Penny Dreadful

Season 1, Episode 03

Episode Title: Resurrection

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar

This episode starts with the opening credits and a brief recap of past two episodes.

The scene shows a young Victor finding his dead dog. His mother is taking care of him when she starts to vomit blood on him. She soon after dies and this makes him start with his research and studies. Back in 1891, the monster (Rory Kinnear as Bill Tanner from Quantum of Solace and Skyfall,) stands over a dead Proteus (Alex Price from 2013 Father Brown,) and a stunned Victor. He tells him to stand up and face him, didn’t he think he would find him? The scene then changes to the moment he was born. The memories show how he woke up screaming with agony, covered in blood and approaching Victor. A frightening Victor, flees the room but observes how the monster screams and destroys his lab. The monster waited for Victor, he read his books and learned about his origins, and Victor’s love for poetry.  He tells Victor that he will never run away from him again. Victor asks why he killed Proteus, to which he replies that it was an act of mercy compared to him.

The scene changes to Sir Malcolm’s house were Vanessa has a vision of Mina asking for help and hears the sounds of many animals.

The monster tells Victor, how he arrived to London, where he learned mankind’s capacity for hatred and kindness. An old man finds him and buys him dinner. The man is Vincent Brand (Alun Armstrong from Henry IV, Parts I and II,) an actor. The old man shows him the kindness that the theater can give. He gives him a job and a place to stay at the theater and a name, Caliban from William Shakespeare’s Tempest.

He did his work in the best way, but there were still people who despised him. With his new job he had time to search for Victor.

“Once I found my occupation in the theater, it was a simple thing to slip at night and hunt for you. And I followed you and I waited. I saw your progress with my lamented younger brother. Did you not feel me near, I wonder? Did you not feel my gravitational pull, my exuberance?’

Victor tells Caliban that he is sorry for abounding him, for the things that happened to him and for the past he has suffered.  Caliban responds that the past does not concern him, but the future does.

We then see Ethan and Brona having sex. When Brona is cleaning herself, she has another cough attack and Ethan asks her if she has medicine to which she replies, “For the lungs you mean? No, who has money for that,” making Ethan thoughtful.

Ethan goes to see Sir Malcolm asking for work, making it seem that he is planning to buy Brona’s medicine.  Sir Malcolm says that it is the perfect moment because they are going hunting that night.  Vanessa tells Ethan that Mina came to her in vision explaining that she sometimes sees and feel things that can’t be explained.

Thinking that Caliban wants Victor’s love, he tells him that he will never love him and Caliban tells him that he does not want his love. Caliban asks Victor to make him an immortal mate like him, threatening him to kill everybody Victor loves if he does not complied. Victor’s response is that he should threaten him with life not death.

Sir Malcolm, Vanessa, Sembeee, and Ethan go the London Zoo to search for Mina. Wolves appear and surround them, but Ethan extends his arm to one of them and after a moment they leave. They then find a man that is eating a monkey. The man is about to attack Vanessa but Ethan knocks him out. The man talks about Amunet and Amun-Ra and that the hidden ones will rule the world. Victor is summoned to see the man. Ethan is not happy that the man is being beaten or experiment with but Vanessa tells him to leave if he does not like it:

 “We all here have been brutalized with loss, it has made us brutal in return. There is no going back from this moment,”

Ethan tells Vanessa that he is with her and she says that she is with him. Vanessa asks Sir Malcolm if he believed that they were going to find Mina that night, to which he replies, no, that the creature doesn’t want Mina he wants Vanessa. She asks is she was just bait and he tells her that to night she was.

When Ethan is telling Vanessa where he is staying, she asks the name of the woman. He lets her know that it is Brona, which means sad in Gaelic. Before leaving Victor tells Sir Malcolm:

 “When you transform a life, you’re making it new. Whatever happens to that creature down stairs, we are responsible for it. It is our burden now, every action builds a link that binds us to it, a chain everlasting.”

The man is seen in the dungeons calling for his master and then he appears happy as he sees something.

This episode was mostly about Frankenstein’s monster or as he is called in the theater, Caliban. How can we blame him for killing Proteus after seeing the way he started his life? (Well I can still blame him, I prefered Proteus, he was different than the original story). I like how his story is combined or resembles the Phantom of the Opera, lurking in the shadows of the theater. Also the theater was rehearsing for The String of Pearls: A Romance or Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which was published in 1846 – 47 in the Penny Dreadful series. Again Sir Malcolm is using Vanessa as bait and that is not going to end well for him. The characters are so pale, good work whoever is doing the makeup effect. The opening has wolves in it, does this mean that there is going to be a werewolf in the show? Maybe Ethan? And is the man a kind of Renfield to the creature they are looking for. Five more episodes to go, let’s see how more dreadful is can become.