It’s time for everything to go horribly wrong, for me to
be immensely annoyed by several characters and for me to generally yell
2nooooo, nooooooo, nooooooooooooooooooo!” over and over again.
Mary Sibley isn’t dead despite the whole blood Marburg
curse thing and she is plagued by her baby devil’s voice. Upon hearing his voice
tempting her, she crawls to the doorway to hell, draws a knife and is ready to
stab ANYONE who comes near her or the door. They will open it over her dead
body. Because she is Mary and she is not standing down.
Mary I made of iron
Unfortunately everyone else is made of stupid. Great big
chunks of stupid welded together. They’re also made of EXCELLENT moral lessons
being made by the WORST PEOPLE in the world
So, Cotton wakes up in the brothel, wanders around a bit,
still drunk, pops in on John (more on him later) and runs into Glorianna. Who doesn’t
remember him. Or, well, anyone but does remember being helped by the oh-so-nice
Anne.
Cotton loses his temper and goes to confront Anne, being
very physical and intimidating. She tries to lie her way about it over and over
again. And it doesn’t work, except to get Cotton to break all morality by
declaring lying worse than murder. He rambles on about how he thought she was a
pure, wonderful innocent angel but now she’s just an evil ugly hag
She snaps. She has an epic, awesome rant about his hypocrisy. How he regularly got drunk, visited prostitutes then lived the lie of climbing up on the pulpit to praise god and be righteous. She calls out the whole horrendous Maddonna/Whore Innocent/witch, beauty/hag dichotomy he has going and generally just awesomely calls out the whole double standard and misogyny of the time and the people here.
And I would be cheering but this whole speech is being
made by a woman literally trying to justify kidnapping, womb raiding and lobotomising
another woman. Nothing she said is wrong by my gods, in the context can we
not?! She is waving the flag of misogyny as some kind of excuse for why she
viciously abused another, even more vulnerable and powerless woman?! Why couldn’t
you have made this speech 3 episodes ago, Anne?!
She’s all set to kill Cotton but Sebastian intervenes and
imprisons him instead at the behest of mummy dearest. Baroness Marburg has
decided that the cure for her poor, heartbroken children (remember Anne is her
daughter too) is incest. Both kids agree so it’s incest time with lots of
incest kissing and we totally needed this storyline and I’m sure there’s a thought
process that has Anne going “cotton has broken my heart so I’m going to make
out with my brother” but I’m totally totally fine with Salem not walking me through this ‘kay thanks
In addition because her heart is all broken she’s going
to help end the world because this is a sensible, mature way to deal with heart
ache. Someone really needs to introduce Anne to a pint of icecream. We know
this because she explains it to Mary – there’s a whole tag team going on of
people explaining their motives to Mary for why they want to end the world
Sebastian is also in because A) mummy dearest and b) waaaaah you love John Alden not me. Seriously guys this is not a healthy way to deal with rejection
The third is Tituba. Yes, she’s put Baby Devil back
together and why? Well she has an excellent speech about oppression and murder
and theft and when Mary tries to agree – yes the Puritans are terrible – she ferociously
objects. You can’t divide the colonists between “good” and “bad”. You can’t
pretend the Puritans are the only problem. All white
Europeans/English/colonisers are, arriving, taking land, enslaving and slaughtering.
And then on top of that Mary pretends she UNDERSTANDS Tituba and share shares
her oppression? Oh hell no
Again it’s an epic speech and, like Anne, not a false word is said. The constant attempt to say the Puritans are wrong to Tituba when all colonists are equally guilty is galling. And it’s epic that she’s calling it out… but she’s doing this while literally SUMMONING THE DEVIL. Is the devil going to be restricted to only colonial white Christians? Are there not zombie Native Americans around the town right now (hey remember them?! Because the show doesn’t). Like Anne we have a speech which is perfectly accurate but completely undermined by the context and actions of the speaker – it becomes less speaking a powerful, real, perfect truth and more about irrational destructive rage that is outright EVIL, literally as evil as it could possibly be.
Though at least she hasn’t found a relative to make out
with I guess.
Oh this show. So much truth, delivered in the worst way
at the worst moments - it’s like taking
perfect messages and thinking of the best ways to have them dismissed. Which
has pretty much been the story of Mercy from the very beginning.
Speaking of. Mercy has one of her minions deliver a
message that she has the Waif. Isaac shows up alone as instructed and then
stays in Mercy’s clutches while the waif is released
Of course the Waif then beings the mob to the brothel to
find Isaac. This was predictable and obvious yet Mercy is shocked, SHOCKED
That leaves John – he visits the serial
killer/barber/surgeon for some doctoring and realises this very disturbing man
is the one with the key to destroying everything. Except that he doesn’t know
how to fix it. Nor does the serial killer doctor. Sebastian might – but Sebastian
ain’t telling.
