Penny Dreadful - 'Above the Vaulted Sky'

"Shall we dance?"

"All sad people love poetry. Happy people love songs."

In the wake of the Nightcomers' ninja assault, Team Dreadful batten down the hatches, investing in stronger doors and locks, all the rituals and charms of protection you can shake a wand at, and lots and lots of guns. This does precisely dick to stop the Nightcomers popping up in some sort of astral form while Vanessa is praying, but does mean that when Inspector Rusk comes to ask Chandler some questions, he is in the process of buying a suspicious amount of ammunition for a retired sharpshooter. Rusk has also learned that Chandler is using an assumed name, and has a man tailing him, but the police are so shit that the tail is spotted and evaded more easily than a dude with one eye and a conspicuous leather half-mask where Chandler ate the rest of his face off.

The Creature is impatient to get to know 'Lily', but she is clearly repulsed by him despite his heartfelt account of their imagined love (it is clear he's thought a lot on the subject) and he goes off to sulk in the catacombs. Vanessa meets Victor's 'cousin' in another delightfully light scene and immediately spots his non-familial affection for her - seriously, they're adorable, and therefore almost certain to die horribly - before going to work in her soup kitchen. Here she has another heart to heart with 'John Clare', and teaches him to dance. I would feel so much more sorry for him over Lily if he didn't have a good friend in Vanessa and a seriously interested blind girl at the waxworks that he is completely ignoring whenever he goes all 'poor me'. Oh well, I guess he's socially awkward.

Face touching.

Speaking of socially awkward, a spiteful attack from a former client prompts Angelique to resume male garb, but Dorina assures her he loves who she is, not how she was born. It's like a rogue scene from Sense8 and would be terribly positive and uplifting if a) this weren't Dorian Gray, perhaps the most infamous destroyer of innocence and betrayer of love in 19th century literature, and b) it had one iota to do with the rest of the plot. Seriously, Gray just seems to be here to fuck things and look blandly anguished. I don't know if it's more or less annoying that he isn't even tangentially associated with the plot by fucking actual characters, although I guess it's nice that he's found someone as inhumanly smooth and hairless as him.

Date rape.

But hey, it's not just Dorian and Angelique getting it on this week. Vanessa and Ethan don't actually get groiny, but they they have some intense non-sex, and when Lily shelters from a thunderstorm in Frankenstein's bed, inevitable outcome is inevitable. Meanwhile, Evelyn Poole is using the love whammy - delivered via her spiked ring - to seduce Sir Malcolm, and her voodoo dolls to drive his wife into insanity and suicide. The climax - pun intended - of the episode is three intercut sex scenes and some intense stair staring from Vanethan, with the eroticism seriously undercut by including Lady Murray slashing her own throat while being menaced by hallucinations of her zombie children.

I've said it before and will say it again: Penny Dreadful is like the Victorian era, in that it is both obsessed with sex and hates sex. Three sex scenes - one is going to lead to violence, one is date rape and one is incidental to the plot and also unlikely to end well, juxtaposed with death, because sex in this show leads to madness, evil and death, like... every time. If Vanessa and Ethan had gone the full montage, she would no doubt be possessed by the devil again. If Sembene and Lyle feel left out, I hope they realise what a bullet they've ducked. What, I have to ask, is this show's entirely literal fucking problem?