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.

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(I guess I should say we don’t know she’s Death yet! It has not yet been discussed at this point in the episode. I am working from advance knowledge)

Death tries to get Dream to open up, so he tells her what’s been going on: revenge (maybe you’d feel better if you’d done more revenge, Dream), McGuffin hunting, etc. What he can’t figure out, he explains, is why he doesn’t feel better now that his quest is finished. He feels like nothing. Death says, immensely sweetly, “You could have called me.” Then she yells at him for being such a whiny baby and not calling her when he should have known she’d be worried about him. It’s Great. Then because she can’t spend her whole life watching Dream tear tiny pieces of bread off his bread loaf and petulantly chuck them at pigeons (affectionate), she invites him to come along while she does her work.

Massive shouts to the chemistry between Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Tom Sturridge. I in general think that one of the strengths of casting Tom Sturridge is that he tends to have good chemistry with the more, shall we say, lively characters, and the same has been true of Kirby Howell-Baptiste in every role I’ve seen her in. They’re fantastic together here. Death is radiantly sincere and cheerful, catching Dream up on the news and gently teasing him for being self-absorbed, and although Dream doesn’t say a lot to her, he does a lot of good being-charmed face acting as she goes about her rounds. As in the comic, Death is absolutely lovely to everyone whose time has come, a kind and personal presence at the end of each human’s life, even as she’s unrelenting in the inevitability of that end.

As they’re going around with Death taking people’s lives, she and Dream chat about The Job and Their Duty, which is very appropriate because His Duty is the primary thing Dream ever cares about. “I am far more terrible than you,” Dream tells his sister, with a hint of a smile on his face. They’re delightful together, truly. Death admits that there was a time when she was really struggling with her die, until she learned that “all they really need is a kind word and a friendly face, like they had in the beginning.” I teared up! Honestly! There has always been something very lovely about the idea that Death is someone who just… likes you.

The thing that really gets to Dream is when Death tells him that the Endless need people as much as people need them, and he thanks her for spending the day with him. He has to go, because he’s late for an appointment, which transitions us into the second half of the episode, an adaptation of a comic a little later in the run called “Men of Good Fortune.”

This one starts with a flashback: Dream and Death (in a wimpley head-dress thing that is An Lot) walk into a bar in 1389, and I screamed FLASHBACK WIGS because of all the bad wigs in all of television, FLASHBACK WIGS are the absolute worst of them all. Remember Stefan and Damon’s FLASHBACK WIGS in The Vampire Diaries? What a time. Anyway, at this bar in 1389, Dream and Death hear a guy talking about how dying is a mug’s game, there’s no good reason for it, and he, this guy, has decided he’s just not going to do it. The Endless siblings are charmed, and Death grants the guy, Hob Gadling, eternal life. The deal is that he and Hob will meet in this bar on the same day every 100 years. Dream is like “lol he is going to REGRET THIS,” and Hob is like “I will never ever ever regret this.”

A hundred years later, Hob is still alive, and Dream is interested. Hob is very excited about chimneys, handkerchiefs, and playing cards, and he’s 100% planning to keep living for another hundred years (slash, forever). You have to admit chimneys and playing cards are pretty good! Think how boring it must have been before playing cards! Anyway, Dream is delighted by this, for a Dream value of delighted (minor mouth quirk). A hundred years from then: Venison! Shakespeare! A knighthood for Hob! A wife and son! (Dream is unimpressed. He liked the chimneys a lot more than the son.) I enjoy the twitchy little weirdo they’ve hired to play Shakespeare, and so does Dream (more to come on this, if Sandman gets renewed).

A hundred years on, Hob’s fortunes have turned, and he’s a starving indigent whom Dream has to prevent from being thrown out of the tavern. He’s lost his wife, been tried as a witch, and hated every second of the last quite-many decades; but as always, he still wants to live. “Death is a mug’s game. I’ve got so much to live for,” says Hob, a very very different person than me. As they’re having this little convo, someone is sketching them from above (ominous), and a hundred years later (we’re in 1789 now, for those keeping track at home), our girlfriend Johanna Constantine shows up with the drawing and an Ominous Plan. It’s of course not our Johanna Constantine, it’s an ancestor, but, whatever. In 1789, Hob is involved in the slave trade, which truly I think they should have just dumped. I can’t fuck with a guy who trades in enslaved people! Dream is all “it’s a poor thing for one man to enslave another” and tells Hob to get into another line of business. Pretty much rooting for Johanna Constantine, our girlfriend, to kill Hob at this point. Can he die if he gets stabbed right in the throat? And if I may, a follow-up: can I stab him right in the throat?

Johanna Constantine, our girlfriend, shows up with two heavies who she says will slit Dream’s and Hob’s throats if they try to do anything she doesn’t like. Having heard that Dream shows up at this tavern every 100 years and shares gifts such as immortality, Johanna Constantine wants in. Accordingly, Hob does a pretty good job of beating up both of Johanna Constantine’s heavies, and then Dream blows sand at her that forces her to see “old ghosts,” which she sounds very upsetting. This is a pretty brutal consequence? I hope it wears off quickly, because I really don’t think threatening them with knives that absolutely cannot hurt them is all that dreadful of a thing to do.

With that, we’re up to 1889, wherein Dream is wearing a top hat. I want a top hat very badly. Don’t you think I’d look good in a top hat? Now that I am a hugely wealthy publishing professional, I feel like I could spend some money on a sexy, sexy top hat? He tells Hob Gadling that Lady Johanna ended up doing a task for him (foreshadowing! it’s a very doomed task for Dream!), and Hob expresses regret for his past mistakes (slave trade! his past mistakes were working in the slave trade!). Then he makes a brand new mistake: he tells Dream that the reason they keep meeting up is that Dream just likes him and wants to be friends. Dream is So Offended. Dream throws a little tanty about it. Dream doesn’t have friends and he doesn’t want friends. What a dumb baby. He’s all, FRIENDSHIP OVER, NOT THAT WE WERE EVER FRIENDS. Hob says, “I tell you what: I’ll be here in a hundred years’ time. If you’re here too, it’ll be because we’re friends. No other reason!”

This is a pretty ill-starred century for Hob to issue an ultimatum! Considering that as of 1989, Dream is imprisoned inside a big glass bubble, which means that when Hob gets stood up, he fully believes it’s because Dream is still in a sulk. No supposition could be more reasonable. Dream is famously a big sulky baby, and after six hundred years, it’s no surprise Hob has noticed.The other shit thing is that Hob learns their special pub has been sold. He’s heartbroken! Their special place! We cut to Dream discovering the same thing, twentyish years on, that their pub has been abandoned. But then it turns out there’s a new pub and Hob owns it. Look. I still want to stab Hob in the throat about the slave trade thing, but this was a rather nice moment.

To close out the episode, we see Desire (Mason Alexander Park, looking sexy as) saying that they have a new plan for how to ruin Dream’s life. Do you think it gets tiresome to be one of the other Endless, and you’ve been around for untold millennia, and Dream and Desire are just constantly bickering with each other? At some point, wouldn’t you just stop coming to family dinners?

Number of things Dream cares about in this episode, other than his duty: 2. Death (fair enough, she’s an angel) and Hob Gadling (can’t get with it).

Does Dream do a sulk? The whole first half of the episode is about Dream being in a big sulk after getting done with his big quest. Then he has another big sulk about Hob thinking he’s lonely. He probably goes home and indignantly rants to Lucienne about it, and Lucienne is probably like “uh-huh” and “sure” and “wow yeah so rude” and then goes into the library and gets a pillow off a window-seat and screams into the pillow for an hour. (I miss Lucienne.)

Fuckboy energy: Oh, absolutely 10/10. Before Sandman came out, they released a clip from the first half of the episode, and Dream’s fuckboy energy simply radiated out of him. It’s great work from Tom Sturridge.

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In Buffalo, New York, Joely Richardson, as Ethel, is hawking some art in several different languages. This is very sexy of her. She is clearly too young to be Ethel, but a thrown-in line later on tells us that she’s made herself youthful by supernatural means. If that’s the case, I wish they’d just stuck with the original actress, who exuded a fascinating combination of warmth and steeliness. The Corinthian breaks into her house to let her know that Dream is out of his cage and will be coming after both of them. As a reminder, the Corinthian has teeth for eyes. He wears sunglasses, but underneath the sunglasses, his eyes are teeth. I miss his little straw boater from the olden days.

Dream sulkily admits to Lucienne that he will need to consult the Fates to find out what’s happened to his stuff. Lucienne is against this; she thinks maybe he should ask his siblings for help, maybe let them know what’s been going on with him. Dream says stonily, “I am quite sure they know what happened to me, and not one of them came to my aid.” That is actually a really good point! Is this addressed in the comics? It’s kind of hurtful that none of them even missed him! Anyway, he doesn’t have enough power to summon the Fates, so he has to go visit Cain and Abel and unmake their pet gargoyle, Gregory. Cain and Abel do not, let’s say, feel like an integral part of the story here—one of those times where adherence to the source material isn’t serving the show well. Even more insanely, Dream cries about unmaking Gregory. That would never happen!! Dream is nice enough to make a cute lil gargoyle, but he is not nice enough to cry about unmaking one.

After picking up some stuff from other people’s dreams, including a snake and a large egg, Dream summons the fates (Maiden, Mother, and Crone). They give him cryptic answers about the whereabouts of his stuff: Johanna Constantine was the last person to buy his pouch of sand; the helmet was traded to a demon in exchange for an amulet of protection; and the ruby passed from a mother to a son. When they leave, Lucienne notices that Dream didn’t give them the egg, just the snake, and he says that the egg is not for them.

Abel, whom Cain has bad-temperedly stabbed after Gregory’s demise, wakes up in a shallow grave with the egg beside him. He takes it back to show Cain, and it hatches into a new baby gargoyle! Eh, the new gargoyle is fine. I miss Gregory. Justice for Gregory! Abel tries to name the baby gargoyle Irving, and Cain kills him again because all gargoyles have to have names that begin with a G, and it’s very annoying that Abel has not done so. Lol. Does Neil Gaiman have siblings? The naming of pets is indeed very contentious and it makes sense siblings would come to blows over it. I judge this to be truth in television.

When Abel wakes up again, he exposits to the baby gargoyle that Cain always kills Abel, and Abel really doesn’t mind. Then he tells Goldie a different story about two brothers who are nice and kind and brotherly, and the older brother never hurts the younger brother at all. Goldie receives this with interest. “And they’d be happy,” says Abel. The scene should have cut here, but instead Abel says he doesn’t mind being killed if it makes Cain happy, and he chipperly wanders off and it’s a laugh line. I am mostly enjoying this show so far, but can it please be more ruthless? I feel like it’s scared of hurting me, but I have come here to be hurt.

In the waking world, Ethel is still bantering with the Corinthian. After some heavy flirt-and-threat action between them (I ship it), she tells him, that she got rid of the helmet and pouch years ago (smart), but that she gave the ruby to her son, John, and it consumed him. The Corinthian takes off his sunglasses and leans more heavily on the threat side of things, but Ethel pulls out her amulet of protection (as mentioned by the Fates), which sorts of sklooshes him into evaporating blood ribbons. Don’t worry. Our teeth-eyed pal will be back. Ethel goes to visit her son in the hospital/asylum (I guess it couldn’t be Arkham Asylum for copyright reasons, but you and I know it’s Arkham Asylum really). John, played by David Thewlis, is not a fan of hers, due to all the many lies she has told him in the course of his life.

Back in the Dreaming, Morpheus tells Lucienne that he’s going to London first, to get the sand, and then to Hell for the helmet. Lucienne advises him to take a raven with him, because a raven could go back and forth between the realms and keep Lucienne posted on what’s happening. I still do not completely buy Dream’s grief over Jessamy, but it’s absolutely in character that he’s all, I am Dream of the Endless, I don’t need a baby-sitter. He’s confident he can take Johanna Constantine. I am alight with desire to meet Johanna Constantine and maybe go on a date with her.

Elsewhere in the dreaming, a bunch of globby blood ribbons reconstitute themselves into the Corinthian. He still does not have his stupid little boater hat. I liked the boater hat! Lucienne tries to convince him to do his duty and be a loyal subject of Dream. “He doesn’t give a fuck about you or me,” says the Corinthian. “He only cares about himself. His kingdom.” This is true enough to be interesting! Even more accurately, as the Corinthian whisks himself back into the waking world, he tells Lucienne: “You can’t change him. You can’t save him.” HIGHLY ACCURATE.

How I’d fix this episode: I enjoyed this episode, and I think Tom Sturridge and Vivienne Acheampong have good and interesting chemistry, despite the fact that all their scenes have been pretty exposition-heavy so far. I just feel that the show overall needs to be more ruthless. It’s been shying away from gore, and Dream is caring about way too many things. I am going to start keeping count of the number of things Dream cares about in each episode, and you will see it’s unreasonable and out of character.

Canon fodder: There is no reason for Cain and Abel to be in this episode. It’s actually a case where they were better integrated into the original — Gregory is the one who finds Dream all sodden and pitiful, and takes him home to Cain and Abel. As things stand, we spend a weird amount of time on Gregory’s death and its emotional impact on everyone. Gregory is cute and all, but this feels superfluous.

Number of things Dream cares about in this episode, other than his duty: 4 (his realm being all fucked up, the fact that his siblings didn’t come save him, Gregory’s death, and the raven who died last week). I wouldn’t mind him caring about Jessamy and Gregory as subjects of his realm, but I simply do not buy his caring for them as people. Arguably he also cares about Cain and Abel enough to get them another gargoyle, but it feels perfectly in character that he’d just drop off this gargoyle egg and never speak of it. I’ll allow it.

Does Dream do a sulk? Yes, a giant one, in his ruined throne room, and then the sulk intensifies when Lucienne brings up his siblings. Very realistic.

Fuckboy energy: 6/10. Tom Sturridge does some highly fuckboy face acting during the scene with the Fates. I feel like he’s hitting his stride.

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