Spoilers!
This episode opens with yet another flashback to Suzanne. This time we see the preacher of the time chiding Suzanne for mourning her mother’s death, then moments later see a tv-traditional witches circle of women dancing around an effigy and bonfire where Suzanne is freely allowed to scream and cry and mourn her loss.
Then we jump, startlingly to foreshadowing dream and another of Lasher’s tricks, reaching out to Rowan when her defenses are down. I kind of like that, because for Rowan to be the strongest witch yet the book doesn’t do much to show that, other than going through the people she’s killed. And even that is blunted by possibly being a side effect of her also being the most modernly educated.
I rather enjoyed Deidre’s funeral scenes. It was neat see the hints at just how big the family is, and Lasher blowing the flower petals in was kind of sweet and very on point for the original content. Carlotta’s immediate reaction of trying to pick all the petals off Deidre’s body was also amusingly on point. Carlotta just hates the idea of anyone having any fun or happiness in their life, doesn’t she?
Also Cortland taking a snip of Deidre’s hair is a fantastic way to foreshadow the dolls made of the bones and hair of the witches from the book.
The tv writers also found a way to include the fact that Lasher can possess people when the Talamasca manages to get, and have Ciprien read, the man who might have been Deidre’s killer, who is being tormented by Lasher. While this is mostly a tv only part of the story, Lasher driving people who harm the witches mad is talked about a number of times in the book (as is him arranging accidents for them, such as how he started the fire to flush Rowan out of Ciprien’s apartment last episode.) Again the writers manage to stay true to the ideas. The flashbacks to Suzanne make me think that perhaps stopping all forward advancing narrative to explore the long history of the witches in the show, as Rice did in the book, would have been an abysmal idea.
I’ve cautiously wondered about Cortland’s existence in the show, but more and more I’m enjoying it. Not just because of Harry Hamlin’s portrayal, which is just an absolute benefit to the show, but also as a writer myself I’m really enjoying the Cold, Miserable, Reserved Carlotta versus the Careless, Fun, Hedonist Cortland. And I’m particularly enjoying that while both try to woo Rowan to their “side” so to speak, she’s still very much making her own choices and not being swept up by either of them. I think this, more than anything else so far, establishes Rowan as an actual strong woman.
I also very much enjoyed the scene where Jojo explains about the witches and the designees. In the books a lot of those artifacts did exist, but Carlotta buried them in the attics, or they had been lost when Riverbend, the family’s last plantation, was washed away by the river. (I always liked the fact that the witches, even with all their power and money couldn’t stop time or nature.)
The choice presented to Rowan while wandering the First Street house of the rosaries, which Carlotta wanted her to take, or the emerald necklace, which Lasher left for her, is a nice use of the theme of “Good” (I mean, except Carlotta is not at all good, and is obviously to the viewers a murderer) versus “Evil” (again, while I know Cortland is evil because he is, if the show holds true to the book, Rowan’s father by his own daughter, he also clearly was considerably more supportive of family members and more productive of a person, not to mention decidedly less miserable to be around).
Honestly, though, I was disappointed that Carlotta didn’t get her little speech from the book when it was just her and Rowan at dinner. While that scene was still pretty much on point for Carlotta, there is something really brilliant about the book scene where Carlotta blatantly reveals her evil to Rowan. From the book:
“I took you away from her to break her will, and to separate her from a crutch upon which she would lean, and an ear into which she would pour her tortured soul, and a companion she would warp and twist in her weakness and misery.”
Very rarely do you get such a potent monologue baring the villain’s evil so clearly. I’ve always admired how Rice set Carlotta up as a very powerful, strong willed woman who rejects the classic evil of Lasher and witchery (in a book that is very much flavored with Catholicism) and yet is possibly the most evil of all because she isn’t deceived or tricked, or forced to choose her survival against another’s, but instead blatantly chooses wot just be a horrible tortuous person to others simply because she believes she is right and justified.
If there was a time to be ham handed and really enforce the point, I think this would have been it.
The scene of Carlotta confronting Rowan wasn’t bad. It made it’s point. I was just a little disappointed. So while we were left again on another cliffhanger the effect, for me, was blunted. Also…Please don’t burn down the house!! In The Witching Hour the house is a fully realized character of its own, and Rowan reclaiming and rehabilitating it is a direct allusion to Rowan choosing who she wants to be and building a life she wants.