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Jul. 21st, 2015 12:14 amPenny Dreadful 2.3!
It can still be a clumsy show, sometimes a static one, often enough a silly one. But it's capable of sudden directness, or anyway places where what's wrapped in allegory pushes its face so far out at you that you see its colors through the material, in a way that can be immensely moving. And the Victorian obsession with slash flight from the Romantic poets is caught exquisitely well. In glints and peeks it even films some of what Romanticism was, is, so I may overrate it for that novelty. I'm at the same sort of remove from it the characters are, it often feels like. From reading, too. A literary show preserving any level of literariness at all will thus feel more personal than it maybe should. But the commitment to deep feeling - there's something real there. Leading to forgiveness when risks don't pay off or when allegories tangle or collapse.
It lacks the high baseline of Hannibal, Better Call Saul, and even The Leftovers, but I think it's comparable with at least the latter two in terms of standout episodes, stray startling scenes.
Adding: Rest of season was mostly terrible. I think most of 1 was too. Maybe all but Proteus' walk, the Doctor's childhood, and some Green scenes (the latter half of 2 makes even her boring!). Plus the Tristan episode, though maybe just for those of us who can't ever resist Tristan. Good emerging from bad and subsiding back into it is the central mystery of the world, I sometimes think. Somehow made more mysterious when evident in the tidepool of a single mind.
It can still be a clumsy show, sometimes a static one, often enough a silly one. But it's capable of sudden directness, or anyway places where what's wrapped in allegory pushes its face so far out at you that you see its colors through the material, in a way that can be immensely moving. And the Victorian obsession with slash flight from the Romantic poets is caught exquisitely well. In glints and peeks it even films some of what Romanticism was, is, so I may overrate it for that novelty. I'm at the same sort of remove from it the characters are, it often feels like. From reading, too. A literary show preserving any level of literariness at all will thus feel more personal than it maybe should. But the commitment to deep feeling - there's something real there. Leading to forgiveness when risks don't pay off or when allegories tangle or collapse.
It lacks the high baseline of Hannibal, Better Call Saul, and even The Leftovers, but I think it's comparable with at least the latter two in terms of standout episodes, stray startling scenes.
Adding: Rest of season was mostly terrible. I think most of 1 was too. Maybe all but Proteus' walk, the Doctor's childhood, and some Green scenes (the latter half of 2 makes even her boring!). Plus the Tristan episode, though maybe just for those of us who can't ever resist Tristan. Good emerging from bad and subsiding back into it is the central mystery of the world, I sometimes think. Somehow made more mysterious when evident in the tidepool of a single mind.
