SPOILERS AHEAD for like, everything, on this show so far.
The Day Tennyson Died
It opens up with a reminder of where we left off at the end of season 2: Vanessa has lost her faith, Sembene has lost his life, Frankenstein has lost his creatures, Ethan has lost his freedom. And all of them … are alone. Other than Lily and Dorian who are striking up some sort of unholy, undying power couple dynamic, each one of our “broken and shunned creatures” are isolated at the start of season 3. If this season is going to be about everyone spilling their beans and like, dealing with their shit, I’m going to have to tell everyone about that White Water Rafting Trip in 1999, and guys, that memory is all mine, ok? I’m hoarding those beans.
On this Episode of Intervention
Vanessa and Sir Malcolm’s once stately Victorian home has been neglected and ignored. It’s like a tomb: dusty, untouched and with a lone occupant, a very depressed Vanessa. Or like a crazy white ghoul who just straight up haunts the ever living eff outta the place and doesn’t check the mail. SAMESIES.
Without her family, without her faith, without Ethan, Vanessa is in her worst post-college break up mode. When you’re old enough to know you should be doing something with your life, but young enough to think that your life is useless because your college boyfriend left you to tour Europe with a humanities major who had a free summer abroad.
She needs help. I mean she’s got Amazon Fresh WAY before we do here in Memphis, but hey, I’m not jealous of her situation. Burning that crucifix last season was the end of her most potent lifeline, and we can see she hasn’t been dealing with it well, or at all.
DOORBELL! ACK!
She’s got that look you get when your UPS Guy knocks on the door on a Tuesday, and you haven’t showered in 56.3 hours. But thankfully, it’s not a hot delivery man in browns, it’s just Dr. Lyle, who’s like your gay uncle who comes by and is like, “No. NO. There isn’t even a place to sit down in here where I don’t feel like fleas are trying to mate with my arm hairs. Get your hair did, and call Merry Maids.”
Sass Queen
I loved how Lyle’s Orange Dreamsicle Hair was the first real glimpse of color we got in Vanessa’s fully black and white existence. And like a father figure, he gently gives her good advice and expects nothing out of her in return. She says nothing, just quietly folds herself into his lap, starved for human touch. Such a sad, but sweet way to flip the switch on Vanessa’s story from the end of season 2 to the start of this one.
Hot U.S. Marshals 16-Month Calendar
Leaving the grey behind and heading into the American west is a new venture for this show. Sometimes I forget that we were introduced to Ethan at a Wild West Sharpshooter show because he fits so seamlessly in the seedy London underbelly of the demimonde. Mostly because he’s super hot, and dirty dirty London is a place for doing it in alleys with hot guys in bowlers.
But here we have some crazy big train, bright sunshine and wide open spaces. Real talk: I have a physical aversion to the American west. All that open space with no trees to break it up gives me the willies. But a train car full of hot Federal Marshals to watch over little ol’ Ethan Chandler pretty much made up for it. Until SPOILER ALERT, they all get murdered by some ruffian cowboys.
Your haircut impresses me, and your face, and your introspection.
I saw this one coming a mile away, and I think Ethan did too. He looks bereft and tense when we first see him, but I’m choosing to believe that’s because he had to leave the love of his life behind, not because he is headed to an uncertain future where he has to face his evil father or a noose or eat everyone. Toss up angst.
BUT SRSLY … WHY DID ALL THE HOT MARSHALS HAVE TO DIE? None of them cowboy crazies looked nearly as hot. Bummer.
If Casablanca Was Really Sad
Timothy Dalton could rival Alan Rickman and Benedict Cumberbatch for Voices that Can Recite Women to Orgasm, but his sad letter writing and Poor Man’s Casablanca Hovel was giving me the sadz instead. Everyone has reached some sort of sad turning point. For Sir Malcolm it could have been Mina’s death in season one but she was kiiiiiiind of a Becky with the Good Hair, so instead it was Sembene’s and now the death of the Mystique of Africa™. He has no other worlds to conquer. He’s lost his faith in the same that Vanessa has lost hers.
I’d be drinking too, Murph.
BUT along comes Papa Wolf (that’s who we met right? Did he TURN Ethan, or did he just mentor him through it? Does Ethan HATE him??? SO MANY QUESTIONS) to bring some mysticism and meaning back to Sir Malcolm’s existence. And to take some scalps. That’s important. How else would we know he was Apache? Looking forward to this partnership, but missing Sembene’s quiet stoicism and mystery already.
*blink blink*
Flash from Africa straight to that ICE BOAT in the middle of the Arctic was like the Shekinah Glory in the darkness of my bedroom. I was not prepared for all that bright whiteness. But it wasn’t the only flash we got during this scene. We get a small glimpse of what the Creature’s life has been like and it’s pretty much the definition of the word: bleak. These jagweeds he’s with are openly discussing cannibalizing the still living children, just so they can make it … what … a few more weeks? Dayum. That’s ice cold. John Clare is too sensitive, to good for this nonsense. SooooooOoOooOOo … it’s time to break a neck and GTFO. But not before he gets a quick flash of his life before his creature-hood and horribleness. He had a kid! And a wife! And a complexion! (And shouldn’t he have had a glimpse of all this long before now because Proteus caught up with his past like Hour 17 of his New Life). Way to be super slow, John.
Anyway, I love how his plight is mirroring Frankenstein’s this season: he starts off alone, but will search for new family among the relationships of the past. Or something. Maybe.
Write me this slashfic
Dr. Jekyll appears on the scene as he is pelted with racist slurs and sewage, but still manages to give me Mr. Pamuk feels with that flowy ebony mane. And let’s be quite honest: throwing Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll together as bosom uni friends who did mad science together, but parted ways abruptly (certainly not amicably) only to be reunited when one is in dire straights and the other (after experimenting on himself) SEEMS to have it all together is a STROKE OF GOTHIC GENIUS. And nothing short of the greatest slashfic plot bunny to ever come out of a canon show. Someone get on their angsty college unrequited love story RIGHT NOW. There’s tension there.
The unresolved sexual kind.
Guess What Won’t Be a Shocker Now
I kind of stay away from spoilers for this show. Mostly because it’s so far never failed to bring really great levels of shock value, and I don’t want to screw that up by knowing too much. For instance: Ethan’s werewolf reveal and the Creature’s Entrance (Poor Proteus!) were genuinely some of the best TV shocks I’ve gotten in a while. I like to preserve that possibility.
So color me shocked when Patti LuPone’s character was Dr. Seward.
This was easily THE BEST SCENE in the episode: which was down to two things … these ladies killing it. Eva’s whispered rasp when she speaks to the secretary for the first time, probably the first time she’s spoken to anyone in MONTHS, was perfect. It hurt to listen to her, so you know it had to hurt for her to speak. Her quiet twitching and incessant scratching were so sad and obvious, but I loved every nuance she played in scene. None more than her honest joy at recognizing Joan Clayton in Dr. Seward’s face. Seeing the reincarnation of the Cut Wife gave her solace. She’s finding family relationships wherever she can, and this was not one she expected to ever see again. Beautifully done.
AND PATTI LuPONE JUST GIVES ME ALL THE LIFE. Her hair. Her demeanor. Her fierce intellectualism. This character is immediately compelling for the simple fact that she’s a woman practicing alienism during this time. Where did she learn it? How is she profitable? Who trained her? WHY does she do it? You are compelled to learn more and more from her because it’s so … pardon the pun … alien to hear it from a woman of her era.
And Patti LuPone plays her to perfection. She straight up READS Vanessa the interior of her soul and her psyche like it’s the phone book. She’s throwing truth and shade and we are all sopping it up.
Sweet Like Candy
But it’s the introduction of Dr. Sweet that turns the episode on its head, and gives us real hope. He so completely without guile that Vanessa cannot help but be taken in with his nerdy little charm. Yes, taxidermy the harmless childhood hobby. Remind me to set up a sawmill for my kids and find a couple of dead hawks for them to harmlessly gut and stuff. These folks are super weird. But the blossoming happiness on Vanessa’s face when she talks to Sweet is worth the creepy Deathstalker talk. MORE CUTES PLEASE.
So as he tells her to pay special attention to the dusty cases because they repay the effort, she returns home to a the dustiest of cases. Her own. And pays it much attention. Letting in the light that Dr. Seward said she was averse to. Removing the dustcovers. Cleaning the dishes. Basically, living my daily life. I just really want to look as hot as Eva Green when I’m scrubbing the floors. In a corset.
OMG THAT ENDING
Look, there are only a couple of things that you need to get audiences to come back to your show the next week: I don’t know what they all are, but I know one of them is introducing THE most famous horror character of all time at the last second. “My name is Dracula” was a perfect clincher to an episode that raised itself from the depths of depression to the cherry blossoms of hope. Killed it with one name.
What did you think of the Season Premiere of Penny Dreadful? What are you excited to see in the rest of the season? Check back with us next week for another recap.
Catch up on more Penny Dreadful on That’s Normal.
