First of all: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
A fork in the tunnel lies ahead of you. If you go down one, you know where you’re going – everything is simple and laid out for you. Go down the other, you’re in entirely new territory. Who knows what will happen or who you will meet. When it comes to adaptations, which path is more exciting?
“Show Me Who You Are” almost feels like a re-pilot. We’ve established these are the same characters from the books, with the same problems and familiar situations. Now what are we going to do with them? Alina climbing into the trunk of the get-away carriage was one of the most thrilling minutes of television I’ve seen in the past few years. I’m sure for new viewers it is simply a hilarious and deft bit of writing. For fans of the book it’s an important melding of sensibilities. Of course Alina would don pedestrian clothes and hide to run away. Jesper witnessing the amazing luck is exactly what would happen during a Crows heist. I can’t express how absolutely bonkers a plot point it is and how promising it is of future episodes. We don’t know where this story is going anymore, with the Crows at the reins, but it’s going to be a wild ride to get there.
The weird, wild high of watching a show take off on an adventure makes it difficult to write about extensively. Buzz is impossible to capture and a torment to analyze. What this episode did was assure the viewer that the writers knew who these characters were and then took the entire cart completely off the rails. A new Grishaverse is opening up and we get to watch it unfold. Giving a head nod to the readers is a risky move that pays off. Too over-the-top or obvious and it gets an eye roll. We get it, Robert Frost. But the symbolic shift of “this is not the story you were expecting” instead feels invigorating. Yes, we’re throwing everything for a loop, but we know we’re doing that.
I guess some other stuff happened in this ep. A lot, actually. I mean the Darkling is now fully the Darkling, right after Alina might have…agreed to sleep with him? Their relationship whiplash might be a little rushed but the Darkling’s obsession with Alina is compelling. When she first kisses him, he’s surprised but unresponsive – does he even understand the human emotion behind it? When he kisses her again, he’s hungry. It still feels wrong though, he’s hungry for her power? The Darkling is jealous, wants to possess Alina and her power. He mistakes it for love (or tries to pass it off as love), let’s hope Alina learns quickly. “You mean a lot, to everyone” he says. But what does “mean” mean?
Additionally, he carries the same eerie presence with everyone. Alina mistakes the closeness for feelings, but the Darkling got all up in Mal’s space too. (I was screaming ‘KISS’ because damn I’d like to read that fucked up fic.) He even leaned in a little too close to his mother. Maybe it’s not that the Darkling cares about Alina but that he doesn’t understand anybody else’s space as not belonging to him.
NOTES w/BOOK SPOILERS:
- Are book spoilers even going to be relevant anymore?
- Poor Marie! (Was it Marie?) Gone too soon. The Conductor being a mole was a great twist and I liked the early introduction of elements used in later novels.
- DAVID IS HOT! DAVID IS SO HOT! Good job, Genya. Good job.
- “She’s Suli.”
- The random noble gossip exposition at the party was a bit too foregrounded and heavy-handed.
- Jesper’s likes: goats, light foreplay
- Big ep for Inej. Seeing the Sun Summoner and first kill. Does Inej think killing in the name of the Sun Summoner is different from other causes? Amita Suman is slaying it (no pun intended) in this role, and every time I see Inej’s eyes well up over her perfectly eyelined lids I want to give her a goat plushie to hug.
- Mal is out and about around the castle this ep – same old, same old, almost dies, gets manipulated, almost dies again, is on Alina’s trail
- fan section getting longer, thinky section getting shorter