Penny Dreadful 1.08: “Grand Guignol”
[Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Penny Dreadful, including the most recent, “Grand Guignol”.] What I might love most about Penny Dreadful is how much it seems to delight in subverting our expectations. From the title “Grand Guignol,” I had been prepared for the first season finale to be a veritable bloodbath, when in actuality, it seems that the title springs almost solely...
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Living Force (Post #38)
[Note: The following review contains spoilers for all episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, up to an including “The Lost One,” “Voices,” “Destiny,” and “Sacrifice”] I had expected to have a great deal to say about this, the very final batch of Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes, particularly when I heard that they would be a Yoda arc that finally revealed how he came to learn how to...
Penny Dreadful 1.07: “Possession”
[Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Penny Dreadful, including the most recent, “Possession”.] It seems that, practically every week, Penny Dreadful gets richer and scarier, and this week is no exception. This–the penultimate episode of the first season–was very likely the best, eeriest episode so far. As with the majority of installments to date, it doesn’t play by...
Penny Dreadful 1.06: “What Death Can Join Together”
[Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Penny Dreadful, including the most recent, “What Death Can Join Together”.] 1) Caliban continues to be a fascinating mixture of sympathetic and monstrous. On the one hand, we have his genuinely sweet and sad infatuation with the actress, which is made all the more bittersweet here ironically because she actually treats him with extreme compassion. She...
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Clovis and Mother (Post #37)
[Note: The following review contains spoilers for all episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, up to an including “An Old Friend,” “The Rise of Clovis,” “Crisis at the Heart,” and “The Disappeared” (Parts 1 and 2).] The last we saw Rush Clovis, Padme’s former lover and fellow senator, Anakin had left him to die at the hands of Lott Dod, after Clovis’ betrayal had contributed to...
Penny Dreadful 1.05: “Closer Than Sisters”
[Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Penny Dreadful, including the most recent, “Closer Than Sisters”.] 1. In keeping with Penny Dreadful‘s uniquely novelistic structure, which I’ve discussed in previous episode reviews, this week’s installment again breaks typical television rules by being almost entirely set in the past. Penny Dreadful dipped its toes into this sort of...