“IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I SAW THE WORLD“ PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS, EPISODE 9
Chris Buse (RIP)
This review contains spoilers.
Limited seasons of television shows are not much different from a novel or a movie. If it is your intention to tell a complete story to your audience, chances are that you“ll follow a well-established pattern that“s most likely already familiar to your viewers; and all in all, as the show progresses, there are certain boxes that“ll need to be checked. The blueprint that“s most commonly used in storytelling, either intentionally or purely subconsciously, through osmosis, is the three-act structure. Even little children know how the story goes. We are introduced to our main characters, let“s say a princess and the son of a farmer. The princess gets kidnapped by an evil lord. The farmer“s son meets a mentor who tells him that he is special and destined for greater things. The young man doubts the words of the older man at first. “How can I be special?”“, he asks. “Look around, I“m destined to become a farmer!”“ The mentor will persist, and he even promises a reward, a spiritual one or a thing of material value. Thus, they embark on an adventure. Along his way, the boy gains companions, but he“ll also find out that he must receive training and much wisdom from his mentor. The hero is challenged; he faces many obstacles as he“ll understand the value of defeat. He will develop new skill sets. Step by step he“s on his way to the ultimate confrontation with his antagonist who happens to be the same person who abducted the princess for different reasons. In the final battle, the mentor is struck down, but the boy proves his worthy successor. He defeats the bad guy and rescues the princess. Then we have a wrap-up during which the boy and his companions receive a token of recognition to acknowledge their acts of bravery and valor. This, for example is the same plot that Akira Kurosawa used for his film “The Hidden Fortress”“ (1958). It is also the plot of the little movie that could, George Lucas“ “Star Wars”“ (1977). Once it proved a massive success, the latter film received a rebranding upon its theatrical re-release, thus what was originally shown to moviegoers, a complete yarn which adhered closely to a three-act structure, retroactively became but a chapter in a much larger storyline. Now ostensibly referred to as “Star Wars Episode IV ”“ A New Hope”“, George Lucas“ first “Star Wars”“ film, an individual, original stand-alone film as far as its original audience was concerned, would henceforth and thereon after serve as the opening chapter in another three-act story, namely a trilogy, while the number IV indicated that there was yet another three-part story to be told, set in the past of the second, then current trilogy. These were indeed exciting prospects. Though Lucas had been toying with the idea of telling a much larger story many years prior to the creation of the first “Star Wars”“ film, he and his co-scripters smartly didn“t tell their audience any of this, not before the first film turned into a cultural sensation. The original “Star Wars”“ has a beginning, a middle and an end. It even concludes with a nice wrap-up. Were there still unanswered questions and more worlds to explore and even more exciting new characters to meet? Surely, but Lucas finished the story he began with the opening crawl once the screen went to black and the credits started to roll. What made audiences want to revisit this movie time and again, and which left them clamoring for more, was not their desire to see a conclusion to the story, but the characters themselves. What also worked to the films advantage was how simple the story and the worldview it put forward were. Indeed, “Star Wars”“ shows us the three-act narrative in its purest form. Serialized storytelling, film franchises, tie-in books, comics and TV shows have pretty much adopted this approach. TV shows will tell you a complete story per season, but doing that, means that they“ll ultimately have to rely on the model “Star Wars”“ and countless other pieces of fiction used expertly. However, this model creates expectations. For example, you must provide a satisfying pay-off to what“s called the promise of the premise, meaning that once your theme is introduced, and the way in which your theme is communicated, you“ll need to deliver. All the smaller confrontations must tie-in to the overall theme and thus must be meaningful and must move the story forward in an organic way. From what we have seen and learned so far, the first season of Penny Dreadful: “City of Angels”“ works in exactly the same way. We were introduced to the season“s most important characters, to the overall theme (love) as well as to its main source of conflict (rejection, hence, unrequited love) during the first three episodes. As for the narrative approach, with each new episode we followed the individual stories of our main players, stories that did connect to both, the plot and the central theme of the season. We also quickly picked up certain visual cues (the use of green light throughout the first seven installments), as well as the discourse and interplay between the bangs and whispers as a storytelling device. We also saw how the second act came to its conclusion with a bang when two of our protagonists got attacked with a hail of bullets from a tommy gun, setting the stage for the final confrontation with which to kick-off the third act. With just two episodes left after the violent and vicious attempt to kill Detective Vega and his partner Detective Michener, it didn“t seem out of left field if you thought that we“d arrive at the highest point of the tension right at the start of the ninth episode, with Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane) getting ready to unleash that righteous anger he was carrying around on the Nazis agents who were to blame for the cowardly ambush. Then you had Rio, one of the disguises worn by demon Magda (Natalie Dormer), the big bad of the show. As we also saw in the eighth episode, the female Pachuco gang leader had Mateo Vega (Jonathan Nieves), Tiago Vega“s younger brother, all wound up like a powerful spring, this kid being the murderer of one police officer already. She and he would lead an up rise of Mexicans and Pachuco members until the streets of Los Angeles were flooded with blood. In episode nine we“d be getting the pay-off to all the individual storylines. These little conflicts would be resolved in a massive battle between our heroes and those who“d fallen prey to Magda“s whispers or who were bad from the get-go. And as we could expect, with the final confrontation, the overarching theme of the entire season would have run its course. There“d be a wrap-up in the final episode, most likely slower paced and more reflective in nature. For comparison“s sake one only needs to look at a massively successful show which also aired ten episodes per season for its first six seasons. Like clockwork, it was during episode nine in each season that some of the storylines came to a head in a climatic, albeit extremely brutal battle that frequently left many of the good guys on the losing side, thus delivering a lot of emotional heft. Episode ten was usually reserved for some soul searching, with each of the main players attempting to get their bearing back to be ready for what came next, in the next season. That show was “Game of Thrones”“. If you were among those viewers who hadn“t read the books this show was initially based on, with its first season and the shocking conclusion to that season“s ninth episode, you knew that you had better brace yourself for impact whenever episode nine of the following seasons rolled around. With the first season of “City of Angels”“, its penultimate installment in a season of ten episodes, pulls no punches either, but for a simple reason. There aren“t any punches. Even though there“s a lot of shouting, there is little bang. There“s isn“t any fault in holding back the final battle and its resolution until the last episode. Certainly, tension arising from the main conflict can build up even more steam for one big explosion and fireworks that are memorable long after the credits roll up. Like some shows will have a cold opening, shows can conclude with a powerful tableau or a shocking last-minute revelation, or a cliffhanger and a quick fade to black, thus leaving the wrap-up entirely in the hands and the mind of the audience. “Rich Man, Poor Man”“, one of the event series of the late 70s, concluded with a shock ending. Rudy Jordache, the man whose hero“s journey from humble surroundings to the top of the political arena the audience had been following over many episodes, died at the hands of his family“s nemesis in the last minutes of the series finale, something that was entirely unheard of for a prime time soap opera at that time. We aren“t really able to predict how series creator John Logan will finish the first season of “City of Angels”“. There isn“t a rule which compels creators to see every storyline through to its endpoint. Still, after this much build-up, we can only hope that its last outing will give us a gripping finale, and the bang which“s missing from this season“s ninth installment. Still, as far as the wrap-up is concerned, episode nine already delivered in this regard so thoroughly and exhaustively, that there aren“t many rooms left to go to it would seem.
Whereas “Game of Thrones”“ was wont to kill-off beloved characters in their penultimate installments, with “Sing, Sing, Sing”“, this show killed most of the excitement with its easy, mundane story resolutions. It“s an all-too common refrain these days to say “you didn“t like this development because it is not what you had envisioned how the story would play out”“, or that creators don“t work in customer relations or that they aren“t required to fulfill the expectations of the audience, that in fact it“s their prerogative to subvert expectations as they see fit. They can kill-off whoever they like (in a story, of course) or choose not to or simply make the call to wipe away all the drama they“ve created among their characters in the most trivial and convenient way. And here“s the rub: they most certainly can. Yet if none of this feels at least a tiny bit organic i.e. true to the story they“ve told thus far or follows simple logic or even the logic as established the world of the characters, viewers have the right to call a spade a spade and name this as what it is. This episode, which was penned by Logan and helmed by Dan Attias, isn“t just a let-down, it“s a huge turd. It“s such a muddled mess with so many wasted opportunities, that it“s even hard to say what Logan was actually going for. Either way, it“s a fair bet that he and his team have struck out. Logan isn“t a stranger to controversy, either. Years ago, there was much hemming and hawing among viewers and in the show“s fan community on the internet, in regard to how Logan chose to conclude the original series “Penny Dreadful”“. For various reasons, the final two installments (with the series finale scripted by Logan) were widely panned, especially when compared to what had come before, even in the final season which was mostly fairly good, the last episodes notwithstanding. Likewise, with “City of Angels”“. Despite a changing stable of writers around the mid-point (or in its second act, if you will), Logan and a handful of creators did manage to establish a riveting new world to explore and engaging characters to follow. It is actually sad to see it all go to seed in an installment that ranks among the worst in the Penny Dreadful franchise. As poorly received as the final two episodes of the original show were and that they were, you could still tell that Logan was trying to deliver a meaningful if not even powerful conclusion. “Sing, Sing, Sing”“ is anything but. Surely, there“s an underlying fact to be explored. This is definitely not a popular show. The original show premiered to an audience of a little less than a million viewers in the United States. The first season, which felt a bit lackluster in parts, held on to most of that audience with every consecutive season testing or dipping below the line of 600,000 viewers. With Logan stating well in advance that he was going for a three-season-arc, this was when the show ended. If you include the seven-days-later audience (i.e. viewers who don“t watch a given show on its premier night, but within a seven-day window via streaming), “City of Angels”“ performs very similarly (though the original ratings didn“t consider the streaming viewers, because even as late as 2016 this was still a new thing with many viewers still choosing to DVR content). Where the new show fails however, is with the coveted segment of the audience, the 18-49 bracket in which “Penny Dreadful”“ scored a 0.07 rating on average. “City of Angels”“ does half the numbers, if that, with its sixth outing, which was actually very good, even dipping to the 0.01 mark, though the show has managed a 0.04 rating for most of its episodes this far. Still, the writing is on the wall. But then again, limited series aren“t usually produced at the time they are aired. It“s a well-educated guess that every episode was already shot before the pilot was aired (or streamed). Thus, the idea that after the lukewarm reception to the first episodes, now Logan has to hastily bring it all around in the last two episodes feels pretty much like a non-starter argument. But even if this is the case (it is highly doubtful), in episode nine he does an excruciatingly bad job of it. Things re-start from exactly the same point where Tatiana Suarez-Pico, the scribe of the previous installment, left things off when she concluded the second act. Michener and Detective Vega (Daniel Zovatto) assess the damage the attack on their lives has left them with. As it turns out, Michener got wounded again, with a bullet passing right through one of his hands it would seem. Chances are high that this won“t get mentioned ever again like the bullet hole he sustained in the pilot episode. Instead of him being too much bothered by his injury, the detective whines about the damage to his vintage car. Then we see our leads standing around as they wonder who they might have pissed off enough to have ordered a hit on them. Michener takes a bit of blood from his hand which Vega has just bandaged up to dramatically and ominously paint a swastika on the hood of his bullet-hole riddled vehicle. Yeah, we already got that the Nazis must have done this, and no, the symbolism of Michener“s act isn“t lost on us either. True to form, Michener goes to a private club to confront the main man of the Nazis, architect Richard Goss (Thomas Kretschmann). Of course, as he barges into the elegant restaurant of the club, the official looking maître d“ quickly tells him with a brief, condescending smile that “this club is restricted”“, implying the Jews aren“t allowed, a detail that while rooted in history, feels unnecessary, especially with the way Michener shrugs it off as he walks straight to the table where Goss is sitting with some business associates. The detective doesn“t care, and he immediately insults Goss in the crowded dining hall, prompting Goss to ask his partners to leave them. To tell the world that Goss is a Nazi is less shocking in reality as this might seem today. After all, the show is set in 1938, and the Nazis were doing business in America fairly openly. Hitler even had liaisons to Hollywood who would make sure that every studio played ball lest their movies wouldn“t be banned in Germany. But Michener“s theatrics don“t just end there. He takes out his service gun which he places on the table in front of Goss, daring Goss to kill him if he has the guts. While the 1930s must have been a violent time, his maneuver doesn“t get any reaction from the other patrons, not even one single raised eyebrow. In the most non-Columbo way, the veteran homicide detective tells Hitler“s man in Los Angeles what he“s been able to find out about him, by doing actually very little other than to trail him and to ask a few questions. Michener fails to mention that he has hidden away the young engineer Goss needs to develop a long-range missile. This is when Goss interjects to calmly tell him that he knows that the detective has hidden Brian Koening (Kyle McArthur), something which comes as a shock to our anti-fascist crusader and gets played up for dramatic effect. Still, like a petulant child, Michener keeps daring Goss to kill him and be done with it, as he shoves his gun further across the table. Instead of him taking the gun, Goss reaches for his smokes as it is now his time to show off some of the detective work, he“s done. As it turns out, Goss knows all about Michener“s estranged family, even where his daughter and grandchildren are located. Clearly, this is intended to drive home the idea that Goss is evil and that he“s a formidable villain, but it underscores how little detective work Michener has actually done in the previous episodes. While Goss seems to know everything about the detective, the policeman is utterly unprepared and equally in the dark about Goss“s motives and objectives, other than that the man wants to help Hitler to build a rocket, and as it turns out, so are we the viewers. Surely, we have seen the Nazi study several maps throughout the season, but even when the penultimate episode concludes, we have no idea to what end. With his family directly threatened, this is when Michener reaches for his gun. He clearly hasn“t done all his homework, and this here might be the moment for a shocking turn of events which is born from his frustrations and the many insults he has received. But not unlike each and every other character on the show, including the demon Magda, he doesn“t act in a decisive manner when it truly counts. In the world that“s been presented to us, we know that the police force of this Los Angeles is corrupt and ready to fabricate evidence when needed. Michener himself did this when he convinced young Diego Lopez (Adan Rocha) to be the fall guy for the multiple homicides of an affluent white family of four from Beverly Hills and Police Officer Reilly. But instead of finding a way to frame Goss, or to use the police force to open an investigation into the man, with Michener and Vega still basking in the glow of their success, after all, they were able to do what no other cop could do, they concluded the Hazlett case and Reilly“s murder and got a confession, the writer has Michener go through another double beat like he did in the second outing. Again, the detective darkens the door of the same Jewish mobster he“d previously petitioned for support. Then, Michener had refused to pay the price the gangster was asking of him, namely that he“d be indebted to him if he accepted his help. The imposing Benny Berman (Brad Garrett) offers the same deal to Michener again this time around. Nothing has changed, only that Lewis Michener isn“t asked to kill for the gangster right away to prove his loyalty, and that now Michener does accept the man“s conditions. Surely, we are to take from this that he has become more desperate since Goss knows about his folks. Still, the first time Lewis and Benny saw each other, the meeting took place at the grave of one Michener“s friends, who was murdered by Goss“s killer Kurt, a crime he might have been able to pin on Goss had the detective not asked the coroner to hide the evidence. Now going back to the same well, this late into the season, feels unnecessary, especially with Berman“s crew getting his only friend and the young engineer to safety before Kurt can dispatch them. Not only is this something that the detective could have handled on his own, why wait until Berman“s men showed up when they did, but that Berman accompanies his men when they pick up Koening and the old Jewish woman from her residence, feels laughable, especially without his entourage securing the dark premise beforehand. It’s hackneyed writing even the most inapt writers of 1930s pulp fiction would have been ashamed of.
But luckily, with these characters, and such a world constructed that is still rife with story potential and meaning to explore, and especially with a cast this talented, it is next to impossible to mess up a single episode this completely. There are three good scenes in total to be found in these fifty-two minutes of tedious television that pretty much amounts to a Vega family album snapshot. Still, Logan nearly drops the ball on the most sensitive one among this handful of story segments. Since he puts this scene at the end of the episode, Logan must be aware how powerful its message can be, and he is, but the message is still poorly communicated. Diego, the kid who had confessed to killing Reilly and the Hazlett family at Michener“s behest, is to be moved to San Quentin. But Michener and Diego aren“t going alone. They“re joined by a small number of patrolmen who ride with him in the armored vehicle with the viewers half-expecting some kind of ambush by a band of Pachucos under Rio“s leadership, hell-bent on freeing their brother from the corrupt authorities. There“s a moment of tension when the men attack Michener, but what they do is to handcuff him to the inside of the transport vehicle while the pull the young Chicano out on the street. Diego“s hands are also cuffed but behind his back and one of the officers holds a rope with one end fashioned into a noose and the other end thrown over the arm of streetlamp. He is getting hoisted up while the noose tightens around his neck. This lynching of Diego could have been a haunting moment, a whisper instead of a bang, albeit one that adds absolutely nothing new. We“ve already been shown that the police force of this fictional Los Angeles of the 1930s is racist. We know that these men have it out for the youngster who has confessed to killing one of their own. And sure, to see men who are clad in black uniforms with military-style regalia begs the question of how different these men are from the monsters who simply add a swastika to their very similar uniforms. Still, this could have been an effective, be it bold exclamation point to this episode, had it not been this weak overall and were it not for the most puzzling choice by helmer Dan Attias to intercut the lynching of Diego Lopez with Tiago and his family having a good time at the club with upbeat music, this mix of Jazz and Mambo bleeding into the somber proceedings that take place on a dark, desolate road in the middle of nowhere yet this close to a supposedly civilized city such as Los Angeles. Attias is surely going for something here, but it comes out as a muddled mess, the kind used to make waters seem deep. Even Lane, who is quite good on the show feels tired in this scene. And back at the club, we see the camera pulling ever closer on the face of the demon who“s wearing the face of Rio, almost as if she knows that this happiness around her won“t be for long, but then, even the camera seems to lose interest and suddenly pans aimlessly across the dancefloor as if the moving legs and feet of the dancers hold more exciting stories to tell. As for the other two scenes, even this massively weak script cannot stop two of the best actors on the show from delivering yet another stellar performance. There is Rory Kinnear“s Peter who is driving with his mix and match family to the movie theater, with even Frank on his best behavior. The scene itself opens with a shot that sums up the could have-beens of this show and the magic of movie making perfectly. We see a gorgeous establishing shot, a panorama view of downtown Los Angeles in the evening, with the lights on and the streets alive with all types of hustle and bustle. Though there is most certainly a ton of effect work that must have gone into creating this image which is on the screen but for a few seconds, we buy it all, because it is simply glorious and because it fits in with the story Peter is telling his kids. When he was a little boy in Essen, long before there was a thing called cinema, there was this man who used but a projector with a handle and some flickering light to show them moving pictures for the first time. “It was the first time I saw the world; you see. And I knew I could go there, and ride on trains and dance”¦ everything that wasn“t my life.”“ But then he pauses in his recollection. “But no more of that”¦,”“ he tells the three kids and himself. There is a deep sadness in the way Kinnear delivers these lines, and we get Peter“s plight. Once you can no longer believe in the made-up magic of movies, you have also lost your place to escape to a better, kinder world, albeit one solely created by shadows and a flickering light. It is a world that“s lost to him that Councilman Charlton Townsend (Michael Gladis) must travel to. Judging from the long drive it takes to get from the gate to the main house, it might as well be a descent into a hell created by men. To him, it may very well feel like that, but as it turns out, he“s about to meet a god who is his maker. With him having exhausted every other option, this mid-level bureaucrat“s only hope rests on a last-minute intervention by a deus ex machina. Otherwise, the city will adapt his rival“s plan for the motorway, and she“ll be successful in her bit to have him recalled from the ballot for the election of Mayor of Los Angeles. That is unless his father saves him and his plans, with Jerome Townsend (Brian Dennehy) being one of the three men who built Los Angeles. This old man who is presented to us comes across as much more cunning and energetic than his son, and from what we learn about him during the encounter he has with his son Charlton, Jerome is a visionary. He built the roads and he turned transport from a public business into a private business, a business he completely owns. And herein, his son now assumes, lie opportunities. With automobiles getting cheaper and affordable to the masses, the citizens would soon forego getting around in Jerome“s streetcars, but with his plans for a the new motorway, a motorway build to his specifications, the old man could still stay on top, with Charlton“s help that was: “The future is the automobile and the roads they drive on. A future we can control,”“ he pitches his dad, putting on a smarmy politician“s spiel that has availed him much, yet clearly not enough. “It“s the family business, sir.”“ However, while Charlton was busy playing with his plans for a motorway that won“t ever get built, at least not the way he had envisioned it, with little regard for the Mexican community through whose neighborhood the road was supposed to run, he did pay little attention to the ways in which the world around him is changing, and, as it turns out, he“s grossly underestimated his father. Jerome isn“t a man who depends on him to know where the future lies. This is when Jerome reveals that he is truly a visionary. It“s like the future is telling him: “Roads? Where we“re going, we don“t need roads.”“ With a finger pointed upwards; Jerome explains: “The future is up there! Aviation.”“ Indeed, Jerome has set his eyes on building up the airport of Los Angeles. With the war coming, there“d be lucrative contracts the government would provide, funds to further his vast empire. And after the war, there“d be technology around to make private aviation a big business as well. But there is also one last insult his father has to parse out to his offspring: “The reason I“m not supporting you isn“t because you“re a fat, ugly queer. It“s because you“re weak and I never back a losing horse.”“ As good as Brian Dennehy is in his last role, Gladis is on point with his acting which also displays a wide range of emotions as he has his character react to insult after insult from a father who has his son pegged as a loser from the start it seems. Fans of comic books and their history will surely see some parallels to Bill Gaines and his father Max with Bill facing a lot of physical abuse and subsequent weight issues as a coping mechanism. But while Bill eventually did outdo Max“s success, there isn“t much hope for Charlton. The way Gladis portrays the man, he is aware of this, which makes it even sadder. Charlton“s a man utterly without hope. If there“s hope for the series remains to be seen, but there“s nothing confidential about this Los Angeles and we aren“t in Chinatown.
Rating for the episode: 1.5 out of 5.
Author Profile
Chris Buse (RIP)
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.
