It was an odd feeling watching this episode of Penny Dreadful.
Up until this point every moment and scene was done to build to the conclusion of the last episode, which saw the assembling of the “monster hunting” team. There was a clear trajectory of every storyline that built upon each other until the series was set up. Along that way the feeling of dread and darkness cast a shadow over the series and piqued our interest, but now that the set up is done, what now? Well, this episode answered that question. “Demimonde” had the distinction of being the halfway point of what has turned out to be a brilliant season of television so far. However, the episode was fairly stagnant in most of its storyline, which worked in some of the story lines and somewhat failed in others.
The episode found the team further studying their captive Fenton (in a lovely performance by Olly Alexander). This time, they focused on the blood, which revealed that the young creeper was involved in the drinking or eating of blood. This reveal proved little shock since we’ve had our suspicions that his master, and Mina’s keeper, was some form of Dracula. However, when Fenton escapes and calls his master to the house, we see it isn’t the tall, pale, and handsome that we are used to when we think of Dracula. It seems our adventurers are in over their heads.
However, the main course of the episode was served up in small moments that gave us (and held from us) insights on our characters. This is where my frustration with the show began. During the first three episodes I was allured to the mystery that was Penny Dreadful. It seemed that everyone had some sort of darkness hidden away in the shadows. I found the show’s ability to hid its cards refreshing in a time where so many shows feel the need to shock us and with twists and turns that we didn’t see coming. I found the slow build of some foreboding darkness to be part of the charm of the series. However, that charm has quickly faded away. I’m tired of waiting for something I didn’t know to be revealed. That first reveal of Dr. Frankenstein was marvelous and satisfying, but it seems the other characters are hesitant to do the same.
The center piece of the episode was the Grand Guignol performance where almost all of our characters converged. The anticipation of something going wrong, between the fast cuts to Caliban working backstage to Broma’s sheer joy at the performance to the seductive stares between Vanessa and Dorian, was painful. I was aching for something to happen, but it never did. It seemed that the cliche of some disaster happening in a theatre didn’t apply here. Instead, we got more mystery.
The beginning of the show started with Dorian in the middle of some convoluted orgy with multiple men and women performing acts that Dorian seemed unfazed by. However, when they were all gone and silence creeped through the picture room, he entered a dark hallway containing the famed portrait, which he stared at intently. We never got to see the picture, perhaps their saving that reveal for later, but again the mystery simply continues.
We do get some relief on the mystery in Broma’s storyline, when she reveals to Ethan that she went into prostitution because of an abusive relationship. However, the hairpin trigger of seeing Dorian again was a bit excessive and convenient for the writers.
Ethan constantly has small eater eggs to the Ripper case that continue to point to his guilt in the matter. My issue is that when it is revealed for sure that he is the ripper, that the shock is gone. There were one too many flashes to past events that troubled Ethan, that confused him. Some that even evaded him, such as the title of the play “The Transformed Beast.” His anger at the situation finally comes out at a sort of bar, but it never builds past that.
What it does build toward is Dorian’s seduction of Ethan. It’s not necessarily a sexual seduction, but rather a seduction of baggage. We are still unaware of the true darkness that trouble Ethan, no matter how many times it is hinted at. I think that he was attracted to the same darkness that trouble Dorian. Their night together simple revealed that these are two men who are tormented with themselves. The difference is that Dorian has a way to project that torment. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, brush up on your English gothic literature.
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.