Jim Strange may be worlds away from Endeavour Morse, but he’s a good man and a reliable one. She’s a smart, bright, independent young woman.” When the pair win tickets to see The Carpenters in London in a raffle, Strange is endearingly unassuming and gives Joan a get-out in case she feels trapped into going, but Miss Thursday’s quite clear that she’ll be snapping up the opportunity. They dance together to ‘Earth Angel’ and his esteem for her is made clear when after she leaves, the 1970s cabbie describes her as “a nice bit of crumpet” and Strange corrects him: “She’s not crumpet.
When she accompanies him to a masonic ladies night, he’s very sweet and treats her well. He’s clearly besotted with Joan, who seems to genuinely enjoy herself with him, too.
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In series eight, Sean Rigby’s Jim Strange is cutting an entirely new romantic figure. When Morse is “marinating” his sorrows over the loss of Claudine, it’s Jim that Joan offers to call to see him home safe. And though Jim can’t truly make head nor tail of Endeavour, he’s even been a steady sort of friend, and flatmate, to him over the years. All the same, he looked out for her and unlike some of the other men in her life, asked nothing in return. Trying to curry favour by helping the guvnor’s daughter? Maybe. The opposite in fact – when she was arrested in series five at an anti-racism protest that turned violent, Jim took it upon himself to check she was okay and send her home, fudging the station’s records so that she wouldn’t be charged. Unlike Morse, Jim Strange has never hurt Joan’s feelings or belittled her. Boring, perhaps, but reliable and solid in a way that the increasingly cynical and petulant Morse will never be. Someone who seems to share that perspective is DS Jim Strange, whose ambition to steadily climb the ladder we know pays off in later life when he becomes Chief Superintendent to Morse’s Inspector. While she’s hardly going to step into Win’s role and send any future husband off each morning with his sandwiches, she’s also been raised to know that work isn’t the be all and end all. Even as his drinking starts to make him unreliable at his job, Morse’s work is everything to him. However many times Fred tells Endeavour that “there’s more to life than coppering,” it’s a lesson he never learns. While Joan has found real meaning in her career as a social worker (she too is saving the world, one woman at a time), thanks to Fred Thursday, she grew up with the message drummed into her that work should be left on the hall stand, by the front door. Like Morse, she’s been through the wringer, but unlike him, she’s dealt with her experiences and used them to make meaningful changes.Įndeavour Series 8 Episode 2 Review: Morse Haunted by Ghosts of His Past By Gem Wheeler That may have been rock bottom for her, but it was by no means the end. Joan ended up in hospital when the pregnancy was lost, after a doubtless euphemistic “fall”. It’s a long time since her head was turned by a chancer like DS Jakes, and years since she got involved with a married man who became physically abusive before leaving her pregnant and homeless. Plenty, if she knows what’s good for her, which Joan seems to of late. Wearer of tank tops, drinker of Double Diamond and bearer of James Last Orchestra LPs? Compared to clever, cultured, tortured Morse, what would Joan Thursday ever see in him? Jim Strange? The unglamorous, unimaginative company man who aspires to climb the ladder and keep his nose clean. As Endeavour nears its ultimate conclusion ( series nine is likely but yet to be announced), series eight has offered up one suggestion for Joan’s future in a burgeoning relationship with DS Jim Strange. The destiny of Sara Vickers’ Joan Thursday however, is still to be decided. That house – which, like Morse of late, has been in a bit of a state and requires some work – is destined never to be a family home, just as Morse is destined never to be a husband or father. Colin Dexter’s Inspector is destined to remain unmarried and to live out his days alone, in the very house that Endeavour fans saw him buy in the series six finale. However much chemistry and yearning those two share, when Inspector Morsebegins sixteen years down their timeline, Miss Thursday won’t be part of Morse’s life. That’s the unavoidable truth casting a pall over their every encounter. Joan Thursday and Endeavour Morse can’t end up together.