American Crime: Who Hurt Gabrielle Durand?

The Season 3 finale of American Crime is coming up on Sunday, April 30th and the one question that we would like to see answered is who hurt Gabrielle Durand? We’re hoping and praying that this is not the one question that the show leaves open as they have done with other situations in prior seasons.

Things don’t get wrapped up in a nice package with a pretty bow on American Crime, that’s for sure. This is heavy duty true life stuff, showing you awful lives with too few people who want to help and too many who can’t or won’t.

Even before the last episode (Episode 7) when Gabrielle came to a breaking point and could no longer stay at the Coates’ house of horrors, Clair Coates was pushing the story that Gabrielle is a cutter. Sorry, Clair, your friend bought it, so far the detectives bought it, but we didn’t buy it and here’s why.

Gabrielle is terrified of Clair. There was one scene in episode 6 where Gabrielle tried to speak English and Clair ordered her not to. She complied. So we know that Gabrielle does know some English, but she is scared to death to use it. Part of it may be fear of being unable to make herself understood, but when she was in the police car in episode 7, here’s what she said, with the translations:

Mon passeport est dans la maison
My passport is in the house
Ils le cachent m’empêchez de la prendre
They’re hiding it to prevent me from taking it
Dites à Clair de laisser rentrer chez moi
Tell Clair to let me go back home
Je dirai rien
I won’t say anything
Je vous en prie de laisser rentrer chez moi
Please let me go back home

So there you have the tell-tale line “I won’t say anything” right after she asks the cops to tell Clair to let her go back home.

Clair has been one shady witch all along. We just didn’t see it at first, even though she snapped at Gabrielle the morning after she arrived from Haiti. Clair just had a tiff with her husband so that seemed normal enough. But when you take Clair’s behavior all together, it is clear that she is a woman who is determined to have things her way, no matter the consequences to others, and that she is vengeful.

There’s a theory that Nicholas is the one who has been hurting Gabrielle going around like that’s got to be the big twist. But he really hasn’t been around the nanny much. We’ve never so much as seen him talk to her, not even when he met her the first time. In Episode 7, when it looked like Nicholas was going to say something confrontational to her, Gabrielle’s first instinct was to protect her charge, Nicky, from his father. She was certainly afraid but it seemed more like she was afraid for the boy than herself. Come to think of it, we’ve never even seen Nicholas talk to the boy and it’s always been something that drives Clair up the wall– the way he ignores this child that she insisted upon having, at astronomical expense. She alternately taunts him that he’s not the biological father or pleads with him to interact with “our child.” Remember how swiftly Clair reacted when she saw Gabrielle chastise Nicholas? It’s hard to believe Clair would want her husband to form a relationship with her miracle baby if he ever so much as raised his voice to the boy.

There’s also this exchange between Clair and Nicholas after Gabrielle was taken to the hospital:

Nicholas: You brought that into this house. You brought that crazy woman into this house.
Clair: I didn’t know.
Nicholas: How could you not know? How?– What?– You couldn’t see what she was doing to herself?
Clair: (shaking her head no) Mmmh mmmh
Nicholas: Didn’t know or didn’t care?
Clair: Mmmh mmmh

This was not the reaction of a man whose wife was covering for his misdeeds. It was the reaction of a man who knew he was dealing with a manipulative liar, and we know it, too. Unlike Nicholas, we saw Clair put a bandage on the cuts on Gabrielle’s hand and tell Gabrielle that she was “doing it to herself.”

In the finale, somebody is going to say “beaucoup” or at least enough to make suspicion fall on the Coates. That’s in the preview. The cops show up with a search warrant.

Even if Clair frames Nicholas for Gabrielle’s abuse, and we wouldn’t put it past her, we’re not going to believe it was him. So please, American Crime, don’t leave us dangling on this one!

THEY DIDN’T: THE SEASON 3 FINALE RECAP