Finally got to watching Sunday’s episode (been a busy week!) and I like that the battle lines have been drawn as opposed to drawing it out. I also thought it was interesting that Mary’s song talked about coming below and finding me - I wonder if that blue sphere we saw a few episodes ago is channeling the Touched somehow.
That’s pretty clearly what was speaking to Amalia through Mary. It also seems pretty clear that Amalia isn’t Amalia, at least not entirely.
I’m pretty sure at this point the “attempted” suicide we saw in the pilot was actually successful, and “Amalia’s” body is now inhabited by the…soul? life force? consciousness? spore? something? of someone/thing that was in the ship. The other Touched got abilities, but none of them seem to have the knowledge Amalia has. Maybe because the host body was dying when it was Touched, she got the full consciousness of X, whatever or whoever X is. Which explains parts of her personality and abilities - she’s a cinematically skilled fighter because she’s not a random woman from Victorian London, she’s a soldier from…the future? Another timeline? An alien race? A parallel universe? Faerie? Somewhen else, anyway.
That could explain the “waif-fu”.
We just watched, another really good episode. I like all the speculation in this thread…I agree that Amalia ain’t Amalia, & she felt alone & abandoned by the aliens until she learned that some other part of her universe is in London and calling to her, and it made her all teary. [agree it’s the blue sphere]
And no brothel this episode! #winning
It really seems like there’s an episode or two missing. There’s a Mutant Registration Act now? Did I miss that being discussed? And the “Galanthe” is a thing? That everyone at the Orphanage knows about? But we in the audience don’t? Did I miss that being discussed?
“She wants to kill everyone who watched the hanging!” So Maladie sets up a plan that…kills a dozen or so people. And not even any of the toffs in the metal balcony. Maybe she was counting on a bigger, more tightly packed crowd, and the electrocutions triggering a deadlier stampede, and Mundi accidentally pre-foiled her plot by capping the crowd at 400? That whole sequence didn’t make much sense to me.
Maladie not being Maladie seemed pretty obvious - Mundi took her down without much of a fight - it seemed like she wanted to be captured. But, I’ll admit, I thought the unidentified victim being the reporter whose identity Maladie stole was fairly clever. Except…did no one at her paper realize she wasn’t the same person? It’s not like she could have filed her stories remotely in 1899. And what did the missing toes have to do with it?
I sort of get what they’re trying to do, with having the characters know more than the audience does, and we the viewing audience having to put together the pieces, but…the whole series at this point just seems more disjointed to me than intriguing.
The missing toes were showing it was the non-touched groupie from when the singing lady was captured. She mentioned that she’s making sacrifices to prove she’s worthy.
And I think the intention was that it would be packed tightly and everyone would burn, so yeah, I think Mundi saved a ton of people with his sense of decency.
As for Malady’s disguise, I assume she watched the reporter for a bit and given that nobody took the reporter overly seriously, was able to pass.
Unless Maladie has the power to shapeshift other people, I think the groupie must have been Touched - her Turn was apparently shapeshifting into people she kisses. Now that you mention it, though, I do remember that bit with the “making sacrifices.” But why were the missing toes significant to Mundi? How did he know Maladie didn’t have missing toes? The camera focused on the toes, and then the flashback to the superintendent’s office…which seemed to focus on Maladie’s booted foot. It seemed like there was supposed to be something significant there, but…I still don’t understand what.
I totally buy her passing with the cops, who as far as we know didn’t know her previously. But how did Maladie pass as the reporter at the reporter’s own paper? When she’s important enough to be writing front page stories with a byline and a picture?
I think–no to both?
Especially considering her established rather striking dental situation.
It was not in last epi, but mentioned about 20 times in this one. weird.
And the whole meme of never ever being able to kill the bad guy is dumb. Not to mention the plan to free her. Why would you free the woman who is making the Touched look like a danger?
I get it, sort of. Maladie may be evil, but she’s one of them - like it or not, she’s a member of the same minority group, and marginalized people look after each other. Besides, by having the execution public the authorities were making it clear that it was an attack on all of the Touched, and that was something they could not allow.
Maladie may have been A bad guy, but she isn’t THE bad guy. THE bad guy is Lord Fuckface, and any thing done to spite him was a good thing.
So, thinking about this some more:
There were a couple of off-hand lines that seemed to indicate that this episode takes place a month or more after the last episode. In that time:
Nimble Jack has left the Beggar King and joined the Orphanage because…reasons.
The Mutant Registration Act has been passed, the Touched are required to be tested, cataloged, and wear a ribbon in public, and discarding the Touched Ribbon at the door of the Orphanage has become a symbol of defiance.
Maladie has been tried for various crimes. And the authorities found out she gains strength from pain…somehow. No one seemed to know that a couple of episodes ago. And since they have Fake Maladie in custody, they couldn’t have figured that out through experience. Unless her Turn also allows her to imitate other Turns along with appearance? Or Amalia warned Mundi about it?
Amalia has told the Orphanage about the “Galanthe”. At least something about them. And maybe more about herself?
Maladie replaced “Effie”. This part actually makes a bit more sense with a month or more between episodes, but only a bit. I think the woman she murdered and replaced was a random secretary, and Maladie stole her identity because that somehow helped her infiltrate the newspaper and work her way up to front page reporter and columnist. Because Maladie, out of nowhere, is somehow actually a very talented journalist. Or something. And she somehow fools everyone that actually knew Effie. Or somehow avoids them. Or something.
Well, that part the show actually deals with. As she’s shedding her Effie disguise, she pulls an appliance out of her mouth. Along with the appliance on her nose and the wig. Maybe an as-yet unseen member of her gang has a Turn that makes them an anachronistically advanced make-up artist?
Look at what happened to the cops who tried to pulls the folks away from the railing, they got zapped as well. If the area was fully packed, the electricity would have passed through a lot of people (likely even getting to the rich folk in the metal balcony) and then the chaos would have likely led to a lot more trampling.
And yes, the Galanthie seems totally out of no where… unless that’s True’s name for the blue globe thing that she’s acknowledging to everyone that she knows exists and where it may be around.
Also a few more lines that True may be a time traveler early in the episode.
Glad me and my wife aren’t the only ones with a general sense of WTF about this show. I sort of enjoy it, and I’m consistently heartened when there are boobs, so more of that please. But the plot is either a complete mess or else the show runner is doing an awful job of balancing the mystery elements with the actual storytelling. In general it’s helpful to give your characters motivations that are clear and sensical, or at least not random, even if there’s an underlying conspiracy/invisible hand at play. So far this show fails badly at that.
I agree that True is more than what she appears. I like the theory that she’s basically a possessed zombie fueled by the power and knowledge of the blue goop. It explains the fighting ability, which until now stretched credibility, and maybe explains her zest for drinking and fucking. It’s doesn’t really explain why Lavinia is supporting her or why Mundi and the rest of the elites seem to give her so much latitude and deference.
Lavinia’s motives are more than a little cryptic across the board and we don’t really have any idea what the mad scientist’s intentions or reasons are…unless he’s just a stereotypical mad scientist doing it for the jollies.
Lord Massen and Lord Littlefinger, erm Swann, have an understanding of some kind. But we still don’t have a clue what the big con that Swann is actually working on is. It certainly seems to be about a lot more than just blackmail. Yet…we know nothing besides the fact that he seems to b setting up Augie as a patsy.
Pretty much everyone on the show is double dealing in one way or another. Swann-Augie, Swann-Mundi, Swann-Massen, Massen-True, Massen-Beggar King, Beggar King-True, Lavinia-True, Lavinia-Mad Scientist and so on…
Perhaps the weirdest bit of information that they seem to be holding onto is Maladie’s everything. She’s set up as the big bad of sorts and yet we don’t really understand her turn, we have no idea why she’s out to wreak havoc, we don’t know if there’s a greater plan happening, we don’t know how she turned into Moriarty all of a sudden, why her followers seem so devoted, where she gets any of her resources and we don’t know why she always looks like shit except that it makes her seem nuttier. This might be the biggest failing of the show. We seem to have True and the orphans as the good guys and Maladie and her nutters as the bad guys…yet they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time conflicting with the other surrounding characters. The show lacks focus and clarity.
Anyways…we’ll stick with it since it’s something to watch on Sundays…but I hope it starts making more sense in a interesting way soon.
The feet were the wrong size? As in he had noticed that Maladie had tiny feet, and so to wear Maladie’s shoes the substitute had to cut off her toes? …but I don’t recall anything that showed him noticing or deciding that Maladie’s feet are some particular size.
Whatever it is, it’s sloppy.
Another sloppiness problem.
And another.
I always get annoyed by writing sloppiness in shows that plainly cost a lot of money (and this one does appear to be well-funded). I gather that next Sunday’s ‘part 1 finale’ marks the end of Wheden’s involvement; maybe the second set of episodes will be better.
I think that this is Joss Whedon experimenting with narrative and story. We’re getting bits and pieces of out of context information, and coming into the middle of conversations, and jumping past some points. As I stated above, I can kind of see what he’s trying to do, but for me it comes across as disjointed and somewhat incoherent, rather than intriguing.
I think he reflected back on the scene where she was choking the guy in his office. She had braced her foot against his back/shoulder with the toes of her boot. This would not have worked if she didn’t have toes.
We are not alone in our confusion-
Episode 5 features the first mention of the Galanthi, but it doesn’t explain what it is or how Amalia and Penance know about it. Apparently, they let Augustus Bidlow (Tom Riley) in on the plan to dig up the Galanthi, but that wasn’t a conversation viewers ever got to witness.
The episode also features missing pieces as to why Amalia and Penance are interested in the Galanthi. All together, it feels like major story points were skipped over, which made it feel quite disconnected.
## It left some fans of ‘The Nevers’ confused
With its missing story elements, the fifth episode of The Nevers left some viewers confused. And a lot of that confusion comes from the show’s abrupt introduction of the Galanthe.
“Disregard for a moment the poor writing/editing that led to everyone suddenly using “Galanthi” in their common vernacular,” one Reddit user wrote. “The question remains: what is The Galanthi?”
https://winteriscoming.net/2021/05/09/the-nevers-review-episode-5-hanged/amp/{{%20url/
I also raised an eyebrow at all the discussions about whether hanging Maladie was the right thing to do. I found it hard to believe that so many characters were sticking up for her after all she’d done
That I understood. As @Alessan pointed out, the public hanging of Maladie (which should have been forbidden by law) is intended to send a message to all Touched.
I’d read that Joss Whedon was out after the third ep., but he’s credited as director here. Is the shunning over with?