Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Recap/Review: Penny Dreadful's 2x02: Verbis Diablo

Second episode into the new season and things are getting rather icky if a final scene is anything to go by. Some good stuff did happen along the way though.

Written by John Logan
Directed by James Hawes


The History Buff & Sharp Shooter: The one thing I loved about this episode was the mixing up of interactions with characters and the teaming up of Egyptian expert Ferdinand Lyle and Ethan for some of this episode was an absolutely joy, especially given that Lyle couldn't contain his delight in spending time with the American. Come to think it, was it me or did Ethan seem a little flattered by Lyle? Probably me but the two of them doing more research on the titular language and uncovering something about a werewolf guard was interesting as well. Speaking of wolves, looks like Ethan's little massacre might be catching up with him fairly soon.


Puppet Mistress: Not too much progression was made with the witch/cult/devil plot this week other than Evelyn working her magic on Sir Malcolm and revealing that Lyle was working for her (or rather being blackmailed into working for her). Well, we did get a creepy final scene where Evelyn took organs from a baby in order to put into a puppet and we saw that there was also a puppet of Vanessa, which also looked pretty creepy. On a slightly less surprising note, it also seems that Evelyn is rather threatened/jealous of Vanessa too.


Honest Conversations: Speaking of Vanessa, this felt like a different episode for her. Sure, there was the opening scene where she told Malcolm that even in prayer she wasn't safe from demons but then we had her and Malcolm feeding the sick at some kind of underground soup kitchen run by nuns and there was also her conversation with Caliban as well. I realised that away from Victor, Caliban can actually be a likeable character and his conversation with Vanessa was one of my favourite scenes ever involving the character. More to the point, I'm enjoying the fact that the show is having other characters interact with each other like with Vanessa/Caliban and Ethan/Lyle this week. I think it keeps things a bit fresher.


A Change In Everything: And then there was one of the more polarising plots of the episode. I know Billie Piper struggled massively with the Northern Irish accent last season but seeing a slightly amnesiac Brona lose it along with her long flowing brown hair and being renamed Lily by Victor kind of pissed me off for some reason. Not to mention the slightly obvious 'triangle' of sorts that's clearly going to emerge between 'Lily', Victor and Caliban as well.


Stay Young & Beautiful: Divorced from all of the main plots (hopefully only for now), Dorian Gray returned in this episode and when he wasn't slightly brooding over Vanessa, he was being charmed by the lovely Angelique (who at first I thought was going to be revealed as a member of Evelyn's coven) who Dorian later visited and had sex with offscreen. While I was disappointed with the latter bit, I do like that the show is continuing well enough with the queer/bisexual representation on the show but aside from that, I'm also hoping that Dorian does become more involved in the main plots as the season progresses too.

Next week, Vanessa meets the Cut Wife as we learn more about her past history with witches.

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