We are only hours away from the finale of Ripper Street Series 2!!

2 spoilerific previews of tonight's Ripper Street finale:

(there is new ep info here so only click if you don't mind spoilers)

Ripper Street | Series 2 - 8. Our Betrayal - Part Two | Radio Times

Ripper Street fans won't let their favourite show be killed off without a fight | The Daily Mirror

yes, some very interesting things indeed!  

Spoiler

I didn't think they would bring up Merrick's death again, as it would further play with history - it's one thing for the audience to know, but another thing for the characters to know, for it to be public knowledge - but it certainly sounds like Shine will be implicated in his death.  and hmmm... help from unexpected quarter.  Could that be Flight?  The bloodbath.  eeeeeppppp!!!!

I can't form coherent though.  Just WOW!  The whole episode was just phenomenal, and Damien... Flight's secrets... OMG.  Incredible performance.  I sit here still breathless half an hour later, I feel like my heart's been ripped to shreds and my gut's been punched.  Like I was in that boxing ring.  HE KNEW about Merrick.  And his secret was more unscrupulous than I had imagined.  I actually feared for his life at one point, when they put Shine in the cells too.  I need time to process more...

What a performance!

I really need to get some sleep so will write more tomorrow (and of course come to Flight chat) but the story about the gin didn't sit well with me, so I did a little research.  

You'll note his arrest record is from 1885.  This was presumably when Shine found, as he said, Flight as the "little Paddy wretch".  That was 5 yrs prior to current events and Flight is by all accounts still young. He looks young (when he's down in the cells and Shine is presenting his case Damien looks like he's 15!) and they refer to him as young.  So when he was doing all this "bad stuff" he was likely very young, a teen.  And we know he was an orphan, likely I think a street urchin just trying to survive.  The way he ate that sandwich - he probably went hungry quite a bit.

One of his arrests was for illicit distilling - this is the gin with the sulfur and turpentine.  However, he did not taint it on purpose.  Sulfur is a byproduct of the the fermentation and if improper distilling equipment is used - say by an inexperienced, impoverished young man making moonshine - then the sulfur remains in the alcohol.  You need to use a copper still, or at least the tubing has to be copper because the copper catalyses the breakdown of sulfuric compounds in the steam vapors, or in other words breaks it down and absorbs it.  Copper is more expensive however and steel is more durable, so you can imagine he would have used a steel still.  As for the turpentine, it was a common additive in cheap gin until the 20th century to give it the juniper berry flavour without using the actual juniper berries.  

So he didn't make bad gin with malicious intent - he just made it cheap.  

I don't know whether the poisoning happened accidentally whimsy, the impression i got from that scene was that maybe he did, he knew it was wrong and it was one of the driving reasons why he strived to be a good man. I think if it had been an accident then he would've said so. I think the fact that he had an inkling that it was wrong was what got Shine's attention in the first place. I think Shine saw his youth and how impressionable he possibly was and manipulated it.  I'd like to believe that perhaps it was during his time at H Division, he 'saw the light' and that was why he sought a priest's confession. Perhaps he saw something he admired in Reid, that this was a man he could actually look up to. So while i don't disagree that the sulphur and turpentine can be a side effect/accidental so to speak, i don't think in Flight's case, it was an accident.

I'd have to watch it again but i'm sure he also said something about evil, pertaining to himself which could be Catholic guilt coming to the fore, but it was that too that gave me the impression that he wasn't exactly an angel in all of this. 

-- Edited by rubyrosettared on Tuesday 17th of December 2013 04:23:58 PM