NBC's Dracula: Episode 3, Goblin Merchant Men.

The question we're faced with at this point is if we'd never seen, or read, or heard the Dracula story, would this show's writing stand on its own? Part of me thinks main players aren't developed or deep enough, but the other part doesn't care because like most viewers, I already can fill in the blanks. Yet the fact that we’re given pause to ask the question’s telling.

And biggest plot oversight episode three presents is why would The Order of the Dragon go through so much trouble to create a being that has supernatural strength & speed, far superior senses, and lives forever if he's just going to turn against them? Same with leaving Van Helsing alive after killing his family. Not as ruthless as a secret cabal that's endured for over a millenia should be. Rather careless, really. And it makes no clear sense other than to set up origins with matching revenge motives for our two antiheros. Writers, your red hands are caught in frame, unfortunately.

Conversely from those same writers, we've been gifted more interesting reimagings: The asylum is Dr. Murray's, Mina's father, not Dr. Seward's asylum, of which there is no Dr. Seward character to speak of. And the more I consider the likewise absence of Mr. Quincey Morris in this version, the more I wonder if making Dracula the Texan Alexander Grayson is kind of a Quincey analogue. Plus if there's no separate Morris, there's no Texan shoving a Bowie knife into Dracula’s chest at the end of the tale ... which means Dracula might yet win this time!

Jonathan Rhys Meyers apparently gets recast as Shirtless Joe, which gives the episode a whole lotta mancandy. Are the unnecessary tribal stripes bookending his elbow & upper sleeve dot patterns really JRM's ink? Either way, enjoy ladies.

Quite fun are the episode’s dominant Lucy & Mina montages & shared moments that sets them up as the best of besties. If (if, since we're not sticking to a direct novel adaptation) things go bad (good?) for Lucy in this telling, it'll hit that much harder. I call BS on the bohemian flaming sugar cube absinthe serving, but liked the tunnel vision and slo-mo dance scene with the twangy modern music, and Mina’s thick flowing curls as the green fairy has its way with her.

[Two orders of cheesecake, please.]

Laurent's secret sentencing by The Order of the Dragon could've been like the startling medieval punishment of the traitors in Anne Rice's Talamasca from Taltos, but the blocking on the gladius thrust was off, which undermined the execution for the viewer. As a partial consequence of this unbelievable element, when lover Daniel shoots himself and suicide note’s Grayson's involvement in both their deaths, we just don't care. We know Daniel's the least sucky fencer, and lost his true manlove, but whatevs. For want of the convincing Roman nail, this whole crux don't matter.

Thanks to clever Team Dracula for killing the seers! Not because they were any sort of threat, but because those two Grace Jones performance school dropouts couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, even making lousy corpses despite really great smashed face prosthesis. And seeing Van Helsing lay down the hammer shows what grim stuff he's made of.

Have discovered why my objection to the show’s oh-so-faux London holds water: It’s shot in Hungary. The studio fabricated street where Dracula picks up Mina, Harker’s new digs, and Mina resides, are all the same set, as carelessly revealed by a ground level 360-degree shot in the Mina & Jonathan let’s-get-married kiss. The directors save money but blow it by not taking the time to redress the set and use different camera setups to hide that fact. But the sweet thing about Hungary as a location is that I believe the cherry blossom tree courtyard is in Castle Corvin (yes, the same of Corvinus family fame from the medieval history involving Vlad Tepes, the Inconnu’s hidden home from VtM, and the Underworld franchise) which makes using this particular location seriously legendary and vampire epicentric.

American Grayson, just like the Transylvanian Count in some film versions, is the unacceptable outsider, intriguing to Victorian society as a curiosity, but never to be given full berth. Also stymied by this, our medically-minded Mina, who would become a female doctor in an age where most women only hope to marry successfully. Grayson’s foreign conventions (pretended & real) & technological progressiveness, challenges Victorian mores, just as Mina does, which in this version makes them a match to root even more for.

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.