Those hoping that NBC’s Dracula miniseries would bring the
excitement for the season (series?) finale, you couldn’t have been
disappointed. Sure, not everything was resolved, but how upset can you be with
a finale that included a great deal of murder, fucking, and the
blood of Christ used as a vampire GPS?
I’m serious. It’s the final showdown for Dracula and the
Order of the Dragon; Dracula thinks he’ll crush them when he demonstrates his
free, wireless electricity generator, but the Order is not dicking around. They
call in the Sicilian, a Seer with wonderfully anachronistic sunglasses to come
in and find all the vampires Dracula has summoned to London; to augment his
power, he’s brought the blood of Jesus in a handy 19th century Tupperware
container. The blood is so powerful it can literally give the Sicilian the
vampire’s street addresses. Lady Jane
organizes a bunch of hunters to basically find and kill every single goddamn
vampire in town; meanwhile, Harker’s ordered to lead a secret group into
Grayson’s warehouse to sabotage the generator.
Grayson/Dracula should realize something’s amiss when
basically none of his compatriots show up on demonstration day other than Xaro
Xhoan Renfield. Harker’s been missing for two days, and even Dracula knows Van
Helsing is busy, having kidnapped Patrick from Coupling’s two kids. But since it’s the day of the demonstration,
they need to get it together. Harker arrives, explaining his two-day absence as
stress-induced sick days after he murdered Davenport. Harker actually sells it
well, and Dracula promises to protect him, assuming Harker does exactly what
Grayson says — Harker would smile evilly if he weren’t so bitter about Mina. Harker’s
first order of business is to bring in “three reporters from the Times” who want pictures of the generator,
by which of course I mean sabotage it when no one is looking.
That leaves Van Helsing, so Grayson sends Renfield to go
find him — which he does, in the middle of destroying his entire lab, along
with all the formula that lets Dracula walk in the sun. Apparently, Van Helsing
gets verrrrry upset when you agree to
follow a plan and then don’t stick to it, much as Dracula has. Xaro Xhoan
Renfield basically manages to say, “WHAT THE FUCK” before Van Helsing stabs him
in the gut and leaves him to die. Which he probably does, unless someone saves
him off-screen — and it isn’t Dracula, because he’s busy.
But so is Van Helsing. As you’ll recall, last episode he
discovers he couldn’t bash Patrick from Coupling’s
children’s little heads in with his Magic Hammer, and thus sent Browning a
ransom letter… but with one of his children’s fingers, you know, just to let
him know he’s on the up-and-up. Browning leaves Operation: Kill All the Fucking
Vampires to deliver the ransom to a remote barn. This goes rather poorly for
Patrick, because apparently Van Helsing didn’t fail to murder the children
because of his morals, but because Browning
wouldn’t have suffered enough. He throws Browing into the barn’s cellar,
dumps the money after him, as well as a great deal of gasoline. At least
Browning’s children are down there… except they’re vampires, because Van
Helsing fed them Dracula’s blood, and of course immediately start drinking
their dad as Van Helsing sets the whole place of fire. Patrick from Coupling: Also probably dead.
It’s at this point that Harker learns that the Order didn’t
just sabotage Grayson’s machine, they rigged it to explode. I don’t know why
Harker didn’t figure this out, given that Patrick from Coupling was very emphatic last episode that they should basically
make sure no one even tries the free
wireless electricity bullshit again, but whatever. He remembers that in a
shitty spat with Mina earlier, he told Mina to go to the demonstration so she
could hang with her new boyfriend Grayson; now Harker has to fight his way
through the crowds to find Mina and drag her away.
He finds her, but Mina is — shockingly — a touch upset that
her former fiancée is attempting to commit an act of mass murder, and instead
of fleeing runs up on stage to warn Grayson. Grayson tries to shut the
generator down, but it’s too late — all Grayson can do is yell for everyone to
leave and for Harker to take Mina away. Then shit explodes. BIG TIME.
Harker and Mina wake up in the rubble, and Mina immediately
runs off to find Grayson. Harker sees that he’s killed his best friend who
hasn’t shown up since episode 4 or something. He has a sad, but the kind of sad
that he blames on Grayson, instead of himself or the Order of the Dragon.
Lady Jane also arrives at the crater, as the Sicilian has
finally revealed that Grayson and Dracula are one and the same (I guess the
blood of Christ wanted to save the best for last? Maybe hJesushas to work in
order or vampiric power? So many questions!); he even gives Lady Jane a special
Pope-approved, Dracula-stabbin’ dagger for the fight. While Jane examines
charred corpses, Grayson/Dracula steps out, cool as a cucumber. The fight scene
that ensues is great, not just because no punches are pulled — literally,
Dracula casually disarms her of her weapons, then punches her repeatedly in the
face — but because both before and after Jane stabs him with the Pope-dagger,
Dracula is a badass. At the end, he casually tosses her across the wreckage of
the building, where she’s impaled on a pipe. In honor of all the times they had
hot, crazy sex, he only drinks her blood, and doesn’t turn her into a vampire.
Lady Jane: Definitely dead.
Meanwhile, Mina is scouring Carfax Manor for Grayson, where
she finds the Dresden Triptych and the paintings of her/Dracula’s burned-alive
ex-wife Ilona. Give that she’s been having Ilona dreams since she was little,
this does not skeeve Mina out; this is to Dracula’s advantage, as when he
arrives, they totally fuck. But a show this dark can’t end with happy monkey
sex, so instead we find Van Helsing back at his destroyed laboratory, carefully
fingering the cross-daggers he used to pin Dracula’s foot in the episode 2 flashback.
This is when Harker walks in, and the two original heroes of Bram Stoker’s
novel more or less team up to kill the monster known as Dracula…. mostly
because they’re assholes and hate the fucker.
As the first episode clearly promised, this miniseries was
one of the least accurate versions of Dracula
I have ever seen, and yet it was massively
entertaining anyways — not just for all the crazy additions to the story, but
because of how it twisted the classic. I still can’t forget how my jaw dropped
when I realized Dracula and Van Helsing were working together. Season one doesn’t
really end on a cliffhanger, per se, but there’s clearly so much more of this
completely insane story to tell, and god I hope it gets the chance.
At the moment, NBC still hasn’t decided if they’re going to
greenlight season 2. I’m not hopeful; the ratings have been so-so (it loses a
lot of Grimm’s audience each week), although they have improved over the last
few weeks. But the show is co-produced by the U.K.’s Carnival Films, so NBC
Universal doesn’t have to front all the cost. And Friday night is always sort
of weird, since it’s such a ratings wasteland; NBC may decide it’s worth giving
it one more chance to see if it continues picking up. Of course, if Jonathan
Rhys-Meyers gets cast in Star Wars:
Episode VII, as was once rumored — or another movie — I guess all bets are
off.
But hope, like Lucy’s hope of getting some girl-on-girl
action with Mina, springs eternal. So here’s hoping there’s more vampiric
business acquisition, 19th century mud-wrestling, and evil cast members of Coupling in our future.
Assorted Musings:
When Mina tells Harker she’s going to Grayson’s demonstration,
and Harker hisses “Good”, did anyone else think he was being super-cold and was
happy she was going to blow up and die? Just me?
Do we have any idea why the Order and Patrick from Coupling thought it was necessary to
murder Van Helsing’s entire family yet leave him alive?
The Order of the Dragon saboteurs “switch the wires” on
the generator, thus causing it to explode. Man, they really did some intensive
scientific research for that one, I tell ya.
So between the Pope-approved dagger the Sicilian gives
Lady Jane and, you know, the blood of Christ, I’m still super-interested in the
theology of this show. God is pretty clearly on the Order of the Dragon’s side
here, despite their nasty habit of murdering a shit-ton of innocent people.
The plot point I failed to mention above, because it
didn’t connect with the main story at all, is of Lucy. Lucy eats her mom, and
with no moral qualms. Assuming Dracula
returns for a second season, it’ll be fun to see a vampire who is 100% evil for
a change.
Seriously, NBC, GREENLIGHT ANOTHER SEASON. Let’s not pretend you have a ton of other options here, okay?
