Penny Dreadful
Season 1, Episode 06
Episode Title: What Death Can Join Together
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar
The episode picks up after the events of the night at the theater. The next day Vanessa and Sir Malcolm argue about the vampire that was in her bedroom, he insists that she do something to find the vampire again. Ethan gets back to where he and Brona are staying, he finds her in her room with her cough getting worse. Ethan tells her that he loves her with all his heart.
While reading her tarot, Vanessa hears Mina’s voice asking her to save her. When she turns the cards one of them is the card of the moon, she starts to hear the bell of a dock, people being ripped apart and the sound of an animal growling. The card of the moon had wolves howling at it.
Dorian goes to see Vanessa to take her out on an adventure as a way to apologize for living so suddenly the theater last night. Meanwhile the main actress of the theater goes to see the Creature to ask him for help with her special effects equipment, she talks with him about her brother that was injured and also disfigured in an accident.
Sembene tells Sir Malcolm that even if they find Mina she cannot be saved and he must be prepared. The adventure that Dorian was talking about is Vanessa being photographed. Vanessa says that she has never been photograph and asks Dorian if he has been photographed many times. To what Dorian replies:
“I prefer painting, photographs are so ironically impermanent. They capture one moment in time to perfection, paintings can capture eternity. ”
The Creature gives the actress a book. He thinks that she might have felt for him but he sees that she is dating the main actor. Victor has dinner with Dr. Van Helsing and tells him that his work is compelling him to go on. He says that a line from Mary Shelley is hunting him and that line is the episode’s name, “What Death Can Join Together.”
Vanessa goes out to dinner with Dorian, she shows her dress to Sir Malcolm and for a moment they have a Father-daughter moment, but it seems that when she leaves Sir Malcolm and Sembene go out without her. In Brona’s room, Ethan is getting ready to go out with Sir Malcolm, Brona tells him that he shouldn’t kiss her anymore and stay a distance from her from now on. He still kisses her and she gives him a medal of Saint Jude to protect him. With Sir Malcolm and Sembene they go to investigate a ship that has been in quarantine in the docks for four months since it arrived from Cairo.
Van Helsing tells Victor that his wife didn’t die of a disease that he drove a stake through her heart and cut off her head. He also tells him about vampires and what happens to the victims that are preyed and feed on.
After dinner Vanessa goes back to Dorian’s house, she admires his paintings seeing that he only has portraits and no landscapes. Then they kiss.
Van Helsing and Victor are walking down the street, the doctor tells Victor that he would have liked to have had a son like him, and from an alley the Creature captures Van Helsing and breaks his neck. He tells Victor that his getting tired of waiting and he is going to start killing does he loves.
Back at the ship, they find women transformed and start to look for Mina or the vampire that indeed is sleeping there. The female vampires wake up and attack them, the vampire watches as they are being killed by Sir Malcolm, Sembene, and Ethan. A fire starts, causing the vampire to go out with Mina in his hands.
Meanwhile Vanessa is having sex with Dorian, she bites, scratches, and cuts him. During the act, for a second, as if time stopped, she hears a voice, “Hello my child, I’ve been waiting, what games will we have now.” She stops and leaves Dorian confused.
Dorian goes to his hidden room where his painting is and the wound starts to heal. Vanessa gets back to SIr Malcolm’s house, where he is about to tell her something she gets possessed and starts to levitate and the ending credits roll.
It seems that this episode had a lot of paradoxes in it and the story broke the fourth wall. We see this when Victor talks about Mary Shelley’s work, that is about him and the Creature. Also when Dr. Van Helsing gives him a copy of Penny Dreadful the printed series that is the show we are watching. For a moment I believed that Sir Malcolm really felt like a father to Vanessa but it all looked like an act. The Creature surprised me when he came out of nowhere and killed Van Helsing. Poor Brona, she is going to die, there was no cure in that time. Ethan is something or he really loves Borna to not fear of getting sick. Vanessa made the funniest face when time stopped and she heard the voice, don’t you think? Two episodes to go and the preview for the next is a cliffhanger.
