story, and armed with her ID card, drive to Rebecca’s house. Rebecca tags along for the ride. While there, Rebecca starts to go over the possibilities of who could have killed her. She believes it could well be her ex-boyfriend Todd. As the two detectives look through Rebecca’s laptop, they decide to see her best friend, Christina. At Christina’s house, Christina admits to the detectives that Rebecca has never really been single for less than 48 hours. Eventually Christina mentions Todd, much to Becky’s glee. She begins dancing about the house before she eventually follows the two detectives to the bar, where Todd shows the last messages he sent to her. Specifically, he messaged 3 skull emojis and called her a b*tch. Now, Todd and Rebecca actually broke up because the latter believed he was cheating on her, but it seems Todd has an alibi. He was with his new girlfriend cooking lasagne and “having lots of sex”. Inexplicably, Rebecca is able to channel her anger and push Todd straight into the detectives. Bronson eventually heads home alone but he’s been stalking his ex wife, hanging about outside her house. While they head inside together, Rebecca channels her energy and somehow manages to drive the car. Despite establishing that she can’t touch anything, I guess she’s starting to control her powers now. Anyway, Rebecca’s ghostly powers aren’t really explained as she uses a combination of physical interference with the case and walking through walls and being invisible to gather evidence and clues. She eventually manages to organize a whole stack of evidence to be sent across to Carole, including a controller with the numbers 55143 scrawled across and plenty of evidence from the pad in question. So who did kill Rebecca? Well, it turns out it’s an angry teenager called Chad, who had a crush on Rebecca. He’s your stereotypical nerd, complete with playing video games and belittling women online on forums. With all the evidence at hand, it’s only a matter of time before he’s brought to justice. With the case presumably all wrapped up, Rebecca heads outside and notices wisps of sparkly dust emanating from her body as she ascends beyond this plane.
The Episode Review
Why did Chad kill Rebecca? And Why? Is it really as simple as him not liking women and being completely unhinged? It’s a pretty weak explanation if I’m honest, and still doesn’t really show how he manage to wash down Rebecca’s body, get her propped up by the side of the road and leave without a trace of evidence. What part of his room and sloppy demeanour gave the impression that he’s capable of this? Unfortunately, this isn’t really explained and the episode suffers because of it. The story leaves a lot of loose threads hanging about in favour of a message that almost reads that violent videogames are the antipathy of violent behaviour. It’s lazy characterisation and I can’t help but feel the story would have been better served if it turns out Bronson was the one who killed Rebecca for some sort of reason. The surprise ending isn’t really a surprise given we’re not really given any clues along the way, and Rebecca’s powers are incredibly wishy washy right the way across the 30 minute run-time. This anthology has been a real mixed bag and this episode is no exception.
