Penny Dreadful: Little Scorpion

Hmm, I'm not sure how I feel about this episode. I liked it well enough, and it had some really wonderful scenes strewn throughout it, but at the same time it didn't blow me away. And I'm used to that happening on a regular basis when I watch Penny Dreadful.

I was so excited when it opened with a monologue from Sembene. Finally, the man has lines! He's hinting at his backstory! He has wisdom to share! And that's it. We’ve got three episodes left this season and I'm losing hope that we're ever going to get anything substantial on Sembene.

(To add insult to injury, Vanessa confides the secret of her location to Frankenstein instead of Sembene. In what world is that decision even remotely logical?)

I'll also confess to missing the Vanessa/Malcolm bond which was such a central element of the first season. In fact, one of the great joys of this show used to be watching them interact and attempting to figure out just what the heck their relationship was. Now that it's been explicitly defined as foster father/daughter it's become considerably less interesting – to John Logan (I suspect) as well as to the audience.

And the rift between them has never been more apparent as when Malcolm tries to pass off Vanessa's fainting spell as female hysteria. Even Victor is weirded out by that.

So it's left somewhat ambiguous whether Vanessa's sudden urge to flee London is due to her realization that Malcolm has been compromised or that she's already got it into her head to even the playing field by fetching the Cut Wife's book of magic, though I suspect it's a little lot of both.

But shout-out to Ferdinand Lyle, who does his level best to encourage Vanessa's journey (and not to tell anyone where she's going, and definitely take Ethan with her for protection) without looking suspicious. He fails, but I think at this point Malcolm's shadiness is eclipsing everything else in the room.

***

So we return to the Cut Wife's house, where Vanessa immediately starts Death Glaring the tree outside.

Ah, tree. My old nemesis.

But it's not long before the shipping fuel starts, though in typical Penny Dreadful style, things don't go from cold-to-warm but warm-to-very-very-cold in terms of the dynamic that emerges between Ethan and Vanessa. So things start out well: they share their inner thoughts, tell each other stories from childhood, cut down the dreaded tree and plant a garden in its place; he teaches her to shoot and she teaches him to dance. 

It all ends with a slow-motion waltz in the house during a thunderstorm before lightning strikes the fireplace and sets the room on fire and destroys the roof so that rain pours in and they stare at each other silently before Ethan lifts Vanessa off the ground so he can kiss her – and are you watching Guillermo del Toro? Because Crimson Peak is getting released soon and it's important that you know how high the Gothic bar has been set.

We're looking at the Gothic at maximum capacity here...

But Vanessa is the one who breaks off the kiss, pushing Ethan away with the words: "we are dangerous." So what exactly did she mean by this? Did the "we" refer to herself and Ethan (ie, it's dangerous for them to be together) or was she referring to her demon? Others aside from myself have noted that her voice seemed a lot deeper and raspier when she said these words, indicating perhaps that the demon had stirred inside her.

After all, we know that her brand of possession is brought on by arousal (Dorian Grey is still confused over that one) and that the devil has visited Vanessa on at least one occasion in the guise of Ethan, so what was really happening in this moment? (That's a rhetorical question; although I think the show could do with a bit more clarity on what the devil's game-plan actually is, there are other scenes in which ambiguity is no bad thing).

Tensions continue to rise when they run into our old friend Lord Snooty McWitchburnerson in the forest, who wastes absolutely no time in re-establishing his assholery.

Issue the first: what's the deal with him and Evelyn? Last season she spoke of her "late husband", which hypothetically could have been referring to a completely different man, as it's certainly not this one. So are they separated? Divorced?  Is there some odd witchiness going on considering Evelyn is living it up in the city without society giving her sideways glances for neglecting her marital duties? And won't the authorities find it a tad suspicious that London's newest couple (who have been making no secret of their affair) have each lost their spouses within what must be no more than a few months?

Issue the second: Vanessa's desire to kill Sir Geoffrey Hawkes (cheers, IMDB) and why it's apparently a bad thing. I have big issues with the ever-popular storyline of "Character A wants to pursue justice but Character B insists it'll have a detrimental effect on their very soul and eventually manages to bring them around to their way of thinking."

Obviously I'm not advocating murder, even of men like Sir Hawkes, and ultimately I agree that vengeance is detrimental to the person trying to accomplish it – but I also bristle at the implication that taking a life will somehow "taint" a person, and the way that this narrative so often plays out in such a condescending manner. Think of Xavier in First Class telling Erik that killing the Nazi who shot his mother before his eyes while he was still a child wouldn't bring him peace, or of Gunn on Angel insisting to Fred that her desire to dispose of Professor Seidel (the man who trapped her and several others in an alternative dimension with the expectation they would die there) would irrevocably change her. (That second example is especially pertinent considering Gunn – like Ethan – decides to take the life of the man himself in an effort to protect the woman he loves from the "spiritual consequences" of killing him).  

In both cases the crimes of the Nazi and the Professor are unprovable; a court of law is completely powerless to bring them to justice. So what exactly is meant to happen? It's all very well to encourage wronged people not to "become like them" by refraining from murder, but this is to ignore the fact that a) the real villains remain at large, untouched by any real consequences and free to do more harm, and b) there's a world of difference between killing an innocent person and killing a killer. Fred and Erik and Vanessa want to rid the world of genuinely dangerous people, which hardly makes them a second Professor Seidel or Sebastian Shaw or Sir Geoffrey.

But wait – I hear you say that the killing of these villains is simply the first step on the road to hell for each of the characters involved. Erik starts his career by murdering an evil, twisted Nazi and ends it (or at least continues it) by tying a teenage girl to the Statue of Liberty and making her absorb his power in the full expectation that she would not survive the experience.

It remains to be seen whether Vanessa will follow in his footsteps, though I still wonder – what's the alternative to turning Sir Geoffrey's own dogs against him? Letting him go unpunished for the horrific murder of the Cut Wife? Letting him continue his pleasant existence as the Lord of the Manor which will no doubt involve him exerting his power against more helpless women, both young and old?

Again, that's a rhetorical question. No one should go around killing anyone, the general wisdom (if you're religiously inclined) is that God will eventually deal with the world's injustices, and in the above three cases we're throwing in a supernatural angle that further muddies the waters.

But it just bugs me, this idea that righteous anger is a bad thing and that acting on it will endanger one's soul.  And so when Ethan responds to Vanessa's thirst for revenge, first by deciding to shoot Sir Geoffrey on her behalf, and then by fiercely admonishing her for going ahead with the kill by using dark magic, it doesn't feel earned. Yes, I can understand his point-of-view, but it certainly doesn't help that we still don't have any solid understanding of his background. He feels guilty about the time he ambushed a tribe of Native Americans? He's haunted by his actions as a werewolf that we still know virtually nothing about? Maybe?

Perhaps Ethan does have enough life experience to lecture Vanessa on the dangers of surrendering to vengeance and bloodlust were it not for the fact that a) we have no real idea if this is true or not, b) it feels a bit rich considering he was giving her sound advice on how to kill someone earlier in the day (aim for the body, don't look them in the eyes) and c) if he is this show's depiction of a man whose soul is endangered for having caused too much death – well, it doesn't seem that bad. He's still capable of empathy, compassion and gentleness, just as Vanessa is.

The whole thing might have made more sense if Ethan had simply reminded Vanessa that although Lord Geoffrey deserved to die for killing the Cut Wife, it's probably not a good idea for a woman haunted by the devil to commit murder – especially when the fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Or perhaps the spell Vanessa cast should have somehow had other ramifications, such as requiring the deaths of innocent people which needed to have been weighed up against her desire for vengeance.

And to top it all off, this may have been the first time Vanessa's deliberately killed someone, but up until this point she's hardly been an innocent either. When Ethan coldly tells her "welcome to the night," I'm afraid I rolled my eyes. She's been living in the night since she was a child!

***

Back in London, Lyle is still unravelling the message of the Verbis Diablo and has reached another breakthrough: that the repetition of the words "lupus dei" signifies a sort of neurosis, as though the demon is repeating that which it fears.

There's a mishmash of symbolism at work here, with love likened to "the scorpion's sting" which is how the Egyptians described it, which is then linked to the eternal love between Amon-Ra and Amon-Net (thank goodness, I thought the show had forgotten about that!) whose conjoining brings forth the end of the world, which draws us back to – in Lyle's words – the scorpion, the demon and the hound, forever circling each other.

But Frankenstein is mostly preoccupied with his own love-life, especially since Lily is off on a date with Dorian Grey. And it would seem that Dorian can tell there's something supernatural about this woman (if anyone could, it's him) which opens up the question of whether he took her to the waxworks to see the resurrectionist exhibit on purpose.  

It's hard to tell with him, though the experience certainly seemed to jog something in Lily's memories. Was it recollections of her past that compelled her to go home with a complete stranger? Maybe, and yet Brona seemed like a reasonably gentle soul, so where did this newfound violence come from? More importantly – when will it be unleashed on Victor and Caliban?

Miscellaneous Observations:

That was a glorious shot that panned from the hanging cross to the book of witchcraft, one that captures everything about Vanessa's conflict of faith.

I worry that Ethan's speech to Vanessa about how to shoot something properly is him prepping her for the day (night) when she might have to shoot him. I recall that in The Wolfman movie with Emily Blunt, being shot by a loved one was the only way the werewolf curse could be broken, though it's incredibly bizarre that he hasn't told her his secret yet. At this point it's putting her in danger, as what if she had followed him out onto the moors the night of his transformation? We know she disobeyed the Cut Wife when she gave her similar instructions to stay inside.

The below shot is amazing. That's a movie poster right there.

Pure speculation, but I wonder if Frankenstein pondering "the hidden ones who will emerge" put him in mind of Caliban. If nothing else, I think he was reminded of Van Helsing when he threw the word "vampires" into the conversation.

Ethan (man, he said a lot tonight) telling Vanessa that he felt he "belonged" in the haunted Indian burial ground and that "we have claws for a reason" is further evidence that one of the major themes of this show is monsters fighting monsters.

Negative space appreciation!