“I HAVE NO HEART TO CARE FOR MEN” PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS, EPISODE 1
Chris Buse (RIP)
This review contains spoilers.
Where art is concerned, and especially popular art, objects in the rear-view mirror may appear bigger than they are. And better. Whenever there“s an addition to a beloved movie franchise, a reboot of some sort, or a remake, fans (this fan included) will look back to what“s in the past, to what came earlier. Even when you view the new season of a long running television show, comparisons to previous seasons are unavoidable. Naturally, we wonder if the latest batch of episodes can ever hope to live up to what made the show so great. What we often tend to overlook, with memories and nostalgia getting in our line of vision, things aren“t always off to such a strong start. Ultimately, what we see once we do look back to the beginning, if we ever go back to the point where it all started, is a picture that is reframed by a large portion of goodwill. On an intellectual level we understand that the first couple of episodes of “Breaking Bad”“ weren“t that great at all. Once the turning point occurs, though, this magic moment in which you become hooked and deeply invested in these fictional characters and their lives, the borings parts, the inconsistencies, the pacing or tone that were off somehow, it all suddenly falls into place. This is when you realize, that you are in good hands, that your time is well invested, and more importantly, whatever comes next, you know you are in for one hell of a ride. John Logan, the writer behind “Penny Dreadful”“ is keenly aware of this. When he pitched the original series in 2013, he was the screenwriter who had written the financially most successful James Bond movie with “Skyfall”“, a film that was also a hit with most reviewers. Logan was in a similar position as his colleague Joseph Stefano half a century prior. To put it into perspective, as the screenwriter of the immensely popular Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho”“, he had helped Universal Pictures and his director to generate millions of dollars. He was in a great spot. Stefano could pick any new project. He decided to do genre television, something that was unusual for the time, especially considering that he“d just been working with one of Hollywood“s top directors. The show, “The Outer Limits”“, was a unique animal. It was allegorical, thought-provoking, and much darker than the cult hit “The Twilight Zone”“, a show that was overseen by a legend of the medium, Rod Serling. Stefano stuck with the project he was developing with producer Leslie Stevens even when he had Alfred Hitchcock hounding him with the offer for Stefano to write “The Birds”“ and “Marnie”“. Stefano declined in both cases. What Logan wanted to do was a horror show. What he had envisioned was his version of Alan Moore and Kevin O“Neill“s comic book series “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”“, or a made for television “Avengers”“, but set in Victorian times, with Bond director Sam Mendes as his co-producer. Logan cast two Bond alumnae in the main roles, former Bond actor Timothy Dalton and Eva Green who would also serve as the series“ focal point. The show also saw the return of Josh Hartnett, a former teen heartthrob turned character actor. When the show got picked up by Showtime for a premier in May of 2014, the writer, now a showrunner, was off to the races it seemed. Only not quite. For one, Logan had muddled his own approach with the inclusion of literary characters in his team of Victorian superheroes that hailed from a different era, namely the Age of Romanticism, which put them immediately at odds with the rest of the cast, though Logan would later find a way to rectify this mistake once he shifted the focus away from the Monster of Frankenstein to his creator and the Monster“s Bride. More detrimental to the overall quality of the show was his and Mendes“ return to the Bond franchise for a second movie. Thusly, with his attention now split between two projects, overseeing his television show and doing the script for “Spectre”“, both suffered in consequence. Still, “Penny Dreadful”“ managed to woo a small, but loyal audience. Since a dedicated fan base is something to build on, Showcase gave Logan another shot at his own game. Once the promotional material for Season 2 began making the rounds, one thing was for sure. The show was back, but with a vengeance. To announce the show“s return, fans were greeted with a powerful one-sheet that showed Eva Green“s enigmatic character Vanessa Ives walking across a snow-covered landscape, with the camera shooting her from high above as she seemed frozen in a thin trail of blood. This right there, this bare, nearly stark-naked image of a powerful female character who was ready to reveal her soul to the viewers, was the turning point of “Penny Dreadful”“. Season 2, once again entirely scripted by Logan, delivered in spades. It currently holds 100% approval rating on the site Rotten Tomatoes which aggregated twenty reviews. Logan managed to carry the spark over to the next season, which was not as tightly plotted, but still immensely entertaining in how it mixed the setting of Victorian England with one story thread taking place in the American West of the late 19th century. It was this inclusion, the incorporation of American Gothic and ghost tales of the Wild West, that brought a much-needed energy while the main story got increasingly dour. Logan brought in several writers this time around, though he stayed on as head writer and showrunner. While its third season garnered a lot of praise, to the dismay many of the show“s devoted fans and most reviewers, John Logan and his team didn“t stick the landing. The last two episodes (with the final episode penned by Logan) “subverted the expectations”“ of the audience and then some. Though as a show, “Penny Dreadful”“ didn“t end on a high note (Season 3 being its last one, which had been Logan“s plan all along as he would later claim), nearly four years have passed since the series finale. As is often the case with past mistakes, eventually all sins are forgiven or forgotten. Vanessa Ives, the show“s brave, tragic heroine has become a figure of modern pop culture who is beloved and associated with the show in what is arguably Green“s best work to date.
There must have been a moment during the thought process that went into a possible return of “Penny Dreadful”“ during which there was some debate among the creatives if it wouldn“t be prudent to forego any connection to the former show entirely. Why call it “Penny Dreadful”“ at all if there wouldn“t be any in-story connective tissue? Yes, the new show was and is intended as a spin-off. Yet shouldn“t there be at least one character (and not only one actor in a new role) to carry viewers over into the new universe which this ostensibly was going to be set in? Why call it “Penny Dreadful”“ at all? is a legitimate question to ask. Logan knows that he“ll invite comparisons. And though, according to common belief, he botched the series finale (he didn“t do “Game of Thrones”“ bad, mind you), this doesn“t matter much. Any show under this name will be judged harshly, or at least much harsher, than a brand-new thing from the same creator. As a creator for television, Logan hasn“t been able to achieve the status of a Ryan Murphy or a J.J. Abrams who get viewers excited based on the brand recognition they“ve built up around themselves. You can argue that this spin-off “City of Angels”“ has a similar vibe than the original show, which it does not, or that it is in the same genre, which it is not, but ultimately, Logan is saddle with a debt he knows he“ll be having a hard time to be paying down. It“s bad enough that this is not just a new series by John Logan, which it is, but which is not the show“s main selling point, but a spin-off of a beloved cult favorite, at the very least that is what it is, but he goes into this race severely handicapped. What works against him, is the nostalgia his bosses at Showtime are banking on, but what“s more, the writer has to make it work sans two of the main ingredients that made the original such a standout. Green is not on the cast list. Her absence is felt immediately once the opening voice-over narration kicks in. So is the huge hole left by the man who had a profound influence on the overall feel of every season of “Penny Dreadful”“, without his face ever getting a second of screen time, composer Abel Korzeniowski. To someone who“s never watched the original show (or Tom Ford“s “Nocturnal Animals”“) this might seem an odd problem at best, and granted John Paesano (perhaps best known for his work on the “Daredevil”“ TV series) does a fine job, but there are crucial scenes in the episode that lack Korzeniowski“s ability to evoke emotions of love and dread, both at the same time. As an experienced writer, Logan is keenly aware that the deck is seriously stacked against him. Especially since he wants to introduce us to a rather large cast in which many characters are more than meets the eye. Logan makes it twice as hard on himself once he reveals that characters we“ve just met, are involved with some secrets or a double life of their own. But as with every season of the original show, you also need a main villain who requires a certain amount of screen time. The first episode has to do a lot, but what Logan needs to achieve most of all, if he wants to retain viewers who want to check the show out though it“s not “Penny Dreadful”“, or since they liked the trailer, is to provide a turning point. If this was any new show, there might be time to wait until episode five or six (as we saw with the first season of “Breaking Bad”“). Logan doesn“t have this time, and time is working against him in another aspect. With having to set-up the main conflict, while handling the introduction of a multitude of new characters, the overall pacing of each scene (not the scene transitions) feels a bit slow, still he needs to cut for time. This creates the effect of things moving too slow and too fast at the same time. Logan and his director Paco Cabezas work against this in the best way possible by avoiding the old trap of tell not show. Though this episode is very dialogue-heavy (as is par for the course when compared to the original series), very little of it feels like exposition, far from it with very little explaining going on. Yet if Logan has garnered one thing from the lukewarm reception of the second James Bond movie he worked on with Sam Mendes, it“s that everybody seems to agree that the pre-credit sequence might by the best thing about “Spectre”“. Thus, very unlike any season of the original show, which was for all intents and purposes a slow boil, often painfully so in its weaker scenes, Logan and Cabezas kick-off “City of Angels with a whisper and a bang. First we get a voice-over by lead actress Natalie Dormer, who nearly succeeds in evoking the same sense of foreboding with her slightly mocking inclination that Green did with her raw, hoarse delivery, a glimpse at the premise which promises that we soon will see a time in which “brother kills brother”“. Then, as if we are dropped into the midst of an eternal game of chess, we meet the representatives of the opposing camps, good and evil, it would seem. We get Santa Muerta (Lorenza Francesca Izzo Parsons), “the holy angel who guides us peacefully to heaven”“ and her “sister”“ Magda (Dormer, of Game of Thrones fame) an alluring demon who“s clad in full-length, skintight faux leather dress. She has the ability to shape shift (even into two people) or to render herself invisible. We have a saintly deity and an immortal trickster, both deeply rooted in Mexican folklore. This fits with what“s going on around these two women, who have not yet made themselves known to the men who are working in the computer-generated lettuce field. These are migrant workers from across the border who listen to sad Mexican songs as they work. This is California at the end of the first decade of the last century. There is a little boy who seems important, because Santa Muerta asks her sister to spare him after Magda has promised her many bodies. And since Logan knows we have seen enough movies, and you don“t present your main antagonist not for nothing as a very gorgeous woman cosplaying as Darth Vader and Dracula“s Daughter at the same time, he and Cabezas let Magda do some real damage Zack Snyder style, all this to prove to Santa Muerta, that “all mankind needs to be the monster he truly is, is being told he can.”“ Before Magda even asks if Santa Muerta will try to stop her, she knows the answer.
“I have no heart for the living”“, is how the holy angel for the dead replies, stating what will become the central motif for this episode which carries her name, “Santa Muerta”“. With no resistance, Magda starts walking through the lettuce field as she and her sister show themselves to these men and the little boy, but for different purposes. The angel, to collect the bodies of the farm hands, which Magda will give to her. Where Magda walks, now fire walks with her (as convincingly as the green screen used throughout this scene allows it). Soon, the men find themselves and their surroundings engulfed in the flames that seem to consume everything in their path except for Magda and the kid. When he sees his father caught up in the inferno, naturally and without hesitation he runs towards the burning man. And if the slowly walking Dormer in her tight black dress (which is anachronistic by design, no pun intended) didn“t clue viewers already in, we have entered Ryan Murphy territory, with Santa Muerta cradling the boy“s father in her lap like Mary did with the body of her son after his crucifixion in Michelangelo“s Pietà sculpture. That “pietà ”“ is the Italian word for pity adds a certain potency to the image, since Santa Muerta states that she has “no heart for the living”“, she seems to care deeply for the dead. And she does for the boy, whom she pushes back with her hand pressed to the spot where his heart is located, which sends him reeling backwards in slow motion. And just like that, with a lot of CGI, carefully staged shots and some goth makeup with a lot of eyeliner on both women, Logan and his director set fire to the grimy feel and look of the original series. This is the world of “Penny Dreadful”“ decades later. It all goes down in flames. But as we jump forward in time, with the boy grown into a young man who has a name and a new actor to play him, Santiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto), some of the old poverty of London of the Victorian Era lives on. The year is 1938, and we are introduced to Vega“s family in the part of Los Angeles to which all the Mexicans are relegated who still work the fields or in the local canning factory, all but one. With a nice scene transition we go from Magda“s flames to a set of burning candles on a cake Vega“s mother baked to celebrate his success. His younger brother and sister are there as well, and finally his older brother Raul shows up to the party (Adam Rodriguez, who viewers remember from “CSI: Miami”“). He is trouble. We know this because he is in the union of the factory workers and because he is envious of his younger sibling who“s been made LAPD“s first Mexican American police detective, assigned to homicide no less. Being a patrolman up to now, has apparently put Vega on the fast track to land in the most prestigious police department right away. No wonder, Raul is so resentful. What irks him more, the neighborhood is about to be destroyed by a building project. The city“s transport planning commission has decided to have the new Arroyo Seco Parkway run through their place of residence. With his allegiances conflicted, thusly, Raul asks his detective brother “Where“s your heart, Tiago?”“ This is also the issue with the four dead bodies that get discovered near the L.A. River, with Vega and his partner brought in to investigate. This is when we get introduced to Detective Lewis Michener (played by a very restrained Nathan Lane). Michener is old and overweight, which means that either he“s a total buffoon, or he must be very good at his job. Why he and Vega have been called in (if this being a quadruple homicide wasn“t enough of a reason) becomes clear when the patrolmen remove the sheets covering the four bodies. This is a white family of four who are naked, but who have their faces painted with DÃa de Muertos makeup. And they all have been mutilated, with their hearts cut out. There is also the obligatory cryptic message painted in blood on one of the concrete pillars supporting the bridge over the dry riverbed, pre-Manson style. It is in Spanish and Vega obviously knows what it means: “You take our heart. We take yours.”“ Whatever could this mean now? But there“s no time to dwell on this macabre tableau of two dead adults and two dead teenagers, mutilated as they may be, for much longer, since next we meet the lone holdover from the original show, though we mightn“t recognize his face from the “Penny Dreadful”“ days when he was known as “The Creature”“ (i.e. the Monster of Frankenstein), but we do know his face from both “Skyfall”“ and “Spectre”“ (and “Quantum of Solace”“ as well, but the least said about that one, the better). Now, British actor Rory Kinnear plays the nice father of two blonde boys, who has done well for himself except for a wife who hits the bottle way more often than seems prudent. We get that she“s a drunk when she briefly shows up for breakfast slurring her words, prompting her loving husband to ask their maid to let him know when she“s raiding the liquor cabinet, as he is getting ready to get to work. The family“s maid is also from across the border, of course, and she“s Detective Tiago Vega“s mom. Peter is a pediatrician, as it turns out, and Dr. Peter Craft (or is it Kraft) has a problems with words as well, and so has the mom of one of his young patients who we immediately recognize as Magda (the blonde wig could have fooled us for a second). Peter and Magda, who now goes by the name Elsa, struggle with their English vowels and consonants pretty badly since he“s from Essen and she“s from Berlin (perhaps a callback to a simpler time when Hollywood regularly cast English actors to play Germans, very often Nazis). He comes across as a nice guy who“s clearly caught in an unhappy marriage and is smitten with Elsa, especially when she tells him that she“s in an abusive relationship with the boy“s dad, which explains his asthma attacks, as Dr. Craft helpfully points out while he lends a handkerchief to her for her tears. This is when Logan gives her one of the best lines of the whole episode. “My husband, he“s American. He“s like all Americans, ja. He listens to the wrestling on the radio… He“s is curious about nothing. He knows nothing.”“ Since Elsa“s disguise is not that convincing, we immediately feel for Peter. Obviously, Magda is up to no good, and the gullible doctor, who is in a sensitive place right now, doesn“t know what we know. This leads to two great revelations. Once Elsa is alone with the boy on an elevator, she lifts her blouse over her belly and presses the child against her naked stomach. In a well-executed effects shot, the boy gets absorbed into her body, face first. This is really creepy, and the young actor really sells this with his performance that is delivered without words. When we check back with the doctor, he lets us see what is inside the closet in his private practice. Next we meet rather sleazy Councilman Charlton Townsend who heads LA City“s Council of Transportation. Townsend (played by Michael Gladis who we remember as Paul Kinsey from “Mad Men”“) presides over an injunction meeting brought by Raul to stop the construction project. With racial tension this high, the councilman shuts him down by calling him a “Bolshevik”“ who willingly stands in the way of progress. Townsend is raw with ambition, but not the sharpest knife in the book. Luckily for him, he has got a personal assistant, who we know must be his brains since she looks rather homely and wears heavy wire-framed specs. This is Alex, who tells him that she has set up a special meeting for him. This is once again Dormer“s Magda, though this time around she could have fooled us. As soon as we catch up with Vega and his partner, we find out why Dr. Craft should have a Nazi uniform his closet. Peter is a member of the German American Bund. Out on his lunch break and backed up by a little gang of merry men, he makes a play for the hearts and minds of the Americans who he and his brothers meet while they are marching up and down the street. Less embarrassed about his German accent now, Peter gives a speech. Though he“s a bit awkward, Craft is pretty much a nerd it would seem, his spiel connects with the good folks (as we recall how Magda has described her husband“s attitude). Peter makes a case for isolationism since he“s genuinely concerned about the people who want to see America take a more active role in the political affairs of other countries, namely Europe. What could have gone so wrong in our current political climate, and with less experienced or less skillful creators tripping over themselves in their mad dash to insert some contemporary political agenda into every show it would seem, works. When Kinnear“s Peter utters the fateful lines in his broken English “I say America first”¦ America always”“, he makes Craft likeable, which is so much more chilling. This is no drooling Nazi spouting racial epithets. Peter is an everyman, who has a troubled home life and who“s concerned for his children. Logan trusts his viewers“ intelligence instead of spelling things out. Next, we follow our homicide detectives as they make a trip to the house of the murder victims to look for clues why they might have been targeted. As we already know from their boss (Star Trek“s Brent Spiner in a guest role), they were residents of Beverly Hills. Vega and Michener find out that the parents were elders in a church group and that the husband“s company is involved in the Arroyo Seco Parkway project. While we admire the production design, we“re in “Chinatown”“ by way of James Ellroy. This is when we are introduced to another thread of the series, radio evangelism and religious mysticism, the revival circuit moving from the hot tents in the Heartland to the West via the new mass medium of choice, which will play a much larger part as things progress, we understand. But for now, it is back to land deals and construction projects, since Logan hasn“t kinda forgotten about the clandestine business meeting Alex had set up for her boss. They meet an interesting man at a coastal highway who reminds us that real Nazis don“t always wear uniforms, para-militaristic or otherwise. Often, they“ll come in the guise of a nice, elderly businessman, as in this case. Townsend, at Alex“s behest, is set to rendezvous with Richard Goss, the owner of a large German architectural firm who is working with Hitler on the Reichstag in Berlin. Goss (played by Thomas Kretschmann who cannot shake his Baron Strucker role from “Avengers: Age of Ultron”“ it seems) also has some time to measure the streets of Los Angeles to see which one is wide enough for the German tanks for the victory parade, and to make Townsend an offer he can“t refuse. They want to make him the Mayor of Los Angeles. They already have their agents everywhere, now they need someone in a position of influence who will have “a sympathetic ear”“ to their cause. Even Hitler enjoys a place in the sun it seems. Gladis, as the type of mid-level, local politician who suddenly understands that the way to real power is one on which he will have to sacrifice his integrity and personal morals, is excellent. He makes us feel his inner conflict. There is his ambition, and now a shiny prize is dangled right in front of him. When he answers, “I won“t betray my country”“, he“s keenly aware that it“s already too late for him. Consequently, Goss replies: “Of course, you will.”“ Forty minutes into the premier episode of “City of Angels”“, after the apocalyptic opening with two immortals of myth and folklore playing their little game, suddenly and unexpectedly, viewers come face-to-face with the real horrors, the kind of demons “Penny Dreadful”“ couldn“t deliver. The monsters, the things that go bump in the night, the allegorical archetypes from literature, created as a “boot camp for the psyche”“ (as Wes Craven once put it) are gone. What“s taken their place is much more frightening.
Kretschmann, who has aged into a man whose pushing sixty, is perfectly cast. There is nothing cartoony in his performance. He is no comic book Nazi shouting “Achtung, Achtung!”“ while the heroes are about to kick him in the kisser. He plays Goss as a man who knows that he“s already won. He never once raises his voice. When Goss reveals to Townsend that the Nazis are already in America, that they“ve infiltrated key positions, a visibly shaken, highly uncomfortable Townsend interjects that perhaps he shouldn“t be telling him all this, Kretschmann doesn“t blink. He simply informs Townsend that his driver is “Gestapo”“, the secret police of The Third Reich: “If he does not see this conversation end with a handshake, I“ve instructed him to take his gun and shoot you through the head. And we“ll have to find another candidate for Mayor, alas.”“ What is more chilling, we already know the decision Gladis“ Townsend will make. He“s the type of little bureaucrat evil needs to be triumphant. Ultimately, wars are won not with a shout, or a little play for sympathy as with Peter, but with a whisper, and a “The pleasure was all mine.”“ But there are more people on the show with secrets. Lane“s Detective Michener has set up the obligatory wall of conspiracy in his house, and he now adds a picture of Goss to his collection as the camera pans wide to let us take it all in. He“s been busy and he“s slowly connecting the dots. The mother of his partner Vega has a similar wall in her residence, as we find out when we catch up with Maria Vega (Adriana Barraza). She“s built a shrine dedicated to the worship of Santa Muerta which spans several walls (something that has gone unnoticed by her four children). And she“s in a religious fervor right now as she“s praying hard to the Angel of Death while she“s pounding her fists against her chest. As to be expected from this kind of show, a wind rises which blows out her many candles. Santa Muerta appears, and she makes it known that she isn“t all that pleased to have been summoned. She tells Ma Vega that she is no customer service representative. “If you are dying, I will come to you”“, the deity explains with anger in her voice, lest she doesn“t get troubled any further. “But if your leg is in a trap, you must chew it off!”“ When Maria offers her own life so that Santa Muerta might take her case, Santa Muerta recites the prophecy that Dormer introduced us to in her opening narration while we wish Korzeniowski had showed up with her to score just this one scene at least. This is the crucial scene of the episode and this is when we make the decision if we want to continue with the series or if this is a “skip it”“ kind of show. Alas, almost an hour in, Logan, courtesy of Santa Muerta, delivers the turning point he knows he needs to place this early in the season. He delivers, as his writing is absolutely on point. So does Lorenza Izzo, who“s been given much more to work with than in the opening. Izzo shows us a range of emotions when her pained and exhausted Santa Muerta says: “I have no heart to care for men!”“ Logan and Izzo subvert our expectations, but in a good way. What from the opening scene looked like a show about the age-old battle between the powers of good and evil, has turned into something else entirely. Santa Muerta is a god of old who“s forced to act out a script she has not written. She is a cosplayer of myth and folklore. She is as impotent as Townsend. What“s left in the world is mankind, willing “to be the monster he truly is”“, and Magda who is there to tell him, “he can.”“ No, the pronoun isn“t lost on us, either. Like a deft card player, Logan actually showed us his hand right in the opening when he and Paco Cabezas had a saddened Santa Muerta say: “I have no heart for the living.”“ With Magda“s quick comeback, “For anything”“, it had seemed like a part of their game. But it wasn“t and it isn“t. Now, as we move towards the climax of the episode, the stakes couldn“t possibly be any higher, and we are again reminded of the famous line by Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”“ There is one good man who finally has made up his mind to do something. Sadly, what he does, leads us back right to the beginning when we were told by Magda that there will be a time in which “brother kills brother”“. We are now in a standoff between Raul, his friends from the union and their neighbors who won“t allow the construction workers onto the premise where their homes are located, and L.A.“s Finest, armed with guns and rifles. Right on cue, here“s the demon, who“s back in her black faux leather dress as she strides in slow motion between the two parties without making her presence know just yet. This is when Detective Vega steps forward to negotiate. On whose behalf becomes quite clear when he tells his brother and the men and women that they need to go home, that they “cannot stop this”“. But he is out of time. Logan closes the episode the same way he started it, with a whisper and a bang. All Magda needs to do is to whisper to a rookie patrolman, who is already nervous, and whose rifle seems almost too big. As Vega walks away from his own people, the die is cast. The camera pushes close on the faces of Magda and the young officer. This is when Magda gets her spark to explode everything into chaos. Violence erupts, with more shots being fired and the men in Raul“s camp wielding their bats and clubs with reckless abandon. The red harvest doesn“t suffice just yet, since now we see Magda whispering to Raul, who seems to wake up as if from a dream. He picks up a gun from one of his men who lies on his stomach, and he goes on shooting spree.
The brothers face each other after Raul has killed several patrolmen and he“s wounded Vega“s partner. With Raul about to kill Detective Michener, who lies flat on his back, Tiago Vega must decide where his heart is. He pulls the trigger of his service revolver and puts his brother down like a rabid dog. With him standing over his brother, the camera pulls wide and we are right where the episode started. The deity and her sister stand opposite to one another on each side of the frame. “Penny Dreadful”“ was originally named for the cheap pamphlets that offered sensationalistic serialized literature in the United Kingdom during the 19th century. It only seems fitting, that with this setting, Logan would turn to their American cousin, the pulp magazine. “City of Angels”“ is a pulp detective story with supernatural elements. Though there are some overt story elements that fit to the time period, race relations or the lack thereof, social unrest, infiltration by fifth columnists from a foreign nation intend on conquering America by corrupting the American way of life (a common theme in pulps of the 1930s), radio evangelism and religious fervor, a rise of occultism and mysticism, there are themes that feel as anachronistic as Magda“s dress. Though there has always been the idea that behind every powerful man, there will be a woman to whisper into his ear, this wasn“t as pronounced in the 30s as it would become in the immediate post war years. Sure, exceptions apply (James M. Cain“s seminal novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice”“ saw print in 1934), but by and large, the idea of the femme fatale was popularized in fiction with the rise of Film Noir during a time when gender roles began to swift due to a socio-economic environment created by the Second World War. One can argue that during the time period and the location “City of Angels”“ is set in, women were less able to influence society than during the Victorian Age, when the Suffragette Movement saw its start and growth (interestingly one of the central themes in Season 3 of “Penny Dreadful”“). The heart of the original show was Eva Green“s Vanessa Ives, who suffered a great deal on the way to what pretty much amounted to a sexual awakening in a society and a time that wanted to see women repressed. It seems rather modern to see this idea turned on its head in the new series. Mankind, which is addressed throughout the episode as “he”“, seems to be repressed. It is the men who are holding back their worst tendencies, but barely, while the women are in control. Mother Vega runs a tight ship with her family, and even Raul falls into line once she scolds him. Her teenage daughter Josefina (Jessica Garza) enjoys the physical advances of a boy, but she stays on top of the situation. And we catch a glimpse of Sister Molly, the radio evangelist (played by Kerry Bishè), who the murdered family was listening to. Then we have Santa Muerta and Magda. The former is worshipped even though she is pretty much the angel of death. The latter uses men“s weaknesses against them, which seems to give her pleasure. This feels like a comment on modern gender roles, but either the show doesn“t know what it wants to say yet (Maria is good, Magda is evil, both are women) and to what end, or the message is a muddled one so far, as is Magda“s motivation. Though Dormer has her state her intentions quite clearly, the why is missing. We don“t know yet what makes Magda tick, hence she is little more than a cypher in a tight dress. However, when we look into the rear-view mirror ever so briefly, this is about the same place Logan started with the original series. Not all was revealed and the superior second season wasn“t even on the horizon. It remains to be seen where Logan is going with this. If this new show will get to the high point of the first show, only time will tell. But we are not better or worse off than where it all started back in May 2014.
A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.
