The Nevers
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Oh, how man makes plans, and Joss Whedon laughs.
This series is completely batshit.
Lets begin at the end.
Stripes are worker bees.
They take orders and GSD.
This squares with Amalias rudderlessness shes a wartime soldier marooned on the front without a mission.
How does Zephyr come to occupy the petite frame formerly belonging to a widowed baker?
For that, we need to take it back to the beginning ofThe NeversPart One finale.
When the episode opens, parachuters are drifting toward war-torn Earth.
I momentarily thought Id pressed play on the wrong show.
Theres the familiar worrying of her fingers, for one, and a conspicuous cynicism.
Most of the new characters die anyway.
We do hear about parallels to whats happened in Victorian England.
Shes never seen either before.
The PDC want to protect the galanthi their last hope for a better world.
At some point, someone says the word portal.
The galanthi wanted to build one, maybe to bring more galanthi here.
Nevermind that the world would still be a hellhole.
Theres in-fighting and crossfire and someone somehow turns on the portal, which goes the other direction.
More galanthi arent coming; this galanthi is leaving.
The knitter is shot and dies before she can tell Zephyr her name.
A despondent Zephyr drinks some kind of poison, Im guessing, based on the yellow and black labels.
To 1893 specifically, at the exact moment the butchers widow plunged herself into the Thames.
Zephyr becomes Amalia in some sort of happenstance cosmic suicide pact (I think).
For no real reason, this weeks episode is organized into chapters.
That one was called Stripe; the next is called Molly.
Mollys is a sob story.
Shes an Irish baker living in London, who apparently doesnt know her financiers from her caneles.
(Did a script supervisor not notice they subbed the pastries?)
For unrelated reasons, Mollys soon to be out of a job.
The man she loves hasnt the money to marry her; the butcher she marries instead is an oaf.
Naturally, she ends up in an asylum.
Welcome to Chapter 3: The Madwoman in the Thames.
Zephyr thinks shes in some kind of historical fantasy simulation.
She meets a pre-Maladie Sarah, who she thinks is part of the sim, too.
We know the broad strokes from here.
Horatio becomes Mollys doctor and then her boyfriend.
To escape the asylum, Zephyr lays off the morphine and quits cursing.
Over the course of a pronunciation and etiquette montage befitting Eliza Doolittle, she transforms into Amalia True.
A few other little fires of intrigue are extinguished in Chapter 3.
Mrs. Bidlow plucks Amalia from the asylum once she gains a reputation for handling the touched patients.
Shes been complaining she lacks a mission; now, Bidlow hands her one.
Amalia and Horatio christen the orphanage before the first charge, Penance, can arrive.
Were back in the more familiar Victorian past on the day of Maladies execution.
The Royal Army site that was meant to be deserted is, in fact, not.
In fact, the general tone of this episodes special effects can best be described asvery1995.
I left Penance because you said come find me, she pleas, but nothing.
Her accent breaks, and shes Zephyr again.
It should have been someone else, she says.
But to do what?
Someone not broken, she says.
But what broke her?
You should have brought Nitia, she says.
But how does Zephyr know her name?
Penance, pious as a Free-Lifer, thanks God for giving her a lifes work.
And then things get really weird.
Still, we dont get an answer to the most relevant questions: Why Zephyr?
Why is the galanthis human form a teenage polyglot named Myrtle?
She starts by telling Penance something more intimate, her real name.
(Philippa Goslett, inheritor of the mess that is Whedons, I forbid you from time-jumping.
I deserve to hear this explanation just as much as Primrose does.)
To some extent, I agree.
There is still so much good on the screen.
The special effects are low-fi, but the sets are tremendous.
And the show has its own appealing argot, even if it leans on it too heavily.
She gets to take a fresh run at the raw goods and rebuild.
We apologize for the error.
