Penny Dreadful 3.07.
Jun. 13th, 2016 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the end of days, err, season, is almost upon us.
Though it’s two episodes more, as a quick check tells me. Which makes me think the speculation that we’re going to get the Time Machine (H.G. Wells edition) is right: next week, end of days, apocalyptic London, then finale, time travel resulting in prevention of apocalypse. I do hope when the apocalypse is prevented everyone of our regulars maintains their memories from how it went the first time around, because then Lily (if the time reset happens just before this episode) will know what’s to come and be able to hopefully find a spectacularly nasty method to remind Dorian immortality doesn’t have to be a blessing.
Mind you: as my previous reviews prove, I saw the Dorian backstabbing Lily plot coming. It’s always been about ego and entertainment with Dorian, and being treated as a cog in the revolutionary machine instead of being catered to and treated as the most important person in Lily’s life wasn’t going to cut it. Though I have to say: Lily, “bring me their hands” is a lousy revolutionary beginning. “Bring me their purses” would have made more sense, since you should at the very least have realized any revolution needs to be financed, and you couldn’t rely on Dorian doing the financing forever. (And who is going to clean up all the hands? Presumably the same invisible servants who also cleaned up all the blood from the orgy.)
Sidenote: just before the more successful kidnapping happens, Dorian’s bit of dialogue about revolutions mentions not just the French Revolution but Byzantium, which means the show is committing itself to Dorian being a millennium old immortal at least, as opposed to the Wildean original who is simply a Victorian. I still don’t buy him as Lucifer, both because he’s not obsessed with Vanessa anymore and because Lucifer in the asylum flashback isn’t interested in sex, leaving that to Dracula. So who is he?
Back to Lily: in cased we missed the general theme re: the patriarchy, Victor hammers it home when saying “we’re going to make you a proper woman”. At this point, I would not mind if Lily tore him apart, but he’s a regular, so I doubt it. I still think something will happen during the struggle to inject Lily if the drug of personality splitting that causes Henry Jekyll to end up with it instead, btw.
Speaking of split personalities: Dr. Seward in her only scene this episode observes Vanessa manifested at least three different ones in her presence. Which is interesting because on the one hand, the audience knows Vanessa actually can do that when in a trance, but on the other, Vanessa hasn’t been possessed this season at all, and it’s been two seasons, even, since Amunet last came calling. Or does Dr. Seward think Vanessa’s lengthy flashback was a case of multiple personalities? Hm.
Speculation: as I mentioned in my review last week, I think Lyle name dropping Imhotep means we’re going to get a walking Mummy plot next season, and this might happen because however things wrap up with Dracula (and my guess is they will wrap up this season), Vanessa might want to investigate who Amunet really was/is when not bodysharing with her, and the Dr. Seward scene in this episode is meant to remind the audience about Vanessa’s occasional possessions, since we haven’t seen them in a while.
Vanessa figures out in this episode who Dr. Sweet really is, which was very satisfying to me because last season I found it endlessly frustrating that she kept not having a clue about Evelyn. However, Dracula proves he’s smarter and more persuasive than other incarnations of himself by playing the “but I didn’t lie to you because I meant all I said about accepting each other as we really are” card (with heavy emphasis on “we outsiders not understood by anyone” and no mention at all that how he really is means a lot of death to a lot of innocent people) , and Vanessa can’t bring herself to kill him, letting him drink from her instead. Since her reply to his “do you accept me” is “I accept me” , not “you”, I have still some hope this might be part of her plan.
ETA: aha! I had another idea. Taking my cue from the fact Vanessa asks Catriona Hartdegen earlier whether Dracula can be killed not just in his mortal form but in his original form, and Catriona says regarding the later "no one lived to tell the tale", from Catriona's "it needs a spy" advice, and from the part of Dracula the novel where Mina after Dracula forced her to drink his blood has the idea that the gang can pursue and track him down via her using that connection, which they do, I wonder whether this is Vanessa's endgame: trying to find Dracula's original form. Because if she kills him as Dr. Sweet, he'll simply be back a few years later. But if she manages to find his essential self...
Or maybe we’re supposed to see it as a parallel to Ethan’s falling into supernatural Bonnie and Clydeness with Hecate for a while. Some of Ethan’s conversations with Kaetenay were in Apache and not subtitled – as opposed to earlier uses of Apache – did some Apache-knowing people on the internet already know what was being said? Rounding off reconciliatory and life illuminating conversations with father figures, the one between Ethan and Malcolm was actually very touching. (Life advice by Malcolm Murray: always boils down to “don’t become me”.) And since Kaetenay was able to contact Vanessa via vision questing, she knows now Malcolm and Ethan are on their way back to her, while they know she’s in danger and by whom; methinks that vision-o-gramming will come in handy later on, too.
The character who has the most success in this episode, though, hands down, is the Creature, aka John Clare (since he still uses the name, it’s apparently intended to last, and I’ll try to use it as well). Who actually makes the better choice about whom to contact with his problems and goes to Vanessa, and I loved their reunion. Which also clarifies that while Vanessa knows now that he’s also the Orderly, John Clare still remembers very little (just those fragments about his wife and son that we saw), and nothing of the asylum or Vanessa. Who tells him the truth, which I’m always a big fan of, instead of keeping it a secret, and advises him to contact and tell his wife the truth, even at the risk of rejection, as she has just recently done (with Dr. Sweet, whose true identity she hasn’t yet figured out at this point). The mutual sympathy, support and encouragement of that scene just reaffirmed these two might arguably have one of the healthiest friendships of the show.
Just one little downside: while John Clare tells his/the Orderly’s wife Margery the full story after she does indeed accept him in his new state, resurrection and Victor Frankenstein included, I note he told Vanessa he’s had a disfiguring accident, not that he died and was resurrected. This unfortunately still leaves Vanessa in the dark re: Victor’s activities, which is somewhat frustrating. I suppose this was because John Logan wanted her to focus on the Dracula plotline, but still, at his point, John Clare should be ready to tell Vanessa that part as well.
Because the reunion with Margery and then the second encounter with his son go so well, I expect imminent tragedy, mind, because I just can’t believe Frankenstein’s Creature gets a happily ever after, in any incarnation. And he’s currently doing really well: he’s got a family, he’s got a friend in Vanessa, he bared his soul to his wife, even confessed to having murdered people and to the very un-Orderly-like rages of seasons past, his summary of Victor as not having intended the wipe out of the Orderly’s identity and memories, just the creation of new life, was pretty generous (probably accurate at that point, but of course by now Victor is more than ready to wipe out identities deliberately), and he’s no longer burning with resentment in that direction. So clearly, SOMETHING catastrophic will happen. My current guess is that he’ll find out quite how he died. Note Margery hasn’t mentioned this. And however the death happened, the information about it will cause John Clare to realize he can’t go back to being the Orderly and living the Orderly’s life again.
Though it’s two episodes more, as a quick check tells me. Which makes me think the speculation that we’re going to get the Time Machine (H.G. Wells edition) is right: next week, end of days, apocalyptic London, then finale, time travel resulting in prevention of apocalypse. I do hope when the apocalypse is prevented everyone of our regulars maintains their memories from how it went the first time around, because then Lily (if the time reset happens just before this episode) will know what’s to come and be able to hopefully find a spectacularly nasty method to remind Dorian immortality doesn’t have to be a blessing.
Mind you: as my previous reviews prove, I saw the Dorian backstabbing Lily plot coming. It’s always been about ego and entertainment with Dorian, and being treated as a cog in the revolutionary machine instead of being catered to and treated as the most important person in Lily’s life wasn’t going to cut it. Though I have to say: Lily, “bring me their hands” is a lousy revolutionary beginning. “Bring me their purses” would have made more sense, since you should at the very least have realized any revolution needs to be financed, and you couldn’t rely on Dorian doing the financing forever. (And who is going to clean up all the hands? Presumably the same invisible servants who also cleaned up all the blood from the orgy.)
Sidenote: just before the more successful kidnapping happens, Dorian’s bit of dialogue about revolutions mentions not just the French Revolution but Byzantium, which means the show is committing itself to Dorian being a millennium old immortal at least, as opposed to the Wildean original who is simply a Victorian. I still don’t buy him as Lucifer, both because he’s not obsessed with Vanessa anymore and because Lucifer in the asylum flashback isn’t interested in sex, leaving that to Dracula. So who is he?
Back to Lily: in cased we missed the general theme re: the patriarchy, Victor hammers it home when saying “we’re going to make you a proper woman”. At this point, I would not mind if Lily tore him apart, but he’s a regular, so I doubt it. I still think something will happen during the struggle to inject Lily if the drug of personality splitting that causes Henry Jekyll to end up with it instead, btw.
Speaking of split personalities: Dr. Seward in her only scene this episode observes Vanessa manifested at least three different ones in her presence. Which is interesting because on the one hand, the audience knows Vanessa actually can do that when in a trance, but on the other, Vanessa hasn’t been possessed this season at all, and it’s been two seasons, even, since Amunet last came calling. Or does Dr. Seward think Vanessa’s lengthy flashback was a case of multiple personalities? Hm.
Speculation: as I mentioned in my review last week, I think Lyle name dropping Imhotep means we’re going to get a walking Mummy plot next season, and this might happen because however things wrap up with Dracula (and my guess is they will wrap up this season), Vanessa might want to investigate who Amunet really was/is when not bodysharing with her, and the Dr. Seward scene in this episode is meant to remind the audience about Vanessa’s occasional possessions, since we haven’t seen them in a while.
Vanessa figures out in this episode who Dr. Sweet really is, which was very satisfying to me because last season I found it endlessly frustrating that she kept not having a clue about Evelyn. However, Dracula proves he’s smarter and more persuasive than other incarnations of himself by playing the “but I didn’t lie to you because I meant all I said about accepting each other as we really are” card (with heavy emphasis on “we outsiders not understood by anyone” and no mention at all that how he really is means a lot of death to a lot of innocent people) , and Vanessa can’t bring herself to kill him, letting him drink from her instead. Since her reply to his “do you accept me” is “I accept me” , not “you”, I have still some hope this might be part of her plan.
ETA: aha! I had another idea. Taking my cue from the fact Vanessa asks Catriona Hartdegen earlier whether Dracula can be killed not just in his mortal form but in his original form, and Catriona says regarding the later "no one lived to tell the tale", from Catriona's "it needs a spy" advice, and from the part of Dracula the novel where Mina after Dracula forced her to drink his blood has the idea that the gang can pursue and track him down via her using that connection, which they do, I wonder whether this is Vanessa's endgame: trying to find Dracula's original form. Because if she kills him as Dr. Sweet, he'll simply be back a few years later. But if she manages to find his essential self...
Or maybe we’re supposed to see it as a parallel to Ethan’s falling into supernatural Bonnie and Clydeness with Hecate for a while. Some of Ethan’s conversations with Kaetenay were in Apache and not subtitled – as opposed to earlier uses of Apache – did some Apache-knowing people on the internet already know what was being said? Rounding off reconciliatory and life illuminating conversations with father figures, the one between Ethan and Malcolm was actually very touching. (Life advice by Malcolm Murray: always boils down to “don’t become me”.) And since Kaetenay was able to contact Vanessa via vision questing, she knows now Malcolm and Ethan are on their way back to her, while they know she’s in danger and by whom; methinks that vision-o-gramming will come in handy later on, too.
The character who has the most success in this episode, though, hands down, is the Creature, aka John Clare (since he still uses the name, it’s apparently intended to last, and I’ll try to use it as well). Who actually makes the better choice about whom to contact with his problems and goes to Vanessa, and I loved their reunion. Which also clarifies that while Vanessa knows now that he’s also the Orderly, John Clare still remembers very little (just those fragments about his wife and son that we saw), and nothing of the asylum or Vanessa. Who tells him the truth, which I’m always a big fan of, instead of keeping it a secret, and advises him to contact and tell his wife the truth, even at the risk of rejection, as she has just recently done (with Dr. Sweet, whose true identity she hasn’t yet figured out at this point). The mutual sympathy, support and encouragement of that scene just reaffirmed these two might arguably have one of the healthiest friendships of the show.
Just one little downside: while John Clare tells his/the Orderly’s wife Margery the full story after she does indeed accept him in his new state, resurrection and Victor Frankenstein included, I note he told Vanessa he’s had a disfiguring accident, not that he died and was resurrected. This unfortunately still leaves Vanessa in the dark re: Victor’s activities, which is somewhat frustrating. I suppose this was because John Logan wanted her to focus on the Dracula plotline, but still, at his point, John Clare should be ready to tell Vanessa that part as well.
Because the reunion with Margery and then the second encounter with his son go so well, I expect imminent tragedy, mind, because I just can’t believe Frankenstein’s Creature gets a happily ever after, in any incarnation. And he’s currently doing really well: he’s got a family, he’s got a friend in Vanessa, he bared his soul to his wife, even confessed to having murdered people and to the very un-Orderly-like rages of seasons past, his summary of Victor as not having intended the wipe out of the Orderly’s identity and memories, just the creation of new life, was pretty generous (probably accurate at that point, but of course by now Victor is more than ready to wipe out identities deliberately), and he’s no longer burning with resentment in that direction. So clearly, SOMETHING catastrophic will happen. My current guess is that he’ll find out quite how he died. Note Margery hasn’t mentioned this. And however the death happened, the information about it will cause John Clare to realize he can’t go back to being the Orderly and living the Orderly’s life again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-06-13 07:38 pm (UTC)The Creature has a different name every season: Caliban in s. 1; John Clare in s. 2. I've been waiting for the orderly's name to be revealed so he can have a s. 3 name. At least he gets a name in this version; that's one of the things that always gets to me in the book. I'm afraid you're right -- how can things possibly go well for him? And now he has people he cares about . . . still, I hope against hope.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 05:14 am (UTC)Dorian's face in the first scene set at his house was priceless: "How did I end up hosting London's shelter for women with every one of them IGNORING ME?"
It's sad, though, that Lily made the same mistake Angelique did in thinking he was in love with her, when he loves the transgressive only for the sensation of it. Otoh Lily is far more robust than Angelique was, not just physically but emotionally. Once she's done with the Hulk plot, she'll get over it.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 02:50 pm (UTC)Poor Angelique; she was a fragile flower. And yes to both of them getting Dorian wrong.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 01:48 am (UTC)I think this scene was included as a callback to the ending of the episode, in which Vanessa defeated Dracula and Satan by allowing herself to unleash Amunet. That links to her saying that she 'accepts herself' in this episode whens she allows Dracula to bite her. I think that Vanessa is embracing her dark side to defeat Dracula, not to join him.
I was pleased to see The Creature/John Clare reunite with his family. As soon as his wife told their son that they would be happy for ever and ever, I just sighed. The minute anyone says that sort of thing in a story like this, you know they're doomed. OTOH, if the show isn't picked up for a 4th season, at least this one lost soul may have found his way back to the light, and that would be fine with me. (Of course, there are still the two hour finale left, so there's still plenty of time for tragedy to strike them again.)
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 05:19 am (UTC)Ah, okay, now that makes sense. I had forgotten that Dr. Seward probably still isn't on board with actual Lucifer and Dracula being around, so Vanessa manifesting the other two would provide a scientific explanation. I wonder whether the scene was also there to make her at least a bit suspicious that there's something wrong with Renfield?
Do we know whether or not there's a fourth season? If not, then absolutely, I'd root for this being the Creature/John Clare's happy ending.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 11:19 am (UTC)I agree that the scene with Dr. Seward was also meant to show her becoming suspicious of Renfield. Perhaps Seward will discover him eating spiders and babbling about his master, and that will make her realize that everything Vanessa was saying was true.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-18 02:28 am (UTC)1) Lily will go through the procedure, but it won't work. Possibly for the same reason she didn't die when Victor shot her--she's too strong for that kind of nonsense now.
2) Lily will fake-out the boys and will take her revenge on the one she is left alone with--who will be Dr. Jekyll, thereby setting up the inevitable doom of that character.
3) Creature Clare will be happy with his family...until his son dies of consumption. But it won't be the death that destroys everything, because that would be too easy. Marjorie will say, "Let's pop over to that lovely resurrectionist who brought you back from the dead and we can all be a happy family again." And Creature will say, "NO. V.BAD IDEA. SRSLY." And the love and acceptance that allowed Margery to welcome Creature back into their home will smack up against Creature's own inability to accept himself, thus making a delicious tragedy for all us sadistic viewers to enjoy.
4) This won't happen during this season. It will get saved for next season when everyone is in Egypt (like you, I hope everyone will be in Egypt for a mummy plot).
5) Ethan, Malcolm, and Kaetenay will arrive in England shouting, "No fear, ladies! We are here to save you!" And Vanessa, Catriona, and Dr. Seward will answer, "We took care of it," as they sip wine and smoke black cigarettes while resting their feet on Dracula's beheaded body. Vanessa will be using the head for an ashtray.
6) Okay, I don't really believe that one will happen. But I sooooo want it to. Second best would be your theory that she is allowing him to drink her blood as part of a Clever Plan to kill the very heart of him, rather than just another body.
Also, I must concede that the constant references to Vanessa's fertility/Amunet's mother-of-evilness support your theory that the antichrist will appear in some future season. But it still annoys me. However, as I mentioned above, this show typically exceeds my expectations, so maybe they will do something with that trope that I find enthralling.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-18 06:20 am (UTC)