I so rarely get a chance to use this icon!

The death of Maddy is on my list of "Top Ten Screen Murders" (which I really must finish some time - I stopped because it seemed over-dominated by TV murders and I wanted to think of some more film ones). I thought it was perfectly done. I remember watching the repeat when it was first broadcast because I wanted to see it again, but legionseagle couldn't bear to, though she admired it: later we were discussing a proposal someone had made to cut the more graphic violence on television, and she suggested "The screen turns black. A caption reads 'At this point, a young girl is horribly and very artistically murdered.'"

My interpretation was that Albert was right, and that Bob was the name we give to the evil that men do. When Sarah and others say that they have never seen Bob before, the real meaning is that they have never seen that "face" of Leland. And once Maddy sees it, she understands what he is, and can see both faces - family man and abuser - almost but not quite simultaneously.

I also thought that Cooper's refusal to accept Bob as a natural manifestation of humanity was a weakness: as I remember it, he says "Would you rather believe that a man could rape and kill his own daughter?" And I thought "What's rather got to do with it? You believe in the supernatural because you find reality too distressing?" So in time I came to believe that it was his inability to recognise and accept his own dark side that allowed him to succumb to it.

But I wish they'd wound up the series with the death of Leland. Though there were occasional interesting moments after that, it struck me as a demonstration of American TV not knowing that some stories have a natural shape and length, and that when that's completed it's a mistake to try to add more.