Going Gaga for Alice
Alice is a documentary about the political troubles on Lady Gaga's home planet sci-fi miniseries retelling of the story of Alice in Wonderland. It has a multitude of plot holes, many of which I've touched on in fic, if you're interested. I'm going to assume you're not, and move forward.
The story opens with our protagonist, Alice, as played by Caterina Scorsone: brunette, this time around, and a black-belt sporting judo instructor. She is currently dating (and attempting to teach) Jack Chase, one of our other main characters. After a little banter and sexy move where Alice tips Jack's ass on the floor and straddles him, they part ways. Jack goes to prepare for his date, and be followed by suspicious-looking people with sunglasses on. Alice looks for her missing for thirteen and/or ten years missing father on the internet, and talks with her mother about her massive commitment issues.
Jack comes to meet Alice's mother, they have what the time skip paints as a fairly good evening, and after the slightly awkward subject of Dad comes up, Mom leaves them alone. I should mention now, before I forget, that the mother's name is Carol, one of the many times where subtle little 'blink or you'll miss it' references to the original storybooks will come up. Not long after she leaves, Jack gets a text: RUN. Cheered by this, he proposes to Alice, who, due to aforementioned commitment issues, declines. Badly. He runs. Alice and her mom have another chat about her Issues, until Alice figures out that Jack slipped her the ring he'd proposed with and runs off after him.
She catches up with Jack just as he's getting the snot beat out of him by a bunch of suit-wearing men, before being throwing him into a white van that goes peeling off into the night. Alice is then confronted by the man we'll soon know as Agent White, who in addition to a white rabbit on his lapel, has two white ponytail hanging behind his head, and is wearing a white suit. He tells her Jack is a thief, and he knows she has the ring: she then slips the ring out of its box onto her finger, there's a scuffle, he gets away, she follows, the chase continues into an abandoned warehouse, and through a Looking Glass.
She lands (on her face, more or less) in a flooded building carpeted with flowers and full of exposed sparking wiring. Agent White is there as well, so Alice gives chase, until the camera pans outside to show us that Alice is on a small ledge in the skyscraper building about half a mile off the ground, placing her roughly two feet away from a smashing end.
Now might be a good time to mention that Alice has a crippling fear of heights. And that when I say city later, you should keep in mind that whoever is in that scene is similarly elevated.
So, she sees Jack being carried into a building with the symbol of the White Rabbit on it, followed by Agent White. She follows once more, until she's held up by the sight of a large mechanical beetle roughly the size of Hindenberg flying among the skyscrapers. A light shines out of it: the light hits Alice's arm, and she instantly gets a green paisley tattoo on her arm. Deciding that she's been outside long enough, she goes inside, and finds a room with a table. On that table is a bottle labeled, not "drink me" as I shouted at the screen upon my first viewing, but "curiosity". The fact that this is the sort of place where bottles of curiosity exist will become very important later, so keep that in mind.
Anyway, there's also a mail slot sort of thing in a wall, which she peers into to see people arranged like chocolates in a sampler, with tattoos on various parts of their bodies, all sleeping. She recognizes one of them as a homeless man she gave apples to. Then the room she's in turns into of the compartments the people were sleeping in, Agent White gets off a pithy line, and Alice very rightly freaks out for a moment, before getting enough of a hold on herself to pick the box she's in open with her hairpin.
As it turns out, she's actually several hundred feet in the air at the time, flying over a lake. Whoops. She falls, though, being Alice, and therefore not only our protagonist but very physically capable, she manages to swim to the city rather than drowning. Thus ends Alice vs lake, round one.
Anyway, she lands herself more or less directly in front of a man called Ratty, who doesn't want anything to do with her, because she's an Oyster. Why is she an Oyster? Because the tattoo says so. Okay then she'll pay him to help her. Pay? Yes. The name's Alice.
ALICE?! THE ALICE OF LEGEND?!?
As the audience learns soon thereafter, this is not only Wonderland, but the Wonderland we know is history for them- and if you thought it was scary before, then you should know that things have only gotten worse since then.
Ratty takes her to the Man Who Knows, who evidentially operates out of a tea shop. Once inside said shop, it becomes clear that 'tea' is something which has shifted in meaning in Wonderland: people are buying liquid emotions. At the head of the confusion of people buying things like Serenity and Hope like they're stocks at Wall Street and the market hasn't yet crashed, is Dormie, who has no canonical gender: Dormie is played by a mustache-wearing woman, so the audience is left to decide which gender they prefer Dormie to be. Dormie is also asleep for most this scene, except for an interlude to bang a gavel and deliver a hilariously sociopathic pitch for the newest tea in the market: Clear Conscious. Alice is then ushered inside to meet the Man Who Knows: Hatter, played by Andrew Lee-Potts in a straw porkpie hat, eyeliner, and paisley.
I should take this moment to say that this is a show which likes to fuck with gender, which is part of why I made that Lady Gaga joke earlier. It's not just Dormie's lack of clear gender, or Hatter's magical make-up which never ever smudges, but how when male characters are trying to sound impressive, they say and do things that make them look more feminine, and when the Queen of Hearts is on the warpath, the fact that she's a woman is one of the first things she emphasizes. This is a nice way of not only making Wonderland a mildly confusing place to navigate for both Alice and the audience, but is interesting from the point of view of someone interesting in gender roles and hierarchies... which you probably aren't, so I'll move on.
Hatter and Alice are introduced to each other: it's established that this Alice can't be that Alice, Hatter is an ever so slightly skeavey character, tea is made from Oysters (read: people from Earth), and Ratty smells. Hatter half pays him to go away, half buys Alice, and then they talk for a little more and it's decided that Hatter will escort Alice to people who can help her. Why? Because then they owe him, and he likes that. He also gives her a coat, which in addition to hiding her tattoo, ties her outfit together quite nicely. They climb a ladder down to a very narrow ledge, whereupon Alice catches sight of the long drop and freezes, and Hatter helps her. He also gets a good look at the ring she’s wearing, which will be significant in about three minutes.
Anyway... over to the Happy Hearts Casino, where in addition to making tea out of Oysters (a very strange process which involves drugging people, and then having them win at gambling repeated and/or ogle dancing girls) there is also the seat of power. This place also gives off something of a Lady Gaga vibe, in that there are numerous women wearing short dress made out of small mirrors and feathers and the like. The King of Hearts (played by Colm Meaney, AKA Chief O'Brian) is talking about tea production: namely, they need more of it in greater varieties. The men he's talking too- presumably important men, though we'll never hear them speak- are interrupted by the Queen, who greets them. The Agent White enters, followed by the Ten of Clubs: he has the ring, or so he thinks. In reality he just has the box he took from Alice during that scuffle earlier. The Queen is not pleased when she hears of this- nor is she pleased when she learns that the girl who must have the ring is running around Wonderland. Off with his head? No, his foot. Of course his head!
They need someone to track her down, someone who can work quietly, someone maniacally homicidal, someone like... Mad March! Is he alive yet?
No he is not. He will be later, due to the efforts of two characters know as Walrus and Carpenter. Carpenter is a balding man with a graying curly beard. Walrus looks like every man who has ever hit fifty in Maine ever. Their job is normally to oversee tea production: but as they are mad scientists for all occasions, they're also called in to reanimate Mad March. There is a small problem: his head is still missing. After a terse moment, Carpenter has a brilliant idea to use a cookie jar, shaped like a rabbit's head.
Meanwhile, Hatter is knocking on a door (to what is known as the Great Library) and giving a password, a scene which has not one but two references to the original story books: “I'm here to return a library book. It's a work by Edwin and Morcar (two figures from Dodo's lecture on William the Conqueror). How does the little crocodile improve its shining tail? He pours waters from the Nile on every shinning scale.” (Being lines from a poem in the story.) And thus we enter a bus, which is actually an elevator. After a drop and a sudden stop, Hatter and Alice are greeted by a little old lady with a sawed-off shot-gun. Behind them, the old man who was operating the elevator pulled out a gun of his own. It's not long before it becomes obvious that Hatter has done this many a time before, and manages to talk them down with the threat of withholding food. It's also the first time we learn that his right hand can also go by the name of 'sledgehammer'. Keep that in mind for later, mostly just because it's kind of cool.
After a bit more harassing on the part of the elderly and armed (called Duck and Owl), and a bit of bribing Alice notices that in the floor below them or several people apparently living among the books. These are refugees, Hatter explains, people who don't fit into the Queen's world. They keep them feed as best they can, Hatter being a part of that they. This is one of the earlier examples of what later turns out to be the implication that Hatter’s sleaze is at least in part something he applies with his eyeliner in the morning. Then it's time to meet the boss: Dodo.
Dodo is Tim Curry, so you can already tell that he's not going to be a very nice guy. He claims not to have seen the sun and to be starving, and calls Hatter a leach, the first two claims of which you can disprove just by looking at him. He thinks that Alice being here puts them all in danger: Hatter points out that he’s smuggle through worse, she wants out, and that she can pay. Wait, what? Show him the ring Alice. Oh, hell no.
Dodo catches sight of the ring anyway, and things get worse. Turns out that thing on her finger actually controls the Looking Glass- without that the Queen can't produce tea, without tea, she falls. Dodo is ecstatic, as he apparently harbors fantasies of the Queen scrubbing floor. Alice is a bit reluctant to part with something that isn't exactly hers to give, so Dodo orders her taken out. Hatter steps between him and Alice, trying to diffuse the situation with no success at all. Dodo threatens to put a price on his head, before simply shooting him, and Hatter shoots backwards into a bookcase- even Owl and Duck seem shocked at this. Alice then disarms Dodo and makes a run for it. Hatter takes a gun out of somewhere and shoots the ceiling: he's not too hurt, it seems, and threatens to aim for Dodo's head next time. Dodo then disarms him, and runs after Alice. After a moment Hatter follows and in the ensuing fisticuffs we find out why it's called a sledgehammer: it can crack stone pillars with a single punch. Dodo gains the advantage after that: Hatter shouts out for Alice to leave, it's the blue button, go, and Alice does go: right over to where Dodo is busy punching Hatter in the face, where she then beats up Tim Curry in revenge for all those times he scared the shit out of her during her childhood. Hatter collects his hat from where it fell off his head during the face punching, and isn't really sure how what just happened actually happened. He and Alice leg it to the bus/elevator and leave, as Dodo lets out the best "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" since the empire struck back.
In the busvator Alice checks on Hatter's bullet wound... only to find there is no bullet hole, as that paisley shirt was hiding body armor. She is not amused. And wants answers. So this ring is the Stone of Wonderland? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Basically that once upon a time the Stone was created by the Knights so they could travel to her world. The Queen wiped them all out, and now it's hers. And, in case you didn't get it, that ring is Very Very Important to Alice getting back home, and resolving the worsening political situation in Wonderland.
Well, great. That's just what every girl wants to hear.
Meanwhile, Carpenter and Walrus are presenting Mad March to the Queen, cookie jar head and all. Does it have an instruction manual, the King wants to know, because he hates instruction manuals. Mad March insults the Queen, who, after a pause during which every member of the court visible in the background holds their breath, laughs. It takes a bit of convincing, but Mad March agrees to go after Alice. Yipee.
Hatter and Alice are having a time of it, by the way: they have an argument while chasing each other around a tree, and then Hatter promises to help her get home. As they walk back to his shop, it becomes obvious that he's less committed to getting Jack home: actually, he's pretty sure that if Alice eats enough chocolate cream cake, she'll forget all about him too. Alice is less than impressed, even though she's using the potentially relationship damning phrases of "like" and "care about". They go back to the Tea House, only to find that it’s being ransacked by Mad March and a posse of Suits. Hatter seems to recognize Mad March (an impressive feat, which he sort of but not really denies later) and they run for Hatter’s smuggling boat, which, after a bit of trouble, they managed to use to escape across the lake. Hatter hides the boat, and says that he has a cunning plan. Alice is going to climb a tree: Hatter is going to use himself as bait for a Jabberwock, and hope he can lead it into the posse before its claws catch him or its jaw bites him.
While Alice is clutching to his arm and trying to put into words her thoughts on that plan, the Jabberwock comes up behind them. They run… in separate directions, with the Jabberwock running after Alice, who is also going to wrong way. Hatter then chases after the Jabberwock chasing Alice, and when it manages to get itself stuck between two trees does the cool thing and punches it in the face. He helps Alice up from where she had fallen, and they run off together, pursued by the Jabberwock. This continues for a few seconds before they fall into a pit, the bottom of which is lined with sharpened stakes. They manage to miss them, more or less, but the Jabberwock sticks itself a couple of times before giving up. Before they can recover properly, an elderly old man wearing a suit of armor leans over the edge of the pit and begins to insult them.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Charlie, the anthropomorphic personification of crazy awesome.
It comes out that Charlie (Sir Charles Eustace Fotheringhey Le Malvois III to you) is the White Knight- or the Last Knight, whichever you prefer. And an inventor. He’s also responsible for the pit. And has been trying to catch that Jabberwock for a very long time. Oh, her name’s Alice? She wears the Stone of Wonderland?
THE STARS ARE ALIGNED IN A COSMIC RAY OF HOPE!
The fact that he’s played by Matt Frewer, who is sporting a curly goatee for this role, makes this even funnier to watch. He pledges his assistance to Alice and her ‘Harbinger’. As a note to that genderfuckery thing I mentioned earlier, one of the titles he styles for himself is ‘Guardian of the Curtsy’, at which Alice is amused and Hatter is mildly impressed. He immediately proves himself useful by having a spare horse Alice and Hatter can share, as well as a magic net to drag behind them, which makes grass grow over their tracks and the brown spots on my lawn weep with longing.
We cut back to Mad March and posse; the Suits think that Hatter and Alice might have been eating by the Jabberwock, as their footprints end at the pit. March says that the shadows aren’t right, which is a turn of phrase never explained, but must mean something important because it leads him to the conclusion that they had help.
Cut back to Charlie and company, with Charlie himself belting out selected lines from Shakespearian music. Hatter and Alice have themselves a little flirt, or, at least, Hatter tries and Alice shuts him down, and then we pull up to the City of the Knights, which is a bunch of HUGE chess pieces carved out of marble. Charlie, as it turns out, has been living in the ruins of this city for the past hundred-odd years or so, alongside the skeletons of his fallen comrades.
He also offers a slightly different account of the root of the Queen’s powers: “She only wanted to feel the good, not the bad.” Speaking as a poli-sci major, this actually makes a lot of sense. Think of how important approval ratings can be in democracies, and then imagine that losing power was likely to come with violent revolution, rather than being voted out of office. Who cares if the people are starving, as long as they feel full? The explanation we got earlier was an implication that Oyster feelings were powerful things the Wonderlanders could experience with the use of Tea. This is why fandom has so many differing views on what Wonderlanders can and cannot feel: it runs the gamut from “they feel, but only very, very dimly” to “well, of course they’re repressed, they’re British”.
Getting back to the topic at hand, Hatter is strongly affected by seeing this, and it comes up after a dinner (borogrove rib, because on top of everything else, Charlie barbeques a mean borogrove). Hatter is going over his plan to cut a deal for Alice’s safety with the ring. It involves a girl Hatter once knew who is very distantly connected to someone who could get them into the Casino. Except, it’s not a ‘them’ he says, it’s a ‘you’. Alice is confused, and then when Hatter reveals his intentions to rejoin the Resistance, even more confused. Isn’t there a price on his head? Well, yeah, but that ring could probably buy his forgiveness. The ring Alice needs to get back home? Well, he’d take it after she was finished. No, forget about Jack- trying to save him to was going to get her killed, can’t she see that, WHY IS SHE SO HUNG UP ON JACK ARGH!
Lucky bastard.
Hatter goes to bed, and by bed I mean he leans against a wall and lets Alice have the bed. But Alice wakes up in the middle of the night with a Plan. Plan being, she leaves her jacket behind so her tattoo is clearly visible, heads off in the general direction of the Casino, and gets intercepted by the posse, who then take her to the Casino. It’s actually not as bad plan as it sounds for reasons I’ll touch upon later, if somewhat reckless, made no less so by the fact that sometime after dawn she falls asleep against the tree and has an out of plot experience.
Basically what happens is this: she sees Dinah, her childhood cat, and follows her to this tree stump/ portal to her childhood home. The cat grins, and she’s locked inside, where she transforms into her ten-year-old self and finds a discarded copy of the Alice in Wonderland book. Then she wakes up, relieved to find the story has not budged one bit while she was out. I’m pretty sure this segment is here because someone realized that there was no Cheshire in this mini, which is probably akin to a criminal act in a Wonderland story.
Meanwhile, Hatter and Charlie awake, to find the perimeter breached and Alice missing. Charlie panics; Hatter zooms in on the jacket and realizes not only what Alice has done, but that he’s about to do more or less the same thing. So they saddle up their horses and head off for the Casino.
Alice, meanwhile, has caught up with the posse. Cut to Alice in the throne room, where we learn that she doesn’t have the ring with her, which is why it wasn’t a bad plan, as the Queen points out. Alice can then use the ring’s location as a bargaining chip: she wants her boyfriend and for her to be sent through the Looking Glass, then she’ll tell them where it is. Well, that’s simple enough, her boyfriend is right outside the door.
Wait.
Jack Chase, as it turns out, is actually a) blond and b) Jack Heart, the Queen of Heart’s son. Who has apparently told everyone that Alice stole the ring from him while he was sleeping. And, oh look, here’s his fiancé, Duchess, who is clearly a relative of Lady Gaga’s, and wastes no time draping herself possessively over Jack.
I’d like to stop the recap again to talk about Jack as a character. Fandom is a bit split on him, in part because of this scene, where he is acting like the biggest dick possible, and for his behavior later, which I’ll talk about then. But I can’t help but feel for the guy, both for how he was left at the end and for the fact that the overwhelming majority of the scenes he was in painted the picture of someone who was being pushed in the distressed damsel mold, knew it, and chaffed. I have a fondness for those characters, even when they are played by Robinson Crusoe. I mean, let’s run through the 'princess on the run' checklist here: Are his parents somewhat evil and is he clearly made uncomfortable by it? Yeah. Does he respond to this discomfort by fleeing his kingdom with a plot device? Yep. When eventually captured and returned to his kingdom, is he knocked out then put in a tall tower? To be fair, the Casino is one big tower, but yes, he’s locked in his room and guarded and everything. Is he going to be ravished/interrogated by his fiancé, who is working for said evil parents? That’s a normal Tuesday night thing, it seems. Meanwhile, back where there’s plot:
Jack finished up his condescending prick act by ‘forgiving’ Alice for stealing the ring; he then leans closer to her, slips her something, and whispers “He’s here.”, then the Queen orders her to be taken to the Truth Room. In case there was any ambiguity about who ‘he’ is, Alice takes a look at the watch while being escorted, and recognizes her father’s watch. Very soon afterwards, we meet Dr. Dee and Dr. Dum, psychologists-cum-torturers who speak in the same riddlesome way they do in the books. This is something which keeps the creep up in a scene which doesn’t really live up to its potential: yes, TV does have a problem with trying to present women in danger as a serious thing without playing it up sexually speaking, but for a torture scene which is supposed to be about having Alice tormented with her greatest fears, it actually ends up just being an excuse to cram as many references to the books in as possible. First, they bring Alice back to her ten-year-old self, again, and then make her go into her father’s study… where there is a pig in a crib, an allusion to the Duchess’ son who turned into a pig in the novel. She stares at it, and then…
Cut to Hatter and Charlie, who are in the process of conning their way into the Casino. Well, Hatter is conning; Charlie is more or less just enjoying the ride. Hatter introduces themselves as Duckworth and Robinson (Duckworth Robinson being the namesake of Duck from the book, and a person who was riding on the boat when Lewis Carroll began to tell this story) guardians of the mesmeric portals. What, asks the guard. Stage hypnotists, Hatter replies, with a little hat trick that enthralls Charlie. The guard buys it, and Hatter punches him in the face. Charlie and Hatter continue on their merry way inside, then realize that the Casino is big and they don’t know where Alice could be. Charlie then moans, says his magic words “GALADOON DE BOOSHE” and then gives a set of complex and specific directions before taking off. Hatter, not having a better plan, nor needing one, follows.
And to Jack, who’s shirt is unbuttoned and is being straddled by Duchess, who has him by the necktie and is plying him with Honesty. She is interrupted by Ten, who tells her that the Queen and King need to see her. She does not appreciate the interruption, and says as much in an extremely politic way during that meeting. It’s a scene that doesn’t add much to the overall plot when you first see it (but for Duchess’ line of “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’d fallen in love with this Alice”, which does further help set up the conflict in that relationship) but is interesting to watch again to try and figure out how what the three of them say differs from what they mean. The Queen is more or less the same, but then again, she doesn’t have anyone to fear. Duchess is, upon second viewing, trying to protect Jack from being exposed to less enjoyable interrogation methods without losing her place in court. The King is a more ambiguous figure: it’s interesting to watch him in action, because it’s very clear that much of his life is spent mitigating the Queen’s orders without defying them. He could be merely acting in that respect, or could be protecting Duchess because he likes her, or might be quietly protecting Jack with her. The end result is that Duchess is given a limited amount of time to make Jack talk. The Queen, who had noticed how the King agreed more with Duchess then herself confronts him, somewhat jealously, and slightly insecurely. She’s obviously jealous of how much younger Duchess is, and though the King smoothes out her ruffled feathers by telling her how powerful and attractive he still finds her, she finds that inadequate, and demands more tea, to make her feel young. This part of their relationship will be important later.
Back to Alice, who is still staring at the baby pig, which then vanishes, because they realized that plot needed to happen. She then is placed in a brightly-lit, unfurnished room, and the Tweedles play upon her fear of heights by having the boards disappear one by one until there’s only one separating her from death by bottomless pit. Then that board starts dissolving. She points out that they need her; they reply that accidents happen all the time, and she will die if she doesn’t tell them something soon. This is a psychological warfare tactic that works better if you can actually kill the person, which you can’t if they’re your sole source of information, in which case you would be making a threat you can’t follow through on, which in my mind lessens their credibility some, but you don’t care about that, so I’ll move on. She says that she needs to write it down, it’s complicated, and they give her a floating desk, where there are white gloves and a fan in addition to paper and writing utensils (another allusion to the books, as this is what’s on the White Rabbit’s desk when the Rabbit mistakes Alice for his maid). She begin to scribble out directions to a locker on Earth, which is also not a bad plan, as locker require keys and being taken to Earth not only gets her home, but puts her into a position to scream bloody murder and have the police take whoever is with her away. Just as she’s finishing, the door to the room she’s in opens and in comes Hatter, who manages not to pitch himself into that bottomless pit. The Tweedles tell him to go away, this is a private session. He decides not to care and tells Alice to jump. She does, using the chandelier to swing across the room into Hatter arms. They stumble into the next room. Alice wants to know what’s going on. Charlie informs them that they’re in her head. Hatter doesn’t understand what’s going on either, but seems perfectly willing to roll with it. A bit of Latin later and Charlie has found them a way out, and they run for it, pursued by a bunch of Suits.
A short while later they take an elevator up. Alice is insistent that she had everything under control, which, admittedly, isn’t entirely a lie, and is less than impressed with the decision to go up to the roof. Hatter is even less impressed with the news that her boyfriend is Jack Heart. Charlie is re-pledging himself to Alice; neither of his younger companions are very taken with this. They make it to the roof where they find two Suits they have to take out. Hatter takes the far one driving him back with a series of punches that don’t actually hit him until the Suit manages to punch his face and them hold him against the wall, where we get a nice shot of the long drop down as well as a trickle of blood coming from out of his nose. Charlie had attempted to take care of the other Suit, but could quite get his sword out of his scabbard, at which point he too was punched in the face. Alice then opens up a can of whoop-ass, complete with some nice ground work. Hatter then proves that his left is not useless by using it to punch the Suit he’s grappling with in face back, then does a neat little diversionary tactic with his hat before punching him again with his right. He wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand, and Alice finishes off her Suit. More or less; the Suit manages to get to his knees in a minute, at which point Charlie brings his hand down on top of his head.
They need to leave the Casino quickly, as more Suits have taken another elevator and are closing in on their position fast. The only way off is on these flying Vespa things shaped like flamingos. Charlie adores them; Alice refuses to get onto one of them, citing her heights thing. Hatter cites his bullets thing and insists that she does; he wouldn’t let her if he thought she wouldn’t be okay. They climb on, Hatter and Alice sharing a flamingo, and try to figure out how to get the things to start. Alice is clearly contemplating jumping off when Charlie finds the right button and zooms off. Hatter and Alice quickly follow, and for a moment it almost seems like the biggest threat is Alice squeezing the life out of Hatter (not that it seems like he’d mind very much). Cut to Jack, still stuck in his tower, who is very surprised to see that there’s a Knight flying past his window, and even more surprised to see him being followed by Alice and a unknown paisley man. Cut back to the main three, where Charlie is shot down mid gleeful shouting about how they were flying like angels, and things get more tense as the Suits catch up to them. It isn’t long before they are also shot down, and plunge into the lake below.
Back at the Casino, Jack is lying on the floor, apparently dead to the world. In come the Ten of Clubs and Duchess, who immediately try to rouse him, the latter significantly more distressed than the former. Jack, however, is faking, and proves this by giving Ten the traditional greeting of a punch to the face. And, just for luck, then gives him several more. Duchess sits down on the bed and watches, then Jack turns from her and undoes his necktie. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to tie you up”. Duchess offers up her wrists without making any of seventy billion jokes I’ve got running through my head right now.
A little while later, while sitting on her throne, the Queen is told that Alice escaping with the aid of a Knight and some other guy, and her son is missing. There is good news, however; she could save 10% or more on flamingo insurance by switching to Geico he has the piece of paper Alice had written the directions down on. The Queen demands her reading glasses and then hands the paper to the King, who reads them off, confirming that they’re fake, and further revealing that the Looking Glass is now shut down. The Queen doesn’t believe what’s written down, and orders Mad March to track her down again. The Nine of Clubs, notable mostly for being Felix Gaeta, returns with her reading glasses, which she then stomps upon, then orders his head removed for breaking them. On that note, Court is adjourned, except for the King and the Ten of Clubs, who hang back. The King tells him to bring Nine back, as the Queen will have forgotten he was supposed to be killed by tomorrow, and then tells him to go with Mad March and keep an eye on things.
Meanwhile, Alice and Hatter are walking along the edge of the lake, Alice vs. lake round two obviously having the same outcome as the first. In addition to not having drowned, Hatter still has his hat and his eyeliner is still not smudged. They are nominally looking for Charlie, and superlatively having an argument about what their priorities are now. Alice reveals that Jack is a bit engaged to someone not herself, Hatter reacts with anger on her behalf, which then turns to anger at her because she still wants to hear him out. She reveals that it’s not only Jack that makes her want to go back; it’s her father. He thinks that Jack is using her. She accuses him of using her; he only seems concerned about the ring, and Hatter is suffering from a bad case of “I can’t tell you that I care about you so I want you to realize it through a process of elimination”.
Thankfully, before their argument can get any more ugly, they hear Charlie’s singing, and discover that not only has he managed to swim while wearing a full suit of armor, but has also managed to get a fire going, hang said armor up to dry, and go back into the lake once or twice to look for them. Because he’s a Knight, and this is how he rolls.
One awkwardly long hug later, Hatter talks Alice into giving his plan a chance; the Resistance needs the ring just as badly as the Queen does, and should be just as willing to barter her safe passage and her father for it. And he knows (sort of) just the guy to talk to: Caterpillar. Alice in the meantime, will go with Charlie back to the City of the Knights.
Cut to the Ten of Clubs and Mad March, stomping through the woods. Ten is doing his level best to get to know Mad March, who is having exactly none of it. Meanwhile, Hatter is in the city, and manages to corner Dormie-who-messes-up-my-pronouns, and gets Dormie to get a message to Caterpillar by way of Dodo. At about the same time, we come across Alice and Charlie having a heart to heart. Alice told him about how her father left when she was ten. This triggers something in Charlie, and he ends up confessing that he was ten years old when the Queen wiped out his people, that he ran and hid and that’s how he survived. He was a squire to the real White Knight, and after the period of near-suicidal depression past he took up his armor and name and carried on. More borogrove?
Hatter returns, apparently a little after his self-appointed deadline of nightfall if the differences in lighting are anything to go by, to find Charlie asleep. He’s managed to get them an in; an agent is on their way at the moment. Where’s Alice?
Alice is brooding on a hilltop, having reclaimed the jacket Hatter lent her, and is visibly glad to see him, even if her “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back” was answered with “Still don’t trust me?” and she didn’t challenge the assumption. Hatter reaffirms that he intends to join the Resistance proper, and his days of pretending to work for the Hearts while feeding their enemies are over. They walk down from the hill, when Alice confronts him with what is obviously a big fear for her: what if she’s stuck here? “Then I’ll make sure you’re okay” Hatter replies, leaning forwards, and…
Enter Jack Heart, Prince of the Cockblock. And wielding a phallic symbol sword, too.
Alice and Hatter are shocked at his appearance. Charlie is hogtied in the background, having been taken off guard by Jack. Hatter grabs a phallic symbol tree branch and lunges for Jack, who taunts him with his phallic symbol sword. Alice steps between their phallic symbols them and declares that she has bigger balls then both of them combined if there is to be any fighting, it will be done by her, the black belt. Jack, as it turns out, is a Resistance insider who knows Caterpillar personally, and was sent to take Alice to her father. Yes, he wants the ring, but because it will help over throw his mother and can take Alice and her father home. And as he is a Resistance fighter, and someone who loves her, and can help her find her father, he is obviously more trustworthy that this guy with hat over here. Hatter deflates at that, and eventually tells Alice that she should go on ahead, and if Caterpillar wants her and Jack to go it alone, then he’ll be okay. Alice reveals that she hid the ring on the Red King’s skeleton’s finger, which is a little creepy, but okay. Charlie, now untied, watches with him as the two of them ride off into the sunrise.
What’s interesting about watching this scene is that it really is the turning point for Alice and Jack’s relationship. She’s met up with him, and he hasn’t offered a single justification for his actions, and what’s more, he’s acting very aloof and withdrawn. I always thought that that this was because he simply had no idea how to go about apologizing for the fact that he lied and put in her danger, and decided to go forward as quickly as possible in the hopes that the whole thing will be overlooked. This scene tends to get him a lot of haters, because in both how it is played and how the audience is viewing the love triangle at this point places the sympathy with Alice and with Alice-Hatter. She’s just found out that she’s the other woman, and what she really needs to here are those justifications, and assurances that he genuinely does love her.
She does try to milk something out of him when the stop at a stream in a bit, but it falls flat, and this sounds the death knell for that relationship, despite her choice to go with him instead of staying with Hatter. Although, that doesn’t matter overmuch because he’s following them, looking a bit more heroic for someone who is essentially stalking his crush has any right to be. There’s a suspicious light reflecting off something, though, and he goes to investigate, only to find it’s Charlie, dress in full armor again and singing his knightly heart out. They team up and follow Jack and Alice to the city.
Alice and Jack arrive at their destination: The Hospital of Dreams. They are directed to the third floor by the creepiest secretary ever, where Alice is cautioned to not let anyone know she’s an Oyster; this is a place for tea addicts, and they would do unspeakable things to her if they knew. They find Caterpillar in a scene which I think might also go a long way towards explaining Jack’s dispassionate disposition: Caterpillar has a character best summed up with the words “stoned Vulcan”, and Jack clearly idolizes him. Anyway, they find him when he’s smoking a hookah while floating on a row boat in the middle of a pool, like you do, and what follows is a slightly awkward scene, where Alice really, really wants to find her father now, Caterpillar has to be told to address her directly, and Jack tries to mediate and fails miserably. Caterpillar then gives them a tour of the hospital, which is full of delightfully literal tea overdose patients: overdosing on self-importance makes you swell in size, it seems, while taking too much flying high makes you, well, fly. Alice is running out of patience, especially after Caterpillar declares that her people’s emotions are poisoning Wonderland. Then she does get some news about her father: he doesn’t really recall who he is, and they were sort of hoping that she would clear out the cobwebs. Jack was in her world to find her for this purpose, and his protests that he does care about Alice, really, that wasn’t a lie, he does care! It falls very flat, but they don’t really have time to properly break up, because her father is waiting on the roof.
Alice’s father is Carpenter. Yeah, he was a brilliant scientist back in his day, didn’t you know?
Anyway Alice struggles her way through this reunion that isn’t really a reunion because her father does remember who he is let alone who she is, until the tears start flowing and he instinctively calls her Jellybean. For a moment it looks like they might be able to remind him, and then shots ring out and the Suits arrive, accompanied by Mad March, who after a bit of gloating wants to know where Hatter is. Why? They never explain it, so when you take a look at fandom you get, variously, that Hatter and March were passing acquaintances, business partners, friends, brothers, lovers, or contemporary incarnations of Wonderland ur-concepts bound together by fate through countless lifetimes. So, you should feel free to take your pick on former relationship status. The Ten of Clubs also gets in on the gloating, telling Jack that his mother will be very disappointed in him (Jack glares back) and informing Caterpillar that his capture means an end to the Resistance (Caterpillar eats a mushroom and disappearing in a puff of smoke).
As Alice and Jack are escorted by the rest to the waiting Scarab (that would be the flying beetle thing from before) Hatter and Charlie watch, less than happy with present developments. Hatter quickly formulates a plan, involving a horse, a sword, and the correct identification and usage of a bottleneck, which makes that part of me that curled up and cried at the end of the new Robin Hood movie very very happy. Unfortunately, that plan fails miserably, as it hinged upon Charlie swooping in and rescuing Alice, when he instead galloped away from the fighting, a move that despite all the foreshadowing, is still shocking because of all the awesome he’s been displaying throughout. Hatter is disarmed and dismounted, at which March manages to look like he’s smiling with too many teeth despite having a head made of ceramic.
After what you can assume was a simultaneously terrifying and awkward Scarab ride, the Queen gets her ring back in a scene which is only lacking in glitter to make it more over-the-top cheesy. During this, Hatter is nowhere to be found, Jack is standing towards the center of Court, and Alice is trapped inside a giant gerbil ball thing. The King explains that this is because she’s a contaminant, and the ball is sound-proofed so that she can hear what they say, but they can’t hear what she says. After a round of psychological torture during which the Queen questions Carpenter about Alice and its confirmed that he has no idea who she is, she sends him back to work. Then she turns her attention to Jack, and we come again to the genderfuckery: Kathy Bates has some awesomely uncomfortable lines about how she gave birth to and breastfed him, so he should be grateful, and the way she delivers them is very reminiscent of the way we often hear male villains remind their children that he worked for the roof over their head. Jack very professionally restrains from rolling his eyes, even after she sentences him to death: instead, when offered the chance for last words, he asks that Alice be allowed to return to Earth, where she’ll be no threat, as opposed to executing her. After a little nudging from the King, she agrees, and Jack is taken away to the Eye Room to await his execution. Alice is then taken to the Looking Glass, and we get a nice close up of Alice caught in utter despair.
Charlie isn’t fairing much better; he’s back at his camp, beating himself up for not being braver and trying to find some way to redeem himself. An idea presents itself when he looks at the Red King, which we’ll see in action later.
Meanwhile, in the Truth Room, someone has given the Tweedles Hatter. This scene makes their wimping out in Alice’s Truth Room scene especially lame: Dr. Dee and Dr. Dum seem to have forgone the physiological torture in favor of cattle prods for Hatter, and this scene is both sexy and brutal. On the one hand, with his jacket and hat missing Hatter is least clothed here than in any other scene we’ve seen him in, he’s tied to a chair, his hair is mussed, he’s covered in sweat, and his eyeliner still isn’t smudged. On the other hand, Hatter is sporting not artistically done cuts and bruises, the Tweedles are laughing and dancing as they poke him, and the acting on Andrew Lee-Pott’s part is intense. Very often in modern-day sci-fi, partly to lessen the negative emotional impact of watching what is a pretty disturbing happening and partly to underscore the badassitutude of their protagonists, the good guy being tortured will try to banter and, at times, seem like they’re having more fun than their torturers, which naturally does nothing to downplay the kink aspect. This is completely flipped here: not only are the Tweedles clearly having the time of their lives, but Hatter acts like someone who has shut down as much as possible and is focusing what’s left on getting through without talking. Bravo. I buy this happening, and it’s kinky to boot.
Anyway, moving away from all that stuff, the Hatter torture scene is interrupted by Mad March who apparently has the authority to tell the Tweedles to buzz off and give him a private session. Hatter preemptively pretends to have gone mad by gibbering some of his namesake’s lines from the book; then March asks for the Great Library and Hatter ruins that idea by glaring at him. March evidently expected not to get anything from him anyway, and is going to use the lack of cooperation as an excuse to kill him, so he’s not too miffed. Hatter then shows off his awesome by avoiding the knife, kicking back March, managing to turn his chair into a shield while still tied to it, getting his right hand free, and then… punching March in the face.
Alice has returned to the Looking Glass room, but before she can be returned the raiding party has to come through. We get a look at the drugged into compliance Oysters being brought back, and Alice grows more and more horrified until the sight of two little girls being lead in Wonderland kicks her out of her funk and into action. She incapacitates three Suits, runs for the roof, incapacitates another, climbs on a flamingo, manages to survive another mid-air dogfight, and in general is pretty damn spectacular.
The King and Queen are happy now that tea production is picking up, and he’s brought her some new flavors to try. The Queen is happy to have her ring returned, as well as a new flavor (innocence) to make her feel younger. Then the Ten of Clubs interrupts, because the knights are attacking the Casino. Charlie, it seems, has decided to redeem himself by dragging his skeletal comrades to the Casino and setting them up like an army of the undead (propped up by sticks) in order to draw out the Suits, an aim the Queen is all too happy to comply with. How did he manage to do that in such a short time? I don’t know; perhaps magic. How is it fooling anybody? I don’t know; maybe Charlie’s cosmic rays of awesome are making it look like the army of the dead is really an army of the undead. This is Wonderland, so we’re just going to roll with it.
Alice meanwhile, has one of the crashes that would result in injury or death in real life that action heroes manage to escape unscathed, and enters the Casino. She sees Charlie distraction and mental sends him his props, and then, while still in the process of making things up as she goes along, is spotted by the Ten of Clubs. Chase scene ensues, until Alice enters the creepy gaming room where the emotions are extracted and barricades herself in. The Ten of Clubs skids to a hilarious non-halt in her wake, and they attempt to open the door.
Meanwhile, Charlie is having a time of it as well, yelling insults at Suits as they rain him with bombs, and occasionally getting off the odd crossbow bolt as well. Then, one bomb hits too close and he falls to the ground.
Alice isn’t in the best of places either. After having chased some dancers off stage (presumably looking for the back-stage exit) she’s notice by two Suits, who draw their guns. She puts her hands up and just when things look like they’re going to take another turn for the much worse, there’s a sharp whistle, followed by Hatter punching a Suit in the face. Alice makes quick work of the other one, and after Hatter takes their guns and displays a bit of competency by checking them to make sure they’re loading and how much they’re loading with, they have a hugging reunion, complete with an “I thought you were dead!” and “I’m sorry for not trusting you before, I trust you now.” Hatter reacts like all his Christmases have come at once, before forcibly reminding himself that they should really be leaving the Casino sooner rather than later. Alice, though, has come up with a Plan. Like her other Plans, it’s not a bad one; unlike her other Plans, this one works.
They barricade the other door (you know, the one Hatter came through earlier) and set about causing as much mayhem as they safely can, firing their guns at the ceiling and shouting at the Oysters to wake up. Caterpillar was very specific about the subject of what happens when the wrong emotions are mixed together: namely, boom.
Jack, however, is having an uncomfortable time of it. The Eye Room is just that; a room cover in giant eyes and nothing else. Eventually Jack tires of that, and throws his chair at them. The chair disappears before it hits anything, and before Jack can have a full-on nervous breakdown the eyes disappear of their own accord. The door opens, and Jack falls into a beginner’s offensive stance, only to be greeted by Duchess, wearing an outfit ripped straight from Barbarella, and carrying a disguise for Jack. Aw, look, she really is on his side!
Alice and Hatter are having great success with the Oysters, meanwhile; it’s come to the attention of the technicians (popularly referred to as Eggmen by fandom) call Carpenter’s attention to it. Carpenter recognizes Alice as the girl before, and as she gets the Oysters to wake up and realize that they’re in danger he recognizes her as something else. Cue “aaahhh what have I been doing for the past ten/thirteen years” reaction and a quick exit. Followed by Walrus, who saw said reaction and obviously knows what caused it. And, judging by the way he knows Carpenter’s real name (“Robert!”) he also had a hand in brainwashing the man. Robert reacts to this by wrestling the gun from Walrus and shooting him, before continuing on his way to Alice.
Meanwhile, the Suits have forced their way through the barricades and opened fire on our heroes, who return it, while the Oysters take cover as best they can. Robert comes up to them and tells the Suits to cut it out, they’re scaring the Oysters. Alice, by now grimly determined to see this thing through, starts to talk about how Robert is responsible for what’s happened to them. Robert reciprocates by telling her that he remembers, and he should have remembered when he first saw her. It’s very touching; just as they’re about to hug, Walrus waddles in and shoots Robert in the back.
Things move very quickly after that; Hatter empties his clip in Walrus (good riddance), Alice drops her gun and tries to keep her father focused on her rather than impending death, and the Oysters’ panic reaches high enough levels that the technicians, watching in their laboratory, release them and run for their lives. Carpenter dies, and Hatter has to drag Alice off his body and get her to run for their lives too.
The Queen has noticed that her Casino is shaking apart at the seams as well, and orders her husband to come with as they abandon ship. Remember how I said the Queen not being able to find any comfort in the support her husband is constantly giving her would be important? This is why: the King’s not going. He can’t make her happy, and that’s the one thing he wants to do in life, and so, for the first time ever he’s saying no. And committing suicide.
The philologist part of me wants to point out the pun here: the card King of Hearts is often nicknamed the Suicide King, because it looks like he’s plunging a sword into his head, but doing so would break the narrative flow, and I would never do that, so we’ll move on to Charlie. Charlie is not yet dead, and gets off one last shot with his cross bow, muttering a ‘Galadoon De Booshe’ as he does so. The Casino explodes, and he faints away. The arrow lands harmlessly in the grass.
Hatter and Alice watch the Casino explode from a safe distance away, surrounded by the escaped Oysters. Hatter would like to know if they couldn’t try that hugging thing again, but is interrupted by the arrival of the Queen and her Suits. She, naturally wants Alice’s head; the Oysters spring to her defense, and Alice, who has ample reason be pissed off at this point, points out that she has no power. Jack and Duchess arrive at that point, and the Queen turns to them for help; Jack disbelieving “Didn’t you just sentence me to death?” tells her how much support she has in that corner. To hammer home how much of the Queen’s power was built on fear and tea, there follows a hilariously schadenfreude karmic sequence. Alice demands the ring. The Queen says that they’ll have to cut off her finger first. Alice has no problem with that. Hatter would very much like to borrow someone knife. The Ten of Clubs has one he can use. Jack asks that he make a clean cut, so as to not damage the ring. Scowling, the Queen hands over the ring, and everyone cheers as Alice holds it aloft.
An indeterminable amount of time later, Alice is waiting in the Looking Glass room with the other Oysters, when Charlie comes along to say goodbye. He is not dead (BECAUSE HE IS MADE OF AWESOME) and is very glad to have met her. The hug, and it is not awkward. Then comes Jack, who has the ring, to both restart the Looking Glass and propose to Alice with. Alice turns him down, in a less abrupt way than before, and Jack gives her the ring to start up the Looking Glass again. They part as friends, as sealed with a hug.
Which is when Hatter enters, slightly less beat up than when we previously saw him, who takes one look at the scene before him and jumps to the conclusion that Alice and Jack are back together. He looks heartbroken for a moment, and tries to beat a retreat, but Alice spots him and calls out to him. What follows is a scene striking in its awkwardness; everything they say only makes it more and more painful to watch. To sum up, Alice gives Hatter his jacket back, Hatter is a bit too emphatic about his desire to not have her stay, they sort of agree that he’ll visit her, and they have the worst hug ever exchanged between two people. Then one of the technicians grabs Alice and pushes her through the Looking Glass.
A bit too hard, because when we next see her, she’s lying on the concrete, out cold, while the sounds of emergency workers fade in and out. She comes to in a hospital ward, where we can plainly see that her tattoo is gone, and after a small moment where Alice breaks down about her father, we learn that she was only gone an hour.
Alice goes home, and packs away her Dad Search things, until there comes a knock on the door. Her mother answers it, and declares it to be David, the construction worker who found her in the warehouse. Alice goes out to meet him, where it is, of course, Hatter, sans stubble and hat in hand. They hug, and it’s a much better hug than their last one. Alice tells him how happy she is he’s here, Hatter tells her how much he missed her, and they kiss. It would be saccharine if Carol wasn’t still in the shot, making an expression of complete bafflement.
So, just to sum up: Alice has played a lot of Love Games, which ends when Jack gets a message on his Telephone, Mad March is a Monster, Duchess wants Jack's Bad Romance, Hatter isn’t a Paper Gangster, and part of the fun of watching is learning to read everyone’s Poker Faces.
Comments are welcome.