#meanwhile i go Ham over any fish i can find PLEASE give me all your fish and shrimp forever

[rxttenfish]

ngl some days i get REAL tempted to start calling myself a pescetarian, just because then i can get people to stop trying to feed me pork and start offering more seafood options (my beloved)

[popculturebuffet]

Green Eggs and Ham: “Train” Review or A Little Better Now (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello you happy people and all aboard! We’re back on the Green Eggs and Ham Train for a Train themed episode. Train. As you can tell I like trains... admitely I don’t see enough episodes et on them and I don’t buy books or obess on them but I like the idea of a train, the comfort, the use of a mode of travel that was once common but is now simply used on occasion with the dawn of air travel, and it confining our heroes to a smaller space with limited room to move. it’s good stuff. I even tolerae the band train... I mean yes their music is okay at best, but the lyrics.. are wonderfully delightfully insane. Who else would use a garbage bag as a genuine romantic metaphor?

When last we left off things ere a bit ehhhhhhhhhhh: Sam went from delightfully quirky with some issues ot adress to annoying, and Michelle went from kin dof a bitch ot ENTIRELY THAT BITCH. Outside of Guy’s mental breakdown/heatstroke episode involving hallucinations of green eggs and ham, yes that did in fact happen, it wasn’t much to write home about and I worried the series simply had a good PILOT but the series itself wasn’t going to be fun sit through. 

If I was right or I was rilla.. will have to wait till after the cut. But first as always i’d like to thank the person who payed for this episode Emma Fici. Emma is one of my closest friends and one of two patreon patreons. If you’d like a reivew of your choice eveyr month guarnateed, then please hop over to patreon.com/popculturebuffet and back me at the 5 dollar level. You also get access to my exclusive discord where I ocasoinally post about work in progress stuff and tlak to my falns, to pick a short any time I do one and EXCLUSIVE review, as well as helping me hit my stretch goals. So line up, sign up then join me under the cut. 

So we pick up where we left off with Guy hurtling into a lake. Eh I dunno i’ve heard being naked ina  lake is pretty neat. 

All you’d have to do is take off the hat and your there. But Sam saves him wiht the weird train of hats he put at the end of the car for some reason, and our heroes are saved.. but down a vehicle. Oh and Sam’s vehiclular neglgence costs a bunch of fish their home.

And our heroes are without a car and Guys at the end of his rope with Sam.. I mean granted he’s been there since he met the guy but it’s down to like the tiniest thred, not helped by Sam casually stealing his wallet to pay for train tickets depsite Guy , UNDERSTANDABLY, not wanting to hang out with the guy who has stolen with him, gotten him implicate din animal trafficing and dosen’t really respect personal space. Also it’s taken me embarassingly long to remember Micheal Douglas played my boy Hank Pym in the Ant Man and the Wasp films. Seroiusly I don’t know HOW I forgot that, him being aged up and thus unable to do ANY of the things he is constnatly denied credit for in canon (Founding the avengers, being the first ant man.. and the first goliath and the first yellow jacket and the first giant man.. and the only doctor pym...).. but instead the film kept his troubled nature and ego, but removed the domestic abuse (which is something I will not go into but needless to say the comics version went above and beyond to try and make up for that and redeem himself soley because it was the right hting to do) and by making im older still gav ehim a roll as Scott’s mentor. What i’m getting at is I freaking love Hank Pym and I could’ve been making hank pym jokes for several episdoes now. That’s a mistake I itned to recitfy.. right away as Guy looses his suitcase as a result of it and whie he lcaims not to be bothered his voice says otherwise. Eh i’m sure the world can wait for ultron Guy. 

So anyway, Guy reluctantly agrees to the train travel idea and being parked across from Sam on the grounds he has no real other options. Meanwhile the BAD GUYZ.. and i’ve also decided to drop spoilers as the series is two years old, most people reading this have probably seen the series, and it makes analysis rough when I have to dance around spoilers. So yeah the BAD GUYZ aren’t villians.. kind of a dickhead on the blue guys part, but not EVIL. They figure out their going by train it’s a whole thing.

ON the train we run into michelle again...

Yeahhh for the first half she’s as inusfferable as she was the last two episodes and it lead me to believie the rest of the series was going to be constant suffering as she’d be in every episode, likely because they DID get Diane Keaton for this and you don’t waste Diane Keaton. You just don’t. But while they got their money’s worth in having her on screne wise they just..w asted her for the first 2 and a half episodes: Michelle is a judgemental, unpleasnt suffocating bitch and it’s going to take a lot , even if this episode helped, to make me truly like her as a person. 

Case in point her first two scenes this episode are just.. dragging her daughter past a play place uncarring about her feelings because while I DO get she cares about her child’s saftey and is terrified afte rloosing her husband.. it dosen’t EXCUSE her actions. It dosen’t forgive her locking her daughter up constanlty, not talking to her like a human being and oh yeah PUTTING A FUCKING LOCK ON HER SHE CAN CONTROL.  I mean my god I don’t think they INTENDED for her to come off as abusive as she does, and i’ve seen far worse inteitonally and untietionally, but it’s still not remotely plesant. There is a larger issue baked into that the episode brings about, but we’ll get to that. 

And naturally at breakfast.. she procedes to top herself. ONCE AGAIN she treats guy like trash as guy UNDERSTANDABLY didn’t want to talk to her after her previous layers of bullshit which, just as a refresher, involved insulting his invention constnatly (even if it turned out ot be dangerous she did not know that till the last second) then refusing to help a man BAKING in the desert and mocking him to his face. 

So yeah unsuprisingly instead of you know, APOLOGIZING for that episode or anything else she mocks him again and calls him sad. I just.. I get they were trying to have her come off as a jerk and then slowly develop.. but you can’t overdue the jerk part. It has to be juts the right amount and if it is this much there has to be a commpuance. There is none as far as I can tell because god is a spiteful two faced prick. 

So naturally Sam forces the two parties together, and orders green eggs and ham for everyone, except guy who refuses. We do get a really great bit though as EB turns down the idea and we get a tremendous rant from Micheal Douglas as he talks about how a girl in his clash, veyr likely just him, got a rash from tring new things and you shouldn’t and to watch out for the scarlet beetle he’ll steel your ants and try to conquer your planet and is not a guy in a costume but in fact an actual beetle. EB naturally tries it. 

We get a brief interlude with Snerz that’s funny enough: he outright calls his visotrs flunkies, they enter to the song money, and his minon throws dollar bills at their feet. I imagine this is what visitng Mar a Largo is like. They turn up his noses until he mentions getting a chickarffe for his animal crutelty wall. And i’m torn about Snerz. On one hand he can be generally entertaining in his dickery.. but ont he other I do question why he’s in EVERY episode. We don’t NEED him in eveyr one and I feel he’s only in them because Eddie Izzard was expensive so they had to get him as a regular to justify the cost. We really DONT’ need this scene funny as it is and it adds nothing so far. Maybe i’m wrong and these guys end up being important. I don’t know. 

So yeah so far this episode was miserable getting through and I expected it to be another long sit... I was wrong. The second half.. is really damn good and reminded me why I liked this series so much. No really. We get two stories,both really good following one half of each pair teaming up. As for why their split Guy is annoyed with Sam, as well as dosen’t want him letting the chickaraffe out because you know lots of people dosen’t want ot go to jail and leaves to find a quiet place to work on watching paint dry while Michelle tucks a sleeping EB in, her first really truly humanizing moment, which should NOT have taken three episodes but hey, i’ll take it, and goes to find the same.

So starting with Sam and EB, naturally Sam takes all of a minute to let his buddy out and it gets loose on top of the train. EB hears the familiar sound and gives chase and the two meet properly. After Sam covers for his buddy and realizes the creature is asleep in his car safe now, he properly talks to EB and we get a truly magical sequnece: The two talk with Sam whoelheartdly supporting her free spirit and finally giving the girl what she badly needed: someone who treated her not as something to be tied down but you know.. a child who just wants some expression and as she literally lets her hair down, It’s truly adorable and it just has a magical quanitity as they enjoy the beautiful view from the train top. 

Granted this takes at urn later when EB brings up her mom, and Sam.. supports her mom, pointing out she’s just looking out for her.. which she is but in a deeply unehalthy way and I don’t like the show just.. brushing over Michelle’s terrible actions because “she’s her mom”. But it’s also hard to tell if they are: Sam’s mom left him as we’ll find out, so he likely colors his memories of her rosey and simply envys EB still HAVING hers. It’s not BAD stuff but I don’t like a work saying “You should love your family just beacause your related”. Instead of because they lovea nd support you and if they dont’ love you or treat you remotely well or don’t give an ass about you fuck them. Thankfully I DO love my family and have no issues with them, my immediate family at least, but i’ve had friens with downright abusive or neglectful parents. It’s not that black and white. Ducktales also hammered in the family theme but was transparent in how it can me messy, harm each other and that it took true love and consideratoin for it to work at it’s core. 

It’s still not a terrible scene and what comes next is neat as earlier it was shown the train has loops, because Seussworld, and now that’s a problem because their on top of it. Michelle’s jail braclet thing ends up coming in handy the first loop, as while she can’t unstick it means she and sam can suririvie it. They do get it loose, turns out the password was indeed password, because of course, and they end up narrowly suriving a roller coaster bit of track, with the help of MR. Jenkins who I can finally name because EB names her in the next scene. Understanding her need for a pet, Sam deputizes her, and gets her back in bed in time for the next plot. 

Speaking of which winding back a bit as these two go back and forth, Guy goes through two rather hilarious cars: First a bath car that has a bubsby berkely style water number and then a model train car.. with the train on the track showing guy watching guy watchin gthe train etc. 

It’s great. Guy ends up finding the quiet car.. and Michelle. And in her first scene of acting like a human being and not if julie powers was a soccer mom, Michelle, while standosfish as usual, not only unites with guy to shush a loud guy in the car, but is genuinely apricative when Guy helps her get her place back, she was doing some literal bean counting. 

The two genuinely hit it off, first with some adorable silent bits and then by talking, with Michelle appreciating his now safer job and warming up to him. Keaton and Douglas have GENUINE chemestry and it annoys me itt took the series this long to use that instead of wasting Diane Keaton on being 

It’s really great stuff and i’m actually rooting for the two.. once she gets her shit together obviously. Guy does make the mistake of lying abotu knowing about the chikcaraffe.

This ends up being bad as he finds out EB knows the next day and after she leaves the car RIGHTFULLY tears the fuck into same for getting him accused of crime, stealing from him and now puttin ghim in a precarious situation. While Guy DID lie, he idd so well meaningly and trying to impress someone whose ineherntly judgmeental. Douglas also does REALY well in the scene, calling sam out but it dosen’t feel cruel.. it’s justified. While guy is miserable and does need to work on himself.. Sam also needs to work on himself and is putting guy in serious danger just by forcing him into his animal smuggling scheme. 

So Guy leaves.. and naturally given the unvierse hate shim runs into the BAD GUYZ, who aren’t much better. No really they refuse to belieive guy might be innocent, use excessive force on everyone. They have better GOALS than sam but I woudln’t really call them good people. Smash to black and we’re out. 

Final Thoughts:  This one was better. As I said the first half or rather third drags slightly but once we get to the two seperate plotlines it’s REALLY damn good stuff and reminded me what the series was capable of in character in creativity. Hopefully it keeps this up

Next Time on the Blog: We return to mewni for the penultimate chapter of season 3 as Moon and Eclipsa have some fundemtnal disgareemnts on how to handle Meteora that wind up costing both dearly. 

See you at the next rainbow

[windermeresimblr]

The Scotsman and the Mystery of El Bosque Del Fauno, Chapter Eight

The end (or is it?) of Alasdair’s Adventures behind the jump...

The world flickered back into view, and Alasdair found himself stripped bare and strapped to a table, unable to move. For a moment, he thought he was paralyzed, perhaps to witness his own dissection while still living, and despaired; soon, the medicine fog began to clear, and he realized he was simply bound too tightly to move more than his eyes and mouth. He was, unfortunately, still naked. 

“You’re finally awake,” said the Guardian, looming over him. “Good. I was worried XJ had gone overboard with the tranquilizers. We didn’t expect you to put up such a fight.”

“Not you again!” Alasdair grumbled. “If you mean to kill me, do it now. I’m not going back to that cell.”

“What a drama queen! I can’t just kill you, you know,” the Guardian said, looking annoyed. “You still have a role to play in the timestream. Well, multiple roles. Which is why you’re here, anyways.”

The Guardian gestured, and a globe emerged. “You’ve seen a globe before, right?”

“I’m not so unlearned I think the world is flat. I’ve sailed--”

“Sure you have! Anyways.” A few more flicks of the being’s hands, and Alasdair eventually realized what he was looking at.

“Holland? Why are you showing me Holland?”

“That’s where our next bubble is headed. So, the Dutch Republic, circa 1608, give or take a few weeks and the change from Gregorian to Julian and maybe a couple of hundred miles in any direction, up, down, or sideways. Do you know anything about that time?”

Alasdair wondered, not for the last time, if he really had died and gone to hell. “War with England, sometimes. War with Spain, more frequently. Pirates in the North Sea. There was some business with tulips and buying on credit. Lots of people roaming about with neckerchiefs starched out like millstones. Rembrandt, of course, and Vermeer. There were some English garrison towns...”

“Groundbreaking. What did you do, read Lonely Planet the night before the test? Well, there goes Bee getting any help with that term paper.” The being gestured again, frowning, and now three portraits hovered between them. They were all of himself, although the dour faces and severe mustaches--now he knew he’d look right awful with a mustache--made him wonder if the Guardian hadn’t gone digging in the McCarric vault.

“You have to choose a new life. So, you’re either of these three pillars of society.”

“Do I have to have a mustache?” Alasdair asked.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” the Guardian said. “Yes, you can stay clean-shaven if you’re so horrified by growing a mustache.”

“Do I get to know anything about what I’m getting into?” Alasdair snapped. “I’m not just choosing a new life based on how least poorly-groomed my face would be, am I?”

“I have to explain everything for you, ugh!” The being said. “Next time, I’m picking for you.” 

“Next time?!” Alasdair cried. “Oh, ye gods and little fishes, preserve me from ever seeing you again!”

“Ń̶͓̟̤̞̉̽̔ę̵̡̼̮̣̯̜͆̒̇̒̀̒͒͜v̵̭̮̳̝̗̩͐̋̍͆̊̑̔͗͗͝ͅe̷̢̢̝͖̞̟͐̌̑͊͋͛̆̀͝r̸̘̗̭̲̃͊̂̽̀̐͘̚͘͝ ̵̧̮̫̯̙͖̂͋̓̊̾̚m̵̡̬͈͎̀͛̈́͝͝i̶̧̳̮̦̩̹̘̼͊́̽̎͠͝ͅṅ̴̰̪̘͚̩̬̝̮̋̀͌̃͌̓̅̽͘ḏ̷̡̲̟̳̜̙͛̌̂̕͠ ̴̢̩̗̻͎͈̥̆̓̋̌̓͋́͐͘͘ͅţ̴̜̓̒̏͊͌ḧ̴̨̗̻͍̭̔̌̇́͘͜͠à̷̹̼̞͍̪̻̞͖̣͗́t̴͇̳̞͈̭͇̙̀̑̃̎̿͠!̴̢̲̹͍̫̘̎̓̐̀̉̊̈́” A pointer, as if the Guardian were a schoolteacher explaining a lesson, also materialized from nowhere. 

“This is William Beaton,” the being said, pointing to the man on the left with a black feathered hat. “He’s an apothecary in Flushing. Unmarried, no children--yet--” 

“I can’t be an apothecary,” Alasdair pointed out. “I don’t know anything about medicine. And I don’t speak Dutch! I’m not about to send myself hurtling into the past to poison someone and be burnt at the stake!”

“We’ll teach you everything you need to know.” Somehow, Alasdair was not convinced.

“I don’t think I want to be an apothecary. Who are the other two?”

“This is Red Finbarr of Barra, a privateer--”

“Absolutely not! I’m not ending up in a gibbet!”

“Why are you so picky? Do you know how excited some people would be to become a pirate?”

“Also, my uncle--my father’s family has relatives in the Caribbean,” Alasdair said. “Surely someone as knowledgeable as you--”

“You’re not even biologically related to most of them! And Finbarr was never known to go deeper into the Atlantic than the Faroes--”

“What’s all this past tense and ‘he was known to’? Are these real people I’m replacing?”

“Not really? I mean, they’re more...aggregates. It’s not really identity theft, or anything.”

Alasdair had a horrifying image of someone stealing his life, some hapless outsider (the bewildered apothecary, or worse, a corsair--heaven only knew what the third person would be)  beguiled by the Guardian into living out the rest of his days. A surge of anger flashed through him--that was his family, however distant, his commission, his friends, his horse, his books--at least he didn’t have a wife or a sweetheart, to also yield to this imagined impostor. (And, of course, he wasn’t really the type to give someone horns, even in the hypothetical; the thought of some burgher’s wife thinking he really was her Jan or Pieter, dandling someone else’s children on his knee while they had no idea who he really was, made him faintly nauseous.) “I’m not stealing someone’s life! That’s horrid!” 

“Fine, Mr. Picky. You don’t want to stay in the Nexus, and then it’s too immoral to go back into reality... Here’s door number three--if you don’t choose one of these, I’m turning you into a goat. A sentient goat.”

“Or you could just kill me. I think it’d be easier,” Alasdair said. 

“No. Killing’s too good for you.” The being stabbed the pointer rather viciously this time. “Alexander Cummings, a saffron merchant living in Campvere.”

“That’s a tulip he’s holding, not a saffron.” Alasdair thought for a moment. “Why are you so insistent on these three...guises? Are they going to replace me?”

“No, they all turned up their noses at your life, too,” the Guardian said, rather nastily. “Every person has their own...significance in the time stream.”

“So you want me to muck things up even further, then.”

“I have a few people in the region who also went through the Nexus. I want you to keep an eye on them.”

Alasdair had a mental image of some of the nastier members of his father’s crew...and his mother’s less scrupulous protectors. He did not much care for the idea of being an enforcer for the Guardian’s schemes. (Perhaps, though, a saffron merchant would have less chances for skulduggery than a corsair or an apothecary? Surely this Alexander Cummings wasn’t the type who personally went to the Ottomans to find his goods, or squabbled with Venetians in squalid back rooms!) “And what’s in it for me, if I’m your enforcer?”

“You’re not sent back to the Stone Age or turned into a goat? Isn’t that enough of a benefit for you?”

“I suppose. But I still don’t speak Dutch, and my hair’s awful short compared to his.”

“We have some time until the rift opens.” The Guardian snapped their fingers, and another group of mechanicals emerged. One had a tailor’s ham in its hands and pins in its mouth; another had a precarious tower of books; a third had a pair of scissors and a curious-looking bottle.

“Meanwhile, you’re going to be getting a bit more...hah...out of date.”

Alasdair was soon dragged off into a room with an array of strange devices throughout. He was pushed onto a platform, and then the harrying began. “Arm out, please,” said one mechanical, who then began measuring him for a new suit of clothes.

“The muttonchops have to go,” said the other, tilting his face its way, and Alasdair flinched at the advancing scissors.

“But they make me look dashing!” he protested, to no avail.

“Compiling trade route statistics,” said the third, its jointed fingers and stalk-like eye breezing through the stack of books with a dizzying speed Alasdair envied. “...Bingely-bing! Personality programming complete.”

“Personality what? I’m fine the way I am, thank you!”

“The hair needs to grow at least five inches at the sides...and he needs a goatee...”

“Och, no.”

“Green wool doublet and cannions, perhaps a nice mulberry sleeve in velvet…”

“No! No velvet! It’s too hot for velvet--”

“Enabling time dilation…”

His hair and facial hair grew at an alarming rate; the mechanical with the tailor’s ham whizzed about him, poking and prodding, until suddenly he was encased in a costume that itched and made him long for a good pair of trousers and a shirt. His hair and beard, even his eyebrows and nails, were trimmed as if he were a topiary in a garden. His mind was overwhelmed by new knowledge, facts and grammatical clauses and memories that he knew weren’t his and had never happened to him crammed into his skull until he felt he was going insane. Perhaps he had.

“Time dilation complete.”

Blinking, he looked at the mechanicals surrounding him, his reflection in the glass. That was, indeed, his reflection, he realized with mounting horror. 

“What have ye done to me?” he cried, looking at himself. His hair was slicked back and curled under at the ends, grazing the starched millstone ruff he was wearing; he had a mustache and goatee that made him look a pompous fool; he was, indeed, clad in green wool and mulberry velvet. “I look awful!” (Well, his calves looked excellent, but calves did not a man’s appearance make.)

“Stop whining!” said the Guardian, who had come into the room when he was unaware, or perhaps while he was contemplating the disastrous...thing on his upper lip. While some of his men had grown them, falling into the French idea that it was dashing and that their waxed mustaches were simply teeming with masculine derring-do, he had always thought they looked rather foolish. “You look nice in green, at least.”

“But I--”

“It’s time to go, you wouldn’t want to be late to your future, now would you?” The Guardian seized hold of him by the shoulders, clawed hands gripping his thrice-damned velvet sleeves so tightly he thought he might actually be mauled.

With that, he was once more shoved through a dizzying array of corridors until he was brought into a room that resembled something like a canal lock, only there was no water. “Suppose this is a canal lock, and not just another strange little room. Suppose they unleash the canal the instant I let my guard drop. I’d be drowned like a rat,” he thought to himself. “I suppose drowning is better than whatever was meant to happen to me in the woods, but what a choice.”

“Must you be so melodramatic?” The Guardian said, stepping behind a partition. “All this frowning and sighing and raising your voice. I can’t wait until you’re inflicting this Lord Byron nonsense on someone else.”

“Wh--how dare you, sir!” Alasdair spluttered. “I’ll have you know--”

Before he could make his reply--certain to have more than a few oaths and imprecations--a bright light flashed; he felt himself pulled once more by an unseen force, forward and back and side to side... 

Credits

Now and forever, thanks to all of you who read this and left such nice comments! 

Of course, my eternal thanks and gratitude to @danjaley, who was so gracious as to allow Alasdair and Daniel into the McCarric(k) clan, and for creating an excellent stable of poses; @moocha-muses, for letting me borrow Dan O’Doyle; @rennylurant​ for costuming advice and squealing over renaissance fashions/advice; @studiok2sims, for even more excellent poses and advice; @tolkiensimmer​ for advice on lighting and costuming; and @treason-and-plot for helping me get “unstuck” on several occasions and finding certain things I needed for the sequel. Why yes, Virginia, there is a sequel. It’s my NANOWRIMO PROJECT. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

Happy Halloween!!!!!

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 32 Review: Sea Fever

{ Not available on YouTube }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

I apologize for the delay in posting this review. Once again, I’ve been busy in real life and didn’t have enough time to work on it last week. (And so soon after starting my Shadow Over Seventh Heaven review series!) But now I’m back and I have enough time to write about my favorite show again--and, in a week or so, hopefully enough to continue my other review series as well.

This is the first episode to differ completely from the Lost Episode summaries published in various U.S. and Canadian newspapers--and therefore probably the point at which the original outline and the final one began to diverge. Episode 30′s summary described an event that happened in the episode, but whose cause appears to have been changed during forced rewrites; last episode’s was still accurate after revisions; but this one’s summary is the first to describe a scene absent from the final, aired episode. (More on that later.)

Shall we begin this review? This episode features some of the darkest Jean Paul (yes, Jean Paul!) dialogue thus far, along with many entertaining facial expressions as multiple characters feast on the scenery. It’s a wild ride with a genuinely scary scene, and, if you like those things, I think you’ll enjoy it.

We open right where last episode left off, with Elizabeth reacting to Jacques’ little comment about Holly and how he would stake her life in a bet that Vangie couldn’t contact Erica in the planned séance. ”Jean Paul,” she shouts, “your inference that I would harm my daughter to take her fortune for my own is insulting and in bad taste: something I’d never expect of you!”

The handsome devil replies, “Your strong defense against a simple query lends credence to a simple supposition”--which is just a fancier, less archaic way of saying “the lady doth protest too much.”

She flounces and runs into Vangie at the door--figuratively, not literally, although that would be amusing. “You interrupted Mrs. Marshall’s romantic exit from which there might be no return,” Jacques comments, which sounds suspiciously like foreshadowing.

The conversation drifts to the séance and how Jacques is most definitely not going to back down because he’s not a coward, and then, suddenly,

Vangie SCREAMS!

Apparently, every time a female character other than Raxl screams, she has to try eating her hand immediately afterwards.

She’s screaming because she can sense that someone is tampering with the cryonics capsule. And, at the same time that this happens, Jacques also de-possesses Jean Paul:

I’ll let these headache faces speak for themselves.

Jean Paul who threatens to kill anyone who tampers with the capsule. Very nice (not)! Normally, I find his concern for Erica romantic, but this is going too far. He reminds me of the captain in the CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode "Sea Fever" (also by Ian Martin) who…well, I don't want to spoil the ending, but let's just say that he is even crazier in love than Jean Paul. It isn’t one of the best CBSRMT dramas, but it will likely chill your bones. It certainly chilled mine.

Love this shot of Colin Fox backacting while Paisley Maxwell and Angela Roland stare at him with wide-open eyes. This episode is full of unintentionally funny facial expressions.

Jean Paul hurries back to Maljardin with Elizabeth and Vangie, and heads to the crypt immediately to see Raxl about the capsule. She recaps to him about the capsule tank’s malfunctioning in the previous episode. He asks who discovered it; she tells him Dan, which only makes him more suspicious of him. SHe also recaps to him about how Alison and Dan are searching for the cyanide that he stole from the lab. “Everyone questions my changes of mood,” he shouts. “Now I must question changes in others!...There is danger hiding everywhere on Maljardin. It has a history that has plagued the family, that will plague all who pry into my affairs!"

While Vangie questions the sincerity of Elizabeth’s devotion to Jean Paul above, Jean Paul leaves red flowers on the cryocapsule and announces his planned next moves to his love: “Erica, my dove, now [there] are some people here on our island who would destroy the process by which you will be returned to me and fill my arms again, but I promise you, no one, no one under any consequences [line flub], will live again if he or she causes you to remain forever dead!"

A beautiful shot of Jean Paul with flowers for Erica.

When Raxl next joins Jean Paul in the crypt, she tells him that “only the priestess of the Serpent knows what is really on their minds.” Jean Paul mentions that she has told him before about the human sacrifices that the priestesses used to perform on the island--which is not recap (as we have only heard her tell Matt about them so far), so she must have told him sometime before Erica’s death. She insists that, although that was true long ago, their altar has not been used for them since Jacques's time.

“But, if his evil can rise again, as you fear,” he begins, implying that he wants to start making blood sacrifices.

“No! Please, M’sieu, no!” Raxl interrupts.

“I will do what has to be done, Raxl. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Raxl draws the Sign of the Great Serpent in the air and the same Great Serpent symbol that's in the Temple appears on screen. It’s a cool effect and not something that’s ever seen in any other episode.

She leaves the crypt, looking back at Jean Paul a few times, probably in complete disbelief that he wants her, daughter of the unseen Priestess of the Serpent, to sacrifice Dan and any other troublesome guests to protect against THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES. This is a shocking new low for Jean Paul Desmond, and shows the darker side of his character. This is a man who, even without a curse and even when he is not possessed, is capable of murder because of his obsession with his love interest. This is a male yandere.

She sees Matt in the Great Hall, who tells her that he’s searched all over Maljardin and that there must be many hidden rooms there. It turns out they have both searched in every room they know about and still have found neither the missing cyanide nor the conjure doll and silver pin. He demands that she tell him the legend of Maljardin and that old black magic. And so we learn from her some very important background information, some of which is never brought up again:

Where there is evil, there is magic. Where there is magic, strange things happen, but first there must be evil, and there is!...Before the time of Jacques Eloi des Mondes, when this house first stood, it was a palace of kings and there were many people here until this island became his!…Only the greedy and foolish [natives] remained, and none who left ever returned.

There is a curse here, Reverend: him, that devil!

The implication is that Jacques did not build the château, but took it from someone else, which connects to his revelation about a month earlier that he was a “free looter”--or, in other words, a pirate. Matt argues that Jacques cannot still hold control over Maljardin because he died three hundred years ago, but Raxl says that “for some of us, three hundred years is but the span of a single lifetime,” indirectly revealing her true age to him.

She smiles at him right after she reveals to him that she’s centuries old. I think this is the first time Raxl smiles on the show, and the only time in the entire Maljardin arc.

Matt asks about the natives who stayed on the island, and Raxl says of them, “They died very soon. It was the curse on Maljardin. Have you ever seen a man who has lost his soul, Reverend? Their eyes down, the fishermen no longer fish, the children cease to play. They do no more than sit and wait [for death]...Since then, no native has ever tried to settle on Maljardin.” Only Vangie, the Conjure Woman, can go back and forth to and from the island “on the wings of the Great Serpent,” but she, too, is destined to die someday on Maljardin.

At the end of this scene, Vangie enters and adds that she doesn’t know when she’ll die, because the tarot cards did not (and cannot?) give her an exact date. This would seem to make her death on the show a foregone conclusion, but that may or may not be the case. (I say that not only to avoid spoilers, but also because the show and the original scripts give the Conjure Woman radically different fates, as we shall explore in future reviews.)

Meanwhile, down in the crypt, Jean Paul is still talking to Erica about how he is determined to kill anyone who interferes with the cryonics process when Jacques starts intruding on his mind. Like in Episode 27, the special effects team illustrates this by superimposing Jacques’ face from the portrait over that of Jean Paul when he is talking to him:

The best example from this episode.

None of Jacques’ lines in this scene are as funny as those of the old, pre-Lost Episode era Jacques, even if Fox-C still delivers the devil’s lines with the same amount of sarcasm and relish as before. His best line this time around is, in my not-so-humble opinion, “Suppose we just whisper so dear Erica may sleep.” I miss early Jacques’ jokes already--yes, even the ham-handed, cornball puns--and it hasn’t even been a week’s worth of episodes since the last.

We cut to Raxl and Vangie in the Great Hall, discussing the upcoming séance. Vangie says that she wants to find out if Erica’s spirit genuinely wants Jean Paul to continue mourning her and keeping her frozen. She insists that Raxl let her touch the cryocapsule before the séance, most likely to get a sense of Erica’s energy before they perform the ceremony.

Jean Paul: “What are you doing!”

Raxl: “Please, M’sieu. The Conjure Woman is trying to help.”

Jean Paul: “Only for a séance, Vangie. Erica must remain undisturbed.” Vangie: “And if you don’t like what you learn?” Jean Paul: “I’ll face that--when the time comes!”

The Lost Episode summary indicates that, at some point in the original draft, Raxl and Vangie had a conversation about Jacques, and Raxl would have told her how she can tell him and Jean Paul apart. As I’m sure many of you have realized, Raxl and Vangie oscillate between knowing that Jean Paul is being possessed and merely suspecting, depending on the episode. In the original Episode 32, Raxl would have known when Jacques is controlling Jean Paul’s body and Vangie would have only suspected until after Raxl explained. Ruling out all obvious non-diegetic clues such as the vanishing portrait shots and Jacques’ theme music, she could have said any number of things, including:

His energy/aura changes (although, logically, Vangie would notice that, too).

He wears the ring from the portrait (which we know is diegetic, because Elizabeth commented on it in Episode 13).

He opens his eyes really wide and makes silly faces.

He makes corny puns Never mind, we’re not doing that anymore.

He acts far too cheerful for a man who is supposedly mourning his dead wife.

He talks about kippers.

Etc.

I suppose we’ll never know which one(s) she mentioned, but I suspect #1, #2, and/or #5. Anyway, Jean Paul leaves to return upstairs and Vangie continues whatever she started doing with the capsule. He orders Jacques to “stop turning people against [him],” which he refuses to do, threatening to keep Erica dead if he doesn’t shut up about it.

“When we really get into the battle, someone has to die,” quips Jacques.

“Perhaps it will be you!” shouts Jean Paul in response.

“Or you, Jean Paul Desmond,” the handsome devil replies. “Or will you be preceded by one of our guests? Now let me see. A likely candidate could be...”

Jean Paul turns away from the roars of laughter, and the episode ends before Jacques can name the guest(s) he plans to murder.

Could it be Vangie? Or Holly? Dan? Alison? Even Elizabeth?

This episode was a fun one to watch, and probably the first review I’ve completed in only one day since sometime last winter. Jean Paul’s willingness to put everyone’s life on the proverbial line to save Erica shows a dark side to his nature that mostly vanishes at the end of this story arc--which is a shame, because I find morally ambiguous antihero Jean Paul the most interesting version of his character. I recommend this one, if you have access to it.

Coming up next: A Quito-centric episode where the detained guests learn shocking truths about Jean Paul’s manservant.

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