Each week, Joe (@bstolemyremote) and Terry (@gaylydreadful) review an episode of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, alternating between our respective sites — queerhorrormovies.com and gaylydreadful.com.

Spoilers for episode 5 follow…

S01E05 “Children of the Royal Sun”: Josefina confides in Sister Molly, who's shocked to discover Josefina is Tiago's sister. Tiago and Lewis's investigation takes them to the Vega House. Townsend is lectured bout his personal life. Tiago confronts Mateo.

TERRY

Here we are, at the halfway point of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and it’s time to have that talk, Joe. The birds. The bees. And everything in between. Let’s talk about sex, baby, because “Children of the Royal Sun” gave us so many different permutations of it. Some (threesome!) wanted. Others (Sex next to a corpse!) not. It’s also the first episode not written by John Logan, as writing duties went to Jose Rivera (who, random, created the excellent Eerie, Indiana!). There’s a lot going on here, so let’s dig in.

After a brief cold open where Magda (Natalie Dormer) turns into Elsa at a dance club and attracts the attention of a gentlemen whom she invites to her house to...uh, hurt her (put a pin in this for later), we see Mateo (Johnathan Nieves) staring at his hand and crying. Rio (Natalie Dormer) holds his hands and tells him it’s time to purge. As she strips him of his clothes--and hilariously talks about not hiding his pride and power as she yanks his underwear off--she continues the weirdest game of flirty tailoring I’ve ever seen. They end up in bed, only to be interrupted later by Fly Rico (Sebastian Chacon) who flops down next to them and joins Rio in kissing on the confused yet happy Mateo.

This is all intercut with a scene of Tiago (Daniel Zovatto) and Sister Molly “I never want to see you again Detective” Finnister (Kerry Bishé) having sex back at the beach house from last episode. She tells him a story of when she was ten and her mother Miss Adelaide (Amy Madigan)--AKA The Dragon Mother, apparently--roared or something. The story doesn’t really matter here, except that it will resurface later when Molly tells the full story to Josefina (Jessica Garza) as a way of connecting with her and her trauma from the last episode. We already beat a dead horse last time, Joe, about using rape as a character and a plot beat, so I don’t think we need to do it again. Just know, folks, that this is still not the way to tell a woman’s story and that there are other avenues of establishing a character than constantly resorting to sexual assault.

Tiago and Lewis (Nathan Lane), meanwhile, continue to be the least effective detectives I’ve seen in a noir. I’ve honestly lost their story, now. From day one they’ve been told by Chief Vanderhoff (Brent Spiner) to solve the Hazlett murders. Or to “conclude” them. Or to bring in someone. To do anything. And so far, they’ve done jack shit because every episode introduces another side investigation that they just pursue instead. They’re like gnats on speed: zipping from story to story. It’s almost as if they’re as uninterested in that storyline as I am...which, fair, but I don’t think that real world detectives are allowed to just follow whatever case they want.

We’re halfway through the season now and I don’t think this show is as well executed, thought out or established as the original Penny Dreadful. I’m finding myself uninterested in the characters right now because they keep repeating the same thing without much progression. And the mortal villains like Richard Goss (Thomas Kretschmann) continue to say foreboding things--before, it was about Councilwoman Beck (Christine Estabrook), now it’s about the CalTech kid--without...well, doing anything.

It just feels so listless right now, Joe. So I’m curious what you thought of this episode. Did you enjoy it? What did you think of Lewis meeting Tiago’s family? In particular, Maria (Adriana Barraza) introducing him to her wicked altar to Santa Muerte? Were you happy to see explosives expert Dottie (Lin Shaye) again? And who has sex next to a corpse in a dark forest?

JOE

Apparently Elsa and Dr. Peter Craft (Rory Kinnear) do, that’s who!

Oh Terry, I feel like I’m on autopilot when I’m watching the show now. I don’t think I’m as frustrated as you, but I’m definitely not engaged in the way that I was hoping to be when this revamp was announced. If there’s one thing that the first half of the season has proven, it is that comparisons to the original incarnation of Penny Dreadful only make City of Angels look worse.

Strangely “Children of the Royal Sun” felt like a stronger episode to me than last week. Perhaps it’s just because it feels like John Logan and his production team have finally begun ramping things up? There’s a sense that the show is on a precipice and we’re finally going to start seeing things get paid off in the weeks to come. Maybe it’s a false sense of hope, but when sex and murders start happening, it’s usually a good omen in a horror series.

I’ll confess that I was underwhelmed by Lewis’ meeting with Tiago and Raul (Adam Rodriguez), if only because he makes such a big deal out of accompanying Tiago into the house and then almost immediately buggers off. I hate these kinds of false starts, particularly when they produce manufactured moments like the one that transpires in Maria’s Santa Meurte shrine room. Clearly this scene only exists so that Lewis can pocket that black figurine, which will protect him - or Tiago - “against evil” (FYI: gold is for money, white for purity of heart, green for justice, and red for love). That black figurine will undoubtedly get paid off in a future episode, but for now, it was a detour that this episode didn’t need.

The Hazlett murder has definitely taken a backseat to Reilly’s murder investigation, though as Lewis makes it clear to Tiago, it’s only because the race war has officially begun in between episodes. It works fine as a narrative device to force Tiago into conflict with his two brothers, but yeah...are these the only two working Detectives in the entire city? (Lewis even hilariously suggests this at one point, saying that it’s a small police force, which...ok).

Maybe I’m fine with all of this because the climatic finale, as Tiago struggles to control his “yo-yo” behavior, leads to a pretty decent chase sequence. As the guys hang out in the car, they’re spotted by Fly Rico’s look-out: a kid of about 12 on a bike whom Tiago brutally falls down a few flights of stairs with before busting in on the four Pachucos (sidebar: where was this other guy during the threesome? Why not a fourgy?). The outcome (Dormer’s Rio and Fl Rico get away, while Lewis nabs the other guy and Tiago lets his brother escape) is predictable, but, again, portends some good conflict to come.

My thinking is that the writing has put too many characters into too many tight spots now, so the penny has got to drop on one of them soon. Right now only Townsend (Michael Gladis) seems to be on solid ground, and that’s just because he’s stupidly fallen in love with Kurt (Dominic Sherwood)...after a single night of sex apparently.

Terry, I wonder if part of the reason that you’re feeling so ambivalent about this episode is because nearly all of our characters are still hanging out in their own independent storylines rather than coming together? But let’s dig into some forecasting: why do you suppose Goss has that absolutely enormous model of Los Angeles motorways? Are you more invested in Elsa and Dr. Craft now that they’ve sexxed up a burial site in the woods? And did you enjoy Townsend showing off his fancy footwork in that palatial living room?

TERRY

You’re absolutely right, Joe, that in some ways this episode feels like we are on the precipice of...something. It’s filled with foreshadowing and foreboding and I think that might be where my ambivalence is coming from. It’s the same foreshadowing and sense of foreboding that was established in the first episode. And we keep going back to that same well, over and over, establishing things that we already know.

That said, you did pick out two of my favorite moments. I loved the way Goss stands over his model of LA and the motorways that crisscross the city. He obviously has plans that go beyond a single motorway and it's intriguing...even if it just, again, reestablishes what we already know.

The other moment was the very tender and humanizing look at Townsend dancing in his room. It’s the feeling that this home...which, let’s face it is incredibly extravagant...is the only place he can feel like himself. The way his sways turn into a tap routine actually brought a smile to my face. His story is going to be a tragic one and while he’s a vile, racist monster, I still think there’s something poignant there.

As for Dr. Craft and Elsa...I’m kind of over them. I did enjoy the moment of marital bliss, as Peter, his sons and Linda (Piper Perabo) play a game of Sorry! before Peter gets whisked away to cover up Elsa’s murder. The way a simple call fractures the appearance of happiness was sadly entertaining. Linda dropping her smile almost immediately before reaching for a cigarette is certainly a mood.

But what about you, Joe? You seemed to enjoy this episode a bit more than I did so I’m curious how you saw the same scenes. Did you think our homophobic gay councilman’s dance was a humanizing moment, as well? And if we are on a precipice, what are you expecting will get paid off as we move into the second half of the show?

JOE

I definitely saw it as humanizing, and on a sheer performance level, I was impressed with Gladis’ moves! As someone who recently embarrassed themselves with a public dance performance, I can unequivocally say that it doesn’t always come off gracefully!

As for the Craft family board game night: oof. Craft’s storyline has definitely not been my favourite of the season - mostly because it feels aimless and meandering - but when that call came in and Linda asked Peter not to get it...yikes. Infidelity storylines tend to put me on edge for personal reasons and while we don’t know Linda as anything other than a drunk, that’s still Coyote Ugly’s Piper Perabo that Peter is stepping out on!

With that said, City of Angels would do well to spend more time on this particular storyline because besides my affection for Perabo, I have literally no investment in the crumbling facade of this marriage.

Not to sound like a broken record, but the series would actually do well to spend more time with all of its characters. No one feels like they’re getting enough screen time and that hurts the show when we’re meant to care if Peter’s marriage goes down the tubes, or if Dottie has put herself in danger by very publicly discussing rockets in a diner!

Part of me secretly hopes that the revamped series will take a note from its predecessor and dedicate a whole episode to a single character (or maybe even a few). As of now, I don’t know that I would care if any of these characters perish in the back half of the season; my enthusiasm for the show is entirely reliant on how much I like the cast, as well as residual goodwill from the original show.

Ultimately this episode is aggressively fine and it’s setting up the back half of the season nicely, but the series overall still has a lot of work to do to make audiences care about the outcomes.

Perhaps next week will be the week it all comes together? We’ll find out when we return to QueerHorrorMovies for “How It Is With Brothers.”