Spoilers Houdini and Doyle

[RJDiogenes]

At this point, complaining about the anachronisms in H&D is like complaining about the anachronisms in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It's just a part of the format.

This was probably the best episode yet. The star of the show is really the growing friendship between Conan Doyle and Houdini. I like all the little character moments, like Conan Doyle watching while Houdini entertains his kids, and Houdini asking about his wife, and Houdini correcting the reporter at the end: "Doctor Doyle." And the conversation about the nature of fear, leading to Conan Doyle's comforting words to his kid at the end.

I also got a kick out of them breaking into Stratton's apartment. They were both genuinely worried about her, but then Houdini got carried away and Conan Doyle got swept up in it. It was a little sitcom for a minute there.

I liked the use of Spring-Heeled Jack. I love the classics. But there was kind of an interesting twist-- the fake Spring-Heeled Jack only came along after the initial sighting, and there was a little suggestive flutter at the end to hint that Spring-Heeled Jack is real. Was that just the writers being coy, or is that the direction the series will ultimately take? Up till now, Houdini has had the upper hand, because the villain has always turned out to be the janitor or the guy who runs the water slide, but perhaps Conan Doyle will ultimately be the winner. It's just kind of a shame that one of them has to lose. They're both cool characters.

 

[auntiehill]

I liked this episode, too. I loved how Houdini totally threw Doyle under the bus by pretending to just arrive with the flowers!

We're getting to see the characters more as people and how/why they are friends. This is the important part of the show, what will make it worthwhile, regardless of the "case of the week." I hope they can keep this up.

 

[Christopher]

I liked this episode, too. I loved how Houdini totally threw Doyle under the bus by pretending to just arrive with the flowers!

What I liked even more is that Adelaide totally saw through his pretense. She's smart enough to know which of the two men would be more likely to break into her flat in the first place.

 

[JD]

I really enjoyed this one. The Spring-Heeled Jack stuff was a nice story that actually used the period, and we also got the bits about the change over from horse drawn carriages to motor-cars.
I actually thought the stuff at the end hinting that Jack was real was a nice little twist.
I'm really starting to like the characters a lot, the conversation about fear and the guys breaking into Stratton's flat were nice moments. The guys breaking into the flat was inappropriate, but I think it made sense given the context. The scene of Doyle watching Houdini with his kids was a nice moment for both characters.
I was surprised by the reveal that Stratton was married. I'm assuming the guy she was watching in the park was her husband and that they are separated.

 

[Christopher]

I actually thought the stuff at the end hinting that Jack was real was a nice little twist.

I just dislike that kind of ambivalence. If you're going to do a story debunking the supernatural, then I think you should be firm about it. But it's a deeply hackneyed cliche for a TV episode to debunk the existence of Bigfoot or UFOs or psychics or whatever and then chicken out at the end with a "maybe it's real after all..." tag scene, which I feel undermines the whole thing, Heck, MacGyver did this a lot back in the '80s, and it was cliched even then.

What I like about this show is that it's the anti-X-Files -- a show where "Scully" gets to be the one who's always right instead of "Mulder." I don't ever want anything supernatural in the show to be real, or even ambiguously real. I want the full-on Scooby-Doo meddling-kids unmasking at the end of every story. Because far, far, far too many works of fiction on TV and film treat the supernatural as real, and I wish there were more that would take the other side of the debate, just for variety's sake as well as credibility's sake.

The guys breaking into the flat was inappropriate, but I think it made sense given the context.

Except they could see Adelaide on the stairs from inside, so why couldn't they look in through the same window and see that she wasn't there? Or at least have the decency to go to her landlord/lady and ask to be let in under supervision? Although it was a blatant pretense that they were checking to see if she was sick. It was clear that neither of them really believed it. It was pure nosiness and invasiveness.

I was surprised by the reveal that Stratton was married. I'm assuming the guy she was watching in the park was her husband and that they are separated.

Was that a Masonic symbol on the ring in her drawer? The eye and pyramid? Or are they going for the Illuminati?

 

[Christopher]

Good episode this week. I liked seeing 12 Monkeys' Emily Hampshire as the "psychic"/secret detective. Ironically, this was airing at the exact same time as 12 Monkeys last night, and that one was an episode that Hampshire wasn't in (maybe she time-travelled back to 1901!). I hope that, if this series endures, her character returns. Normally I have no truck with fake psychics, but I can understand how a female detective in 1901 might find that male establishment figures would be more likely to listen to her if they thought she was channeling divine insight rather than reasoning things out through her own intelligence. After all, at the time, women were expected to be "intuitive," while men were supposed to be the logical ones. Adelaide herself tries to prove those assumptions wrong, but Edith instead tries to work around them. Come to think of it, she's a good foil for both Doyle (as a practitioner of Holmes's methods) and Houdini (as a performer and showperson), as well as a counterpoint to Adelaide.

I like it that it was Doyle himself who figured out Edith's deception, rather than Houdini doing it. It helped break the pattern of Doyle as the credulous one and Houdini as the perceptive skeptic. And of course, Doyle practically invented the methods she was using, or at least popularized them. It was also nice to get a bit of character-building for Inspector Merring. (Or whatever his rank is -- the muttonchopped guy who runs the precinct.)

 

[RJDiogenes]

Lots of good character moments in this one, which is really the show's strong suit. Houdini's good-natured, but unrelenting jealousy of his mother, Conan Doyle having a bit of writer's block, Stratton's defensiveness, and the Chief Inspector taking the missing children personally. That was quite an interesting moment when the Inspector stated that his son had been killed in the Boer War, which Conan Doyle had defended so eloquently-- and Conan Doyle made no excuses and didn't back down. Another powerful moment was Houdini's confession that he used to work as a fake psychic, and his guilt over a customer's suicide.

It was also a nice touch that the psychic was emulating Holmes and that Conan Doyle recognized what she was doing. And Houdini got a nice heroic moment with his tense, last-second rescue of the girl. And he also used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive her-- about fifty years early.

We also got a little bit of a revelation on Adelaide Stratton. She's really Penelope Somebody. I wonder if the fact that the psychic was using a false identity is a coincidence, a literary parallel, or a deliberate plot point. The psychic knew about it somehow, and I doubt it just "came to her."

 

[Christopher]

And he also used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive her-- about fifty years early.

Actually various forms of artificial ventilation had been in use since the late 18th century. You're probably thinking of CPR, the combination of artificial ventilation with chest compression, which emerged in the early 1960s.

And I'm sure Edith found out about Adelaide the same way she figured out everything else -- by observation and deduction. As someone leading a double life herself, she probably recognized some tell and did her own research in the records archive.

 

[JD]

I'm a big fan of Emily Hampshire's character on 12 Monkeys, so I got a big kick out of seeing her here too. The stuff at the end revealing her as an investigator in her own right was really cool, and a lot more interesting than her just being a run of the mill con-artist. I really hope they bring her back.
Houdini using his escape artist skills to save the girl was a nice moment for him.

 

[Christopher]

The stuff at the end revealing her as an investigator in her own right was really cool, and a lot more interesting than her just being a run of the mill con-artist. I really hope they bring her back.

It's a nice reminder that what "psychics" do and what Holmes did are basically the same thing, except that Holmes was honest about how he did it.

Houdini using his escape artist skills to save the girl was a nice moment for him.

It makes up for the bit in the pilot where he failed to use his escape-artist skills to get himself and Doyle out of the watery death trap in time and needed Stratton to rescue them.

 

[Christopher]

I quite enjoyed tonight's episode. I loved the role reversal, with Houdini being the believer and Doyle the skeptic, and I liked it that the story delved more into Houdini's backstory, and a bit of Doyle's as well. (Although it makes me wish Mangan were playing Doyle with a Scottish accent as he had in real life. Didn't the Scots face a degree of prejudice from the English?)

It was anachronistic for Houdini to refer to people from space as "aliens," a term which meant "foreigners" at the time. It didn't really become commonly used in science fiction to refer to extraterrestrials until the 1930s or so, and it didn't catch on in that sense in the wider vernacular until the 1960s. Although at least the episode did justify it as Houdini's own coinage based on the standard outsider/foreigner usage. Still, I would've preferred the use of a more period-accurate term, though I'm not sure what that might be. ("Spaceman" also seems to be from the '30s.)

 

[auntiehill]

I liked this one as well, even if the solution was as obvious as could be. I really liked getting to hear more of Houdini's past, the differences in the two men's lives, etc. Yes, I'm fairly certain that a mixed-race couple with a child in a poor mining town would NOT have been treated as well as this episode would lead one to believe but still, it was a nice bit of character building.

 

[RJDiogenes]

This was definitely a good one, with a strong theme, dealing with prejudice from the perspective of various groups. Despite all the anachronisms in the language and the timeline revisions in Houdini's and Doyle's lives, one thing they've done pretty well is in the presentation of women and minorities in that time period. I'm sure that a lot of viewers in this revisionist era are shocked to learn-- if they even believe-- that there was Feminism and "inter-racial" relationships in that era.

I got a kick out of Houdini using science to justify his belief in aliens. "We know there are canals on Mars." "There are six other planets in the universe." From a rationalistic viewpoint, space aliens made perfect sense, but to Doyle they were more farfetched than spiritualism.

It was also an cute touch when the guy picked a fight with Houdini and Houdini goaded him into punching him in the stomach-- only to get socked in the face. Houdini was well known to be able to take a punch to the gut if he was ready-- and taking a punch to the gut when he was not ready was what ultimately killed him.

The second-generation cave dwellers were a bit far-fetched, but it's not the first time that the show has skidded that close to the edge of Pulpishness. It's okay with me. I'd prefer a more Pulp approach myself.

There was the usual assortment of amusing character moments, such as Houdini befriending the crazy old woman and musing about the unthinkability of two men sleeping together as he gets into bed with Conan Doyle. There were a couple of major plot holes, though. Why did the cave people attack the pregnant couple and Conan Doyle? Just because they were seen?

Yes, I'm fairly certain that a mixed-race couple with a child in a poor mining town would NOT have been treated as well as this episode would lead one to believe but still, it was a nice bit of character building.

They weren't treated all that great, but you actually might be surprised. There's a reason that The Man passed anti-miscegenation laws. There have always been mixed-race relationships and acceptance has varied from area to area.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Oh, forgot to mention. The pub they were at was called The White Hart. I wonder if that was a nod to Arthur C Clarke or if there really was such a place.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

White Hart is a very common pub name.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

I'm happy the last few episodes have done away with the modern music tracks.

 

[Christopher]

It was also an cute touch when the guy picked a fight with Houdini and Houdini goaded him into punching him in the stomach-- only to get socked in the face. Houdini was well known to be able to take a punch to the gut if he was ready-- and taking a punch to the gut when he was not ready was what ultimately killed him.

Not sure if "cute" is the best word given that last fact, but yeah, I noted this too. It was interesting that they didn't explain it, just left it there implicitly as something people familiar with Houdini would understand.

There was the usual assortment of amusing character moments, such as Houdini befriending the crazy old woman and musing about the unthinkability of two men sleeping together as he gets into bed with Conan Doyle.

Aside from that, it was notable that Houdini expressed a homophobic sentiment at the tail end of a conversation where he was speaking passionately against racial and religious prejudice. It's a reminder that every era has its blind spots -- and that most individuals have theirs.

 

[RJDiogenes]

White Hart is a very common pub name.

Oh, okay. Probably didn't mean anything then.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't care for this one as much as last week's. They took rather a lot of liberties with Doyle's biography here. How could he have a childhood home in London when he was born and raised in Edinburgh? Yes, his father did suffer from alcoholism and mental illness, but he died in a Scottish hospital, not Bethlem Royal.

And how silly was it for Houdini to rush this vital antidote to Doyle by holding the fragile glass vial in front of him as he ran? Didn't he have pockets? Didn't he have a handkerchief to wrap it in? I mean, for pity's sake, the man is a career magician. He must have countless ways of hiding things inside his clothes. And good grief, why did he need to run? He had a police constable right there with him! Adelaide could've commandeered a carriage or gotten him a police escort or something. For that matter, what happened to that motorcar he and Doyle were using in the Springheel'd Jack episode? This was an incredibly stupid contrivance to take the antidote out of play so that Doyle would have to rely on some magical personal catharsis to somehow cure himself of poison. I mean, sure, halluci-Holmes did offer an explanation of how euphoria could alter his blood flow and slow the poison, but slowing it is a far cry from eradicating it altogether. Really, really dumb stuff.

Although the conceit of having Doyle actually meet Sherlock Holmes after a fashion was kind of fun. And it's a bit of an indirect in-joke, maybe, because "Holmes" was played by Ewen Bremner, who co-starred in Trainspotting with Elementary's Holmes, Jonny Lee Miller.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Well, this was a nice character study of Conan Doyle, going deep into his daddy issues, his love for his wife, and his own personal weaknesses. His inner Sherlock was funny, and it's interesting that he thought Conan Doyle had gotten so much wrong. Did I hear him say that Watson's real name was Wilson? I imagine that we will now see the return of Sherlock Holmes in terms of Conan Doyle's writing-- no more blank pages-- but I wonder if this experience will effect the plot or his interactions with Houdini and Stratton.

It was nice how they got to have it both ways with Conan Doyle's near-death experience. Houdini got to make the superhuman effort to save his friend, figuring out how to get the antidote and running it across the city to get there just in time, almost-- but ultimately it was Conan Doyle who saved himself.