“Mr. Renfield, we are about to embark on a journey, you and I. It begins with a single question and it ends with your answer to that question.”
But on the bright side, with Twilight, out of the way, this episode has no where else to go but up, right?
Apparently not…
Renfield D
It’s quite a feat to have a whole episode dedicated to your backstory and still come out of it a cardboard character. It took me a total of five seconds of watching Renfield sitting strapped to that chair, before going, “Oh, shit, that’s right, he got abducted last episode, didn’t he? Damn…”
In a flashback we travel back to long ago and learn the story of how Dracula and Renfield met and fell in love. Somehow, through this beautiful journey, Renfield still comes out of all of it a big dull dud. Yes, he’s meant to be brave, and loyal, and tough, but why is he all those things? And when are we going to see him show his crazy?
On the plus side, we did find out that Renfield is actually Dracula’s attorney, (apparently a damn good one at that) and not actually his butler as I had previously presumed (who wudda guessed?) and also that women in Victorian London are all blood lusting sadists. I discovered the latter upon observing the fact that while The Order appears to be a brotherhood of pretentious, pompous upper crust males, their go to “men” when it comes to doing all the dirty work like hunting down vampires and carrying out torture interrogations, are all women. Yet somehow, those men still come out of all of this as complete and total sexists who drops lines like, “You’re not the first woman to be blinded by desire. First huntsman, yes, but not the first woman.” Ugh…
Harker & Mina F & F
Harker has evolved from being Dracula’s number one hater to being his personal bitch assistant. Seriously, the guy does everything for our boy, from being his spy, to being his private detective, to pimping out his fiancé for a first dance. In other news, while Mina might have forgiven Harker for his boo boo a few weeks ago, the classic rule applies: once a d-bag, always a d-bag. It appears that when Harker’s not too busy voicing his sexist politics, he’s cutting out old friends for higher status cooler friends.
Meanwhile, Mina’s fast devolution from ambitious girl with a dream to a poor man’s Bella Swan continues with her alternating sulking with whining and being indecisive about her feelings towards her prospective men. I'm starting to wonder if there's a rule written down somewhere that stipulate that the love interest and mortal leading ladies in vampire shows need to be insufferable and annoying. What are we suppose to see in Mina? Because I'm not sure whether we're suppose to like her or hate her.
Van Helsing & Dracula D & F
Van Helsing continues to fiddle with that daylight serum for Dracula and he continues to fail. Somewhere along the last few episodes of watching Van Helsing inject that yellow liquid into Dracula’s veins, and now into the stomach of some poor terrified vampire, the gimmick stopped being cute.
As for Dracula, I don’t get him. Two episodes back he was crying and cracking his knuckles over the fact that a vampire was being tortured by Jayne in her secret dungeon. Now he’s brutally sacrificing a vampire (was it the same one?), to act as a guinea pig for the daylight serum. When the daylight serum fails, the poor girl screams while she bursts into flames and Dracula just stands there, crying. Apparently, Dracula crying is going to be a thing, in much the same way that Jesse Pinkman’s “bitch” was a thing, and Miley Cyrus’ tongue is a thing, and The Walking Dead killing of the black guys is a thing and because of that, as I promised, I’m going to start keeping a tally.
In this episode Dracula cries twice. The first time is while he witness the serum fail and his hopes of walking in daylight bursting into flames along with the vampire girl:
And the second time is while he’s watching Mina and Harker together as a happy, soon to be married couple:
Add these two to the waterworks of two weeks ago when Dracula ordered Houston (RIP) to kill Lady Jayne, and the weeks before that when he found the vampire in Lady Jayne’s dungeon, and the witnessing of Ilona being burned alive, the final Tear Count is: Five. Did I miss some? Let me know in the comments and I’ll adjust the count. Anyone care to venture an estimate to the number we’ll be left with by the season finale?
Lucy A+
An A for Lucy for being Dracula’s ultimate cockblock even in a dream, and a + for her for having such a rough couple of weeks. That being said, while I’m all for Lucy’s plotline, I really hope it’s going somewhere. Unrequited love is only fun to watch when there’s a happy resolution, otherwise it’s just depressing.
Lady Jayne B
I have to hand it to Lady Jayne, between Vampire hunting and the revelation that her comrades are abducting men in broad daylight in the middle of the street, her main concern was still trying to get Dracula into her bed. You go get him you little minx!
Pimp Suit A+
It looks like Pimp Suit has had enough of Dracula’s shenanigans and decided to abandon ship. Sadly, he made the unfortunate decision to hang out with Renfield the King of Boring instead. It’s okay, Pimp Suit, we still love you!
"The Devil’s Waltz"C-
A potentially decent episode was dragged down by the biggest disappointment of the evening — Harker’s death was a cop-out. It doesn’t help that I spent most of the hour waiting for that scene, expecting some big, gory, bloody tragedy worthy of Shakespeare. Without the promised death scene, this episode turned out to be slow with limited important plot development… and there wasn’t even sex! Doesn't everybody know, when it doubt, go with the sex.
Extra Credit
- I’m not sure what it is about this show. Nothing much is going on and the central plotline drags on and on with too much dialogue and not enough action and yet I’m still enjoying it.
- Kuddos to the writer’s for continuously putting (most of) the women in the show in empowering roles… aside from the constant display of bustling cleavages.
Demerits
- This week’s demerit is reserved for just one thing: the most epic cop-out in the history of television. Two weeks ago in the promo we were teased Harker’s gruesome death with a scene of his throat being sliced open. It left us all sitting here wondering what the shiznaz (yes, it’s a word, look it up!) is going to go down in that scene. This week we find out that it’s nothing more than a two second wistful fantasy of Dracula’s. Talk about lame...