Well, well. Joss Whedon pulled a Keyser Söze on us!
A ton happens in “Hanged,” the penultimate episode of this first half of the first season (so many qualifiers) of The Nevers, and we’ll get to a lot of it. We will! But first, let’s talk about those final seconds as Effie Boyle—newish journalist character, dressed aggressively in shades of beige, irritating to Inspector Mundi but pretty much an accepted face at the police station after weeks of hanging around—takes out some fake teeth, removes the padding in her corset, pinches off the end of her nose, and then shakes out her hair to reveal herself as Maladie all along. Voila!
The Nevers loves it baddies, so it’s not entirely surprising that Maladie adorer Clara swapped places with her, and willingly chose to break her own neck so that the Colonel could put the electrocution plan in action. Until we find out the entire history of whatever went down between Mrs. True and Maladie, The Nevers isn’t going to write out the latter character; she’s clearly here for the long haul. What does feel rushed in this episode, though, is like … why any of this is happening at all?
Maladie’s motives remain jumbled and unclear. She’s gone from hating everyone to specifically hating Mrs. True back to hating everyone; she’s gone from killing random people to killing “angels” to now killing as revenge. Her actions shift with each episode; the character doesn’t have a thorough line. I think The Nevers wants Maladie to be their Joker: a character causing chaos wherever she goes, and acting purely for her own amusement. Amy Manson certainly has the unhinged grin for it, and her purposefully provocative body language—toward Dr. Cousens, toward Mundi—does a lot to sell her, “Fuck you, I’ll make you uncomfortable if I want” vibe. But past the momentary thrill of seeing one character transform into another, I’m not sure what else we’re supposed to feel about Maladie’s return. We barely knew her; did we really feel her loss?
“Hanged” assumes that we care about Maladie enough to be both torn up by her death and reinvigorated by her deception, and it spreads that presumptive quality regarding our reactions far and wide. Joss Whedon wrote this episode, and it sure feels like certain chunks of exposition and character development felt missing, didn’t they? Mrs. True keeps dropping the word “Galanthi” like we should know what it means! Perhaps I am totally blanking, but has the force or being who delivered that song through Mary to Mrs. True been referred to as “Galanthi” before? I watched “Undertaking” again, and perused through my notes, and didn’t notice a mention of it. Is the name inspired by Galanthus, the Latin name for the snowdrop flower? Did Mrs. True and Penance choose this moniker because the vessel looked like one of those flower buds? Did they further translate Mary’s song and come upon that term? I don’t know! But The Nevers just slides in that terminology until finally, 39 minutes into the episode, Mrs. True says in a throwaway line of “Galanthi,” “I know I’ve been vague about what that means.” Yes, Mrs. True, you have.
Something else strange: the sudden rift between Penance and Mrs. True. Up until this point, the two have been phenomenally close—best friends, colleagues, confidantes—with Penance stepping up to defend Mrs. True both when others don’t believe in her, and when Amalia doesn’t believe in herself. Is The Nevers really equating Penance’s discomfort with seeing and hearing people sexing it up with her fear of oppression against the Touched? And combined, would those put Penance so on edge that she would believably turn on Mrs. True and instead forgive kidnapper Maladie? Has Penance spoken of her faith before? Her insistence on forgiveness, how she beseeches Mrs. True that they’re all “a part of God’s world”—those hint at a religious belief that this episode leans on quite heavily to justify her break from Mrs. True. But much like how The Nevers treats Maladie like a narrative shortcut this episode, I’m not sure it’s done the work so far to fully convey what a rift like this would mean for the women, men, and children who live at St. Romaulda’s Orphanage.
Perhaps “Hanged” would have been more effective if it focused solely on that Mrs. True/Penance argument, and really dug into how other members of the orphanage reacted to it, and what ensuing lines were drawn. Do the Touched want to be about survival or acceptance? Compassion or vengeance? The scene set in the orphanage’s courtyard, with that box of identifying blue bows that the Touched now have to wear prominently featured, and Desirée reading from Maladie/Boyle’s editorial “A Nation Shamed,” and Penance listening as Bonfire Annie, Nimble Jack, Harriet, George Thorns (Brett Curtis), and others trained and discussed the country’s first public execution in 30 years, had the right idea. The Touched are different genders, ages, sexualities; come from different families, classes, countries; surely have different opinions on what they should do with their powers, and whether they even want a leader at all, or if it’s best to stay in London. Building out the Touched’s interior world with that conversation might have imbued the Penance/Mrs. True fight, and the eventual “Maladie saved herself!” reveal, with more impact.
As has become custom for The Nevers, though, “Hanged” is all over the place in terms of varying villains and subplots, restarting certain relationships, hinting at others, and linking together unexpected alliances. Let’s start with Lavinia Bidlow and Lord Massen, because I have to admit here that some of my theories about them were wrong. I thought Lavinia had helped spring Machine-Gun-Guy from prison and sent him to murder Mary because she knew from Mrs. True and Penance where Mary’s song would be performed, and I thought Lord Massen was just trying to intimidate Mrs. True, rather than spill his guilt, when she visited him at his estate.
But Lord Massen and his comrades admit responsibility for the murder of Mary in that meeting with the Prime Minister, and I’m assuming they acted on information provided by the missing Lucy: “We showed our hand siccing that ghastly gunman … on Mary Brighton, and for what? Within a week, the orphanage has doubled its roster.” We also learn that Massen, not the Beggar King, sent the water-walking Odium after Mrs. True when she was traveling back from that lair where Dr. Hague’s human/robot hybrids were luring the Touched. So Lord Massen is spreading his power far and wide, including enlisting the Beggar King to help cause the riot after “Maladie’s” execution. The Beggar King doesn’t seem like someone who would abide Lord Massen for very long, but money talks.
Meanwhile, Lavinia flirts? I think? with the ghastly Dr. Hague. Maybe I’m wrong (again), but Lavinia seems more interested in killing whatever the Galanthi is (“more chrysalis than egg,” as described by Dr. Hague) than in killing individual members of the Touched. I don’t mean to suggest that Lavinia would care at all if, say, Penance died. But think of how pleased she looked when Dr. Hague praised her “moral compass,” and elevated her past Satan himself in terms of ambition. Lord Massen is obsessed with protecting his country, specifically, while I think Lavinia believes she’s protecting humanity, wholly. How do you stand against such zealousness? And when Lavinia learns what her brother is, will that change things for her?
Speaking of Augie, I don’t think he would peep on you, Penance! He’s too pure for that! (Unlike Hugo Swann, “a pimp with a gimmick,” according to Mundi.) Interesting, though, that Augie sides with Mrs. True [alongside Bonfire Annie, Mrs. True’s renewed lover Dr. Cousens, and Su Ping Lim (Pui Fan Lee)] in going for the Galanthi, while Penance gathers to her side Harriet, George, Desirée, and Nimble Jack (and, ultimately, Su Ping Lim, who Mrs. True sends to protect Penance). After Penance and Co. realize that Maladie didn’t need saving at all, and barely escape from the riot with their lives, they limp back to the courtyard to find Mrs. True’s crew, bloody and battered. Next week’s mid-season finale “True” has to switch perspectives so we see what that attack was like for them, because I refuse to believe The Nevers would let a nodding assent to “Go all right?” be our only glimpse into whatever, or whoever, the Galanthi is. And an episode named “True” has to explain whatever, or whatever, Mrs. True is, of course. Oh, and provide a definition of what “The Nevers” means already! The people demand it.
Stray observations
- Lord Massen’s diatribe against electricity … you’re not going to win this one, my man.
- “We took a vow to protect the empire, not to kill for sport,” the prime minister said. Cut to me, staring in colonialism.
- What if this show cast Nikola Tesla? I’m not sure I could handle that!
- The crowd’s “Drop the bitch!” chant at Maladie’s execution had real “Lock her up!” energy.
- Clara might not have been Maladie, but kudos to Briggs for great comedic timing and delivery. Clara interpreting whatever noises coming out from underneath the area where the execution was held (the Galanthi further cracking, I’m assuming?) as the Devil calling for her, and cheekily ad-libbing “Quit yelling, love, I’ll be down in a minute!” was good stuff. The student becomes the master, etc.
- “A crack in the soul of the city,” wrote Maladie-as-Effie in that editorial; when Lavinia and Dr. Hague look upon the increasingly revealed Galanthi, they notice it has a crack too. Has Maladie seen the current incarnation of the Galanthi, or that was just on-the-nose writing?
- We’ve seen Maladie take lives, and now we’ve seen her save one: She rescues Harriet from being trampled by the non-Touched she helps escape the riot.
- On those nooses hung all around the orphanage courtyard: First, why wouldn’t Mrs. True have posted a watchperson in the courtyard, given how hot tensions are getting between the Touched and everyone else? Second, if you haven’t read Pulitzer Prize finalist Soraya Nadia McDonald’s exceptional essay on the neck as “the point of subjugation and control” on one’s body, you should.
- Details of the Maladie-as-Effie reveal that don’t exactly add up for me: Did Maladie kill Effie all those weeks ago, and then when she assumed Effie’s identity recently, pretend she’d gone on a trip or something? Or did she invent the Effie Boyle persona out of thin air, inspired by that dead woman?
- Lavinia’s headaches at lunch with Augie: maybe something, maybe nothing.
- “The world is watching,” one of Lord Massen’s peers says of the execution. This could be taken two ways, I think (and speaks to a question I’ve posed before). First, that London/the UK is the only place affected by whatever the Galanthi did, and the entire world is just being ghoulish in following Maladie’s case. Second, the Galanthi affected other places too, and international curiosity in what happens to Maladie is inspired by the possibility that other nations deal with their Touched by mimicking this execution.
- Best lines of the episode go to Hugo Swann and Mundi, with the former’s “What a strange fate. We’ve become men with offices” as he looked around Mundi’s teetering stacks of files, and the latter’s bemusement at Hugo’s complaint about an unhappy member of his sex club: “Send him a fucking horse, or whatever you rich people do.”
- Meanwhile, Penance—who normally is so much like Willow Rosenberg—actually gets a little Buffy-like with her description of her anxiety: “It’s like we’re being tested, but it’s that dream where the test’s over, and you’ve not found your pencils.” In Buffy season one episode “Nightmares,” one of her worst fears involves a history test for which she hasn’t studied, and during which she doesn’t even have time to write her name.
- Did Dr. Hague’s lobotomization of Miss Cassini not fully work? Notice that she was still causing items to float while digging. Or, do Touched powers eventually come back, even if one’s brain suffers damage?
77 Comments
The last episode was just so much more “sprawl” (Thank you, AV Club). Further, I found even less to like about each and every character (no investment after Mary was murdered).Asking the Commentariat: did you like this?Also, I think it’s fun to remember how Donnelly-as-Jenny would have pronounced “hanged” on Outlander: Two syllables – “Hang-et.”
I liked this episode more than Roxana did, as it was structured on a suspenseful set piece in one fraught location. Penance wanting to rescue a serial killer from state execution was a nice statement against capital punishment even for mass murderers. You could argue Maladie was mentally deranged while she did the murders, a real life painful parallel to our own system where we do execute such people. I didn’t need a reason for Penance’s actions than that it offended her morality. Penance and Amalia make nice contrasts: the light and the dark, the optimist and the pessimist about human beings. Even their names: Amalia thinks she knows the truth about how people are, while Penance dares to believe they can change for the better. I have crushes on both characters.I don’t remember who Clara is. I would have remembered a member of Maladie’s group who looked like her in a previous episode. Maladie as Effie knew how to write journalism all of a sudden? Ok. Before the switcheroo I was thinking it was neat they had Manson play a totally different character, as some shows (Seinfeld, for example) do, no in-story reason required. Oh well.A theory: Maladie is the bad possessed whatever it is to Amalia’s good. Or whatever tried to possess her broke her brain, so they tried a new way with Amalia, who may be invented from whole cloth.I was confused as well about how they knew to call the thing underground the Galanthi. It’s been a month since the events of the last episode, I heard in the dialogue here. Maybe we’ll get a flashback to it. The show does feel rushed in its plotting, almost as if Whedon knew he was going to be fired from the project and made sure to cram as much of his story into the episodes as he could. Slowing down would help a lot. The ingredients are all here for a great series. At least Victorian London could be explored in depth.
Yeah Maladie being able to transform so well into Effie didn’t really work for me. I get that the real Effie was probably a well known, controversial woman reporter, so no one saw her behaviour as strange. But… I did remember Clara because there was a scene where she discussed her lack of toes or her toes were cut off or something—God I should remember the details week’s later but all I remember is lack of toes 😛
As for the Galanthi mention–I assume it was off camera too that they decided that the song lyrics absolutely meant to start digging under London to find it? The show has done this weird type of plotting before but about more minor details–like last week when suddenly ALL the villains were calling True “The Widow” and the viewer was just meant to instantly know who they mean even though no one called her that before…
Clara was telling Mary that cutting off her toes was going to give her powers like Maladie.The part that doesn’t work for me on Effie, was she disfigured after the killing? Why wouldn’t anyone recognize the well known controversial reporter?
Very good point re her body…
The way everyone just knew of Galanthie and was using the name casually drove me nuts in this episode as I kept trying to remember did they establish that term in the message last episode. The pacing of this show is crazy as if they knew they had this many episodes, which had to be aware of when production started, why the hell are they overstuffing everything like this.To me, the ‘You x-ray’d London’ was another groan-worthy moment of rush as it makes no sense, but they just didn’t want to spend time to establishing how they found the ship. Which, to be honest, wouldn’t have even needed that much time.
Yeah, did they even say how she x-rayed London? It was all very lazy and seemed to know it “Just go with this…”
I think the Galanthi mission will be shown in full next week, which leaves me with two theories for what happened here:1) 5 and 6 were originally a traditional two-parter, but were re-edited in post so each would focus on just one of the two missions. They made a right mess of deciding which episodes should include what set up.2) Remember that it was originally a 10 episode season, later expanded to 12, but split into two batches. Maybe 5 and 6 were structured as is, with the two parallel missions being shown in separate episodes, but they were intended to air the other way around. And with only 6 episodes releasing in this batch, they were switched, presumably because the Galanthi side of things will end in a way much more suited for acting as a mid-season cliffhanger.
I too wasn’t clear who Clara was but fortunately there’s a wiki for that https://the-nevers.fandom.com/wiki/Clara_StoweShe’s the one who was missing some toes.Mundi by the end of the episode puts two and two together and realizes that its Clara and not Maladie who was lynched.
I had forgotten about Clara and for a second when the episode ended I was like “Huh, does Maladie have duplication powers?” Not sure if that’s me being an idiot/tired or if the storytelling around Maladie has just really been that vague and bad.
Wasn’t it obvious from the time she was introduced that Effie was Maladie?? She looked just like her!The whole episode was based on people making inexplicably bad decisions. This was easily the worst one so far.
Did Dr. Hague’s lobotomization of Miss Cassini not fully work? Notice that she was still causing items to float while digging. Or, do Touched powers eventually come back, even if one’s brain suffers damage?Do we know if he suppresses their powers or is it more of a mind control thing?The show is all over the place, I would expect it to start to make more sense in the second half or it’s going to fall apart in season 2, like Heroes…
I got the impression that working in close proximity to the egg is returning Miss Cassini’s abilities back to her – if not curing her lobotomy. Maybe she was being fully cured, however, she seemed to be aware enough to know to hide her levitation from the rest of the crew.
It didn’t seem to me that she was hiding it, maybe just not really registering that she was doing it, but the other person looking on was definitely aware of it. That may mean that, as you say, their proximity is kind of undoing the damage the Dr did and there are others that are pretending to be mindlessly working.
What bothered me the most of the Cassini scene was that it was presented as this meaningful moment, but they hadn’t really established if the lobotomy thing removed their powers or not. It is another aspect of how overstuffed this show is as they keep having these big moments that rarely feel such due to the lack of build.
If anything the resurgence of Cassini’s floating touch power suggests that its psychologically based. Thus psychological conditioning seems to be what the doctor does not lobotomy in the truest sense. Hence her power as well as most likely the other Nevers powers are not gone for good they will occasionally return.Speaking of powers was it my imagination or did Lavinia seem to gain the power to read minds this episode and then fly off in a rant as a result of what people literally thought?As is usual I’m sure this episode will rerun ad naseum. If you’re looking for it its the scene where Lavinia and her brother are talking with each other at a table.
I think there was a couple excitedly talking about he execution that drew her ire…
I thought ‘The Nevers” was on HBO but after that opening it turned out to be on the BBC.
So, who does everyone think will be dead meat by the end of the season?I have a bad feeling about poor Primrose.
After knowing Effie’s true identity, on the rewatch, you can tell it’s Maladie. She does a good job trying to hide her twitchiness, but it comes through here and there. Making her tits bigger was clever, it (they) act as a distraction both in-show and with HBO viewers as well. Lots to do with the lead trio’s nudity this episode.
Right but that would have worked better if we had seen the real Effie earlier–to see that she wasn’t so twitchy. But, since she was a corpse in episode one, that never happened.
I knew Effie was Maladie right away because I recognized her voice – there’s a rasy/reediness that can’t be concealed. My husband didn’t believe me until it was revealed.
How does anyone watch this show and not wonder “what bullshit was Joss Whedon pulling on this episode?”
Uh, it’s easy. I watch the show instead of obsessing over who is behind the camera. Nothing to it.
Yes, but Whedon is one of the most self-conscious writers in the business. Quip, quip, quip, quip. Everyone has a snarky quip for every situation. His brand is OTT so it isn’t unreasonable to be pulled out by his presence over the show.
Yep, just watch the show and pay attention to the characters/story. I only remember that Whedon is involved when I read the reviews and comments.
While I in general liked the concept of it all being a part of Maladie’s large plan to cause chaos, I completely agree with the review in that the show really assumed audience investments that it really hadn’t earned. This felt like it would have been a much more if it had been episode 10 or 12 with Effie being a much more established presence. Furthermore the attack was kind of weird, but that is what this show is.By the way, the review also really made me realize why Maladie is stumbling for me as much as she is. There is an attempt for her to be a Joker like character, but her actions and seeming goals are all over the place. After killing the psychiatrists, she goes mass murder in the Opera which again Annie was a completely willing accomplice in, but here it is about creating chaos. And the thing with using Joker in Batman stories is that he can be trying to do many things, but his goals within a single story are almost always consistant. That’s one of the things that makes the character of Joker so powerful as you get a sense there was a purpose in all that chaos. Something which does not apply really with Maladie.
As a sidenote, I loathed Penance in this episode. Before this I just found a little bit annoying, but now I’m fully hating her. Not because of her stance on death penalty, I’m opposed to it personally, but because of just how stupid the whole presentation of the argument was. Also what the hell was that kitten joke? It was almost sad to see how far Whedon has fallen as a writer as on Buffy or Angel he would have realized that how disruptive that was for the argument as a whole.My issue is that at core the argument was a really nuanced and interesting one considering what can be considered justice or not. Except none of that matter to idealistic Penance who could not care at all about any victims of Maladie, to be fair the show doesn’t either, or repercussions in intefering here. When True pointed out how it would be the worst thing possible for the Touched for them to prevent the execution of an unrepetent mass murdered, Penance to just shrug that off was infuriating.Again to agree with the review, I think if they had focused an episode on that debate, showed many of the different characters discussing it and expressing their views, and ended the episode with everyone choosing sides, I think it could have been powerful and told of us these characters. Instead we got Penance going full ‘Being idealistic means being a complete moron’ and then just characters choosing sides almost at random.
100 times yes (although since he didn’t script the episode, the kitten joke may not have been Whedon but just a writer trying poorly to sound like him). It just seemed, well, out of character for Penance to be SOO devoted to saving Maladie. They lampshaded this to some extent by having True point out ALL the reasons why P shouldn’t care, but still…
What made the execution debate so much more absurd was that it wasn’t that England brought back the death penalty for Maladie, but that they made the hanging public. Hence Penance’s sudden decision to save Maladie based on that decision didn’t connect as apparently she would have been fine if it was a private execution?Also what was a burden the episode could never handle is that they have established that Maladie was a famous brutal murderer who had wrecked havoc in the city. So there’s actually a pretty decent chance that they would have made the hanging public even if she wasn’t Touched, so positioning this about really protecting the Touched didn’t work at all.
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I’ve appreciated your perspective every week, despite having a diametrically opposite view of some of this show. Amalia and Penance are far and away the best part of the show for me and I could spend an hour just watching the two of them hanging out together, or, as in this episode, opposing one another. But, yeah, Maladie is problematic. Maybe Wessen’s paying the Beggar to create chaos is the clue – she simply *the* chaos agent with nothing deeper than that going on. But I suspect when we get Amalia’s backstory next week, we’ll learn a lot more about Maladie.
I agree that Penance and Amalia’s relationship is the clear highlight of the show so far. I kind of stop caring every time they aren’t on screen.
I didn’t mind Penance’s stance in the argument, but then seeing her actual plan made me go “What?” Because the goal as a practical matter (putting aside the morality) was to stop the precedent of the government being able to “kill the Touched for sport,” but openly being seen rescuing a murderer from execution was not going to help them toward that goal! If it had worked, the Orphanage would be raided and shut down the next day and if they’re lucky, everyone who was directly involved in sabotaging the execution would be arrested if not hanged themselves.
I didn’t even want to start on that plan as it was baffling. There’s no way that plan wouldn’t have resulted in deaths, most likely involving Touched, the police and bystanders. So not only would the end result in tehe Orphanage essentially becoming public enemy number one, it would have had a bigger death toll than if the execution had gone through,.
But hey, at least the government would have learned its lesson and nesxt time hanged the Touched in a closed setting. Which, again, Penance utterly fine with.
Yeah, Maladie really is the weakest part of the show for me. I have no idea why I thought maybe they actually would kill her (when she hanged herself, essentially) but I was glad to move past the character… Oh well.
Effie premiered last week but the reviewer didn’t even mention her—so yeah, I think they screwed the reveal by it being a character we had so little interest in.
The review seems confused as to if the body (from the pilot) was Effie or not but I’m pretty sure it was–hence why we saw Mundi write her name on the death certificate and presumably real Effie was an outspoken woman reporter, hence why everyone seemed to know who she was in the news room, etc. But, but, it still doesn’t really add up for me as to why.
The more I think about the Effie reveal, the more insane it feels.
First, when they showed the body of the real Effie in the pilot, they made a huge point about how it didn’t fit Maladie’s MO and there were heavy implications from Mundi that it was an attempt at diversion from the workmen. Then it was just completely dropped for a month before here it is revealed that it actually was Effie. Like I genuinely don’t think that was the original plan, but even if it was, just the way it was ignored was baffling considering how big of a twist it was supposed to be.Second, and this has been brought up here in the commentary, Effie is apparently a pretty big name as a journalist and is the only female reporter in the scenes. Yet despite all of this, no one could figure out that it was actually Maladie? That just requires such a massive suspension of disbelief the moment you think on it.
Yes, I don’t get why Effie’s murder was purposefully staged by Maladie (apparently) so that it looked like a copycat? And than Maladie-Effie even pointed this out again to Mundi in this week’s episode? Was that to show she wanted to get caught? She liked toying with him (fine, but, wha?)?
It would be clumsy and heavy handed for sure, but they should have previously shown that Maladie is a master of impersonation/disguise or something to set this all up. As it stands, the fact that apparently she was able to pull off the Effie ruses for *months* but normally can’t even comb her hair… I dunno.
The problem with making Effie more of a presence is that eventually I think people would’ve figured out the ruse. Every time she was on screen, my brain kept telling me *something* was off about her appearance. Why was she dressed so plainly? She was pretty much made to look as unmemorable as possible. She reminded me of like a smoothed-out Kristen Wiig. She didn’t quite look like a normal person. I’m glad I didn’t look up the credits during the show though.I had zero memory of Clara though, so that whole death part didn’t hit at all. She was in like 2 scenes for maybe 1 minute the whole series?
‘”I had zero memory of Clara though, so that whole death part didn’t hit at all. She was in like 2 scenes for maybe 1 minute the whole series?”’refresh my memory. Clara was the Never who has the broken touch. Everything she touches breaks and last episode it (or rather the episode before Hanged) she was revealed to also be a mole.Hence the surprise showdown betwixt Amalia and her. Which culminated in her causing a fault/earthquake when she touched the ground and Amalia allowing her to live but only if she left and NEVER returned(sorry couldn’t resist.)
No, that was Lucy. Clara was the Maladie groupie who thought if he did Maladie’s bidding, she’d grant her a turn. Like a vampire’s familiar or something. She was the one talking to Mary after they kidnapped her. But she was pretty forgettable.
My problem with all of this is that Maladie seems rather…well…stupid. To the point where in the pilot, I couldn’t figure out why anyone, let alone someone as seemingly strong and rational as Annie, would actually be following her. Drusilla was mentally ill, but she seemed savvy in a way that Maladie is not.
And now…I’m supposed to believed she orchestrated…all of this? I can’t even fathom how she managed to stay lucid enough to pretend to be Effie over the past two epsiodes. It doesn’t many any earthly sense. The woman we’ve seen for the past four episodes would not be capable of that.
Don’t get me wrong, the initial reveal had me absolutely captivated, and reminded me of The Prestige more than The Usual Suspects. But it still doesn’t make any sense.
I feel like the main struggle for this show has been the amount of episodes for them to work this huge plot into. If they had done 8 and 8 for a total of 16 episodes I think the character work could have been fleshed out a lot better. As it is it feels like they’re barely fitting everything in. Having said that it’s still good TV. Just far from the best I’ve seen when it has the potential to be in that category. I hope if it renews, season 2 is longer.
I was a little bit surprised when I saw that Whedon had both directed and written this episode. Not because of any quality issues, but rather I had assumed he had left the project at this point.Based on this I’m assuming the new showrunner is actually responsible for the second half of the first season, which is giving me a little bit of hope. Despite my criticism of the show, I do think that there is potential there, but it is just making these really weird creative choices. So I’m now optimistic that maybe the new showrunner will make the show less cluttered and do some more work on crucial characterizations and pacing.
Melissa Iqbal wrote the script for this episode, Joss directed. (The reviewer is wrong–unless all the credits are wrong?) But yeah, in the behind the scenes feature they mentioned that this was the first episode with some parts taped pre-Covid and some after the Covid break–so I guess Joss stuck around long enough to direct the post-Covid break too (was his exit announcement in November? So it makes sense that they could have come back from the break before then).
I should add that yeah, it was stated already that the new showrunner was taking over for the final 6 episodes. They took a break in production (although as the featurette to this episode showed there was, when filming this episode, already a COVID break) and put her in during the break.
On a positive note, I’m genuinely shocked how much Mundi has won me over and at this point he has become my favorite character on the show. He just feels nuanced, his character motivations are understandable and his actually really fun to follow around.Another character that has improved for me, again to my surprise, is Swann. In the first few episodes he was an insufferable caricature of a noble hedonist, but those interactions wtih Mundi have helped him a lot. I also really loved how he wanted to go to be with the commoners in the show before escaping back to the nobles. It felt so fitting for the character.
Well, this episode sure felt like an episode or two was missing between last week and this week’s. I’m guessing this episode (and next week’s) were shot long after the first four and had to deal with some Covid-19 related issues because it sure felt extremely disjointed.
The behind the scenes featurette that aired after the episode said this WAS the episode that was broken up because it had to take a break for Covid (which caused them to film the hanging scene completely differently—on a set instead of on location and with the crowd shot on a green screen in small groups and then digitally all mixed together).
Hmm, knowing that, I wonder if they knew time was limited on how many episodes they could film and wanted to get to a certain place before it ended to have the show make some sense. So they skipped a few episodes between this one and the last and just did a time jump where the characters suddenly knew the term Galanthi and where it was buried.. stuff that may have been figured out in missing episodes.
I think that’s very likely. I also, though, feel like this weird writing style–of skipping over some things and jumping to a place where the characters already know something–is done out of some sort of fear that they need to rush towards the “good stuff”. It’s like Whedon or someone wanted to prove they could still do compelling TV so didn’t want to waste time on the less interesting parts… (if that makes any sense)
Ah, I see. Makes sense.
Melissa Iqbal wrote this episode, not Joss Whedon, who directed. Can we refrain from the, “This episode sucks because Joss Whedon,” and focus on the actual material? Maybe if we did, we’d know that it’s not about how we feel about Maladie. She’s a murderer who’s exclusively spoken in abstract cuckooballs until this episode. We’re clearly not meant to be attached to her, while the show has easily made us attached to a lot of characters that are more in the background (anyone that doesn’t love Myrtle and Primrose are psychotic).
It’s more about the principle of publicly executing a Touched person. Amalia’s stance isn’t just that she doesn’t care about Maladie, but it was a really bad idea that injured several of their own as a result. Amalia is our audience surrogate.
For Penance, she makes an emotional appeal to the other Touched, which is also meant to make an appeal to us the audience. It doesn’t matter to me if Maladie dies, but it matters to me that Penance cares that she dies. Maybe I’m reading more into it, but she spoke in very religious language, referencing God, and earlier we see a lot of scars on her back. Her name is fucking Penance, so it just sort of feels like she grew up in an abusively strict, religious home, where basically existing lead to severe punishment, especially for someone so creative and outspoken. Being Touched has given her a sense of purpose and belonging. Mixing that with faith, when Harriet says, “She’s being hung for being Touched,” she feels it as a deeply personal attack against her apparently chosen people. It’s not that Maladie is undeserving of punishment, it’s that she’s meant to represent all Touched as she dies in a sadistic public spectacle. She wanted to defy their hatred more than she wanted Maladie alive.
“..has the force or being who delivered that song through Mary to Mrs. True been referred to as “Galanthi” before”Nope. I had just re-watched the previous four episodes over the weekend and the word is never spoken once. Closed captions bears this out. Then, suddenly, the term is sprung on the audience and we’re supposed to make the connection?
Did anyone have trouble actually making that connection, though? Did we need 10 minutes of exposition instead? It seemed kind of obvious what it referred to.
No, but a “I don’t know who they are exactly. I just call them the Galanthi,” would have helped. Introducing steampunk gibberish usually involves at least some slim context.
Agreed. True previously dropped several clues about herself/itself (being a soldier and being on an unknown mission) that didn’t get any backstory, but just sort of became understood based on context. I get the sense that Whedon is experimenting with providing virtually no exposition and hoping context will let the audience figure out what’s going on.
That’s not true. About 20 minutes into episode 2, when Amalia is first talking to Desiree.“Maladie has no idea what Mary’s turn can do, Mary is the voice of the Galan-” she cuts herself off as she realises Desiree’s turn is making her say it.We saw the ship crash in episode 1. Last episode we heard the translation of Mary’s song “I went inside the city, I was damaged.”Why do you need an extra line spelling out that the ship or pilot or whatever is called Galanthi?Besides, I’m not sure Amalia is supposed to know exactly what she’s looking for to explain it properly, it still seems like Maladie is the only who remembers seeing the ship.
Is Lavinia is touched?They really haven’t touched (heh) on why she is in the wheelchair and during lunch with her brother, it was revealed that she wasn’t always confined to that chair.It would give a bit more reasoning as to why she is both Benefactor and Tormentor.If say her legs did something similar to what Lucy’s hands did, it could explain the huge tremor during the execution and her duality in wanting to both support and “cure” turns.
She was in the wheelchair during the flashback scene, not saying that she isn’t touched, but if so it did not cause her to be in the chair.
I had forgotten that… good catch.
I thought maybe the tremor had something to do with the other team and the drilling for the Galanthi-related rescue/reconnaissance? Who knows.
“Joss Whedon wrote this episode, and it sure feels like certain chunks of
exposition and character development felt missing, didn’t they?”
Just to be clear, since a few of the commentaries seem to be going with this, Joss did not script the episode. He directed it. Melissa Iqbalwrote it, unless that’s a pen name of Joss that everyone here except for myself is unaware of. (Jane Espenson, the only writer featured in the behind the scenes featurettes, is back writing her second episode for the finale next week–so Joss is only credited with the script of the pilot). I mean he was still the show runner for these episodes, so… But he didn’t write it.
See this is why im never fully onboard with this show. Because it does things like have characters use terms (galanthi) out of left field that no one understands but are meant to find insignificant. And has another character decide to aid and abet a mass murderer, there by dooming the entire group as criminals more than theyre already perceived as such, cos…God?Its not as though Maladie is innocent and being hung on trumped up charges. So if she feels that strongly , they should have done a better job explaining it cos it seemed entirely stupid to me. Also i dont give a toss about Maladie cos they still haven’t explained what she was even doing or why. Sigh.
I like that they don’t spoon feed you information. You are left to work things out for yourself. It’s been weeks since the previous episode, so I assume that Mrs. True has explained everything to the members of the orphanage about the Galanthi, information we are not privvy to, so they are speaking casually about it without doing an information dump for our convenience. Also, Penance didn’t care specifically about saving a murderer. As was pointed out by a few characters, it was the method she objected to (public execution, against current law), because it seemed a specific way to attack all touched persons.
Is Harriet’s turn being able to turn things to glass when she blows on them? I was really confused by the grape scene from earlier, just assuming that the showrunners thought grapes turned clear when frozen. But it’s obviously a glass blowing (ha) ability, right?
Did the cut to the inflating balloon? our of the cart have a purpose? Is it going someplace?
Probably show up in season 4
Like remember that half second clip of a balloon inflating? It’s important now.
you sir are a probably a frequent HBO viewer.
Yeah I am so sick of this show playing ‘mystery box’ with the audience for stuff it’s apparently all too willing to reveal to the characters within it. It’s keeping secrets solely for a ‘shocking reveal’ despite that reveal already being out of the box within the story. It’s stringing along the audience for no reason other than to do so since it doesn’t actually equate to any rising tension within the story itself.
I really, really hope them ditching Whedon gets rid of this shit and I hope the wounds it causes won’t be too deep before we reach that turnover.
So who was that guy that flipped the switch and electrocuted the people at the execution? Had we seen him before? Is he one of the aristocrat dudes that Massen has been meeting with? I’m assuming he’s Touched, because it seemed like he was mind-controlling those guys in the tent.
He’s Maladie’s henchman. We saw him in episode two or three—whenever Mary was chained up–and I think again when Maladie had the doctor join her in the carriage. I think he is Touched, but can’t quite remember if mind control is his thing.
Yeah, one of my friends told me he has the power of suggestion. He made Mary almost eat a dead rat by telling her it was a turkey leg, and he made Cousens think the carriage belonged to him.
I had to double check that episode 4 was the episode 4 I remember watching, because this episode made me feel like I had missed an episode somehow.
The episode was directed by Whedon. But it was *written* by Melissa Iqbal, and the whole thing felt like it wasn’t part of the same series we’d been watching.
Feels so much like we missed the episode where they explain what a Galanthi is and what Lavinia wants and how Massen killed Mary and who the character of Effie was supposed to be that I momentarily thought I was watching it on Fox and they had screwed with the running order.
I couldn’t help but notice the lack of any mention of those many hanging nooses(which allude to future possible lynchings… of ALL the Nevers).I would think Penances desire to save Maladies springs at least in part from a place of fear and self-preservation.