As always, there will be spoilers.
Second Line was a much easier watch after the emotional yank of the last scene of episode 2 where Deidre is killed.
I’m feeling fairly neutral about the flashbacks to Scotland and Suzanne. In the books Suzanne is portrayed as very childlike, someone who had a gift and enjoyed the attention it, and being pretty brought her. She’d often referred to as “simple” and even her daughter, Deborah, says she had no real comprehension of what she had done by summoning Lasher to self awareness.
Suzanne is not portrayed this way at all in the series. Instead she is a dirty, fearful, extremely serious young woman who is clearly being trained in folk medicinal arts.
Side Note: It’s pretty obvious Rice struggled with writing women/female points of view, and even in this, her most feminist series, much of the story is told from the point of view of males who are trying to save–or survive–these women. The changes made around Suzanne are some of the few I don’t like, because I was always amused that the whole family curse started because someone who didn’t know better messed around. And I always connected more with Deborah and Mary Beth and the others in the moments where the women in the story tried to take more control of the situations they were forced to handle. I consider these scenes to be the weakest points of the series so far.
Suzanne’s conversation with her mother about death was sort of interesting. There is a point to be made for sure. This connects strongly to the dayjob for me, and I’m totally with the idea that sometimes the best thing healers can do is giving people a good death. But I just don’t really like the flashback scenes to Suzanne and the whole thing felt like it took too long and was inelegant.
Carlotta almost immediately tries to get control of the situation and Rowan, and to seed the idea of the rest of the family being untrustworthy. But Rowan dismisses her and instead flees to Ciprien for respite from the trauma of watching her mother die in her arms. It’s at this point that I realized why the series writers merged Aaron Lightinger and Michael Curry.
First, and most simply, Michael was almost twice Rowan’s age. Rice had a very. very clear issue with healthy relationships as age gaps, incest, and rape were all really common in her stories.
Second, though, was the role of Aaron and the Talamasca itself. Upon my most recent rereading of The Witching Hour is bothered me how the Talamasca was blatantly stalkery. Even Aaron addresses it directly, and there is a scene where Rowan thanks Aaron for both compiling the history into a single document and for following her all her life, because this file allowed her to really know who she was an where she came from. As a teen, and younger adult, I resonated strongly with those feelings. It would be real nice to be handed a file of your family history and understand the people you may have known or not known so very better. Being handed answers like “Why are things this way” is almost always a huge experience. I still chase this in my personal life with a hobbyist obsession with historical documentaries.
But as an older adult it reads differently, particularly because it’s an important note that by the time Rowan is living her life the witches have all forgotten their past, and in many way have lost their power from that missing place.
Merging Aaron and Michael has managed to make the only 100% actual caring and supportive characters into a single person. Most importantly adding in that Ellie knew of and worked somewhat with the Talamasca suddenly make all the stalkery bits much more tolerable. Instead of archiving gossip and “digging in the trash” so to speak (Aaron makes it very clear they never went that far) this gives Rowan, and Ellie, much more agency in this version of the tale and reinforces the idea that Ciprien is a good and trustworthy person. Certainly in the book Aaron and Michael both very much wanted to protect not just Rowan, but displayed a clear sadness for the fates of Suzanne and Deborah and the other witches who found tragedy.
This episode does manage to establish Ciprien as, probably, the only good guy in the series, and clearly show Rowan’s anger at Ellie who purposefully manipulated Rowan all her life. These were important aspects of Rowan’s character development in the book.
I still remain curious, but pleased with the inclusion of a very alive Cortland, who clearly has both earthly and magical power, but not ones that have solved all his problems for him. This episode manages to establish that Cortland is wary, if not outright fearful of Lasher, and that Lasher is not fond of the men in the family.
This episode also exposes a hint of Carlotta’s true nature, and Lasher’s power and manipulative abilities.
While not explored in the book the episode then digs into the well known, flavorful funeral rites of New Orleans. I can’t complain because not only have I always loved these kinds of scenes, I thought this one was both lovely and poignant for the tales it was trying to tell. We get to see how the dead never really leave us, which is also a huge theme of the series, and how surreal and magical these experiences can be. People experiencing things beyond explanation and nearly, or actually, going mad is also huge in Rice’s work.
So far the show is still vivid and beautiful, still telling a very similar tale, and telling it in a more potent, relatable way.