There was so much possibility here! The look is opulent, the relationships thick with possibility, the characters hinting at depths beyond role playing, and then...nothing. So many tantalizing snippets of so much more - her scars, Luke's goals, Martha's past and future, even Frankie's depths - and we are never invited to explore any of it. I kept asking myself what this was about, in the end, and there's simply not much to say. Watch to wrap yourself in high brown Victorian dysfunction that never quite gives you the meat of the dysfunction.
Being truly Victorian means never more than hinting at the fullness of any situation, any emotion, and that's all we get...but the emotions are still there, and that's what we want and deserve. The tiny hope of something supernatural is offered, then snatched back. The mysteries posited but never addressed again (how did a man who died peacefully end up in the middle of the march with his neck ostensibly snapped? What exactly happened to Naomi's sister? What was Naomi doing the last three episodes...and why?) are even more frustrating than the low-pressure drip of plot development.
Overall, a disappointment. So much more was right there for the taking, and its bounty sits and rots, like the stranded body of "the serpent."
Being truly Victorian means never more than hinting at the fullness of any situation, any emotion, and that's all we get...but the emotions are still there, and that's what we want and deserve. The tiny hope of something supernatural is offered, then snatched back. The mysteries posited but never addressed again (how did a man who died peacefully end up in the middle of the march with his neck ostensibly snapped? What exactly happened to Naomi's sister? What was Naomi doing the last three episodes...and why?) are even more frustrating than the low-pressure drip of plot development.
Overall, a disappointment. So much more was right there for the taking, and its bounty sits and rots, like the stranded body of "the serpent."