The premise is that Sorjonen is this genius detective with Asperger's Syndrome, although that diagnosis is never actually given. I watched all 3 seasons, and I enjoyed the first season, but by the time I'd watched 2 or 3 episodes of the second season, I was thoroughly sick of Ville Virtanen attempting to play the genius detective, and by the time I'd finished Season 3 I was so sick of his bratty, out of control daughter, Janina, that I was ready for the series to be over. As Sorjonen, Ville Virtanen does a lot of geeky, awkward moves with his hands when he's "thinking" (e.g., waves his hands above his head, from the back to the front, without actually touching his head 'to shut out negative thoughts'). Watching him make these moves, I remembered when I got my first computer and thought it would be cool to attach different sounds to different actions, only to realize within a few minutes that what had seemed like a good idea in theory was just incredibly annoying in practice. My guess is a writer or director thought these moves would enhance the character's weirdness, but they just become super annoying mannerisms in very short order. But the annoying mannerisms are just the tip of the iceberg. In one of the early episodes in the second season, Sorjonen is interviewing a female witness and they're seated on opposite sides of a table in an interview room (of course) and mid interview, he puts one of his feet on the table and proceeds to not only remove his boot and sock, but then begins cutting his toenails, with bits of nail flying everywhere, and everyone pretends that's normal and perfectly OK because he's supposed to be such an effing genius. All I could think was, what's next? Will he take a dump on the table while interviewing a witness? The character is a narcissistic pig who expects everyone to put up with his crap, but I didn't find him attractive enough to pull off being so obnoxious. I liked Olivia Ainali as Janina in Seasons 1 and 2, but in Season 3, she turns into a narcissitic sociopath who goes from bludgeoning an injured dog to death to bullying the boy, Jarkko (Johannes Brotherus) who expresses an interest in her to the point that I wondered if the storyline would have him suicidal. That didn't happen, but if any viewer thinks for a minute that what Janina does in Season 3 to Jarkko is OK, imagine if she was a male doing the same thing to a female, and you'll see how not OK her actions are. Also, I don't know if this is poor direction or poor acting or a combination of both, but whenever anyone talks to her, she juts out her lower jaw and sits there with her mouth hanging open and a "Duh" expression on her big moon face, and that just doesn't work. Janina regresses as a character, in contrast to Katia Jaakkola, portrayed by Lenita Susi, whose character really grows. By the end of Season 3, I was so tired of the Sorjonens that I was happy for the season to end.
Review of Bordertown
