Sunday, August 21, 2022

My Review of The Sandman's 1x08: "Playing House"

 


Written by Alexander Newman-Wise
Directed by Andres Baiz

Morpheus: "Time to wake up, Jed Walker."

Okay, if there was an episode that highlighted just how needlessly harsh Morpheus can be, it's definitely this one. I mean, even Lucienne, his biggest enabler seemed to have opposed the way he handled the situation with Gault (Ann Ogbomo/Andi Osho).

Let's talk about Gault, shall we? If the Corinthian become obsessed with taking his work into the waking world, the Gault's determination to change her profession provided something of a nice contrast. Shes a Nightmare who wants to be a Dream. A Nightmare who instead of making a traumatised young boy's life worse, she tried to make it better. How are we not supposed to root for her?

Gault genuinely cared about Jed and in his dreams, she let him be his own Sandman, complete with superhero attire, going up against the baddies that he couldn't in the waking world. I absolutely believed her when she talked about wanting to be a source of inspiration. How Morpheus dealt with her and the punishment he inflicted on Gault was beyond harsh. Saying that though, it's not the first time this season we've seen Morpheus being needlessly cruel.

He started the episode willing to help Rose locate Jed but the moment he got his true aim in Gault, he abandoned her. I got to say that seems to be an unwise thing to do, considering that Rose's Vortex abilities are getting stronger and she's now jumping into her friends dreams to boot. Those friends of hers have some rather interesting dreams, don't they?

For example, Lyta's inability to have moved on from Hector intensified with this one. She dreamed about being pregnant with Hector's child and now in the waking world, she's actually pregnant. Has Rose's influence made that happen? And if Rose can influence a dream/ghost pregnancy with her friend, then Morpheus really should be worried and not get on her bad side.

As for Jed, it was hard not to sympathise with him. Barnaby was an evil brute and Clarice, while clearly terrified of her husband also did nothing to stop him from terrorising Jed. You know things are bad when even the Corinthian seems like a safer option for Jed than Barnaby and Clarice. Not surprisingly enough, the Corinthian did take Jed in order to draw Rose to him.

- Hal seems to have mommy issues, Ken was naked and terrified Barbie would leave him, Barbie had a doglike friend named Martin Tenbones (Lenny Henry) while Zelda spent time at a graveyard and Chantel spoke about making laws in their dreams.
- Some nice mention of characters such as Pied Piper and Doctor Death in this one, who became a part of Jed's rogues gallery in his dreams.
- Rose mistook Matthew for a crow at one point in this episode and the Corinthian killed three characters in this one in his bid to get to Rose and Jed.
- Chronology: Where the previous episode left off with the action mainly in Cape Kennedy.

Playing House very much moved things along and with two episodes left, we've got this Vortex storyline, an inevitable confrontation between both Morpheus and Corinthian along with Rose and Jed reuniting for real. This was a very strong episode with the ante very much getting upped here.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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