A lot of talent and potential gone to waste: Top of the Lake

Have finished the 7-part first (and only?) season of Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, and, as noted in earlier post, I was drawn to stay with it by the great acting of Elisabeth Moss (as a New Zealand detective with a specialty of working on cases involving children or abuse), the beautiful scenery, and the many little odd elements that continued to promise to build toward an interesting or satisfying whole. Sadly, that never happens - Campion knows how to establish a mood and a tone, but doesn't quite know what to do when she gets there. So among the elements here is the commune of women who've turned their backs on (male) society and live in some abandoned box cars in a remote setting called Paradise, the lead drug dealer in town and his tough-guy sons who occasionally kneels before his mother's grave and lashes himself with his own belt, the creepy detective sergeant who comes on to Moss/Robin in an extremely clumsy way, and possibly drugs her while she's visiting his far-too-lavish home, and others. By the time all the elements come together at the end of episode seven, there are so many loose threads and so many ridiculous improbabilities that I just felt empty, cheated. For example, the spiritual leader of the women, Holly Hunter (G-J), never says anything wise or helpful - it is totally unclear why any of these women would hitch their star to her and travel half-way around the world. Ultimately, Hunter just walks off the scene. What are we to make of this? Most of the way through the series I thought Campion was conveying a feminist message: the men certainly are horrible, rapists and drug dealers and full of bile and hatred; so I thought, OK, the female detective and the camp of women would present an alternative. But when you get down to it, the women don't protect or help one another either - Moss is the victim of a childhood rape that was never reported, let alone avenged - completely and totally unlikely in this small community; the central figure in the plot is a 12-year-old girl who is pregnant (by her father, we finally learn to no surprise) - nobody helps her except some well-meaning fellow preteens - again, completely impossible that the entire community could be seeking her out for months while a group of teens delivers her daily supplies to a campsite in the woods. There are so many ridiculous turns in this series that it's not even worth recounting any more. It's a great example of a lot of talent - beautifully shot and paced, generally well acted, some scenes powerfully written - without any sense of vision or direction, without, in fact, any sense of how people really live and behave - or misbehave.