Pipe Smokers: Can You Spot The Christmas Cheer On This TV Show?

A world without God is a blue and gray world. If I lived in such a world, for example, Sweden, I'd always have a pipe lit to remind me that the light and heat of the Father was near to my heart. Otherwise I might be tempted to go on welfare and eventually commit suicide. You know, just follow the normal Danish/Swedish life path.

There's an awesome series of long TV episodes/movies from Sweden called Wallander. This is not the BBC's Wallander, set in Sweden with the same character but starring Kenneth Branagh. This is the bona fide Swedish show. And it is so depressing. So perfectly depressing. When I watch Swedish shows I honestly wonder how those people keep going. At least in the U.S. we play really loud music and eat fast foods and drive fast cars with really loud engines to distract us from our loneliness. 

Those dudes just float right in it, like a sense-deprivation chamber for the soul. 

Anyway, this is what I want you, dear pipe smoker, for:

In the latest episode of Wallander, in which he finally comes to terms with his alzheimer's (can you imagine how awkward a detective show with an aging alzheimer's sufferer as lead detective is?), I spotted a little ray of light just past the whiskey bottle. Is it wishful thinking, or did I indeed see light? If you're a pipe smoker, you might be able to help me.

Above is Kurt Wallander looking out on a slate-gray sea as he faces his retirement and considers suicide. Look, there! Between his head and his feet, a pipe stand with a couple of beautiful pipes.

This next pic gives us a little more perspective, and we see a legit little collection of pipes. Perhaps on cold lonesome nights he fondles one and considers filling and lighting it, letting the bit of warmth he'd cradle in his palm travel to his cockles and innards and soul. Note the star above his head.

Y'all. He's sitting in his chair, contemplating suicide (his daughter will be unable to dissuade him from the attempt), having drunk almost the entire bottle of whiskey. But look over at the pipes, below the star and right of the telescope: is that McClelland's Christmas Cheer?

It's hard to tell. My first impression as I watched in passing was that it is Christmas Cheer, but further viewings of the film make it harder to see, as I imagine must happen to referees when they review close plays on repeat.

What do you think? Is that a tin of Christmas Cheer?

I choose to believe it is. That Kurt Wallander is about to die only to rise to a new world, a world of Christmas, a world of Jesus (he attempts suicide but lives, and the show closes with scenes of him content with his grandchild). He will sit under his Christmas star and smoke his Christmas Cheer while dandling his grandson on his knee.

Just not inside his house, because of course that's illegal in Sweden.