Okay, seriously, maybe it’s the American in me, but the episode is showing us that guns will obviously drop some witches. So why did we waste all that time fortifying the townhouse and not getting to see any awesome possession scenes when we could have just had everyone Rambo their way out of this mess? It’s gaps in logic like this and stuff like Vanessa not recognizing Lily as Brona that pull me out of the show sometimes. It’s a minor issue, on the whole, but it crops up more than I’d like.
However, there’s not a lot of time to consider stuff like this because the group is finally reuniting over the body of Sembene. This is a death that really disappoints me because he felt so crucially underused. They could have explored some really interesting elements to his background and last week’s revelation that he was a former slave trader now seems like they scrambled to throw out a fun fact to know and tell before the character’s demise in lieu of actual development. Maybe we’ll get to see more of him in the way of flashbacks next season, but this death felt shitty and lacked the weight it should of had.
After closing the eyes of their fallen comrade, Vanessa sits back saying “It’s done.” Uh uh, girl. We aren’t half way through this episode yet and Dorian hasn’t even show up.
Though I still haven’t forgiven the character completely for destroying Proteus, John Clare has grown on me quite a bit and I feel kind of terrible for the guy. He’s never gonna get the girl, he’s named for one of the most depressing poets, he has absolutely zero melanin and he got suckered into a cage. By a blind chick. “I was not made to scream.” Well, what were you made to do? Sit there and listen while your supposed employer prattles on the other side of your prison door about fancy clothing and making you part of some freak show zoo? Hell no! You’re Frankenstein’s monster! Wreck this place!
And that’s exactly what he does, slaughtering the duplicitous Putney family in the process. This is the guy who literally ripped Proteus in half the very first time he appeared on screen, but one of his darker moves is definitely leaving a blind woman in a dungeon with the corpses of her parents. You do you, John Clare
In the flurry to prepare for battle and in the wake of what happened at the witches’ house, no one noticed the sudden disappearance of Frankenstein’s other wayward creation, Lily. Returning to the ramshackle little abode they shared, Victor discovers Lily has abandoned the premises, leaving nothing but decaying flowers. She’s run off with Dorian. Because, duh.
Lily and Dorian are so perfectly depraved and wrong that it just makes me happy. They’re like a new Spike and Dru, just with less visions of the future and more Story of O scenes. The duo is literally waltzing when Victor bursts in, gun at hand and ready to shoot a lich and an immortal. (Did these guys just all of the sudden remember that firearms are a thing?)
Of course, Lily and Dorian laugh, gun barrel and all, mocking both Victor’s meager home and his ineptitude as a lover as he begs Lily to come back with him. It’s almost possible to feel pity for him, except that he basically deserves this kind of treatment.
The rejection proves too much for Victor and he shoots Lily in the chest, regretting it instantly. But where Frankenstein’s lack of prowess in the bedroom may be laughable, his skills as a surgeon have proven too good for even a bullet through the heart to do much more than ruin a rather pretty dress.
Beating the dead horse once more and unfazed by all the blood, Lily calls up our central theme with the apathetic admittance that she knows that she’s a reanimated corpse and that she’s always known. Dorian being Dorian, he decides this is the best time to reach over and sample some boob blood. Prompting Victor to shoot him this time and getting about the same reaction- laughter.
“Shall we kill him?”
“They’re made for killing.” And with that turn of phrase, the divide between the humans and the abominations widens. You can feel that we’re being set up for a new regime and it doesn’t feel unlike when the Olympians seized the thrones of the Titans. Supremacy. Ascendancy. Conquest. This is very much a Zeus and Cronus situation and Lily doesn’t hesitate in making Victor know exactly how this is going to play out. If for nothing else, these two are the reason to be excited season three was picked up.
Back at Greenwich Place, the team has been reduced to its original roster of Vanessa, Malcolm and Ethan. With the immediate foe defeated everyone sort of falls into a haze in the aftermath. Seeking him out, Vanessa confronts Ethan with uncharacteristic optimism hoping to attempt a future, or at the very least some measure of solace. It’s one of the first times we’ve ever seen the controlled Vanessa emotionally vulnerable and his inevitable rejection feels that much more brutal.
“Forgive me.”
“I do.”
While your initial assumption is that Ethan is apologizing for declining her advance, the next scene shows us his true intent- made miserable by his lycanthrope and having outlived his usefulness, Ethan surrenders to Inspector Rusk and we learn this is really a run at suicide by cop. Admitting to causing the deaths at the inn from the first season, Ethan assumed he would be put to death. Instead of a rope, however, Rusk passes him an extradition order to send him back to America.
Still reeling from the previous night’s events and the realization that her support structure is beginning to scatter, Vanessa seeks out John Clare, newly escaped from the dungeon and ready to bolt himself. The relationship between these two feels the most pure of all the entanglements. Their friendship isn’t muddied by lust or greed, ambition or revenge or even fear. They genuinely seem to respect one another and, as such, their brief interactions always seem to provide clarity to the insanity that follows everything else in their worlds.
“I’ve lost the immortal part of myself, you see. No, I’ve thrown it away.” You begin to realize just how crippled Vanessa’s faith has become as a result of her experiences. She has lost her connection with her deity and it wasn’t from the spellbook the cut-wife warned her about. It was her own mortal need to survive.
Both John and Vanessa are such raw people, that you kind of want her to say yes when he impulsively asks her to run away with him as he leaves London. But the last several weeks have taught her exactly what she is and Vanessa’s words carry weight when she declines, saying instead, “You are the most human man I have ever known,” a statement that reduces Clare to tears as she departs.
Everyone is in the wind as the episode closes. Ethan en route to whatever fate awaits him in America, Malcolm on his way to bury Sembene in his homeland, Victor sinking further into his addiction and John Clare shipbound of arctic waters. Of the key players, only Vanessa remains, very aware of her solitude, choosing to burn her crucifix, not even god is with her now.
“So we walk alone.”
There were a lot of elements that I really enjoyed about this episode, especially the exploration of the sins of our parents being passed to ourselves. There was a some strange pacing, however, and there were gaps of negative space between the admittedly dynamic action scenes. While John Logan has been the series sole writer through the course of its run, these last two episodes were directed by Brian Kirk who also handled my favorite episode this season, The Nightcomers. I wonder if this impression might be coming from the editing team or if this season’s more vague and internal antagonists had that much of an effect on the pace the story moved at.
Season three has already been announced, with nine episodes scheduled so far and it’s pretty clear my two favorite scamps, Dorian and Lily, are going to be major players. Hopefully, this new plot will provide us a more identifiable foe with which to direct our energy. That said, there was a lot I really, genuinely enjoyed in this season and I think having a forced self examination of the characters was important if we are to understand their true motivations. If we’re to understand their true selves.
Here’s the thing with this season of Penny Dreadful- despite all the witches, regardless of the appearance of Lucifer, angry villagers who burn women at the stake or any of the other monsters we’ve come across- the real enemy, the true beasts, have always been the past. The first season built a very tight narrative structured around the quest to save Mina Murray and defeat the vampire lord who took her, but the resolution of that very effort only managed to reveal that in the end we’re all just battling ourselves. This theme is exactly what season two explored, while at a slower pace than the previous arc, it often did so very well. The past becomes us, in all its various and sinister ways. We can either embrace it and find power in it or we can be its victims. Sometimes we are both.
That said, Jesus, those god damned talking dolls are just not okay.
We last left off with Vanessa in the belly of the beast and confronting the disturbing simulacrum of herself, naming her a murderer. Not only has she recently stabbed Ethan’s former victim in defense back at the cut-wife’s cabin, but she also unleashed hell on that jerk lordling in the Moors by using her hexcraft to have him fall prey to his own pack of hunting dogs. Honestly, both idiots deserved it so it’s kind of unfair of Lucifer to be all preachy and finger waving about it, but here we are. Falling back into her old comfort of Christian righteousness, Vanessa refuses to be swayed by the mocking and names him as the fallen angel that’s been quietly working to bring about this whole mess upon the heads of everyone.
“Who is the liar here? You claim to walk with angels, but your every action speaks otherwise.” The fact that this is coming from a replica of her own face is an interesting choice given the clout that mirrors have had over the course of the last several episodes and the idée fixe of “know yourself” gets hammered home once again.
We also learn that whatever forces and manipulations have been working to bring Vanessa to this point also require, at least at some level, her consent. A large part of this scene focuses on trying to attain that allowance by any means necessary. No one knows Scripture better than the devil and while her faith has always been Vanessa’s greatest comfort, it is also Lucifer’s sharpest weapon.
Vanessa isn’t the only one being confronted by the horrors of her sins, locked in the memory room and surrounded by their own personal hells, Victor and Malcolm are still being strung along by the apathetic incompetence of their parenthood. The tragedy of Proteus dominates here, “Like a lamb I was, Victor. How could you let me be hurt?” Which immediately prompts Victor to disavow any ownership of his crimes by pointing out that it was John Clare who killed Proteus, with Clare reasoning “But what am I, but an extension of you? All your sin emptied into me. I am your other half, your truest self.” Again we have the idea of reflection, and as if we had any doubt of this season’s philosophical obsession, we are demanded by the narrative to know ourselves, no matter how ugly the visage.
Both Victor and Malcolm’s families stand testament to the sins visited upon them by their fatherheads and both desperately deny any blame in the fates that befell all those in their orbit, refusing to acknowledge the situations they themselves constructed, “Did you name a mountain for me?”, “Did you enjoy her body as I bled?”, there is no colder hell than one’s own mind.
“Did we ask for this life or was it your pride?” Victor Frankenstein and Malcolm Murray share a fatal flaw, hubris. The fact that they are both trapped in the same room together, tormented by the ruins of families they have destroyed isn’t a coincidence. There is a symmetry within the plights the two men experience and their dual torments expose the grand scale of their choices, of which neither have ever really seen the direct consequences for, instead it’s those they’re supposed to care for that fall victim.
Both cling so tightly to the identities that each has manufactured for themselves, Murray the explorer, intrepid adventurer of Africa and Victor consumed by his reckless status as a scientist in order to sterilize all humanity and responsibility from the terrible things he has played at. As both begin to collapse under the weight of what they’ve done, they’re both contrite, ruing that they would do the past another way given the chance, but “life only leads forward. There is no going back. “
All of this explores two key concepts that stretch to every character in this episode, the first is atonement. How do we correct the depravities of the past? The other is the polarity of the kindness found in lies and the cruelty of the truth. As Victor and Malcolm’ s children push them towards suicide, Vanessa has become locked in her own hell, the temptation of normalcy, as a fantasy plays in her head of herself living an innocent life with Ethan and their children. It’s a vulgar fiction as Vanessa will never be a simple woman and Ethan isn’t even exactly human himself. “There is an old dream in you, a deep longing. To be free of pain, to be loved simply for who you are. Is that not the engine of all human creatures?”
This phrase from Lucifer also marks the second time this episode uses the word “engine” as reference to either motivation or the means to attain desire. It also has a connotation of artifice and intervention, especially with the context that the early 19th century was still reeling from the previous century’s Enlightenment. Western society was struggling with the Judeo-Christian morality it had always participated in and was coming into conflict with the radically evolving understanding of science as the discipline continued to develop and expand. Within a few years Darwin would present his theory on evolution, critically challenging the way humanity saw itself in the scheme of the world. Dinosaurs were already a known factor to the Victorians and Nichol’s nebular hypothesis was entreating our culture to look outside of the immediate and into where we fit in the universe as a whole. Science was effectively making us know ourselves and it’s an uncomfortable process.
Still locked in their mental hells and close to falling into suicide by cajoling corpse children, Victor and Malcolm are being tempted by the truth in their lies, that death would be a great adventure, the final discovery, while Vanessa breaks free of the mental prison pretty fast. “You offer me a normal like. Why do you think I want that anymore? I know what I am.”
Oh, sweet Jesus, finally a good devil magic scene. Screaming at each other in the Verbis Diablo as Vanessa once again taps into the old darkness and her power fully comes into fruition as she goes toe to toe with the fallen prince. She commands Lucifer, “Beloved, know your master.” right before straight up destroying that creeptastic doll, scorpions spilling everywhere. Oh. Crap.
The scene culminates in that god damned brat, Hecate, making herself useful for once and releasing Ethan from his trap. She was probably hoping in his werewolf rage he would go after Vanessa and contain the clearly out of control situation, at least in part, but instead he went directly after dear old mum and rips out Evelyn’s throat. It’s the most action we’ve seen from this show in weeks and, I won’t lie, I was pumping my fist in the air like an idiot when that went down.
This also marks the first time Vanessa is seeing Ethan’s beast and it’s a fairly tender moment we get to witness as she handles what he is with grace. The moment makes you wonder if atonement is necessary in the face of acceptance. But with these two, nothing is ever that easy.
Poor fussy Professor Lyle has been being choked by the same witch for what feels like the span of two episodes now only to pull out a gun and utter a line that would make RuPaul so damned proud, “Never underestimate a queen with lovely hair, my dear,” right before busting a cap in her. Which, it turns out, totally works on them.
With the witches dropping like rocks in a pond, the power of the torture room begins to abate, and in effect losing its grip on Frankenstein and Murray. I find it pretty interesting that the two most egotistical of the group were also the ones that failed to save themselves. In fact, both were on the verge of falling prey to the room’s devices. Even my man, high dandy Ferdinand Lyle was able to get away on his own and these two weren’t.
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