Dracula: "Servant of Two Masters"
After a brief hiatus Dracula is back. Okay.
It’s not that I dislike watching, it’s just that I’m utterly apathetic to both the plot and characters. No one in the cast has gotten me invested in their story, and the story itself is filled with needless padding, tedious love dodecahedrons, and the most agonizingly slow vendetta ever put to screen. Again, I point you to The Count of Monte Christo for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge done right. Hint: it involves people you’ll care about and a deep sense of Schadenfraude when intricately plotted vengeance starts to rain down.
Here I find myself repeatedly thinking: I just don’t care. Stuff just sort of happens. I’ll probably tune in for the final three episodes, but I doubt I’ll be back if the show is renewed.
So in this episode, Alexander Greyson prepares for a demonstration of his energy source thingy, Renfield goes to retrieve an ancient triptych, Mina hosts a dance for the mental patients in her father’s asylum, Lady Jane convinces Lucy to seduce Jonathan, and Van Helsing...is he still in this?
It’s all vaguely connected - for instance, Greyson is late for the demonstration because he was busy trying to help Mina with her dance, and the loss of the triptych was down to Lord Davenport trying to discover how he might best hurt Grayson, but there’s no real urgency to the proceedings, perhaps due to the fact that I have no investment in any of the romantic pairings OR the vendetta against the Order of the Dragon. There is a piecemeal quality to each episode which may have payoff later (I get the feeling that what Lucy is currently up to will eventually lead to her vamping) but for now it’s just meandering along with no real sense of suspense or intrigue.
Motivation is all over the place. Despite confessing her undying love for Mina, Lucy’s immediate reaction to her friend’s confusion is to attempt revenge by seducing her fiancé. After realizing that Greyson has manipulated him into ruining the reputation of an innocent man, Jonathan just puts on a woebegone face and gets back to work. Mina suddenly shows a romantic interest in Greyson despite her engagement. It’s revealed that Jane is apparently trying to remove Mina as competition by manipulating Lucy into ruining her life (as Greyson inadvertently advises her to do), even though she had already put this plan into effect in the last episode, long before Grayson tells her to “go after the object of his affection.” Dracula suddenly decides that he doesn’t want to drink blood anymore but live as a man (what brought this on? The serum? Mina?) and organises an orchestra to play at the mental asylum.
I suppose you could justify all this if you wanted to, but it all just seems a bit random to me. There’s a certain elegance to the storytelling in the way that disparate plot-threads are gradually being drawn together, but the characters feel very much in service to the plot, and various scenes come across as way too trite. I wasn’t sure whether Jane’s advice to Lucy on using her five senses in seduction was meant to be funny or not.
Life’s too short to be this negative. If it doesn’t pick up by next week, I’ll spare you any more grousing.
Miscellaneous
It amuses me that this episode shared the name of the last indisputably good Merlin episode.
The best thing continues to be the costumes. Jessica de Gouw looked adorable in that blue/white outfit at the park.
Renfield should never be allowed to bid at auction again. Who on earth takes the price up from 250 thousand dollars/coronas to one million? What better way to advertise to the entire world how important the artefact is? And what a waste of money!
I had to laugh at the old man’s face when Lucy decided to get hands-on in measuring Jonathan’s trousers. It was almost as funny as Lord Davenport deciding that Mina was the person Grayson loved most as evidenced by a centuries-old painting (sure, there’s a similarity to Mina, but it defies logic to draw this conclusion).
Harker gets kidnapped by the Order of the Dragon, perhaps with the intent to make him a double-agent. This is the most interesting thing that’s yet happened to him.
The animosity/alliance between Dracula and Van Helsing could have been the most interesting part of this show, but they barely interact. I’m still not sure why Van Helsing thought resurrecting Dracula was necessary, or why the Order of the Dragon turned on him in the first place - and without knowing this, there’s no way to connect with this character, or any of the events that come as a direct consequence of his choices (which is thus far practically everything that happens in the show).