S01.E07: Possession

[blixie]

Hmm guess I was thinking of The Age of Innocence where Newland Archer seems nearly as sexually repressed as any of the women if not MORE. In any case no one that has ever met Victor could be surprised he hasn't gotten any.

[iMonrey]

 

The show got a second season and an episode order increase several weeks ago.

 

Yes but that was after they had finished filming Season 1. When they were writing and producing these episodes, they had no idea whether they would get a second season, which means they planned to just leave us on a cliff-hanger if they didn't. And that doesn't sit well with me. I'd prefer more of a self-contained story for a show that spans only eight episodes when the producers don't know if there will be any other seasons. Imagine if it hadn't been renewed and we'd all be just left hanging with no answers to anything.

[ganesh]

It's not yet determined they are ending on a cliffhanger since we haven't seen E8 yet. UK shows typically don't.

[Dirtybubble]

I too was a bit "oh here we go again" with the Vanessa being possesed bit again but it was done nicely with many twists & turns in character revelations and was just acted so beautifully that it didn't seem dull or "oh this again" type of scene. 

 

But one thing I don't understand is Ethan mentioned that they had been staying with Vanessa for a week during the span of the episode.  A week?!  Did Ethan just leave poor Bronan hacking up her lungs while he tended to Vanessa?  Not that he shouldn't have stayed with Ms. Ives (since he can apparently perform an exorcism as well) but idk, just seemed out of character to me.  Honestly lately everything he does is out of character though.  He's a latin spewing, devil removing, bisexual werewolf?!

 

[Bec]

I wonder why he's a virgin? I remember asking this about Peter. Is he awkward around women, asexual, gay?

Well, thanks to whatever possessed Vanessa, now we know Peter didn't die a virgin. Though that was pretty disturbing that he apparently raped tribal women in Africa out of some desperation to prove himself to his father. And Sir Malcolm is looking like the biggest monster of them all. He regrets what he did to his own children, sure, but not an ounce of regret for raping his way across a continent. Typical for a man of his time.

 

It kind of makes Victor seem well adjusted in comparison. He's merely too busy being obsessed with raising the dead to even think about sex.

 

Anyway, remember, this is the guy who thinks that most scientific endeavors are nothing but "solipsistic self-aggrandizement". I would imagine he thinks even less of the more mundane human endeavors like sex and reproduction. He probably thinks most people waste their lives doing things that any animal can do instead of working towards what really matters - figuring out what separates life and death in the time they have before they die. And instead of seeing new life as wonderful and miraculous like most people, he probably sees it as nothing more than a biological function that doesn't provide any answers for the enigma that is death.

 

A stereotypical guy explores and makes discoveries because it brings fame and glory, which brings money and power, which brings the ability to "get some". I mean, look at Sir Malcolm. "Getting some" is not part of Victor's motivations - it's actually kind of refreshing to see a character like this. I see it as part of his appeal that he's so different from what is typical.

[ganesh]

It looked like they were going in shifts. So he could have come back to check on Brona. Maybe he made sure she was asleep and took the night shift.

[Door]

I forgot about this!  There was a scene where there is a wolf behind Ethan - at first I thought it was a mirror but it must have been a painting.  Then they flashed to the other men waiting in various rooms of the house, but I didn't notice any connection between them and the paintings hanging behind them.

 

I initially thought this as well, but it's actually a stuffed lion head. The fact that it looks very wolf-like in the shot could still be a signal, however. Or maybe Ethan's a werelion and/or lionhearted?

 

ETA: I thought this episode drew an interesting parallel between our three (four, including Sembene) guys watching over Vanessa the same way Lord Holmwood (aka Malcolm), Quincy Morris (Ethan), and Dr. Seward (Victor [see also: addiction]) look after Lucy in Dracula.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Door

[Michell3]

I found this episode deeply affecting, I really did. Watching Van get water tortured in the previous All Eva, All the Time episode was a little hard to watch, but I found this episode just profoundly disturbing. I have to say this because TV doesn't usually get to me like this did. So so sad. Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking to watch her come to the realization that Sir Malcolm really is a ruthless bastard, heartbreaking to watch her come to the realization that she was conversing with the demon inside her, and not having a quiet and sweet moment with Chandler as she initially thought.

That being said, can we take a moment to appreciate the brief and rare gems of humor in this episode that had me literally laughing out loud?

Vanessa: "Forgive me, Mr. Chandler. I'm not myself." ... and then i was alternately touched by Chandler's compassion and horrified by Vanessa the remainder of the scene.

I love that Dr. F feebly attempts to diagnose her "condition" using his abundance of medical knowledge...except that doesn't explain the levitating, you TWIT. Stupid smart people.

Chandler on the bottom. What? WHAAT??

I love that the demon focuses on Victor's virginity as his big bad secret. But raising the dead? Whatevs.

Can we please toss Caliban and PosessedVanessa in a pit and have them battle it out? PossessedVanessa is already talking smack: "You think you know a greater demon? Tell me!"

Sir Malcolm: "She's possessed by a demon."

Chandler: "Well, fuck me!"

That moment the priest walks into Vanessa's room, realizes this shit is FORREAL, and attempts to GTFOutta there with the quickness. You can almost hear him muttering, "aw HAIL no."

Eva Green's EYEBALLS deserve their own Emmys (Emmies?), one each....

Sir Malcolm: (something along the lines of....) "Mina, is that you?"

Vanessa's eyeballs: (*getting big and glassy and cheerily sinister*) "Somewhat!!!"

The rest of the episode was so deeply disturbing to me, though. I've rewatched it because I've found it so awful and sad. Love Green's and Hartnett's chemistry. Also, it is a credit to the show and the acting that, during the scene between DevilChandler and UnPossessedVan for a flash second, I thought, aw look how happy she is! They should absolutely get together!

A lot has been said about Chandler busting out with the Latin, calling in St. Jude to come and save the day and why didn't he do that like almost an hour ago. My thoughts are that he read about St. Jude during that loooong week they all had and learned a bit of Latin. think he's mentioned before that he's not religious, so he has no reason to believe that he has any power to exorcise Vanessa, but when it comes right down to it, it's either give it a try or kill Vanessa, and at that point he's thinking he has absolutely nothing to lose. If it doesn't work, he shoots her (if she doesn't kill him first).

Edited June 25, 2014 by Michell3

[LittleIggy]

I'm tired of the "Devil in Miss Ives" stuff. I've seen enough of Eva Green writhing around and growling to last a lifetime. Let's move on.

[Dirtybubble]

I love that the demon focuses on Victor's virginity as his big bad secret. But raising the dead? Whatevs.

Haha!  I was waiting for his experiments to be mentioned but it wasn't.  I guess they were going for whatever would embarrass Dr. F the most *shrug* and I guess being a 20-30 something virigin is more humiliating than reassembling a corpse. 

 

I do kinda wish Dr. F wasn't so young.  I can understand why he is for storyline purposes but there is a part of me that wishes he was as he is on Once Upon a Time.  The actor that portrays him on OUAT is such a cutie!

[kryss]

I *think* it was mentioned, just subtley. 

 

The line about "Do you think you know a worse demon?  Tell me about him.  Or perhaps I should tell you about him..." (or words to that effect).  I thought that was alluding to the 'monster'.

 

Chalk me up as another who thought Ethan knew the words to say with the pendant, as a result of those words having been used on him in the past.  There was a look on his face before he did it as well, possibly the realisation that it was a real shot given the different circumstances?

[sjohnson]

I rewatched on demand. Ethan just kept repeating a relatively short set of phrases. I think it was largely an appeal to the saints and short enough to be on one side of the medal. I noticed that when Ives and false Ethan finished their conversation with a kiss and a seeming moment of ease for Ives that the camera cut to Ethan holding the medal in an unusual posture reminiscent of prayer. 

 

Ives' demand to Ethan that he kill her was associated with the moon, which seems suggestive to me. 

 

The preview suggests that somehow we're supposed to care about Brona's ex?

[LittleIggy]

I don't care about Brona.

[Michell3]

I kinda care about brona, but would rather see van and chandler together, they obviously have chemistry. I seriously don't care if mina gets rescued. I hope the big rescue (...attempt? ) that I'm assuming is coming in the finale doesn't cost us any of the main characters.

[kryss]

I kinda care about brona, but would rather see van and chandler together, they obviously have chemistry. I seriously don't care if mina gets rescued. I hope the big rescue (...attempt? ) that I'm assuming is coming in the finale doesn't cost us any of the main characters.

 

Right from the start I've been a bit wary about Timothy Dalton's fate, more so as the story has progressed.  I like him on my screen though, would hate for him to go so my fingers are crossed.

[sjohnson]

We've had the protagonists' monsters revealed to us, in great detail. We've even seen Murray trying to force the prostrate Ives to serve his wishes, so his monstrousness isn't just off screen. But we haven't seen Ethan's monster. He's admitted monstrousness, but in TV is it real until it's on screen? If the theme is the monster within, then the logical conclusion will be the revelation of the final monster. Dorian Gray has not been a protagonist but a supporting character, which rules out seeing the portrait as the climax. I think the finale should be the Ethan episode then, to deliver on the through line, which is what I believe it might be called. Which isn't promising for Dalton's appearance in the next season.

 

If Brona is the Bride, then the finale really is Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man? But if the finale is Mina's rescue, do we get any completion on the monsters within us?

[The Kings Foot]

I'm tired of the "Devil in Miss Ives" stuff. I've seen enough of Eva Green writhing around and growling to last a lifetime. Let's move on.

 

 

You can never have too much Eva Green growling and writhing around. 

[ganesh]

Preferably nude. She's not shy.

[Michell3]

 

 

I *think* it was mentioned, just subtley.

The line about "Do you think you know a worse demon?  Tell me about him.  Or perhaps I should tell you about him..." (or words to that effect).  I thought that was alluding to the 'monster'.

 

I caught that too, but the demon seemed more interested in outing Victor's virginity than his raising of the undead.  It came up in multiple scenes!  My thoughts are that maybe the demon is more interested in humiliating Victor than bringing his most morally criminal acts to light.  Maybe it means that yes, Victor feels bad about bringing caliban to life and abandoning him, but somehow he secretly feels even worse about being a virgin?

 

But come to think of it, the demon pretty much focused on sex across the board, when it came to his interactions with each character.  Malcolm raping his way across Africa, Chandler's encounter with Dorian, Victor and his virginity.  That being said, the demon had zero interest in Sembene.  And Sembene clocked him/her pretty good in the beginning, so he might have reason to be especially sore at him, at least in the moment.  I wonder if this means something, the demon picking on everyone but Sembene.  

[sjohnson]

The demon's interest in sex to the exclusion of other crimes is pretty much reflective of Ives' hangups being about sex. She doesn't seem to worry much about killing people. So I don't know if the demon is truly a separate personality or is sort of a demonic soul mate. 

 

If the demon were a wholly separate entity, we shouldn't take its claims without reservation. Murray's every transaction with women in Africa may have been consensual, whether intended for pleasure or for payment. And the role of explorers (including missionaries) in the colonial rape of Africa may be concretized as actual rapes. I've no idea why we should trust devils to be honest with us. And we especially should suspect the demon is deliberately trying to pander to  or otherwise take advantage of Ives' worst desires and fears.

 

But if the demon is more Ives' dissociative personality, or the unrestrained manifestation of her psychic abilities, we should think the charges against Murray are true. And by Ives' covertly prudish lights, Murray is the worst monster of the lot. Ives' disdain for Frankenstein's virginity and her jealousy of Ethan over Dorian Gray seem to me to fit her personality. But I don't think she is perturbed by Murray's brutality and other forms of exploitation of Africans, or Frankenstein's hubris nor even Ethan's slaughters.

 

In regards to Sembene, this is show is using the steampunk esthetic. This is, I think, a very backward approach that implicitly glorifies the Raj. Steampunk is practically never set in non-imperial locales, much less colonial ones and I don't think that is an accident. Ireland during the famine or the Congo during Leopold's reign or such don't have the gleeful joy of empire. In this esthetic, Sembene is the wrong color to be of any real interest. Hinting at a back story is probably as far as it can go. Making Semben a real character would I believe be tantamount to deconstructing steampunk, instead of just playing with it a little by making Sembene the one who saved Murray.  

Edited June 28, 2014 by sjohnson

[Bec]

I doubt the demon was lying about Sir Malcolm, because what would be the point of lying? Possessed Vanessa and Sir Malcolm were the only people around when that line about raping women across Africa came up. I have no doubt it was rape either, from what the demon said: "the whores in Zanzibar... the native women along the way... they enjoyed you pawing at them... or you convinced yourself they did". It's strongly implied the women did not in fact enjoy Sir Malcolm pawing at them. Even after the demon said that to his face, I wonder if it even occurs to Sir Malcolm that what he did to those women was rape and it was wrong.

 

It would certainly be in line with the imperialism of the time that he wouldn't get it. Someone like Sir Malcolm would feel like those women are way lower than him, so of course they all want to have sex with him. The English of the time felt like Africa is way lower than England, so of course the Africans would love for their land to be taken over. It's the same kind of hubris that drove the rape of the land and the rape of the people.

 

I like that the show went there, because usually these ugly bits of history are glossed over in fictional stories set in ye olden times that are not specifically about the subject of imperialism/slavery.

[sjohnson]

I don't think we can reduce the British Empire to a few men's personal flaws. Social, political and economic pressures of individuals in any given system tend to force them to act in certain ways regardless of intent. Any given explorer or missionary may have had conscious noble motives yet his actions did not occur in a vacuum and their consequences are used in ways he cannot intend...nor seriously affect. I don't think the series is genuinely interested in what explorers and missionaries and their roles in the British colonial devastation of Africa. After all, they are babbling about the search for the source of the Nile years after Burton, Speke, et al. made their expeditions.

 

Murray's issue in this regard are similar to Ethan's Indian wars issue. Ethan being in his mid thirties in the early nineties means he was born in the mid sixties (during the Civil War.) He was thus in his early teens during the high points of the "Indian wars." 

[Enero]

On 6/26/2014 at 0:12 AM, LittleIggy said:

I'm tired of the "Devil in Miss Ives" stuff. I've seen enough of Eva Green writhing around and growling to last a lifetime. Let's move on.

 I just started watching this show on Netflix (specifically I just finished this episode) and I completely agree. I am over the Vanessa possession storyline. Furthermore, I'm over everything being about sex too. Perhaps the demon exposing everyone's sexual secrets is related to how Vanessa was first exposed to him - when she saw her mom with Sir Malcom? But it still doesn't make it less scoff inducing. 

What annoyed me about this episode is that the men spent dam near the entire hour doing nothing for Vanessa except sitting around on their laurels until the magical moment when Ethan remembers he's wearing the pendant of the saint and performs, what I don't know. Because I don't believe for one second that Vanessa is  free if that demon. She got a reprieve and nothing more.

Even with the things that annoy, this show is still pretty interesting. So I plan to continue watching.