Stuff You Should be Watching: Penny Dreadful

Penny Dreadful is Showtime’s Gothic Horror show that’s returning for season 2 on May 3rd.  I watched it when it was airing, and Carrie watched it all last week (which I can prove with many angry IMs that read: “WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME”).

It’s a story about a father, Malcolm Murray, who is trying to find his missing daughter Mina, and the story of Vanessa Ives, Mina’s best friend, who has things to atone for, and of Ethan Chandler, who is running from something, and of Brona Croft, who is waiting. Along with Dr. Frankenstein and Dorian Grey, they go into the dark and bloody undercurrents of Victorian London.  Oh, and there are vampires.  And demons.  And spiders.  Lots of spiders.  And guts.

CarrieS: EVA GREEN!

RHG: This is the show that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wanted to be.

This show is also not for everyone.  (Sarah adds: specifically, this show is NOT for me.) There are entrails.  And uh, well, a dude getting ripped in half.  And that’s in the first two episodes.

CarrieS: True fact – during the first episodes, I had subtitles on, and at one point they read, “Footsteps squishing through entrails” and now every time something happens I think, “Oh man, I love this character – dammit, feet are probably going to squish through her entrails soon!”

RHG: This show is SO darkly, gothically pretty.  When I got the DVDs, my roommates watched a couple episodes, and Dude Roommate said at one point, “Josh Hartnett and Timothy Dalton in the same scene.  That’s just not FAIR.”  (Also Dalton is SEVENTY.  SEVENTY YEARS OLD, speaking of NOT FAIR.)

CarrieS: GET OUT.  How is that possible!  Does he have a painting aging in an attic?

RHG: PROBABLY.  Also his bread is luxurious.

Speaking of Dorian, and his absolute refusal to dress period-appropriate and his purple shirts and lack of anything like a cravat and his LEATHER PANTS.  I like that we never actually see his painting.

CarrieS:  Me, too.  I fervently hope they never show it.  I adore Dorian but I always wonder – is he intended to be the endless source of comic relief that I see him as?  Was I supposed to laugh during the Orgy of Bored Models?  Am I intended to find his allergy to shirt buttons so cute?  The theater department at my college was full of Dorians and I had crushes on all of them, and now I’m middle-aged and I think he is SO FUNNY AND ADORABLE.

RHG: I think Dorian would be insulted by that, I’m not sure what the show thinks of him.  Josh Harnett grew on me as the season went on, my first reaction was “Eva Green!  Timothy Dalton!  Billie Piper!  ….and Josh Hartnett for some reason…?”  (Also Billie’s accent was specifically supposed to be Belfast, which is why it sounds so odd.)

 

EVA GREEN THOUGH.  EVA FUCKING GREEN WHO NEEDS TO GET AN EMMY NOMINATION RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

CarrieS:  I agree about Josh – I feel like he’s done an amazing job of very quietly, subtly becoming the moral center of the show.  

Plus I love that he pulled off and excorcism purely through the power of being “SO OVER THIS SHIT.”  I like to think that when he was praying in Latin, he was actually saying, “Enough already!” over and over again.

And of COURSE Eva.  She can chew the scenery, she levitates and climbs on tables and screams in Egyptian but she also brings volumes of content to very quiet moments.  Also her saying, “It is the essence of your charm,” to Victor had me rolling on the floor – and let’s not forget Demon Eva hissing, “KITTENSSSSSS”!  That woman is astounding.

I love all the actors, and they keep surprising me.  I’m not surprised that they are good; I’m surprised that they will suddenly pull out a new layer of emotion or motivation from their character in ways that I don’t expect but that feel perfectly natural.

RHG:  The only thing I was disappointed by was that with 8 episodes, and one of them devoted purely to Vanessa and Malcolm’s backstory, things were rushed.  The next season is supposed to go for 10 episodes, and involves Helen McCory’s medium character bathing in blood, so that’ll be exciting.  WHAT IS HER DEAL.  WHAT IS EVERYONE’S DEAL.  HOW DID ETHAN BECOME WHAT HE IS?  HOW?  WHO IS HIS FATHER TELL ME NOW.

CarrieS:  Step away from capslock, RHG.  We mustn’t abuse the capslock WHO AM I KIDDING THIS WHOLE REVIEW SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN CAPSLOCK IT’S THAT KIND OF SHOW!

So can we talk about the sex?  Because it irritates the shit out of me that there are so many sex scenes that all involve pretty much the same sex – thrusting away.  After a while I thought maybe this, too, is deliberate, because we almost never see an orgasm.  The camera always cuts away.  So there’s all this grinding but no fulfillment, which is very Victorian and very in keeping with the ideas this show has about repression.  (I’m pretty sure if I could just teach all these characters about the clitoris everyone’s problems would be over.)

RHG: I do believe that we see peen before we see boob, so there’s that.  Granted, it’s the peen of a dead dude, but still.  Peen.

CarrieS:  Also lots of male butts on display.  I don’t think it’s a male gaze issue – actually for all the sex they are having, the camera usually cuts away before they get to have an orgasm either (presumably they have one, but from a symbolic standpoint I think it’s significant that we don’t see one).

The closest we have is is during a scene between Brona and Ethan, our one and only loving couple who are as healthy as a couple in their circumstances and from their backgrounds can possibly be.

RHG: Brona as “healthy” is hilarious.

CarrieS: EMOTIONALLY healthy.  Which, sadly, is still hilarious.

RHG: Yup.

I think the main take away from the show is that everything has a cost- Vanessa’s gift, Frankenstein’s (FRANKENSTEEN) ambition, Malcolm’s goal, Ethan’s escape, and Dorian’s ennui (oh Dorian’s ennui).  There’s the posted cost, and the incidentals, but it’s the incidentals that’ll get you in the end.

Of course, there’s also the “found family” theme, which is my very favorite theme of all.  “We’ll have the boys come over and decorate the tree,” indeed.

CarrieS:  I love found family stories.  The tree line just killed me as did Ethan and Victor practicing shooting:  “Uh-oh, we’re in trouble with Dad!”

It’s such a dark, gory, violent show – but there’s also this core of humor.  And a lot of the humor is of the snark variety which I adore.

RHG: It’s as dark and violent as pulpy as the penny dreadfuls it is derived from.  The repression of the Victorian age resulted in a lot of very weird and fucked up art as a release valve, and you take all of that, and put it in the hands of some really good writers and actors and you get this.

Nothing like Eva Green glowering at you (Or giving you a 180 degree side-eye) to make you rethink all of the choices that brought you to this point.

CarrieS: Yes, as an avid reader of Victorian gothic fiction I think this show does an amazing job of combining elements of modern sensibility with a very Victorian horror feel.  The episode in which they told the story of Frankenstein and the Monster was one of the best retellings I’ve come across in terms of staying absolutely true to the themes and emotions of Shelley’s novel.

So I was thinking about the shows that the Bitches are drawn too and how very different they are.  Some have romance, but a lot don’t, or they have tortured romance, so that’s not the common thread.  One thing we all seem passionately drawn to is costume porn and the clothes in Penny Dreadful are STUNNING.

But also if you look at Penny Dreadful, Agent Carter, Outlander, and Miss Fisher’s Mysteries, there’s a common theme of resilience, self-respect, and agency.  All these shows take place in very different time periods and setting, but all feature characters who are told that they are worth very little, or that they need to stay in a particular role, and the question becomes whether, as Peggy says in Agent Carter, they know their own value.

On top of this there’s the issue of agency and resilience.  How do you find your freedom when everyone wants to confine you literally or metaphorically?  How do you continue to find joy in the face of great loss and trauma (Agent Carter, Outlander, and Miss Fisher all deal with coping with the aftermath of war and the characters in Penny D are all coping with various traumas, both natural and supernatural).  It’s thrilling to see these very different women battling with this issue and it’s thrilling to know that huge audiences want them to succeed.

I think the reason Cinderella left me with such a bad aftertaste is that agency in women is punished.  Yes, it’s punished because it’s at the expense of others, but it’s not paired with benevolent agency.  What’s rewarded is passive endurance, and there’s something terribly ugly about that, even though there is the theme of knowing your own value (and, of course, THE CLOTHES).

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Penny Dreadful returns on Sunday, May 3rd on Showtime.  You can buy season 1 on DVD at Amazon or other fine retailers, and it’s available streaming as well.