I liked the second episode better than the first one, especially with the bad guy turning out to be less of a bad guy. I could do without brothel subplot though.
Yes, exactly my thoughts. If by bad guy you mean Detective Mundi.
I am not a fan of Joss Whedon normally, and I am especially happy to not be a fan now we know more about him, so I’m a bit annoyed that I like this show so much.
Yes, that’s indeed what I meant.
I have the same feelings about Whedon, but I do know he left the show at some point and it was taken over by someone else. What that means for the show itself I don’t know, but I’m at least willing to go along with it for a while.
I’m not going to get into the Whedon stuff.
Like most of you I’m waffling on the show after 2 episodes. I dig the look and feel of the show and there seems to be a few potentially great nuggets here. However I am finding that the “style” that’s globbed on top of every inch of this show seems to be detracting from the overall story. The most glaring problem for me is the heavy, heavy use of accents. The show has lots of quippy dialogue and because there’s a bunch of politics and a mystery buried here, understanding what the characters are saying would help a lot. I can barely parse 25% of what Maladie is saying and in the second episode I was hopelessly lost for the entire second half.
I too am starting to get burned out on shows with ass-kicking women fighting way above their weight. It can be fun and I’m all for representation, but this show feels a lot like the female empowerment program has completely trampled the goal of telling a interesting story. I’ll probably stick with it for a little while longer since I enjoy having shows to watch on Sunday nights and I really dug the first episode of Mare of Easttown. Hopefully it gets better.
Okay, after episode three I think my name for the series is The Nipples.
The water fight scene was pretty cool, though. (Except for the fact that she would have no leverage to be pulling at his neck without pulling herself to the surface at the same time. Unless she had her feet on his back. Did she have her feet on his back?)
Yes. It least it looked that way to me - she clearly had her feet braced against his back while she was pulling on the chain around his neck. I’m just not sure how she was able to hold her breath that long. I suppose at that point it was a contest of who could hold out the longest, and she just happened to win.
Also, I agree that was a cool scene - I think the most imaginative action scene so far.
Yeah, I was getting kinda bored with the turns until I saw that guy walk on water. For like the oldest superpower in literature, that was pretty cool. Even after he died, he didn’t sink.
I don’t think he was supposed to be dead, just unconscious.
That fight scene was great, and it was a good episode overall. I mostly am enjoying the series, but the brothel plotline is starting to bore me…is that going somewhere?
Nudey bits in a TV series always feels a bit juvenile to me. Those scenes are getting quite boring. I assume they will have more of a point soon enough, but they’re not grabbing me yet.
A weird Alien ship or meteorite hits London, creating The Touched women (and a few men) with each one unusual ability. And “The Nevers” is a bad title, “The Touched” would have been better.
The two main protagonists are- Amalia True who can see in the future a bit, although that does not explain her ‘waif-fu’ fighting abilities (but see above for “Joss Whedon”, which explains it).
And Penance Adair who designs all sort of weird steampunk devices, due to her ability see see electric fields.
Ms. True also seems to fall out of her dresses a lot.
It is fun, it is fantasy. It could be better.
Also, Johnny Tremain should have been called Johnny Deformed.
I dont get it.
I mean it is an HBO series. A lot of them just have nipples for random reasons (Game of Thrones, Sopranos, etc) just because they can. There is a running joke that there is an HBO CEO of Tits.
I have a feeling the brothel is there to show some of the hypocrisy of the upper classes - more than willing to take away rights from the Touched, but want to have freaky sex with them. And I think there is going to be some sort of payoff when rich benefactor’s mother finds out he’s the owner of a Touched brothel.
I’m having trouble keeping my bad guys straight. The Big Chain Walks on Water guy works for the Beggar King, who is on Amalia True’s retainer. Essentially, she’s paying this freak to try to drown her. It’s a cool visual, but the connections between the characters could be clearer.
The Beggar King did find out that True was present at the Bonfire Annie attack on his opium. He might have changed his stance on her. Or maybe WaterWalkingDude was freelancing.
Amalia True & Co. have a tentative and uneasy alliance with the Beggar King. They pay him under the table in return for some considerations. He definitely does not think of himself as on their retainer - if anything, he thinks of them as paying tribute to him. He was already pissed off at them and directly threatened them when they tried to semi-publicly leverage their relationship to force him to provide them with assistance on one of their missions.
Then he finds out that Amalia and Penance Adair were involved in destroying his heroin shipment, and were consorting with Bonfire Annie, who had pretty much openly declared war on him. At that point, it’s clear to him that they’re either secretly his enemies and only pretending to be allies, or at best they’re not actually allies and they’ll casually ignore his interests and collaborate with his enemies, and thereby undermine him and his authority (which is exactly what they’re doing).
He really doesn’t have a choice - he has to retaliate. Even if he didn’t personally feel betrayed and want to take them on, his gang now knows they’re cooperating with Bonfire Annie and were present during the attack on the heroin shipment. If he doesn’t retaliate, he’ll lose control of his gang, which almost certainly means he’ll be killed.
It’s also bizarrely short-sighted (pun intended) of Amalia not to realize all of that, and to continue treating him as some sort of lackey, who’s pride and interests they can just keep trampling on with no consequences.
Has anyone else noticed the intimations about Amalia True’s background? I think she might be an alien, or at least a member of the crew of the spaceship / airship that “touched” all the people in London. Anyone else get the same impression? Do you remember the lines that made you think that?
J.
So what war is Britain fighting in the show’s 1899? Is it just the Boer War, or are we really in an alternate timeline?
No, she’s a time traveler - something I suspected since the previous episode and which was confirmed in this one, when she said the phrase “When I came from…” in her talk with Penance about funerals.
The way the aristos talk, Britain is pretty much the only empire in this timeline. I get the vibe the wars are to expand and maintain that empire rather than compete with peer powers like France or Germany.