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Penny Dreadful Review: “Demimonde” (Season 1, Episode 4)

The fourth episode of Showtime's Penny Dreadful, titled "Demimonde," feels like an improvement over the past episodes of the show in every way. It's extremely sexy, scary and compelling television, complete with some extremely intriguing plot developments and character progressions that make me excited to see how Penny Dreadful's second half (for Showtime only ordered eight episodes for the show's first season) continues the story.

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As Victor’s holding his head in his hands, Ethan is busy holding Brona’s in his. For the second time this season, they’re introduced wrapped up in bed, embracing one another. Surprise, surprise, Brona didn’t have the best childhood. We find out that, before ditching her family and heading to London, she was engaged to a brute of a man who enjoyed rough sex. “One night, he was fucking me, and he got really… tough. And there was blood,” Brona tells Ethan. “I went to my mother. She said to go back and marry him.” As one can imagine, that basically spelled the end of Brona’s relationship with her family. So she started whoring in London, feeling completely and utterly unloved… until Ethan came along. He offers to take her out on the town that night, then heads to work.

We get the episode’s first jump-out moment as the scene cuts from Ethan talking to Brona to him confronting a near-feral Fenton. “Where’s Vanessa? I want mother!” Fenton cries, taunting his captors. Olly Alexander has been doing an absolutely amazing job of playing a loon since his introduction last week, and this episode really soars on his talents. He snarls, spits and hisses like a wild animal, thrashing against his restraints with almost merry madness. Victor wants to try a blood transfusion to cure him and asks Ethan to roll up his sleeve. “That’s not a good idea – trust me,” he says, much to everyone’s surprise. It’s looking more and more likely that Ethan is a werewolf, so that would explain why he doesn’t want to have his blood used in a medical procedure. Sir Malcolm wants to know how they’ll know if the transfusion is working. “Well, he wouldn’t want to eat everyone, for a start,” Victor retorts dryly.

As they wait, Sir Malcolm and Victor discuss the recent spree of murders. “Christ you’re both morbid fucks,” says Ethan, scrunching up the newspaper they’re reading and tossing it into the fireplace. Something doesn’t seem quite right about his reaction, though my working theory that he’s the one responsible for the deaths would explain his passionate response to Sir Malcolm and Victor dissecting the crime. Sir Malcolm moves on, inviting Ethan on an expedition to Africa he plans to take in a few months. Victor is noticeably hurt by not being invited.

Back in the basement, the transfusion isn’t working. In the episode’s most frightening moment, he responds to Vanessa carefully rolling him an apple by screaming, “I need blood, you fucking devil whore!” Again, I can’t impress enough how great Alexander is in this part. When they later toss him a recently killed cat, the gusto with which Fenton tears into it is chilling.

Shaken, Ethan leaves for his date with Brona – at the Grand Guignol, no less. The play on offer? The Transformed Beast. We see Brona’s joy in watching the grisly performance, and also Caliban busying himself with all manner of ropes and levers below the stage. Dorian, Vanessa and Sembene (nope, still no development as far as he’s concerned, unfortunately, though he’s the one to cold-bloodedly twist the cat’s neck before tossing it to Fenton) are also in the audience, funnily enough.

It’s a fun little performance, with Vincent Brand hamming it up on stage as the narrator and main character. Caliban seems truly at home as the stage rat, and the joy with which he tends to his work makes it hard to reconcile him with the vengeful creature who tore Proteus apart at the end of the second episode. When a werewolf-like creature tears into the female lead, he operates the blood pump mirthfully, making a wolf call alongside Brand.

Meanwhile, back at the mansion, Fenton is drawing his master in. Gleefully cackling, he sets to work biting through his arm enough to slip the shackles off. Sir Malcolm and Victor are upstairs. When Victor voices his anger at being passed over for Sir Malcolm’s expedition, a surprising bit of emotion comes out of Sir Malcolm. “Mr. Chandler means nothing to me. He is a finger on a trigger. You are not,” he says. Touched, Victor lets go of his earlier resentment. It’s more than a little odd to see this bond between the pair, considering Victor and Sir Malcolm didn’t have much of a relationship (or at least one that we knew about) before the start of the series, but the chemistry between Timothy Dalton and Harry Treadaway makes it work.

Their quality time is spoiled by strange noises on the second floor of the house. They go up to investigate and, in a very effective bit of direction from Dearbhla Walsh, Fenton crawls up the stairs after them. Cautiously, Sir Malcolm opens the door to Vanessa’s room. Inside is a pale, naked, humanoid creature distinguished by a beast-like, very sharp set of teeth and vicious, red eyes. It roars at them and, at the same time, Fenton leaps out of nowhere to incapacitate Sir Malcolm. As they tussle, Fenton howls, “She’s not here, master!” It appears that this creature is this series’ take on Dracula – the makeup is impressive, but I’ll have to wait for the creature to make a larger appearance until I pass judgment.

Victor watches it with a mixture of horror and fascination for a few seconds, as it turns to look at the cross on Vanessa’s wall, recoils and jumps through a window into the night. Sir Malcolm’s struggle with Fenton ends almost immediately afterwards, as Fenton falls over and is impaled through the head by a shard of glass on the newly broken window. With a tearful “Mother?,” the group’s first test subject is no more.