Salem: "Cat and Mouse"
This show confuses me on so many levels. The plot unfolds in fits and starts, with plot-lines introduced and dropped at random, only to be picked up again when I least expect it. The effect its characters have on me are equally confusing, with some of them appealing and interesting one week, only to be bland and irritating the next. Its world-building continues to be arbitrary, with no clear understanding of its own rules surrounding the witches and their religion (seriously, are they devil worshippers or pagans? Are their powers hereditary or gifted? Are they truly evil or do they have an “ends justify the means” mentality?)
And two episodes out from its grand finale, this felt uncomfortably like filler. It was patchy, it left important characters unaccounted for, and it ultimately felt like setup for John Alden’s Big Important Trial without really giving us much reason to care about it - beyond Cotton’s tearful plea to his father to halt proceedings.
With John Alden arrested on charges of witchcraft, Mary decides to amp up her Puritan persona by veering hard in the opposite direction than the one expected of her, encouraging Increase to get backing from the select board so to quelling village dissent by putting the possibility of John Alden’s trial to a vote.
The show even plays with the possibility that Mary has turned against John, with a scene in which Hale assures Mary that he will “vote as you ask” without specifying how Mary wants him to vote.
It’s a clever ploy on Mary’s behalf, for though it makes her come across as staunch in her desire for justice, she’s secretly confident that she can sway the numbers to her side - though Increase gets the upper hand on her in this instance as well. Just when I was about to write “Mary has way too much power in this Puritan community”, Increase rolls the wheelchair-bound George into the court and has him spit affirmation that John should be put on trial.
So Mary goes to plan two, which is something she should have come up with a few weeks ago: murder Increase. Using Mercy as bait and Isaac as a false witness, Increase is tricked into trekking out into the woods in search of the wayward witch.
Unfortunately this storyline fails on two fronts: firstly that Mary goes to a lot of trouble to get Increase out into the forest when her spell to squeeze the life out of him could have occurred anywhere, and secondly because Mercy is laughably useless in her mission to kill the man. I’m not even sure how she failed, only that one second she had the upper hand, the next she was darting away in terror.
I suppose on the first count you could argue that Mary never meant to kill Increase, just weaken him so that Mercy could finish him off, but on the second - isn’t there meant to be a large number of Elder witches camped out in the forest somewhere? Couldn’t they have been trusted with the task of killing a dangerous witch hunter?
As contrived as his survival was, I’m glad Increase is staying with us for a while longer. Stephen Lang has pretty much stolen the show from everyone in his portrayal of Increase: so genial, so calm, so fatherly, and yet utterly cold and implacable.
Plus, he’s not at all stupid. Though he’s temporarily fallen for Tituba’s lies about John Alden’s guilt, he’s clearly got his suspicions about Mary as well - outright demanding a confession from Isaac whilst out in the woods together, and correctly deducing that the simple-minded man had been set up by someone else.
There was a fascinating choice of delivery in his final scene with Mary, in which the two of them are standing close - almost intimately close - together, and he draws out the words: “someone...desires...me...dead”, followed by Mary deliberately licking her fingers before extinguishing the candle. Yikes, what was all that about?
I’ll be disappointed if Mary decides to try seduction tactics on the old man (it’s gross enough between herself and George), and Increase himself seems far too righteous to fall for it.
Indeed, his veiled suggestion to Mary as to how she can save John Alden’s life - confess to witchcraft herself - seems more in line with how Increase operates, especially with the anecdote he shares with his son: whilst in his early years as a witch hunter, he suspected a young man who he rather liked. Far from confirming Cotton’s assumption that he let him burn, Increase confesses that he let him go free, and now carries the guilty of the innocent deaths that followed.
All this is much more interesting and powerful than the self-flagellation, which will always be a rather lazy way of demonstrating religious fanaticism. I much prefer the portrayal of a man who made a mistake in his past, and has dearly learnt from it. He was a kind man one - you can still see the remnants of it in his demeanour - but now he rues the day.
It was a strong episode for Mary, despite the tenuous ground she stands on, but it was a good portrayal of her as a master manipulator: strength when dealing with Hale and Increase, soft and cajoling words with Isaac, and abject flattery with Mercy. Though she has a soft-spot for Isaac, she clearly isn’t above using him for her own ends - albeit in the gentlest way possible. It says a lot about her that she swears vengeance on his behalf after the injuries that befell him while following her orders.
Miscellaneous
As the show gets closer to its finale, it gets more and more scattered - and as a result is losing its urgency. To centre the final episodes around Alden’s trial rather than the Grand Rite seems a mistake, as we all know that Shane West isn’t going anywhere (call him John Proctor and maybe you would have had some dramatic tension).
Still, to hear Cotton say “John Alden is my friend, perhaps my only friend” was a touching moment, especially in light of how these two started off. You should all know by now that it’s practically a point of principle for me to be uninterested in white dude bromances, but this was rather sweet.
And between Cotton crashing Increase’s sermon and declaring that he’ll defend Alden at trial, we’re given our first indication that Increase has a tipping point.
Finally, Anne learns the truth about her father’s true nature, though it only serves to raise more questions. After he tells her that only a witch would be able to use the teleporting mask, we’re informed of the not-very-surprising revelation that Anne is a witch.
Hold the phone. So the show is now saying that being a witch is hereditary? That goes against what’s been portrayed so far, which is that the witches of Salem are in league with the devil (or at least some dark creature that lives in the forest) after being given a very clear choice to accept or deny him. All of them have been depicted as normal people before they were recruited into the fold.
This is changing the rules entirely, and throws them all into a much more sympathetic light. Rather like the assorted Druids and magical folk of Merlin, they’re now a persecuted minority, just trying to survive in a world that considers them evil.
Basically, the show is now a morass of questions, and I fear the writers have let it all get out of hand.
The torture of the girls was a bit much. Where on earth were their parents? Does Mary know they’re being tortured? Does Mercy? Come to think of it, does Mary know that Mercy has been sharing magic with these girls? What exactly is she teaching them? Why are they so confident that Mercy will rescue them? This is not at all what they were initially set up to be: a group of girls who craved excitement and attention: the perfect tools with which Mary could pick out appropriate sacrifices for the Grand Rite. Is that still on?
And I’ve forgotten why Mary had her familiar in Mercy in the first place. Was it to get her to point the finger at witches? Doesn’t she have to kill a certain number of people by a set date? Shouldn’t she get back to that?
Where’s Tituba? Why does Mary go for a chat with John but not her friend? Why on earth was Mercy hugging a dead body in the woods? Hale mentions to his daughter that he was raised by people “loyal to the cause” - what cause? How can witch hunters get the upper hand over witches when the latter seem so powerful?
What’s going on with the Grand Rite? The Elders? Do they want to live in peace or destroy mankind? Every character seems to have a different answer to these questions, and at this point it no longer seems complex, just nonsensical.
And two episodes out from its grand finale, this felt uncomfortably like filler. It was patchy, it left important characters unaccounted for, and it ultimately felt like setup for John Alden’s Big Important Trial without really giving us much reason to care about it - beyond Cotton’s tearful plea to his father to halt proceedings.
With John Alden arrested on charges of witchcraft, Mary decides to amp up her Puritan persona by veering hard in the opposite direction than the one expected of her, encouraging Increase to get backing from the select board so to quelling village dissent by putting the possibility of John Alden’s trial to a vote.
The show even plays with the possibility that Mary has turned against John, with a scene in which Hale assures Mary that he will “vote as you ask” without specifying how Mary wants him to vote.
It’s a clever ploy on Mary’s behalf, for though it makes her come across as staunch in her desire for justice, she’s secretly confident that she can sway the numbers to her side - though Increase gets the upper hand on her in this instance as well. Just when I was about to write “Mary has way too much power in this Puritan community”, Increase rolls the wheelchair-bound George into the court and has him spit affirmation that John should be put on trial.
So Mary goes to plan two, which is something she should have come up with a few weeks ago: murder Increase. Using Mercy as bait and Isaac as a false witness, Increase is tricked into trekking out into the woods in search of the wayward witch.
Unfortunately this storyline fails on two fronts: firstly that Mary goes to a lot of trouble to get Increase out into the forest when her spell to squeeze the life out of him could have occurred anywhere, and secondly because Mercy is laughably useless in her mission to kill the man. I’m not even sure how she failed, only that one second she had the upper hand, the next she was darting away in terror.
I suppose on the first count you could argue that Mary never meant to kill Increase, just weaken him so that Mercy could finish him off, but on the second - isn’t there meant to be a large number of Elder witches camped out in the forest somewhere? Couldn’t they have been trusted with the task of killing a dangerous witch hunter?
As contrived as his survival was, I’m glad Increase is staying with us for a while longer. Stephen Lang has pretty much stolen the show from everyone in his portrayal of Increase: so genial, so calm, so fatherly, and yet utterly cold and implacable.
Plus, he’s not at all stupid. Though he’s temporarily fallen for Tituba’s lies about John Alden’s guilt, he’s clearly got his suspicions about Mary as well - outright demanding a confession from Isaac whilst out in the woods together, and correctly deducing that the simple-minded man had been set up by someone else.
There was a fascinating choice of delivery in his final scene with Mary, in which the two of them are standing close - almost intimately close - together, and he draws out the words: “someone...desires...me...dead”, followed by Mary deliberately licking her fingers before extinguishing the candle. Yikes, what was all that about?
I’ll be disappointed if Mary decides to try seduction tactics on the old man (it’s gross enough between herself and George), and Increase himself seems far too righteous to fall for it.
Indeed, his veiled suggestion to Mary as to how she can save John Alden’s life - confess to witchcraft herself - seems more in line with how Increase operates, especially with the anecdote he shares with his son: whilst in his early years as a witch hunter, he suspected a young man who he rather liked. Far from confirming Cotton’s assumption that he let him burn, Increase confesses that he let him go free, and now carries the guilty of the innocent deaths that followed.
All this is much more interesting and powerful than the self-flagellation, which will always be a rather lazy way of demonstrating religious fanaticism. I much prefer the portrayal of a man who made a mistake in his past, and has dearly learnt from it. He was a kind man one - you can still see the remnants of it in his demeanour - but now he rues the day.
It was a strong episode for Mary, despite the tenuous ground she stands on, but it was a good portrayal of her as a master manipulator: strength when dealing with Hale and Increase, soft and cajoling words with Isaac, and abject flattery with Mercy. Though she has a soft-spot for Isaac, she clearly isn’t above using him for her own ends - albeit in the gentlest way possible. It says a lot about her that she swears vengeance on his behalf after the injuries that befell him while following her orders.
Miscellaneous
As the show gets closer to its finale, it gets more and more scattered - and as a result is losing its urgency. To centre the final episodes around Alden’s trial rather than the Grand Rite seems a mistake, as we all know that Shane West isn’t going anywhere (call him John Proctor and maybe you would have had some dramatic tension).
Still, to hear Cotton say “John Alden is my friend, perhaps my only friend” was a touching moment, especially in light of how these two started off. You should all know by now that it’s practically a point of principle for me to be uninterested in white dude bromances, but this was rather sweet.
And between Cotton crashing Increase’s sermon and declaring that he’ll defend Alden at trial, we’re given our first indication that Increase has a tipping point.
Finally, Anne learns the truth about her father’s true nature, though it only serves to raise more questions. After he tells her that only a witch would be able to use the teleporting mask, we’re informed of the not-very-surprising revelation that Anne is a witch.
Hold the phone. So the show is now saying that being a witch is hereditary? That goes against what’s been portrayed so far, which is that the witches of Salem are in league with the devil (or at least some dark creature that lives in the forest) after being given a very clear choice to accept or deny him. All of them have been depicted as normal people before they were recruited into the fold.
This is changing the rules entirely, and throws them all into a much more sympathetic light. Rather like the assorted Druids and magical folk of Merlin, they’re now a persecuted minority, just trying to survive in a world that considers them evil.
Basically, the show is now a morass of questions, and I fear the writers have let it all get out of hand.
The torture of the girls was a bit much. Where on earth were their parents? Does Mary know they’re being tortured? Does Mercy? Come to think of it, does Mary know that Mercy has been sharing magic with these girls? What exactly is she teaching them? Why are they so confident that Mercy will rescue them? This is not at all what they were initially set up to be: a group of girls who craved excitement and attention: the perfect tools with which Mary could pick out appropriate sacrifices for the Grand Rite. Is that still on?
And I’ve forgotten why Mary had her familiar in Mercy in the first place. Was it to get her to point the finger at witches? Doesn’t she have to kill a certain number of people by a set date? Shouldn’t she get back to that?
Where’s Tituba? Why does Mary go for a chat with John but not her friend? Why on earth was Mercy hugging a dead body in the woods? Hale mentions to his daughter that he was raised by people “loyal to the cause” - what cause? How can witch hunters get the upper hand over witches when the latter seem so powerful?
What’s going on with the Grand Rite? The Elders? Do they want to live in peace or destroy mankind? Every character seems to have a different answer to these questions, and at this point it no longer seems complex, just nonsensical.