Penny Dreadful Recap: Episode 1.05 “Closer Than Sisters”
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Read Time:9 Minute, 29 Second
We begin with Vanessa (Eva Green) writing a letter to Mina and she is telling her she is writing this as she is recovering from her illness. She tells Mina that she hopes that one day she will answer her letters and she hopes that things will be good between them again, but she knows it will never happen. We go back to a flashback of when Vanessa and Mina were young girls they are running around the ocean, Vanessa is telling her that they should go as far as they can see, but Mina is afraid. In a voice-over by the older Vanessa she talks about how both their families were inseparable that the gates between their homes were never locked until the day it closed forever. Young Vanessa and Mina are joined with Mina’s brother Peter and they are in a room where it’s all animals that have been or going to be taxidermied. Vanessa mentions that they should have a name, because or else they won’t be real, Peter tells Vanessa that she’s ghoulish and then Mina mentions that one day Vanessa is going to marry Peter.
They hear that Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton) is arriving home from one of his expeditions and all three go running to him. He hugs both Vanessa and Mina and Peter is left there standing. He tells his father if he brought him anything from Africa and it’s a serval pelt. Vanessa in voice-over says she remembers the festive homecomings the most, the rare gifts, and the tales of adventure that Sir Malcolm would tell them. She mentions how Peter would be so excited and that her and Mina were not completely alike, that the Catholic church was alien to Mina. Vanessa says that she felt the tremor of something maybe adulthood. She tells of something terrible happening that night, as young Vanessa is walking through this maze and sees her mother and Sir Malcolm having sex. She says that she enjoyed watching and that something whispered to her as she listened that this demon inside her was waiting to turn around. She doesn’t tell Mina about what she saw in the maze, because she said she didn’t want to see her grow up too soon. But that something changed for her in that maze that she started to do little acts of wickedness that she knew that it was more than just mischief. Young Vanessa is going through the maze singing and the scene goes to a grown up Vanessa.
Vanessa says that Mina (Olivia Llewellyn) met her gentleman first a fellow by the name of Captain Branson, who Mina was going to marry and head off to India with, Vanessa says that she envied Mina and even hated her because she was the courageous one and knew nothing. Peter comes to the maze and talks to Vanessa telling her that whenever he mentions about wanting to go to Africa with his father that Sir Malcolm shies away from it and that he knows he’s a disappointment to his father because he’s always been sick and weak. That Sir Malcolm needs someone like Vanessa, she kisses him and she wants to go further, but Peter stops her and leaves. She says that she loved Peter for been beautifully weak. Vanessa is in her room praying to God, but mentions that the other one answered instead and we hear a voice saying, “Soon child, what games we will have”
Vanessa and Mina are in bed sleeping when Vanessa kisses her and heads downstairs when she runs into Captain Branson. She tells him if he wants to see something interesting and takes him to that room with all the taxidermy. She tells him that you have to name a thing before it comes to life like a witches spell. She shows him this bird that she has named Ariel and says that the challenge is in the eyes. Vanessa and Captain Branson started kissing and it leads to sex and Mina walks in to seeing them screwing when Vanessa is seeing Mina. Captain Branson leaves the next morning and Mina is sobbing, Vanessa wants to talk to Mina, but her mother tells her if she doesn’t have any shame and she throws back those words at her mother saying that she should makes amends with Vanessa’s father for what she did all those years ago. Vanessa is heading there when she sees Sir Malcolm and she tells him that she has to see Mina and wants to make things right, Sir Malcolm calls her a cruel little girl and closes the gate. Devastated Vanessa faints walking back and tells us that this is when the illness came and that it was absolutely inexplicable. They show her having a seizure and Vanessa’s mother says that the doctors really don’t think it’s epilepsy that they fear that it is something in her brain, something inside her. That since the seizures have been so bad that they consulted a specialist in London, for treating women’s disorders and Vanessa tells her mother, “An asylum”
Vanessa and her parents are with the doctor and he is telling them that they have treatment for a person with hysteria of a psychosexual nature with the use of narcotics and escalating hydrotherapy and he also mentions that there are surgical options, Vanessa finally speaks and says that this want she wants to do. The doctor tells her parents to leave the office and Vanessa tells him that she prefers the ocean because of the men she has seen drowned, the doctor starts to suspect something is wrong and he rings a bell and starts talking to her and all of a sudden she says “Who’s Vanessa?” and starts attacking the doctor. We see being thrown in a tub in cold water and the are also putting ice cubes she is yelling in gibberish and the doctor injects her with something to calm her down. They tie her up and are spraying with this full pressure hose repeatly. Next scene they are cutting her hair leaving her bald and they are prepping her for a surgical procedure, she has this contraption with this needle on her head and the doctor is twisting it and checking at the hole he did.
We are at the Ives home and the doorbell rings and it’s Peter telling Vanessa’s parents that he leaving and is finally going to Africa with his father and that he wants to see Vanessa. Her mother tells Peter and she’s changed much and we see Vanessa in her bed she breathing really hard and looking all catatonic. Peter asks her mother if she will recognize him and she says that she doesn’t know, but my talking to her it’s meant to help her. He tells Vanessa that he is finally having that adventure they had talked about. Vanessa whispers to him that he should have kissed her and tells him if he will kiss her now, he does and then she tells him that he’s going to die over there. Peter leaves all scared and Vanessa’s mother asks him what she said, but he tells her he couldn’t make her out.
Vanessa is in her room when she hears the voice of Sir Malcolm and looks and he’s sitting across from her saying if she knows of Keats the poet. She says that she is too weak to speak and she tells him “Who are you?” she knows that this isn’t Sir Malcolm and she calls him the prince of darkness. He keeps talking about Keats and that he always had a dark whisper, a mirror behind the glass eyes…he starts reciting some lines from Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”:
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath
They start kissing and Vanessa’s mother is hearing some noises coming from Vanessa’s room and goes to check on her and we hear some moaning and Vanessa is naked on her bed having sex, but it’s only herself and then she turns to her mother and Vanessa’s eyes are completely white like she’s possessed. Her mother drops dead instantly and see a funeral afterwards.
Vanessa is walking on the ocean and she sees Mina across from her, she tells Vanessa that she doesn’t blame her, but Vanessa tells her she can’t forgive herself. Mina tells her that she is married now to a lawyer called Mr. Harker and that he is a good man. Vanessa tells her she is happy for her and then Mina mentions their poor Peter since he died and that he should have never left because Vanessa loved him for his weakness. Vanessa is surprised at her saying that because no one knew that and all of a sudden we see Mina’s face turn a bit different and she has red eyes and tells Vanessa that the Master has taught her well and then changes back to normal and tells Vanessa to help her to save her and gets dragged away and vanishes.
Sembene (Danny Sapani) comes to Sir Malcolm and they are speaking in another language, and it’s Vanessa who has showed up telling Sir Malcolm that Mina needs their help and if he will let her in. They start talking and also arguing with each other and she tells him to imagine how things have been for her that something marked her forever. This is the moment where everything begins in the search for Mina that they will follow it to Mina and then what will happen Sir Malcolm asks Vanessa. She responds by saying that he will be done and she will walk on. Sir Malcolm tells Sembene to make a room for Vanessa that this will now be her home. Last scene we get is Vanessa writing some last sentences in the letter she had been writing saying that she will not rest until Mina is safe that this is her purpose and that she will always love her and folds the letter and we see the envelope is addressed to Mrs. Jonathan Harker and she puts the letter inside a box with a bunch of other letters she written to her. In Vanessa’s voiceover she says, “Postscript: Your father loves you very much, he loves you in a different way, I love you enough to kill you” end of the episode.
I really enjoyed this episode, Eva Green was phenomenal with her acting, love how she can quickly go from normal to playing someone who is possessed and you felt for her in those scenes at the asylum. I love how we were shown some backstory on the relationship between Vanessa and Mina and how it all went back to that second episode during the seance when Vanessa got possessed and was speaking in those voices, we know what happened between their relationship. And we also see how it all began with the search of Mina and Vanessa and Sir Malcolm’s relationship in how they came to working together. Also one part I liked was that ocean scene of Vanessa walking and running into Mina, loved how Vanessa was wearing black and Mina white, like a contrast between light and dark forces.
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