NBC's Dracula: Episode 9, Four Roses.

The three single stems Alexander brings hospitalized Mina are obvious. It’s this episode’s eponymous fourth rose that blooms when Dracula says, “If you’re going to behave like a monster, then I’m going to make you one”, as the story finally has Lucy get turned, but in an act of hatred over the original one of desire. Yet, if you’re going to shoot a bloodletting & bloodgiving scene in a picturesque milk bath chamber you’ve already spent tons making & lighting, use the contrast of liquids, and the blooming infectious cloud of blood permeating the milk in an overhead shot. Instead they chose neck gore over subtle cinematic poetry.

Also this episode continues the trumping up of Lady Jayne’s concerns about an increasing vampire incursion in London. If there’s an epidemic of ghastly proportions infesting the whole metropolis, let’s see the rolling of victims, a pub takeover, dead bobbies as the corpse of authority, or dirty street urchins strewn about like empty bags that were neither cared for by Victorian society alive nor dead ... but they certainly would when they rise undead to feed on them.

Instead we do get one scene of Dracula leading his “relatives in from the continent” to take out some of the lesser known Order of the Dragon, but despite their awesome damask waistcoats, they’re just not-so-elegant hissing monsters sporting unfortunate bulgy mouthed dental prosthesis.

[No, why bother hiring an accomplished professional fangsmith like Dnash, when one can cut corners with huge plastic caps? It’s only a really expensive & risky primetime major network show with tenuous ratings.]

And Mina’s reflection vision of herself as Ilona in the gutter scene, while a good idea, terribly bad execution. With so much sophistication plotted and built one minute, there’s hardly much time wasted in yanking the carpet out from under the same foundations. It’s surely unintended, but at times one feels that there’s a “oh, that’s good enough” ethic that erodes the result.

Plotwise, things only set themselves up for what may just be an anticlimactic end of season: Harker ensconces himself with the Order of the Dragon, continuing to prove he’s the biggest patsycake ever. And in another echo of past things, Mina throws Lucy out of a whole hospital upon Lucy’s passive confession of jerkface Harker’s tryst.

More interestingly, Mina’s modern directness gives Alexander the opening he needs, her admitting to inner knowledge she’s metaphysically connected to lost Ilona, but in a fit of vampire guilt, Dracuxander doesn’t take the opening by finally confessing his love. It’s a great moment hampered by unnecessary restraint, especially since Davenport’s threat’s been removed from the board. Also mentioned by Lady Jayne, the “Sanguine Sanctorum” has been loaned to her team of hunters from the Vatican. Whatever this item is, we’re dying to find out.

And most vengefully rogue, it seems Van Helsing may have injected Browning’s kids with his apothecary jars of Dracula’s blood before deciding to ransom them for £50K (oh, about £21M today!). If the implication of the syringes is correct, the series’ creepiness factor may multiply “‘Salem’s Lot”-style with Browing either getting eaten by his own offspring, or being put in the position of having to drive steaks through their tiny hearts! Well done, Van Helsing!

With Harker’s granting the Order the blueprints to Grayson’s transmitter, it seems hopeless that a big science ending’s going to prevail. Browning’s demands for a catastrophe may happen on both sides, and one has to suppose that a fat cliffhanger full of debris and smoke’s all we’re going to get … unless Dracula placed faux plans for Harker to steal, but that’s probably overthinking it.

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+.

NBC's Dracula: Episode 8, Come to Die.

Whenever there’s a gun introduced into a vampire story, it’s a groaner since the audience knows a gun's an ineffectual weapon against a vampire*, so when it happens this episode it doesn’t hold any dramatic water ... unless the writers totally surprise you by getting their most gutless character to shoot someone for the vampire!

Finally the all fallout we've been waiting for as the season comes closer to its finale: Harker shoots Davenport! Lady Jayne breaks it off with Alexander (again)! Renfield throws down with Dracula! Jonathan casts Mina off in a final fit of distrust! Lucy’s faux seduction works too well as Harker gives her a go! Van Helsing krampuses Browning’s children!

Out of the above, seeing Renfield dish out tough love to Dracula reverses their usual cinematic relationship again. Renfield actually tells Dracula what not to do, restrains him physically, then stops him by strength of reason.

All this passionate interplay aside, the most clever contribution to the vampire lore was huntress Lady Jayne pouring a flask of holy water down her captives’ throats, and having their mouths erupt in black blood baking soda deathcanoes!

Setwise, while I’d first join many of the Pall Mall clubs to enjoy their furniture instead, one must say the Order Of the Dragon's got beautiful chesterfields in their hideout. Also we spot some really fetching gold rimmed tri-foot teacups!

Visually there’s really not too much experimental or cinematic loanage going on, which is a shame (with the exception of Dracula tossing Renfield into stairs, sort of like Renfield’s death in the 1931 version). Certainly this was a high drama character blowout, but maybe some practical vertigo effects for Harker’s post-murder nausea, or canted whip pans as he runs away from the scene, but instead we only get the usual costume piece camerawork.

It’s all up in the air, and it’ll be thrilling to see where it lands in the next two shows! Anyone care to make some guesses? Odds are Harker redeems himself by pushing Dracula into his power transmitter, which explodes into irreproducible fragments, revealing the still living Browning brats in a sub-basement, giving Harker enough press to permanently blow the lid off the Order in the first viral infowave, gets pardoned, and wins Lucy’s hand back for being the big hero he really isn’t. Yet I really still want to see it go like in my last paragraph of the episode 2 commentary, but I’m thinking the writers can’t see it that world changing “Fight Club” (film, not differing book) alternate history ending, which would more surely secure them a second season. We’ll see what the coffin of television holds in store next week.
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* Yes, there are good exceptions, like Underworld.

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+.

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+.

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+.