After the exhilaration of the premiere episode of season one, Penny Dreadful stayed pressed on my mind until this point arrived. Now, Penny Dreadful returns one week later for its second episode of its first run, but could this latest episode match the quality of the premiere. In my opinion, I’d say the two are fairly equally weighted.
One of my favourite areas of this episode was the introduction of Dorian Gray. Something about his character is strangely refreshing, maybe it’s his erotic quality that contrasts heavily with the rest of the show. Maybe it’s his charismatic quality, something about him makes him supremely engaging. Dorian Gray himself becomes entwined with Bonna Croft (Billie Piper), with her performance being the highlight of the show. She starts as this charming, seductress of Ethan Chandler, and continues throughout to mix vulnerability and happiness. What makes her performance that more sterling is the believability she brings to it, with her actions feeling genuine. Yet these create one of the elements of this episode that I didn’t enjoy, the rape-ish undertones. From the way to Dorian Gray forces himself onto Croft for the purpose of a picture, to Vanessa Ives having sex with a random character in the street, it all feels unnecessary. I understand it’s meant to create discomfort and concern with the audience, it just didn’t feel needed.
Speaking of Vanessa Ives, Eva Green puts in a truly fantastic performance. She isn’t massively remarkable in the early stages, yet once her character reaches the séance scene, she comes into her own. Her performance is majorly what makes this scene stand out in my memory. This séance scene is unnerving throughout, with scripting of the scene being key to its terror. It’s continuing changing personalities of Ives and the many reactions, it engulfs you in the terror. The visual effects are also superb, with the smashing of the table and the convulsions Ives makes compounds the terror further; it has to be seen to be believed.
Moving onto Frankenstein’s elements, yet I’m starting on a negative, as Proteus lacks relevance to the episode and the bigger picture. His first steps into the outside world, his interactions with Croft and him learning to read are nice and all, but they distract from the main story. Luckily for us, the ending treats us to the end of Proteus with the return of the ‘firstborn’. It comes out of nowhere, which adds to its ‘jaw to the floor quality’, yet it has the intensity to create you questioning who is this guy and what is he doing.
As I said, the first two episodes seeming fairly equal in terms of quality, but that should in no way detract from how much I enjoyed this episode. The strong performances from Ives, Croft and Gray; plus their strong characters create a great basis for the main story. The séance is where the episode shines, and hold out for that ending to see Penny Dreadful at its best.
