While last week’s episode was the awesome story of the
awesome Vanessa who is awesome, this week’s story is of Ethan’s which is…
fraught. We have Ethan and Hecate, low on water with dying horses (hey Hecate
likes horses, total redemption guys!) who totally hates mankind and god and
would really really like Ethan to join her in dark awesome evilness. Kaetenay
and Malcolm – with Kaetenay happily willing to cut a swathe through everything
to get to Ethan. And we have Marshal Franklin, his men and Rust who politely
reveals some back story to let us all know he is an implacable force of endless
tenacity that cannot be slowed or stopped and who you really really really don’t
want to fuck with.
It’s a… volatile combination.
Thanks to various people we do learn Ethan’s backstory
(partly while sharing terrible parent stories with Hecate. Hecate’s “I was
given to satan as a 5 year old” totally wins, for the record). Ethan was sent
to the army by his dad and his commander then ordered him to slaughter innocent
Apache. Which he did – then killed his evil commander and reported to the
Apache – Kaetenay in particular – to turn himself over to be executed for his
crimes
Kaetenay decided far more usefully to make Ethan fight against the United states to protect the Apache. Which meant facing overwhelming numbers and, in Kaetenay’s words, resorting to greater and geater evil
Which… ugh. Look, we’ve said before that drawing on real
life horrors like the genocide of Native Americans is something to be handled
with great care and caution and respect, if at all. Further to this, even while
this depiction doesn’t shrink away from the brutal genocide of the Native
Americans, there’s then a whiff of blame for what Ethan become (and Kaetenay
feeling a level of guilt and obligation towards him). And… really taking the
massacre of Native Americans and making it a werewolf origin story is everything
we spoke against.
Ethan and Hecate also talk morality with her all for
evilness – and pointing out he’s kind of being led into this eternal guilt by
the orders of others. He says his guilt is the best thing about him while she
points out god won’t forgive him and if he ever wants to be free from guilt he
needs to embrace his sins, praise satan.
Y’know this would be great advice if we were talking
about shaming of innocent acts by an oppressive church and awful advice when it
comes to “hey murder and massacres are totally ok!”.
As Ethan talks to Hecate he also fills her in on some
Apache creation myth. Honestly, I know virtually nothing about Apache creation myths
so I can’t begin to comment on the accuracy of this. What I will point out is
that Ethan and Hecate, while talking about the darkness being defeated by a
warrior, they decide to centre Ethan: will Ethan be a monstrous creature of
said darkness or will he be the warrior who fights it. Either way, we’re taking
an apparent Native
American legend and making it all about a White
guy.
Kaetenay doubles down on this with him fearing Ethan
turning to the darkness
Which is a problem because Ethan seems to have been listening to Hecate’s recipe for not feeling guilty any more – he’s going to go evil. And when she asks if he can borrow his blood she can summon some demons, he’s totally on side.
Sadly, while she would look quite evil with her sand box
demon summing, on this show she looks kind of like a cut price Vanessa. That’s
not a criticism of her, no-one babbles evil nonsense quite like Vanessa does.
She summons lots of snakes which attack Rusk, the
Marshall and his minion. And one of them bites Kaetenay who is their slicing
throats as well. Snakes? These are your demons? Pfft, Vanessa would eat you for breakfast
Rusk survives because, as I mentioned, he is a terrifying
force of nature. Him and the Marshall are now dedicated to not just catching
Ethan, but killing him.
Killing the people following him doesn’t solve the fact
they have no water – and both Ethan and Hecate collapse before they’re found by
Malcolm (and a half-dead Kaetenay) and then by Ethan’s dad’s men. Which is good
timing because it stops Malcolm from shooting Hecate and then Ethan having to
shoot Malcolm which would have been messy
At chez daddy Talbott, we find that Talbott is very much
a clone of Malcolm - Malcolm denies it – but really between him being a racist
arsehole who hates Native Americans to being proud of naming a mountain after
himself, he’s Malcolm #2, the less classy American version. Malcolm denies it even
while handing over his own life lessons because they apply because they are the
same person
Also note, again, colonisation, genocide et al being turned into character development and life lessons for White people
So why did daddy Talbott want to drag Ethan back? He
wants Ethan to repent. See, when he was first taken by Kaetenay to fight for
the Apache, Ethan told Kaetenay where a large stash of ammunition and weapons
were. That was his dad’s ranch. And the Apache used all the detailed
information he gave to take down the guards, kill Ethan’s family including his
older brother, his mother and torture and kill his little sister.
Daddy Talbott knows he’s going to hell but wants to save
his son from the same fate. So wants him to fall to his knees and beg god for
forgiveness. Or be shot
But, thanks to Hecate’s conversion efforts (oh they had
sex. Did I mention that?) Ethan is officially done with feeling guilty or
asking forgiveness. And he’s quite happy to go to hell.
Let’s hope everyone kills everyone else.
Again we have a whole story about the American West, the
Native Americans being slaughtered but the focus of this story is on the White
people who killed them, the White people who died, the White people who
suffered. The deaths of the Native Americans is an abstract – an abstract which
is also all about Ethan’s pain and angst. While the deaths of the White people
are very personal, very graphically described and connected to a very human
cost. This whole storyline is about Ethan and his family – and the moments when
they point out that they’ve evilly massacred Native Americans is both a
footnote and used to develop Ethan more. This
is literally everything we spoked about here. Honestly I could replace that
post with this episode and just say “this!”
The sad thing is, if we removed the whole Native American
appropriation and were a bit less murdery about the sins Ethan has to embrace
then we could make some excellent points about being shackled by guilt, rising
above it and even embracing yourself
Actually, let’s remove this train wreck of a storyline,
Ethan and Malcolm and zap this entire lesson and character development on
Vanessa instead.
Oh, B plot – Victor Frankenstein is still messing with Henry
Jerkyll’s formula. It also continues as before with Victor being super duper
creepy about Lily. I’m also really not loving how Victor and Henry’s
relationship is developing. Originally it looked good, they worked well
together – but Victor is becoming increasingly condescending to Henry and his
skills, sure he can do a much better job of Henry’s own invention. Henry is also
getting justifiably pissed off with Victor apparently viewing them as “fellow
outcasts” while completely ignoring/downplaying the racism that Henry faces. I
dearly hope the appearance of Hyde will reign this in.
