"Kush" :: Review
Here I am with the Kush review. I barely managed to make it in time for this week’s dicussion. Phew! Seriously, it's getting harder and harder to keep up. We'll see for next week...
Spoilers ahoy for S2 - EON/Eulogy and Haunted!
1x05 KUSH
Before getting into this episode’s more precise topics, I’d like to mention that really like the way we get from point A to point B. It’s very well constructed, allows for character background infos and lets the mystery evolves slowly. It makes the viewer doubt. Personally, I had no idea who the creature was before learning it at the end of the episode. Even in hindsight, the only clue I can see is that we never saw Allison’s hallucination. Never was enough to tip me off. Of course, they point out other things in the commentaries, but I hadn’t seen those.
Second thing, I don’t have a lot to say on this episode’s original characters aside from Helen and Will (will talk about them later), because they pretty much all die (oh!), but let’s mention who they were in relation to Magnus.
We get our first glimpse at the Worldwide Sanctuary Network with Allison Grant, as she is the head of the Sanctuary in New Delhi. This information doesn’t mean anything to us, because the network isn’t that much important until the season 1 finale/season 2 opener, but it’s a nice way to slowly introduce us into what Magnus has built over the years. Had they not done that, and thrown everything in our face in one episode, we would probably have found it less believable.
This episode also marks the first death of a character close to the Sanctuary team, Sylvio. We’ve seen that character only once before. Do I mind his death? No. I don’t relate to him; he’s not that important. Most of all, I think killing characters such as Sylvio and Allison opens the way for what will happen later. It’s subtle, but in retrospect, it makes Ashley’s death less shocking. The death of these two probably weighs heavily on Helen’s shoulders since they were working for her. Even if she doesn’t let her emotions show, she cares about the people who work for her. From her reaction though, you can see that this isn’t the first death she’s dealt with. She seems used to it, which, IMO, is kind of sad.
Guess that’s what you earn for being 157.
One last thing before this episode’s list.
WILL
Hold on, hold on. Now, Tashi claims that he's not part of this Pangboche Order, correct? And, I'm sorry, but having a medallion is hardly proof of intent to kill.
HELEN
Will's right. We can't condemn a man because of his beliefs. Leave him alone.
Just wanted to point out that Tashi’s situation is a marvellous metaphor for what’s happening in our world with religions. I’m not about to open this can of worms; so NOT doing that! ;P But I wanted to point it out. Braun is a character that judges people before knowing them. He assumes things. This episode offers some really incredible questions for us to think about. I love sci-fi! :D
So, those were the thoughts that didn’t fit into any category. Now, digging into these topics:
1. Sanctuary’s take on the famous Yeti - thoughts on the creature and his abilities
2. Helen/Will - getting to know you
3. Will/His mother - some fallout
4. Helen/John - her worst nightmare
I just want to clarify something before we continue. Yes, I am a Helen/John shipper. Proud of it and nothing is going to make me change my mind. BUT for those reviews, I’ll try to be what I would call an ‘objective shipper’ (so much as a shipper can be objective, that’s the trick ;P). Meaning, I’ll analyse the relationship from my POV, but it’s going to be analysed the same way the rest is, going into the depths of what’s happening and trying to understand what lurks beneath, or at least, that’s what I’ll try to do. You’re opinion is welcome if you’re not a shipper, even very much encouraged, because even if I try really hard, I guess I’m still biased. :)
That’s what I wanted to say. Though, for fanfic purposes, that part may be longer than the rest, and for that I apologize in advance. (These reviews really help me getting into character when I write, that’s why.)
1. Sanctuary’s take on the famous Yeti
This is another great example of them taking a creature/legend we know and making it into something else. This Yeti doesn’t look anything like we were told when we were kids. Even Helen believed that’s what he looked like at first! It was playing on their perception of the place, objects and people around, making them believe they had captured a big creature.
Aside from that, the episode’s plot is great, different to what we’ve seen so far. It’s classic Sanctuary. And that’s really getting he viewer to see what the show will be like in the beginning. Something happens involving a creature, but the main story is not about finding out who or what the creature is, it’s about surviving in a plane in the Himalayas, while finding out where the creature is hiding as it is killing every single one of them. This is not a conventional episode for this type show, but it is showing us that Sanctuary is NOT about staying at home and bringing in monsters. That’s what’s interesting and different about this show. It’s a FACT that these creatures exist, so the main plot is not discovering them, it’s capturing/helping/whatever, but I think that’s what makes this different from the other series in the genre.
The Yeti creates hallucinations to hide its presence amongst them. The nature of these hallucinations has been brought to my attention by a discussion here (see the comments in the discussion post). What do they have in common? They’re all generated for them to be distracted while the beast strikes. Will and Helen never dealt with theirs. Will’s mother and John Druitt are both topics these people prefer not to dwell on, but presented with them so fiercely, they are forced to face them and they are in an emotional roller coaster, thinking about it awake and asleep. So, what about Sylvio? I’m guessing the creature didn’t have anything to go on that was as ‘dark’ as what it found in Helen and Will, so it went with what was worrying him the most at the moment. He’s a monster hunter who has a fiancée, there IS a chance he might not come back from one of his hunts, so the beat shows him is future wife for who he worries a lot. So, yes, basically, all the hallucinations have the same tone IMHO.
2. Helen/Will
HELEN
I need to ask you something, and it may sound strange.
WILL
Oh believe me; I'm getting very used to strange.
So far as Will in concerned, his integration into the Sanctuary world seems complete from this episode on. We’ve seen him taking in all that Magnus has to offer slowly, and now, he’s there for her; he’s working WITH her. There are no more questions on how things work. In Kush, he’s always by her side. He supports her when Braun questions their methods and, most of all, he seems to know her. She sometimes lets him take the lead then takes it back. They are finding out how they are working together, but it’s not about learning anymore.
The following is the start of some classic Will/Magnus scenes. They’ll have many scenes like this one in later episode, with this sort of teasing (and really cool!) dynamic to it, where they find out things about each other, most often not work-related.
HELEN
Oh, please tell me that that is tea.
WILL
Gods are on vacation. It's coffee. Here.
HELEN
Pass.
WILL
Come on, it'll help you keep warm.
HELEN
I have standards, Will. Drinking coffee? Well below them.
WILL
Man, you are a Brit to the core, aren't you?
HELEN
And proud of it.
I don’t see this exchange happening in any of the previous episodes. Will’s even able to tease her a little here on her British background. He’s still cautious because he doesn’t know the lengths he can go to; it feels like he’s testing the grounds, but Magnus seems to like that about him. This is also, as pointed out in the commentaries, Will’s and Magnus’ first mission alone together. Over all, it deepened their relationship a lot.
And when you think that it is based on his knowledge of her that Helen makes the final decision to shoot Yeti!Will, it shows you just how much trust she’s ready to put in him. She knows it’s been hard for him to learn his way around the Sanctuary, so he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. (But the creature obviously didn’t.)
On thing they said on the commentaries that struck me was that, when Will his outside, facing his mother, he makes the choice to leave her. He realises she’s not real and doesn’t believe what she has to offer. Thus, he’s choosing Magnus’ world. It’s a sort of confirmation of what we’ve seen so far; him leaving behind his past and moving on.
3. Will/His mother
Now, after the revelation in the first episode that Will’s mother was killed by an abnormal, I was waiting for an episode to touch this subject. This is the only one that has (so far). I expected to be more and, honestly, I am a bit disappointed.
We can see that, even if he as worked with abnormals for maybe a few weeks(?), it didn’t make up yet for what happened earlier in his life. So, Magnus wasn’t the answer to every question he had. Will still has some mind juggling to do on his own. I think this episode/creature offers him the push he needs to confront the death of his mother, now that he knows for sure an abnormal is responsible. Loosing his mother when he was young was hard, especially since the cause of death would attract laughs from everyone he knew at that age. This is why he didn’t confront it before, but, in the Sanctuary, for the first time in his life, he can. So I’m guessing there’s some fallout to this episode on Will’s part that we didn’t get to see.
But, as I said earlier, we can say that he chooses Helen definitely in this episode, over his past (his mother). (See the last paragraph of #3.)
4. Helen/John
Ahhh… where to start? The fact is that Helen’s hallucination tells us a lot about her and her personality. We’ve seen a very confident Helen so far; the only time she faltered was in SFA when she saw John again after possibly close to 100 years without news from him. The beast uses her memories of Druitt to distract her because it knows, like we do, that’s it’s probably the only thing that can take her focus off the problem at hand. Thing is, John is Helen’s liability. It is what makes her vulnerable and that’s what the creature wants to do.
I think Helen’s reaction also tells us that she’s afraid John will come back, even though she thinks she killed him with the fake blood she gave him. He’s still very much a problem for her, one she cannot deal with because it involves too much emotional consequences, and she doesn’t think that someone in her position can allow such vulnerability. So, for her whole life, she probably repressed thoughts of him and it got her where she is. Her professional life is amazing; she achieved a lot for her Sanctuaries. But somehow, I don’t think her personal life was ever complete, even if we know she had lovers of the past hundred years. (No one lives single for century, come on!) For me, it’ll be hollow as long as she doesn’t confront her feelings for her first relationship. It ended so quickly she didn’t had time for closure. That’s why she’s it is creating a reaction within her whenever he’s mentioned/seen/heard of/etc.
First scene up for discussion on my part: the flashback.
Oh, do I love flashbacks. <3 The 1880s are even more interesting with characters from Sanctuary. And when The Five comes in, it’s even better! But let’s keep that for the actual The Five episode. (That review is going to be so much fun!)
The carriage scene was directly taken from the webbies and reedited (shortened :( ) for the episodes. That makes it harder to analyse because some of the things they say don’t make sense anymore. At the beginning of the series, they hinted that it was the Source Blood who changed John from the man he was to Jack the Ripper. Haunted changed that knowledge and it turned out okay. BUT, in the webbies, it was hinted that John Druitt always had the teleporting power and there was no The Five. So, his line, “I've spent my entire life lost in a void, afraid of who I am... of what I am. If not for you, I fear I would have remained lost. Instead, I can now see that I am neither a freak of nature nor a devil,” makes more sense in the webbies than it does right now. But, I’ll attempt to understand it in another light.
Every member of The Five strikes me as forward thinking, out the box type of people. Because of that, John was probably ‘lost in a void’, alone, because he was thinking differently from others. Though I must say that, in appearances, John looks like the sanest member of the group. When Helen comes in (with the others), he realises that he can think out of the box without being chastise for it.
Also, from what Helen says in SFA, I get the distinct impression that John was at some point sick(?) before their engagement. She gave him her blood to prolong his life. That’s where his, “someone who wishes to spend the rest of his life repaying his saviour for all she's done,” comes from, in the TV series.
Then, we’re faced for the first time with their eternal promise. “For all eternity” becomes a recurring aspect in their relationship as they struggle to fight their impulses and think rationally, because they are both rational people who have learned that choices come with a price. I think it is this aspect that haunts Helen more than anything else. He failed to hold up to his promise. John broke her heart not because their relationship ended, but because of the WAY it ended. It didn’t allow her - both of them for that matter - any form of closure. One moment they had it all and the next, everything was gone. The emotion never got away; they HAD to repress it. So, it’s still there and that emotion is really strong. Whether it’s love or not… I’ll leave that to your interpretation.
But all that is pretty much profound and I just want to point out that at their beginning in the 1880s, they’re a ‘normal’ couple, heads over heels in love with each other and oblivious to what lies ahead for them. That’s what the flashback shows us. What happens after is history.
In every hallucination Helen thinks about the John Druitt from her London days. He is the one she loved - still does perhaps? - but he is also the John who broke her heart. There’s a duality in their relationship right from the start. Where am I getting with this? Magnus’ feelings are divided: the good memories and the bad ones. Both are hard to bear and she represses them most of the time. I think the longer she does without confronting these feelings, the more the good and bad memories mix up. They are hard to distinguish because both hurt, either from fear and regret, or nostalgia and sadness. They also fight over the control of her emotions, so, for her, it’s really hard to understand how she feels towards John.
HELEN
You destroyed my heart, John. Even though I understood why you had changed, your ailment, the hatred you felt towards me, and then the way you would harm our daughter.
JOHN
Let me make it up to you. I need you to wake up. NOW.
Does SHE want HIM to make it up to her? She’s imagining this, let’s not forget.
The fact that he last appears to her not as he was, but as he is now, offers a new train of thoughts. This is creepy Druitt, but she still ‘trusts’ him to wake up, whereas earlier in the episode, she flinched away from London!John’s touch. I’m seeing a possibility in the fact that she trusts him. Not everything seems gone. There’s a possibility - be it a renewed friendship if you don’t care for the rest). She knows it’s a hallucination, so it defies the purpose of trust, but I’m merely pointing out that it is the closest she comes to confronting what happened in the 1880’s. So, maybe trust is not the best word. Maybe it’s just history.
Also, another thing I observed is that she doesn’t dream of him as Jack the Ripper. We could expect her to have nightmares about what happened back then, but somehow, these thoughts are not what she’s afraid of. Her nightmares come from the happy memories, such as her engagement. She regrets what happened because she cared (still cares maybe?) about him and it’s hard to live with.
So, over all, another great episode on PTB's part! It's starting to roll. ;)
Spoilers ahoy for S2 - EON/Eulogy and Haunted!
1x05 KUSH
Before getting into this episode’s more precise topics, I’d like to mention that really like the way we get from point A to point B. It’s very well constructed, allows for character background infos and lets the mystery evolves slowly. It makes the viewer doubt. Personally, I had no idea who the creature was before learning it at the end of the episode. Even in hindsight, the only clue I can see is that we never saw Allison’s hallucination. Never was enough to tip me off. Of course, they point out other things in the commentaries, but I hadn’t seen those.
Second thing, I don’t have a lot to say on this episode’s original characters aside from Helen and Will (will talk about them later), because they pretty much all die (oh!), but let’s mention who they were in relation to Magnus.
We get our first glimpse at the Worldwide Sanctuary Network with Allison Grant, as she is the head of the Sanctuary in New Delhi. This information doesn’t mean anything to us, because the network isn’t that much important until the season 1 finale/season 2 opener, but it’s a nice way to slowly introduce us into what Magnus has built over the years. Had they not done that, and thrown everything in our face in one episode, we would probably have found it less believable.
This episode also marks the first death of a character close to the Sanctuary team, Sylvio. We’ve seen that character only once before. Do I mind his death? No. I don’t relate to him; he’s not that important. Most of all, I think killing characters such as Sylvio and Allison opens the way for what will happen later. It’s subtle, but in retrospect, it makes Ashley’s death less shocking. The death of these two probably weighs heavily on Helen’s shoulders since they were working for her. Even if she doesn’t let her emotions show, she cares about the people who work for her. From her reaction though, you can see that this isn’t the first death she’s dealt with. She seems used to it, which, IMO, is kind of sad.
Guess that’s what you earn for being 157.
One last thing before this episode’s list.
WILL
Hold on, hold on. Now, Tashi claims that he's not part of this Pangboche Order, correct? And, I'm sorry, but having a medallion is hardly proof of intent to kill.
HELEN
Will's right. We can't condemn a man because of his beliefs. Leave him alone.
Just wanted to point out that Tashi’s situation is a marvellous metaphor for what’s happening in our world with religions. I’m not about to open this can of worms; so NOT doing that! ;P But I wanted to point it out. Braun is a character that judges people before knowing them. He assumes things. This episode offers some really incredible questions for us to think about. I love sci-fi! :D
So, those were the thoughts that didn’t fit into any category. Now, digging into these topics:
1. Sanctuary’s take on the famous Yeti - thoughts on the creature and his abilities
2. Helen/Will - getting to know you
3. Will/His mother - some fallout
4. Helen/John - her worst nightmare
I just want to clarify something before we continue. Yes, I am a Helen/John shipper. Proud of it and nothing is going to make me change my mind. BUT for those reviews, I’ll try to be what I would call an ‘objective shipper’ (so much as a shipper can be objective, that’s the trick ;P). Meaning, I’ll analyse the relationship from my POV, but it’s going to be analysed the same way the rest is, going into the depths of what’s happening and trying to understand what lurks beneath, or at least, that’s what I’ll try to do. You’re opinion is welcome if you’re not a shipper, even very much encouraged, because even if I try really hard, I guess I’m still biased. :)
That’s what I wanted to say. Though, for fanfic purposes, that part may be longer than the rest, and for that I apologize in advance. (These reviews really help me getting into character when I write, that’s why.)
1. Sanctuary’s take on the famous Yeti
This is another great example of them taking a creature/legend we know and making it into something else. This Yeti doesn’t look anything like we were told when we were kids. Even Helen believed that’s what he looked like at first! It was playing on their perception of the place, objects and people around, making them believe they had captured a big creature.
Aside from that, the episode’s plot is great, different to what we’ve seen so far. It’s classic Sanctuary. And that’s really getting he viewer to see what the show will be like in the beginning. Something happens involving a creature, but the main story is not about finding out who or what the creature is, it’s about surviving in a plane in the Himalayas, while finding out where the creature is hiding as it is killing every single one of them. This is not a conventional episode for this type show, but it is showing us that Sanctuary is NOT about staying at home and bringing in monsters. That’s what’s interesting and different about this show. It’s a FACT that these creatures exist, so the main plot is not discovering them, it’s capturing/helping/whatever, but I think that’s what makes this different from the other series in the genre.
The Yeti creates hallucinations to hide its presence amongst them. The nature of these hallucinations has been brought to my attention by a discussion here (see the comments in the discussion post). What do they have in common? They’re all generated for them to be distracted while the beast strikes. Will and Helen never dealt with theirs. Will’s mother and John Druitt are both topics these people prefer not to dwell on, but presented with them so fiercely, they are forced to face them and they are in an emotional roller coaster, thinking about it awake and asleep. So, what about Sylvio? I’m guessing the creature didn’t have anything to go on that was as ‘dark’ as what it found in Helen and Will, so it went with what was worrying him the most at the moment. He’s a monster hunter who has a fiancée, there IS a chance he might not come back from one of his hunts, so the beat shows him is future wife for who he worries a lot. So, yes, basically, all the hallucinations have the same tone IMHO.
2. Helen/Will
HELEN
I need to ask you something, and it may sound strange.
WILL
Oh believe me; I'm getting very used to strange.
So far as Will in concerned, his integration into the Sanctuary world seems complete from this episode on. We’ve seen him taking in all that Magnus has to offer slowly, and now, he’s there for her; he’s working WITH her. There are no more questions on how things work. In Kush, he’s always by her side. He supports her when Braun questions their methods and, most of all, he seems to know her. She sometimes lets him take the lead then takes it back. They are finding out how they are working together, but it’s not about learning anymore.
The following is the start of some classic Will/Magnus scenes. They’ll have many scenes like this one in later episode, with this sort of teasing (and really cool!) dynamic to it, where they find out things about each other, most often not work-related.
HELEN
Oh, please tell me that that is tea.
WILL
Gods are on vacation. It's coffee. Here.
HELEN
Pass.
WILL
Come on, it'll help you keep warm.
HELEN
I have standards, Will. Drinking coffee? Well below them.
WILL
Man, you are a Brit to the core, aren't you?
HELEN
And proud of it.
I don’t see this exchange happening in any of the previous episodes. Will’s even able to tease her a little here on her British background. He’s still cautious because he doesn’t know the lengths he can go to; it feels like he’s testing the grounds, but Magnus seems to like that about him. This is also, as pointed out in the commentaries, Will’s and Magnus’ first mission alone together. Over all, it deepened their relationship a lot.
And when you think that it is based on his knowledge of her that Helen makes the final decision to shoot Yeti!Will, it shows you just how much trust she’s ready to put in him. She knows it’s been hard for him to learn his way around the Sanctuary, so he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. (But the creature obviously didn’t.)
On thing they said on the commentaries that struck me was that, when Will his outside, facing his mother, he makes the choice to leave her. He realises she’s not real and doesn’t believe what she has to offer. Thus, he’s choosing Magnus’ world. It’s a sort of confirmation of what we’ve seen so far; him leaving behind his past and moving on.
3. Will/His mother
Now, after the revelation in the first episode that Will’s mother was killed by an abnormal, I was waiting for an episode to touch this subject. This is the only one that has (so far). I expected to be more and, honestly, I am a bit disappointed.
We can see that, even if he as worked with abnormals for maybe a few weeks(?), it didn’t make up yet for what happened earlier in his life. So, Magnus wasn’t the answer to every question he had. Will still has some mind juggling to do on his own. I think this episode/creature offers him the push he needs to confront the death of his mother, now that he knows for sure an abnormal is responsible. Loosing his mother when he was young was hard, especially since the cause of death would attract laughs from everyone he knew at that age. This is why he didn’t confront it before, but, in the Sanctuary, for the first time in his life, he can. So I’m guessing there’s some fallout to this episode on Will’s part that we didn’t get to see.
But, as I said earlier, we can say that he chooses Helen definitely in this episode, over his past (his mother). (See the last paragraph of #3.)
4. Helen/John
Ahhh… where to start? The fact is that Helen’s hallucination tells us a lot about her and her personality. We’ve seen a very confident Helen so far; the only time she faltered was in SFA when she saw John again after possibly close to 100 years without news from him. The beast uses her memories of Druitt to distract her because it knows, like we do, that’s it’s probably the only thing that can take her focus off the problem at hand. Thing is, John is Helen’s liability. It is what makes her vulnerable and that’s what the creature wants to do.
I think Helen’s reaction also tells us that she’s afraid John will come back, even though she thinks she killed him with the fake blood she gave him. He’s still very much a problem for her, one she cannot deal with because it involves too much emotional consequences, and she doesn’t think that someone in her position can allow such vulnerability. So, for her whole life, she probably repressed thoughts of him and it got her where she is. Her professional life is amazing; she achieved a lot for her Sanctuaries. But somehow, I don’t think her personal life was ever complete, even if we know she had lovers of the past hundred years. (No one lives single for century, come on!) For me, it’ll be hollow as long as she doesn’t confront her feelings for her first relationship. It ended so quickly she didn’t had time for closure. That’s why she’s it is creating a reaction within her whenever he’s mentioned/seen/heard of/etc.
First scene up for discussion on my part: the flashback.
Oh, do I love flashbacks. <3 The 1880s are even more interesting with characters from Sanctuary. And when The Five comes in, it’s even better! But let’s keep that for the actual The Five episode. (That review is going to be so much fun!)
The carriage scene was directly taken from the webbies and reedited (shortened :( ) for the episodes. That makes it harder to analyse because some of the things they say don’t make sense anymore. At the beginning of the series, they hinted that it was the Source Blood who changed John from the man he was to Jack the Ripper. Haunted changed that knowledge and it turned out okay. BUT, in the webbies, it was hinted that John Druitt always had the teleporting power and there was no The Five. So, his line, “I've spent my entire life lost in a void, afraid of who I am... of what I am. If not for you, I fear I would have remained lost. Instead, I can now see that I am neither a freak of nature nor a devil,” makes more sense in the webbies than it does right now. But, I’ll attempt to understand it in another light.
Every member of The Five strikes me as forward thinking, out the box type of people. Because of that, John was probably ‘lost in a void’, alone, because he was thinking differently from others. Though I must say that, in appearances, John looks like the sanest member of the group. When Helen comes in (with the others), he realises that he can think out of the box without being chastise for it.
Also, from what Helen says in SFA, I get the distinct impression that John was at some point sick(?) before their engagement. She gave him her blood to prolong his life. That’s where his, “someone who wishes to spend the rest of his life repaying his saviour for all she's done,” comes from, in the TV series.
Then, we’re faced for the first time with their eternal promise. “For all eternity” becomes a recurring aspect in their relationship as they struggle to fight their impulses and think rationally, because they are both rational people who have learned that choices come with a price. I think it is this aspect that haunts Helen more than anything else. He failed to hold up to his promise. John broke her heart not because their relationship ended, but because of the WAY it ended. It didn’t allow her - both of them for that matter - any form of closure. One moment they had it all and the next, everything was gone. The emotion never got away; they HAD to repress it. So, it’s still there and that emotion is really strong. Whether it’s love or not… I’ll leave that to your interpretation.
But all that is pretty much profound and I just want to point out that at their beginning in the 1880s, they’re a ‘normal’ couple, heads over heels in love with each other and oblivious to what lies ahead for them. That’s what the flashback shows us. What happens after is history.
In every hallucination Helen thinks about the John Druitt from her London days. He is the one she loved - still does perhaps? - but he is also the John who broke her heart. There’s a duality in their relationship right from the start. Where am I getting with this? Magnus’ feelings are divided: the good memories and the bad ones. Both are hard to bear and she represses them most of the time. I think the longer she does without confronting these feelings, the more the good and bad memories mix up. They are hard to distinguish because both hurt, either from fear and regret, or nostalgia and sadness. They also fight over the control of her emotions, so, for her, it’s really hard to understand how she feels towards John.
HELEN
You destroyed my heart, John. Even though I understood why you had changed, your ailment, the hatred you felt towards me, and then the way you would harm our daughter.
JOHN
Let me make it up to you. I need you to wake up. NOW.
Does SHE want HIM to make it up to her? She’s imagining this, let’s not forget.
The fact that he last appears to her not as he was, but as he is now, offers a new train of thoughts. This is creepy Druitt, but she still ‘trusts’ him to wake up, whereas earlier in the episode, she flinched away from London!John’s touch. I’m seeing a possibility in the fact that she trusts him. Not everything seems gone. There’s a possibility - be it a renewed friendship if you don’t care for the rest). She knows it’s a hallucination, so it defies the purpose of trust, but I’m merely pointing out that it is the closest she comes to confronting what happened in the 1880’s. So, maybe trust is not the best word. Maybe it’s just history.
Also, another thing I observed is that she doesn’t dream of him as Jack the Ripper. We could expect her to have nightmares about what happened back then, but somehow, these thoughts are not what she’s afraid of. Her nightmares come from the happy memories, such as her engagement. She regrets what happened because she cared (still cares maybe?) about him and it’s hard to live with.
So, over all, another great episode on PTB's part! It's starting to roll. ;)