Endeavour Series 8 Recap: Morse’s Downward Spiral, Joan & Jim’s Romance, and Sam Thursday

Jim Strange and Joan Thursday

Nor was Endeavour the same man who’d caught Joan Thursday’s eye over daily morning hellos as he picked her father up for work. Joan had been absent for Series 7, only the off-screen recipient of the heart-felt letter of apology Morse had sent after falling out with Fred. In Series 8, she was back from Stevenage, living in Oxford with a housemate, and working as a Welfare Officer.

It was Joan’s work that threw her into the path of DS Jim Strange. While Endeavour was on a downward spiral, his former housemate Strange was on the way up. A case brought Strange to Joan’s place of work, where he extended her an invitation to a dinner dance at his Masonic lodge, clearly expecting to be rebuffed. Joan though, older and wiser and recognising Jim’s upright reliability, accepted.

The dance went well and Jim proved himself a gentleman when, out of Joan’s earshot, he curtly told off a cabbie who’d described her in sexist terms. Jim was clearly smitten and treated Joan well. A second date to see The Carpenters at the Royal Albert Hall happened off-screen, and by the finale, it was Jim’s shoulder that Joan cried on when her younger brother Sam went missing from army duty in Northern Ireland.

Endeavour’s Drink Problem

While Joan and Endeavour clearly still held an attraction to one another and there was plenty left unsaid between them, his drinking concerned her – as well it should. While she was out at the dinner dance, Morse had turned up fall-down drunk at her door. By the Series 8 finale, it was clear that Jim’s upstanding comfort, not Morse’s bitter unpredictability, was what Joan needed.

That was far from the only time Morse drank himself insensible in Series 8. In episode 3 ‘Terminus’, the team investigated the passengers of the No. 33 bus in a murder case. Not being able to trace “a drunk, medium height, medium build, clerk-type” who had fallen down the bus stairs, Fred realised the man in question was Endeavour. Ever the concerned father-figure, Fred told Morse to seek help and to “break the habit before it breaks” him. Fred’s dad had been “a devil for the drink,” he told Morse, and he’d hate to see him go the same way. Thursday offered the details of a rehab centre Morse could attend. Endeavour rejected the offer and told Fred he didn’t need help.

A hellish night spent trapped in a snowed-in mansion where his fellow bus passengers were being murdered one by one taught Endeavour that yes, he did need help. By the next morning, he accepted Fred’s offer and agreed to take leave to deal with his drink problem. “As long as you need,” said Fred.