Very much like last week’s episode was all about Vanessa, and a little of Caliban’s former life, “This World is Our Hell” was mostly focussed on Chandler. He doesn’t get the whole show to himself, but his journey is the focal point, and seeing as Chandler began the series as the audience surrogate, it’s high time he had the spotlight like this. And hey, any chance to show more of the Old West.
First off, I’ll touch on the one other storyline that featured in this episode. Frankenstein has purified Jeckyll’s serum and is again administering it to Balfour. That poor guy’s been through a lot though, couldn’t they pick someone else? Frankenstein warns his patient that all his memories of the world will be gone but surmises that’s a good thing as “it is our memories that make us monsters”. Clearly, it’s a little more than that as it’s not just Frankenstein’s memories that are provoking him to inject this man in the eye! Later as they wait, Frankenstein and Jeckyll reflect on their time in school. Jeckyll points out how different they are when Frankenstein admits if he had the choice he would not destroy his dark impulses. With all this teasing, we better get to Mr. Hyde soon. Jeckyll also asks if Frankenstein would be capable of performing this somewhat violent and definitely invasive procedure on Lily. But Frankenstein says he would, considering his time with Lily was the only time he was ever really happy. Which is pretty sad and pitiful. We earlier got a glimpse of him in his old lab, cleaning out the tub, shaving, and …smelling Lily’s old nightdress to attest to how creepily attached he is to her. When next they check on Balfour, he has lost his memories and cannot believe it when told he conspired against the Queen. He’s deeply sad and repentant, a sign that Frankenstein’s serum has worked. I can only conclude that faced with this result, Jeckyll is going to demand this treatment be given to him, and it’s through that that we’ll see Mr. Hyde finally surface.
But onto the crux of the episode. Chandler and Hecate are on their way to his fathers’ ranch which actually renders the previous story detours for Chandler pointless. Rusk was taking him there. His father’s bandits were taking him there. And now he’s going there freely. He’s just been passed to different travelling companions. Hecate lectures him on the way, telling him to embrace his sins. Her insistence on doing this seems to be rooted in his Christian beliefs which were never really emphasized before this point. Or is she just presuming he’s a ‘man of God’ as she puts it? Meanwhile, Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm are on their trail and Kaetenay can tell how many are in Rusk’s team in pursuit. He proclaims he is willing to kill every man necessary to save Chandler from Hecate even though he knows “Ethan will kill me the first chance he gets”. Lines like this just make the relationship between Chandler and Kaetenay all the more fascinating.
Both duos converge, though not in the same place, in the evening upon a campfire of Rusk and his men. Rusk and the marshal Ostow are talking (I love that all this time Rusk still wears his bowler hat), when he brings up his artificial arm. Did we know Rusk was missing an arm? This may be the first time it’s been brought up. He tells the story of how he lost it during the First Boer War in an ambush. He survived though and cauterized the wound himself before tracking the man who did it down. When he found him, he dragged him to Cape Town in chains. I don’t know if this level of backstory is needed on a character like Rusk, but Douglas Hodge tells the story with compelling vividness, that I liked it. Where they’re camping, Hecate reveals she’s quite partial to animals, perhaps another reason she’s attracted to Chandler so much. We get the “we’re not too different, you and I” cliché as she tells him how she was forced into demonic servitude by her mother as a child. Chandler likewise had a difficult history, and relates how he was enlisted by his father with the son of a prominent senator as his commanding officer. He tells the story Kaetenay referenced in “Predators Far and Near” of how they attacked an Apache tribe, Chandler did a lot of the killing, until his commander revealed a child he killed with a rock. Chandler then killed his commander, turned himself into the Apache and begged to be scalped. This story naturally tying into Kaetenay’s, is finished by Kaetenay, who tells Sir Malcolm he forced Chandler to fight the army he had served. He expands his telling how the Apache were hunted by the army, and as their numbers depleted they did cruel, even monstrous things. He and Sir Malcolm then make for the camp-out, Sir Malcolm to steal the horses, Kaetenay to kill the hunters. Hecate continues to seduce Chandler, taunting him that God allowed this, and promising again that they will smite their enemies when they create their own world. That’s when Chandler gives her his blood.
As Kaetenay prepares to slit one sleeping mans’ throat, a snake rises up from the ground and stares at Kaetenay. He makes the first move, but the snake bites him in the process. The other hunters awaken and soon find themselves surrounded by snakes, the manifestations of Hecate’s demonic enchantment. Sir Malcolm manages to steal the horses, killing Rusk’s man and firing on Rusk himself, but not hitting him. Sir Malcolm rescues Kaetenay and they escape. Rusk and Ostow also manage to survive, but their whole party is lost. Knowing Chandler is responsible, Rusk disavows his code calling him “a scourge upon the earth”.
Chandler and Hecate ride to a cave, losing a horse along the way. In the cave, Chandler tells the folk story of the boy called Apache who defeated the dark forces unleashed by the Coyote. And it’s no coincidence that when he mentions the creatures of the night, one of the paintings on the wall is clearly a scorpion. Before the end, Vanessa’s going to tie into all this. It’s also interesting that Apache seems to be the kind of hero Kaetenay wants Chandler to be. But that’s not going to happen as with Hecate’s encouragement, Chandler commits to evil, and goes to bed with her (because the Devil himself was unavailable). This all coming off of a mortally wounded Kaetenay telling Sir Malcolm that the night will never end if Chandler turns. He saw a vision of the world cast in darkness with Chandler among them, and that premonition looks to be coming true. Chandler and Hecate lose their other horse the next day and she begins to collapse from the heat. She seems to be dying in Chandler’s arms when Sir Malcolm and Kaetenay come into view. And I love Chandler’s reaction of “what the fuck are you doing here?” upon seeing Sir Malcolm. Their warm reunion is cut short though when Chandler tries to stop Sir Malcolm from killing Hecate. They’re interrupted when riders arrive with the same intention as everyone in America it seems: to take Chandler to his father. They take him, Hecate, and Sir Malcolm, leaving Kaetenay to die slowly as Chandler declares in the spirit of his former commander, “he’s not worth the bullet”.
The episode doesn’t quite end there though as we make it to the ranch, and are introduced to Jared Talbot played by the great Brian Cox (who given the fact he’s a Scottish actor, it must have hurt him to refer to Sir Malcolm’s whisky as “Scottish nonsense”!) He questions Sir Malcolm why his son has been living in his mansion, to which Sir Malcolm replies with a version of the truth leaving out vampires. I like how Timothy Dalton plays the scene as someone subtly anxious, looking for a window to kill Hecate. Talbot during this conversation, makes clear he’s incredibly racist to the Apache, and also intends to keep Sir Malcolm on his ranch. Meanwhile, Hecate recovers healthy and reminds Chandler what he must do. Finally we get Chandler face-to-face with his father, and he confronts him about the innocent people Talbot’s men killed on the train. Talbot brushes it aside and soon brings up Chandler’s sister with a heavy suggestion of Chandler’s guilt. He takes his son to his chapel which he has left unchanged since an Apache attacked. Here’s where we see what Kaetenay meant about the Apache becoming cruel, and the repercussions of Chandler’s actions during the Apache raid. As they survey the destroyed, bloody chapel Talbot relates in detail how the Apache killed his oldest son Paul as well as his wife and daughter, specifically how the man who took his daughter cut out her tongue and promised to do the same with her eyes. Chandler clearly is angry and disturbed as he’s being reminded he brought them there and is responsible, but stands firm, even when his father threatens him at gunpoint to repent. Chandler says he's done repenting just in time for the show to pull a cliffhanger by Talbot cocking his gun.
Chandler’s turn, though an interesting development, isn’t as strong or believable as it should be. It seems too easy, especially given how he knows Hecate. It’s also weird his religious affiliation plays a part, despite not having been prominent before. The history we’re given for him is good though and I like how his story and its subsequent consequences, suggest that neither Chandler nor Kaetenay is innocent of anything. Both did horrible things and both are responsible for what happened to the Talbot family. And I really hope this isn’t the end of Kaetenay. He’s too interesting a character, and Wes Studi’s too good an actor for him to die off-screen halfway into the season. I’m also left wondering where this leaves Rusk. He’s set on killing Chandler now, which might not be so easy so long as Chandler remains on Talbot property. As for Talbot, I love Brian Cox, but his character is pretty much just William Stryker in the 19th century. Just substitute mutants for Apache and it’s the same bloke. His parallels to Sir Malcolm are interesting, as is brought up in the show. Both have mountains named after them, both lost a daughter, both are father figures of sorts to Ethan Chandler, the difference being as Talbot pointed out, his child he can still save. How long will Sir Malcolm be around here, and how long can Hecate stay alive?
So though I may be engaged with what this episode is building more than its content itself, I liked a lot of “This World is Our Hell”. The Frankenstein interludes were fine but nothing unexpected, and in the main story my biggest problem is the swiftness of Chandler’s committing to evil. Maybe it would have been more convincing with a better actor than Josh Hartnett, but it just doesn’t work for me. And this is a major point for a major character, it should have been executed better. But I loved the camp-fire convergence (it has a very calm-before-the-storm vibe), and I definitely have a lot of questions as to where this will go. Somehow I doubt Talbot will pull the trigger at the start of the next episode, but that doesn’t mean shit won’t go down.
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