We open on Dream paging through a book labeled “Rose Walker.” In a flashback, a boy and a girl are packing to leave for New Jersey, but then their mom comes in to say that their (clearly abusive) father refuses to let the boy, Jed, go with them. The girl, Rose, will go with her mom to New Jersey and then send for Jed to join them later. Ugh.
Desire, played very sexily by Mason Alexander Park, summons their sister Despair to talk with them about their plans for Dream. This is my least favorite thing: As in the comics, Despair is a fat lady, which is an exhausting and shitty depiction; here she has a northern accent and a cardigan, and it’s all just… crappy! I don’t know what to say! The show contains virtually no other fat characters or people from the north, so this is really a Choice. Anyway, Desire and Despair have a little chat about how they (mostly Desire) want to ruin Dream’s life. They’ve made efforts in the past, Desire reveals (Nada and Roderick Burgess), but now there is a “dream vortex,” a woman called Rose.
The aforementioned Rose is packing for a trip with the assistance of her friend Lyta and her roommate whose name I immediately forget. She’s trying to find Jed, who was placed in foster care sometime after their parting in 2015, but she doesn’t have the money to pay for a private investigator. Right now a London foundation has offered her a bunch of money to come do an oral history interview. We learn that Rose’s mother is really the one the foundation wanted, but she passed away before she could make the trip. Lyta, who is grieving her late husband Hector, is coming with instead. On the plane, she dreams of Hector. She is… not a good actress.
Back in the Dreaming, Lucienne has done a census and come up with a count of the entities that are still missing: a shape-changing nightmare called Gault, our old pal the Corinthian (well, we knew that one), and the previously very reliable Fiddler’s Green. Dream is surprised and upset by this last one. Lucienne also shares that there are rumors in the Dreaming of a dream vortex, which she advises Dream to investigate. He’s like, oh yeah, there is a vortex, yep, she could definitely destroy the Dreaming, but I’m not bothered. Really, Dream. Really. At Lucienne’s request, he sends Matthew to surveil Rose in the waking world so they’ll at least be keeping track of what’s going on with her.
Rose and Lyta arrive at a care home for the elderly, where they meet Unity Kincaid. Remember her? We are familiar with her! Way way back in the mists of time, she fell victim to the sleepy sickness that resulted from Dream being kidnapped by the Burgesses, and now she appears to be, like, sixty. This is not how time works! Are we meant to understand that she didn’t age normally because of reasons? She tells how in her dreams, she met a man with golden eyes and had a baby with him, and when she woke up she learned that she really did have a child, who grew up in turn to have a daughter of her own. This was Rose’s mother, Miranda, which makes this woman Rose’s great-grandmother.
By chance, Rose walks into a room and encounters the three Fates. Because she does not know who they are, she doesn’t use her questions in the most useful way. They tell her to “beware dreams and houses” and express regret that she didn’t ask questions that would have allowed them to share more intel on the Corinthian, Jed, and Morpheus. Look. I will say this. They do not really answer the questions she asks, so much as criticize her question choices, and I truly feel that if they had wanted to share the intel, they could have found a way to do it within the context of her questions. For instance, she says “How do you know my name?” to which a quite cromulent answer would have been, “The Dream Lord, Morpheus, is looking for a woman called Rose Walker who is a dream vortex, which means that other supernatural beings also know who you are.” See? Information conveyed! Fuckin Fates.
When Rose tells Unity that she’s looking for her brother Jed, Unity proposes to fund the search and pay Rose a salary to go down to Cape Kennedy, Florida, and find Jed. This brings us most gloriously to John Cameron Mitchell, John Cameron Mitchell, like, this is the attention to detail that I have come to expect from the Sandman casting people. He plays Hal, the owner of the Florida B&B where Rose and Lyta will be staying. Other B&B residents including two creepy Goth spider ladies, a white bread couple called Barbie and Ken, and Stephen Fry. They go to speak with Jed’s caseworker, who can’t release any information about Jed and his foster family. This sucks. The B&B crowd cheers Rose up by taking her to lovely Hal’s lovely drag show — again, can’t say enough about the choice to cast John Cameron Mitchell in this role. She also meets Stephen Fry (his character’s name is Gilbert, but we’re not going to worry about that) when he helps her fight off some would-be muggers in an alley.
At a diner in Alabama, three convention organizers are trying to identify and recruit a guest of honor. One of them is fat, so there you go, one other fat character. And guess what! He’s a serial killer! Ha ha I hate it here. They all know that they want to recruit the Corinthian, and the woman proposes they do copycat murders. For fun! As the two dudes discuss the pros and cons of this plan, the woman goes to the bathroom, murders the waiter, and takes his eyes out, just like the Corinthian would do. The Corinthian bones, but does not murder, Rose’s roommate. Yay? His cover story is that he wants Rose to work for him, so that together they can put his old boss out of business. He gets a news alert about the eye murders and shows up at the diner to threaten the convention organizers. Except for, you know how sometimes you’ll be all geared up to be angry at/murder some people, and then it turns out they’re your biggest fans and even though you’re still mad, it’s hard not to be flattered when people are so hyped about your work? You know? And then you accept their invitation to keynote at their conference without even inquiring whether they’re offering to cover your lodging and transportation and give you a per diem for meals?
(Actually: Does the Corinthian need to eat? Can the Corinthian eat? We know he can bone people’s roommates without them noticing anything weird about him, so I presume he can also eat if he wants to, but doesn’t have to?)
Dream and Lucienne realize that Rose’s brother’s connection with the Dreaming has, somehow, been severed. His last nightmare, prior to vanishing from the Dreaming, was of Gault, the missing nightmare. As they’re talking about what to do, Rose walks into the Dreaming all like “Hi. What?” To close things out, we flash on Jed trying to escape from his abusive foster father. His foster mother almost agrees that the two of them will flee, but then the foster father drives up all intimidating and puts Jed in the trunk of his car. I hate this. It’s a white foster family and a Black child. Anyway.
Despite the strong casting, this episode feels really lifeless. It’s so nearly a beat-for-beat redoing of the comic, with loads of exposition painstakingly delivered among the various characters. I generally approve the decision for Lyta to be integrated into Rose’s life, rather than existing in her own separate plotline, but the actress who plays Lyta is so (sorry!!) stiff and uninteresting that I struggled to stay engaged any time she was on screen. Can I get a remake of the episode where John Cameron Mitchell wanders around the Dreaming having a pleasant chat with Lucienne? I realize it wouldn’t advance the plot, but it would cluster my favorite characters from the episode together, and I think that would be nice.