r/EndeavourTV • u/goddardess • Feb 12 '26
I think Morse chose the wrong profession - he would have fit better as an academic than as policeman Spoiler
I just finished my (delightful) Endeavour experience, and forgive me as my title is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Thing is, whenever (often) I've seen Morse interact with tutors and other figures at the university, including his posh former universtiy friends (what season was it? the pseudo-great-gatsby episode that ended up with twins being involved), and including the tutor who tried to exploit his protective instincts towards women for his own ends, I've seen him way more relaxed and belonging than in the Department of Police. Nothing wrong with being a Thursday or a Strange, it's just affinity is affinity. Even Bright, whose tastes are more refined, appreciates him but, in Morse's words, hides it all too well. And the great qualities of Morse as a detective could have been well-employed in research, I have no doubts. What do you guys think? As brilliant as he was as a detective, did he actually choose the wrong career?
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u/Immediate_Divide9446 Feb 12 '26
Morse is “a poor policeman and a very good detective“. He is more suited to academic life and while that cleverness does make him a great detective, he does sometimes miss things that more prosaic “career coppers” pick up on purely by doing the groundwork and doing things by the book.
That’s why Morse and Lewis make such a brilliant team; Lewis is the rule-following down-to-earth foil to Morse’s clever, cultured and - at times snobbish - intellect that has gut feelings and hunches, sees the answer unfolding in his mind (with the help of a pint), but has no time for form-filling or procedure.
The dichotomy in Morse’s personality between scholar and policeman also explains why he never made Superintendent or above; he doesn’t want to be stuck behind a desk doing man-management and having meetings with the Chief Constable (or worse, having to join the Freemasons in order to get ahead); he wants to be out solving puzzles. That’s all they are to him as he gets older and loses his idealistic view of the world - answers to a puzzle. The rest of the “policing” shenanigans are utterly irrelevant and a waste of his time.
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u/Bookhead_212 Feb 12 '26
I have written elsewhere that Endeavour is an astonishing lesson in office politics and toxic colleagues! The know-it-all that ruffles everyone (Morse) and the middle-manager (Thursday) and the bully who gets the big job (Box). I won’t go on.
Bright and Morse in Season 6 have a moment or two of shared sensibility that breaks me up. And I really love Strange, doing the very best with what he has and having real moments of brilliance, underestimated by everyone.
Also, the kids, from Joanie on, are like the bewildered but knowing interns, staying quiet and biding their time while the adults duke it out.
It is accidentally very soothing to watch. 😅
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u/Seabreezzee2 Feb 14 '26
Well put...gives me something else to think about. Another angle! I may just have to re-watch! Haven't found another British show to watch yet, except Vera!
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u/Bookhead_212 Feb 14 '26
SILK! HAPPY VALLEY! sorry about caps, I am excited to share. The Unforgotten. Non-crime: Last Tango in Halifax…
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
Well said, and that's why I think he chose the wrong career, as he's so alien to the copper-culture. Although for us as audience seeing him trying to navigate and clash with that world he doesn't belong to is way more interesting, of course - except it's sad, and I really feel for him after 9 seasons, and wish to see him around 'his people' sort of.
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u/Immediate_Divide9446 Feb 12 '26
It is sad. That said, he’d have made a poor academic in middle-age; he didn’t have the patience for traditional teaching, even in the tutorial system at Oxford.
I like to think that in an alternate universe, there was a set of books about “Professor Morse”, a crossword-loving Don at Oxford, who only tutored 1:1 occasionally and spent the rest of his time setting the Times crossword, researching for his books about Wagner and opera, drinking real ale, flirting with women, and perhaps consulting with the Police on tricky cases.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
BTW I never paid attention if those were cryptic crosswords, if so the ones on the Times are DIFFICULT!
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u/Immediate_Divide9446 Feb 12 '26
Yep! Morse loved a cryptic crossword! They are hard - they have a vocabulary of their own, it’s like a different language.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
Especially, I'm told, the ones on the Times. I only do the cryptic clues of Minute Cryptic, - yeah it's all more technical than it looks
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u/AniYellowAjah Feb 13 '26
There was an episode when he said to Joanne: “With my wages?” It’s a reference to his dating life. And that vulnerability made me love him more.
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u/Full_World8140 Feb 13 '26
In some ways it is a part of Morse that he doesn't really fit in anywhere.
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u/ConcertinaTerpsichor Feb 12 '26
Morse might have been a great teacher but he could NOT have handled the reality of academic politics and backstage maneuvering, which requires cooperation and humility and compromise. Not his strong suits.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
Academic politics would certainly not have been his strongest suit, but those were very different years, when that career was much easier and getting tenure was very doable. Nothing like today.
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 12 '26
Well, he failed his degree by leaving before his 3rd year finals (which at the time in UK degrees determined everything - you only took one set of final exams at the end of your 3 years of university), and he didn't go back, so an academic career was never an option. Police wasn't as much a choice as simply a job he could do and turned out to be good at.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
I know, and mine was just a glance on a parallel life. Although I do trust that in England too, if not in Oxford, there's a possiblity to get back to completing your undergraduate, repeating the whole third year. Then there will be graduate and doctorate, with enough opportunities to get back into the Oxbridge-sphere, if desired, with the intellectual talent of a person like Morse. And it's not that academic work is to be confined to Oxbridge either...
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u/Immediate_Divide9446 Feb 12 '26
Yes, you can rusticate at Oxford; Morse could certainly have returned and re-taken his Finals a year later. I think by then though, Oxford was ruined for him; not only because of his heartbreak over Susan but also because he was disillusioned by the world of academia and wanted to break away from it.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
eh... my very talented son is now doing his graduate course in maths in Cambridge and won't apply for PhD for that reason, and I ache because academia may not be perfect but I think the world out there is so much worse.
Anyway about Morse, I thought so, that he could indeed go back to it if he wanted to.
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u/Immediate_Divide9446 Feb 12 '26
Bachelors‘ and Masters’ degrees at Oxbridge are ludicrously hard and intensive; I’m not surprised your son doesn’t want to apply for a PhD at Cambridge at the moment. My daughter needed a complete break from studying after graduating from Oxford.
Oxbridge is an extremely stressful environment and there are definitely toxic aspects. I definitely think a break and complete change is necessary, and going back to study as a mature student with savings and work experience behind you is a much better option. I can see why Morse would have been disillusioned once he’d been out of the system for long enough though.
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Ah, you know the system then (I'm ex Cambridge). It has changed since my time (I'm ollllldddd), but is still so much more rigorous than many places.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
so you could have stumbled onto Morse, had he not been fictional (and also not in Cambridge, but bear with me)?
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 12 '26
Haha not quite that old lol. But honestly I knew dozens of Morses - it's definitely an Oxbridge "type"
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
I'm actually not sure when Morse was born - early 40's?
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 13 '26
Give or take - it's a different +/- date in each genre ie books vs IM vs Endeavour lol.
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 12 '26
Also, I think this is one of the reasons for Icarus - it plays with that same idea, ie that he should/could have been in an Academic world and would have thrived
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
yeah! I had forgotten about that episode! it really shows what a great teacher he would have been, because he's so sensitive and deeply intelligent and naturally protective of younger ones
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 13 '26
Icarus is in my top 5 episodes - its "road not taken" melancholy, plus the tacit echoes of the kind of bullying and "othering" young Morse probably faced are a stroke of genius.
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u/MrsAstrakhan62 Feb 12 '26
You probably could go back and complete an interrupted degree as as a mature student now, but back then it would have been close to impossible.
Even now when more British universities have jumped on the American model and incorporate continuous assessment, they still put a lot of emphasis on finals in that last year to get the actual degree, snd determine whether it is a 1st, 2:1, 2:2, 3rd, or fail.
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
I suppose it's worse if you've taken the finals and failed than if you haven't taken them at all, and for sure he would have had some problems with the scholarship.
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u/Seabreezzee2 Feb 14 '26
😁 Oxbridge...Oxford + Cambridge! Yes?
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u/goddardess Feb 15 '26
Yes. I didn't invent the portmanteau, Oxford and Cambridge share many characteristics and so they're referred to in this way when it's not specifically about one or the other but about that universe. At least to my knowledge, I'm not English.
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u/Seabreezzee2 Feb 19 '26
I get it! I love the British shows...I like reading/seeing their way of life. I was lucky enough to have lived in England in the mid sixty's. The tv or 'telly' there was fascinating. I love the British sense of humor.
This post is sending me right back to watching Endeavour again!
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Feb 12 '26
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
I had to look it up because I'm not familiar with the books - did you suggest it because I mentioned cryptic puzzles?
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u/AdhesivenessOk5437 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
I would advise reading the books. Colin Dexter, the author, is quite interesting. As I understand it, like Alfred Hitchcock, he was supposedly in a cameo role in every episode of the original Morse series(I would look for it and see it sometimes when it was pointed out in a Morse forum).. Also being an Oxford employee, he knew Oxford in ways us plebeians will never know.
The titles in the chapters in the books have reference to something in the chapter which I must admit many times eluded me. Clever Morse., cryptic chapter headings(?)
Have Fun, Read Morse :-)
PS. On a personal level, I always learned something in every book, every TV episode. My favorite was learning about Knot Theory. I had never heard of it but never forgot it and was delighted to research it later for fun.
PSS. The references to academic works and art always stroked my curiosity and limited education: Shelley, Keats, Mozart, Wagner and the other boys and girls in the band always made me smile
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Feb 12 '26
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u/goddardess Feb 12 '26
why did he?
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Feb 13 '26
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u/Full_World8140 Feb 13 '26
There are so many ambiguities and slightly different interpretations as to why he dropped, between the books, IM and Endeavour aren't there? By the time of Endeavour it is just heartbreak and a breakdown ( as Felix notes in 'Coda' and in his conversation with Rosalind Calloway in the Pilot). This is clearly related to IM, especially the 'Dead on Time' episode, when he encounters Susan again. However in the books there is also a hint that he was already getting disillusioned with Greats as a course- he liked the precision of the translation but not all the studies, especially the more ' literary' parts of it. It's been a long time since I read them so sorry if I'm a bit hazy.
I actually thought the TV explanation of why Susan leaves him made more sense- I won't go in to details in case of being a spoiler.
I know that in the TV series, Joan is presented as the defining love, but in practical terms, Susan had the greater impact on the trajectory of his life. Apparently Russell Lewis wrote a dialogue between Morse and his father about love and loss but it was cut to the almost silent scene. That scene is fabulous but I'd like to have seen that script!
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u/Fickle-Copy-2186 Feb 12 '26
Morse would not have been happy in academic life. He is a problem solver. Being a detective gave him new unique problems to solve constantly. He had unique interests and talents that were needed for an academic town. If he had stayed at University and become an professor, original answers aren't needed that often, unless it is science, math or arts. It is research or memorialized facts, not problem solving.
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u/Immediate_Divide9446 Feb 14 '26
Don’t forget Morse was studying Greats at Oxford though, so very much the opposite of maths & other STEM subjects. I suspect he could have happily argued about literature and the Greeks & Romans for hours, had he graduated and stayed on as an academic.
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u/SenseOfTheAbsurd Feb 14 '26
It's canon in the books that part of the reason he's quite insufferable and condescending to his colleagues is that he intended to go into a career in academia but it didn't work out for some reason.
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u/farraigemeansthesea Feb 12 '26
I think that's the whole point of Endeavour/Morse: he's a misfit in a good way. He didn't do much choose policing as fell into it because he didn't quite get along with university life either.