NBC's Dracula: Episode 6, Of Monsters & Men.

Amorphousness makes this episode interesting because after all the unfolding of motivations last show, we're totally engaged in trying to figure things out, even though it's not as hard hitting by comparison.

The introductory sunlit sequence's obviously a dream, which they should've tried harder to conceal, and doesn't make any developmental sense until Dracula's required to attend a meeting in a solarium later. This would be the second dream sequence intro, so writing them somewhere else in the later acts, keeping it more even in tone could play better, and having Myers pull from the dream performance into the real one until the realization that the sun's still not, and will probably never be, a reacquired comfort, might've been better.

By contrast, it's a drenching London rain that segues Mina into disrobing and getting Jonathan into bed with her, which elementally encapsulates their uncertain & soppy engagement. The next morning's pillow talk reinforces that with Jonathan pitching elopement, while Mina majorly calls him for the third time on his motivations for being with her, further proof that he's just not in tune with her, compared to her dance time with Alexander, or even her boho night with Lucy.

Jayne's designs on Alexander play themselves forward with her not-so-subtle girl-on-girl talk with Lucy, which had to be the best bit of interaction this episode, followed by heartbreaker Mina throwing Lucy out for finally confessing her more than sisterly feelings. Characterwise this breaking off could drive Lucy in any number of interesting directions: Make up with droll beard/boyfriend Alistair? Into the arms of deliciously promiscuous Lady Jayne (who perhaps is playing a long game to do so)? Pawned by the Order or catspawed by Dracula? Or maybe even finding the fortitude to still pursue Lucy and convert her to the girlside?

Tension peaks when Van Helsing's about to use his beautiful surgical steel hammer (Hello, NBC online giftshoppe?) on the back of Mina's head for sneaking into his secret lab and finding the inexplicable properties of Dracula's blood, but her humanity stays his hand as she reveals that her mother died of stomach cancer, and she nobly tells him, "I wish to cure death." It's like that moment in "The Fountain" where angry & mournful Hugh Jackman rails against a universal fundamental but can see that it's within his grasp to actually cure death as he similarly declares "Death is a disease, just like any other, and there's a cure. A cure. And I will find it." It may have been to Van Helsing's detriment to spare her as in this version the intellectually unstoppable Mina could figure out where that blood comes from and put it all together before anyone else does. If so, will the scientist in her win and join Dracula to pass out both clean wireless power and grant mankind immortality? (Or will the dead rat she injected with vampire blood escape out into the sewers and accidentally promulgate a plague of undeath the likes of which the world has never seen?!? Aieeeeeee!)

There's a notable match-on-action shot of a real horse being cut to a carousel horse. Also visually, a great electric crucifixion sequence where Alexander's strapped down to the lab apparatus, his heart dynamo defibrillated and his torso charged & jabbed with injection equipment, hearkening to the Spear of Longinus. The inversion's disturbing & grand, with new science given unholy concert to the ancient supernatural. So New Age!

[Master & Servant.] 

Costumewise, there's a callback to all the caped Draculas when Alexander arrives with his greatcoat collar popped up at the solarium, positing perhaps that Dracula may have done it more for unexpected sun protection rather than dramatic menace.

[Daring to touch the Voivode?!? Just kill that Lord Davenport already!] 

Finally we have a great reveal of how duplicitous Dracuxander really is by finding out he originally hired an actress to disinform Jonathan with General Shaw's financial kickbacks, betting on Harker's patriotism to leak it to the press and enjoying scolding Harker for it, and then tying it all up by killing the actress. Mastermind!

While "Of Monsters and Men" played on a less active level, with only three episodes left, the series is going to have to get really ugly really quickly for anyone to have a definitive victory by the end ... unless there's a second season, which ratings are leaving to be equally amorphous. If the show continues to explore roads untaken from the original narrative, use the grander cinematic techniques, and keep the acting stylish but sensible, we could only be so lucky.

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+.