So Chandler awakens after killing a bunch of folks and is annoyed, to put it lightly, to see Hecate there. He awakens from a dream where he saw Kaetenay in blood (a sequence which also gives us some terrific western landscape). Though he wants to leave Hecate, she’s determined to accompany him wherever he’s headed. It’s not until this odd couple reaches a homestead to steal a couple horses that we learn exactly what Hecate’s plan is. She is enraptured by his wolf form and wants Chandler and her to be the King and Queen of Darkness. She also kills the man and his wife who own the homestead, making a point that Chandler is a murderer too, but when she does it it’s wilful. As they head on their way, their pursuers are surprisingly close behind. We see Rusk investigating the bar where Chandler attacked and noticing one persons’ injuries don’t match, indicating they were made by another. Later they catch up, spotting Chandler and Hecate in a valley below, opening fire, but not actually hitting their targets before they escape. Rusk and the American marshal seem to have a nice rapport going. After the attempt on Chandler, when Rusk states “Scotland Yard inspectors do not carry firearms”, the marshal responds with “then you’d do great out here in the west”. Sir Malcolm and Kaetenay only arrive in America this episode yet quickly track Chandler. On a train (almost the same as the one Chandler was on), Kaetenay reveals more about the danger he fears Chandler is in, and it’s all about Hecate. Sir Malcolm of course has experience with witches, the reason why he was recruited. Kaetenay also believes Chandler is some kind of saviour for his people, having apparently adopted him as an Apache. There’s then another great moment where a couple assholes try to remove Kaetenay from the train because racism, and Sir Malcolm stands and threatens them. I’m still liking everything I’m seeing with these two, and it can’t be said their story is moving slowly as they make it to the homestead this very episode, meaning they, Rusk, and Chandler and Hecate are all within a few miles of each other by episodes’ end.
Meanwhile there’s a little bit of back-peddling in Frankenstein’s story arc this episode. After the apparent successful experiment on Balfour in “Predators Far and Near”, he reverts, and Jeckyll explains his serum is only temporary, going against the implication of the last episode. While this does on the one hand allow for Frankenstein and Jeckyll to work further on perfecting it, it slows the pace of this storyline. Though I do wonder if Frankenstein will test his permanent serum on Jeckyll? Jeckyll has an outbreak after Frankenstein quotes the episode title, about repressing “the other man” making me more and more curious about Mr. Hyde’s eventual appearance. One thing’s for sure, they’re not going to create their “choir of angels”.
Vanessa on the other hand, goes through quite a lot. Her sessions with Seward are proving quite emotionally trying, but Seward believes in her. Vanessa goes further by describing the creatures that walk the city and though it frightens Seward a little, she agrees to go on. Outside of these sessions, Vanessa is thoroughly enjoying herself in the company of Dr. Sweet, the awkward scientist we now know is Dracula. They go for a walk in Chinatown, all the while followed by that same pale goon who’s been stalking Vanessa for three episodes now. They decide to turn into a House of Mirrors, and it’s not long before Vanessa loses Sweet and sees the vampire who followed them in, distinct for the fact that he has no reflection. The House of Mirrors setting is really good in this regard as it provides a claustrophobic environment to increase the fearful tension. Soon, the vampire corners her alone, but rather than attack her, just teases a few plot points, as much for the audience as for Vanessa. He references Dracula whom Vanessa like me, thought had been dealt with and he suggests that a figure from her past is the vampire lord in disguise. It’s enough to frighten her (the lecherous lick didn’t help either), and so later when in a tearoom with Sweet, she breaks off their courtship in distress. Sweet tries to learn the truth of what she witnessed but is unsuccessful. Evidently this vampire lackey was not acting on Dracula’s orders, as later a furious Dracula admonishes him for confronting Vanessa, and subsequently has all the other vampires cannibalize him in a gruesome scene made all the more horrifying by the focus on the child vampire engaging in this feast as well. What Dracula’s next move is, we don’t know, but I wonder if it means we’re ever going to see him as Dr. Sweet again.
Easily the most interesting story in this episode was Calibans, who has now returned to England rather quickly given he supposedly came all the way on foot. And he’s still being haunted by images of his former life, trying to trace them. He realizes he used to live with his wife and children in the Chinese district where he spots Vanessa and Sweet. He manages to locate the room they had lived in above a gambling den and forces the owner to reveal where the family who used to live there have gone. He’s directed to the docks and manages to find the downtrodden building they now reside in in poverty. He spies down on their apartment from the attic above. And in a quite contrived plot point, it turns out his son is sickened, possibly dying. The way it’s portrayed is something right out of Dickens. But I have to say, Rory Kinnear is great in these scenes. He’s always been good at relating his characters’ sorrow, and here they’re some of his finest moments. Despite all he’s done, Caliban is still something of a sympathetic tragic character and you feel immensely for his heartbreak in this scene, aided by the sombre music. He later robs a coachman of his pocket-watch and leaves it for the family, and even though it’s a stolen gift, it’s heartwarming to see the look on the mothers’ face when she discovers it. These scenes are executed with such finesse and feel so directly in the tone of a gothic tragedy, they’re easily the episodes’ best.
But they’re overshadowed by what takes place in Lily’s neck of the woods. Dorian has captured the man who first bought their new guest, Justine, as a child, and has tied him naked to a chair in his ballroom. The scene structure through this is very foreboding, setting up what could be a gruesome torture. Justine however, anxious as she is, just slits his throat right away and then takes out her anger by repeatedly stabbing his corpse. And then Dorian starts making out with her, unsurprising as Dorian gets turned on by just about anything. Then in accordance with a medieval practice Dorian had alluded to earlier, he, Lily, and Justine get naked, douse themselves in the guys’ blood and have a threesome. This sounds very exploitive and it is, but there is something to be said for how the music and editing try to convey this sequence as disturbing; disturbing but also erotic. If nothing else it is shocking (you have to wonder what Dorians’ portrait looks like now), but I can’t help but feel it has little going for it apart from the shock value. The morning after, still naked, Lily tells Justine she is their first soldier and they want her to recruit prostitutes and fallen women to their cause. Which we already knew essentially. Nothing new has come of their unusual sex scene, except Justine is more fully indoctrinated; but that was kind of suggested in the last episode and by the earlier scene in this one which had Lily commenting to Justine on the suffragette movement, as protesters are seen being suppressed by authorities. That scene also revealed Lily fully remembers Brona’s relationship with Chandler, hopefully hinting that the repercussions of that will come back, after last season failed to deliver on that front.
The ending was particularly fascinating. After her encounter with the vampire, Vanessa suggests Seward use hypnotism on her to see if she can find sense in what the vampire told her. Through the hypnosis, Vanessa envisions her time in the madhouse we saw in “Closer Than Sisters” and it’s revealed one of the orderlies was the man Caliban used to be, suggesting to Vanessa that Caliban is really Dracula! It’s a nice twist, both expanding on Calibans’ backstory and suggesting these two will confront each other soon. Which is great because I liked the chemistry Eva Green and Rory Kinnear had last season, even if its a shame it means the end of their sweet relationship.
“Good and Evil Braided Be” was a good episode, possibly the best of the season so far. That infamous sex scene will probably be seared into the memory of most who watch it, but it’s far from the best this episode delivered on. Vanessa’s arc, the Western story, and most of all Caliban’s journey were all really good and are promising better things to come.
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