Our cast of characters includes Bambi-eyed lesbian Judy, waitress/writer Bette, a CEO and her trophy husband, a line cook (survived COVID only to perish at the hands of a megalomaniac!), and a young guy who’s hoping to get hired at the pharmaceutical company run by, coincidentally, the same CEO that’s just sat down for a meal. Judy hit her girlfriend in a recent argument. The trophy husband is cheating on the CEO. The CEO belittles and controls him.

I really, really did not expect to enjoy this episode, but it’s my second favorite so far (after “Dream a Little Dream of Me”). The comic was telling a story about the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, and that wasn’t something I found interesting or surprising even at age eighteen when I first read Sandman. Now, many years and one attempted coup later, I just don’t need to be told that everyone’s fundamentally bad. Luckily, the show isn’t trying to tell me that. It’s telling a story that’s more complicated and more true, that we all have good and bad within ourselves, we all choose to tell certain truths and certain lies, and the selves we curate with those choices are our authentic selves. John Dee isn’t revealing these people’s inner truths. He’s just changing how they curate.

It starts small, when Bette calls John “handsome.” Does she really think he’s handsome, John asks, cradling the ruby. No, says Bette. She just wanted him to like her. “I do like you,” John says, Dutch-angled-ly. Isn’t it better to be able to say what we actually think? I know the answer to this one! It is not! We think a lot of things, and the nice things we think aren’t faker than the mean things! I mean, sometimes they are, and that is why it’s a relief to go to New York City sometimes; but sometimes they’re not, and that’s why it’s a relief to come back home to the South sometimes. The world is a rich tapestry, and only rarely does it require us to stab someone in the neck with a diner utensil.

The CEO and the trophy husband snipe at each other. She thinks he’s cheating (he’s cheating). He thinks she undermines him (she undermines him). Mark, the guy waiting for his corporate interview, tells Judy to stop texting because her girlfriend doesn’t want to hear from her. (PLAID WATCH, Judy is wearing plaid.) Furious, Judy gets up to storm out, but she finds that she can’t leave. Nobody can leave. We’re in the end game now.

Under the influence of the amulet, Judy tells John everything. John is like the creepiest horror movie shrink ever, assuring Judy that nobody is judging her. Judy says that everyone’s judging her for being gay, and John shares that Bette told Marsh Judy’s girlfriend isn’t good enough for her. This doesn’t bode well for the vibe inside the diner! Thunder rumbles outside. Night falls. Bette goes into the back to hit on Marsh, the line cook, while he’s cleaning the grill. (PLAID WATCH, Marsh is wearing plaid.) Marsh tells her that he’s fucking her son, and Bette throws some utensils on the floor and storms out. I really thought she was going to stab him with one of those utensils, but I guess that’s coming.

Next, everyone fucks. Mark begs the CEO to top him. Marsh makes the trophy husband a burger in bisexual lighting. Judy waits for Bette to come out of the bathroom (sexual). David Thewlis looks very, very tired as he extracts a large tub of ice cream from the freezer.

For the third act, John tells the diner inhabitants that they enjoy their suffering, and that’s their truth. The truth, he says like a cult leader, is a cleansing fire. Bette burns her book manuscript. Mark hammers a nail into his hand, and Marsh meat-cleavers off his own fingers. Judy slits her wrists, and the CEO cuts her throat. Tearfully, Bette asks how this is a better world, and John tells her to embrace the darkness, which we all already know means that she’s going to skewer her eyes. I sensibly looked away, and I advise you to do the same.

After a quick prophecy from the Fates (the Fates are still very very cool), Dream stomps into the diner in his shitkicker boots, and he is not happy. Not a particular fan of humanity himself, Dream still tells John that people in the diner started their day in a reality that was founded in dreams, not lies, and all John did was to rob them of their hopes. The two of them head into a dream to duke it out, and although it’s quite spooky for John to be chasing after the elusive caped figure of his mother in Roderick Burgess’s old house (I’m thrilled to see Niamh Walsh again; she continues to make the most of very small moments as young Ethel), he eventually figures out that he’s in a dream. He sets the ruins of the Dreaming on fire and uses the ruby to suck more of Dream’s power away. Then he destroys the ruby.

Bad luck, John! All the power in the ruby reverts to Dream when it gets destroyed! Dream puts him back in Arkham Asylum, where I have to assume he’s not going to be hugely popular, right? Given that he splatted at least three guards that we know of, like, a week ago? And I’m kind of annoyed that this mass murderer gets to live while Dream mercy-killed Rachel two episodes ago. Whatever, I guess. As Dream strolls away all smug, we zoom in on a tres glamorous person in a white suit, who smiles their red-lipstick lips and says, “I’m watching you… big brother.” Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN. Mason Alexander Park has the perfect look for this character, and I’m excited to see more of them.

Number of things Dream cares about in this episode, other than his duty: Correctly, none!

Does Dream do a sulk? Honestly, Dream is the nicest version of himself when, as now, he has a mission that you and I want him to succeed at. Not one scrap of a sulk in this episode. He’s actually pretty nice at the end (because, again, of duty).

Fuckboy energy: 0/10. John Dee is so terrible and creepy that Dream doesn’t even register on the scale. Don’t worry, though! He’s going to be such a fuckboy next episode! (I assume.)

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What you don’t realize about is that this is secretly an episode of The Amazing Race, a television program I have never seen but I’m pretty confident this joke works. Our teams are competing to find and retrieve the final tool that was taken from Dream during his captivity, a ruby of unknowable power. Last time Dream had it, he got captured by penny-ante magicians! Last time John Dee had it, he killed a whole bunch of people! Whatever the outcome of this thrilling race against time, you can be sure that the person who triumphs is going to use their winnings to really thrive.

Let’s meet our first team! As you remember, John Dee has recently escaped from Arkham Asylum, splatting at least three people in the process. He looks terribly forlorn and pitiful in his asylum clothes, and a kindly woman—after hitting him with her car—offers him a ride. She is played by Sarah Niles, who you remember as the inexplicably chilly and hostile therapist from Ted Lasso. They bond over both having terrible mothers, and you can almost, sort of, slightly feel like John Dee might be okay, until he starts talking about the people he’s killed. At that point you just know that John Dee is going to kill very nice Rosemary and her very nice Rottweiler, so it’s stressful. I was so worried about Rosemary that I looked up whether she was going to survive, because this character is a sweet dear in the comics too and John Dee very much kills her. (TV Rosemary does survive. THANK GOD.)

Our second team are Dream and the raven he doesn’t want, whose name is Matthew and who is voiced by Patton Oswalt. In order to find the ruby, they first have to get Dream’s helmet back from the demon who has it, so they’re heading down to hell for some exposition, as if we the viewers don’t already know the backstory on Lucifer. I could have done with slightly more images of the things being done to the tortured souls of hell, but the visuals we do get, of humans half-transformed into cave walls and trees, writhing in agony, are quite creepy and awful. It’s nasty. I loved it. Dream explains to Matthew that Lucifer is miles more powerful than he, Dream, is, and that Dream isn’t an honored guest the way he was the last time he was here. I guess because of not having his helmet?

Their guide takes them on a path that Dream isn’t as familiar with, and things take a real turn when one of the tortured souls of Hell recognizes Dream. She’s a young Black woman called Nada, and when she speaks to Dream, he appears as a young Black man, which is a good echo of the comics that ???hopefully???? will make the optics of the Nada storyline less horrifying. Anyway, Nada is here in Hell, she’s being tortured, and only Dream’s forgiveness can free her. He admits that he still loves her, but he has not forgiven her. My fuckboy dial spun round and round at top speed, became a blur, and then broke off with a loud twanging noise. Dream is the worst, and after the last episode’s batch o’ violent deaths for characters of color, I was in no mood for this.

And yes! Since you ask! They did indeed walk past Nada on purpose! Lucifer wanted to fuck with Dream. I had mixed feelings because on one hand, hate this for Nada, but on the other hand, I’m incapable of not being delighted when someone fucks with Dream.

I can’t decide how I feel about Gwendolen Christie’s performance as Lucifer. I enjoyed her time with Dream, but more because of the way Dream is responding to her than anything she herself is doing. It’s a real “is she good or is she just tall” moment. What does come through is that Lucifer and Dream kinda like each other, or at least enjoy butting heads, but that’s not going to stop Dream from being autocratic, or Lucifer from fucking with Dream to the limits of her power. Dream doesn’t know the name of the demon that has his helmet, so Lucifer summons every demon.

She thinks this is very clever, but perhaps not to my surprise, Dream is unfoiled. He pours out some of his sand, which will bring “that which is mine in Hell” to him. Choronzon, Duke of Hell, shows up with spiky purple hair and Dream’s helmet, and he is not prepared to give the helmet back without a fight. Cool! Dream is going to fight on his own behalf, but Choronzon asks Lucifer to be his representative in the fight. If I were the ruler of all hell, I would probably not agree to fight on behalf of my lowly demon subjects, even to fuck with a self-serious member of the Endless, but of course Lucifer probably gets bored and needs to liven things up. She’s excited to fight Dream, and Dream gets a face on him like: This is bloody typical. See! This is how you make Dream relatable! Not by having him keep giving too many damns about his damn raven!

The fight between Dream and Lucifer is a) too faithful to the comics and b) way the fuck too slow. The genre of fight is that they’re transforming into things and trying to defeat each other as those things. Ultimately Lucifer says that she’s the end of all life, and Dream says he’s hope, and that’s the battle won. It is pretty anticlimactic considering all the writhing, tormented bodies Dream walked past to get here. I have also long been of the opinion that we’ve already seen the best version of this type of duel, and it was the duel Merlin had with the magnificent marvelous mad mad mad mad Madam Mim. It’s done! It’s over! The apex of this art form has been achieved! Other media should just admit defeat and go home.

(Matthew gives Dream a pep talk in the middle of this speech, but I thought that was really stupid so I refuse to say more about it.)

Dream walks away from Lucifer in slow motion with triumphant music playing behind him. It is just a little bit too much. That Tom Sturridge has resting Blue Steel face is good most of the time and is certainly in keeping with the character. But in this moment, with the slow-mo and the soundtrack trying to hype him up, I was forced to say aloud in the quiet of my own home: “The files are in the computer,” just to remind Dream that he’s not all that.

With the helmet in hand, Dream’s able to find his way to the ruby. It’s a real good news / bad news situation: Yeah, he gets to the ruby first and you think he’s won the Amazing Race, but, downside, John Dee was telling the truth last time: He changed the ruby so only he can use it, so the ruby knocks Dream out. John Dee strolls in, still looking as waifishly ill as ever, and picks the ruby up. When he goes back outside, he finds that Rosemary is still there, waiting to offer him a ride, and he gives her his amulet of protection to Rosemary. We all breathe a sigh of relief when the credits roll, because it means that Rosemary and her very good dog are going to live. Good luck, Rosemary and Susie!

How I’d fix this episode: Cut the exposition by two thirds and make the fight more exciting! For God’s sake! I have never seen a high-stakes fight that proceeded so slowly. Also, I would have liked to see more torments for the souls in hell. If the writers couldn’t think of any themselves, they were perfectly able to steal the ones that Dante talks about in Inferno. It is out of copyright.

Number of things Dream cares about in this episode, other than his duty: None. It’s literally just his duty all episode long. When Matthew gives him his pep talk (I’m not discussing it), the whole contents of the pep talk are just, You have a duty to me, your raven and your subject, and Dream’s like, oh yeah, good point, and gathers his shit together to win the fight.

Does Dream do a sulk? Sooooooort of. Like, the aftermath of his relationship with Nada is one giant sulk, and you see the traces of it as he’s walking away from where she’s imprisoned. But I think that’s not enough of a standalone sulk, so I’m going to say, no.

Fuckboy energy: Fuckin… twelve zillion out of ten. His fuckboy energy when he’s talking to Nada, and then talking to Matthew about Nada, is through the roof. Dream is a total crapsack. I do very much like the actor who plays the version of Dream Nada sees. His name’s Ernest Kingsley Jr., and he’s starring as the title character in a forthcoming Hulu adaptation of Washington Black. Can’t wait! Cheekbones!

The post Sandman, Episode 4: A Hope in Hell appeared first on Reading the End.

An old lady named Hetty warns Constantine that Morpheus / the Oneiromancer / the Sandman is back, and he wants his sand. Constantine thinks Morpheus is a fairy tale, but wouldn’t you know it? She turns around, and there he is. Wonderfully, she does not have time for Dream, because she’s come to do a job for a lady vicar who flirts madly with her (fair) and tries to convince her to exorcise a princess who’s showed up insisting on marrying a footballer she claims she’s in love with. Constantine insists she’s done with the royal family, which I take to mean that she watched the Oprah interview with Meghan and Harry and drew the same conclusions as all the rest of us.

Eventually, she is prevailed upon to do the exorcism. Turns out it’s not the princess who’s possessed, it’s the footballer she’s trying to marry. Here we have a genuinely nasty and horrible bit of gore, with hands reaching up out of the guy’s throat to sort of tear his body apart and burst into a demon? I loved it except for this is the first nasty death we have actually witnessed, and it’s a Black character and that makes me feel weird. Just cast a white guy when someone needs to get torn apart. Then tear him apart. This is the ruthlessness that was missing from the show’s first two episodes.

Constantine tries to carry on with the exorcism, but Dream shows up to cause problems on purpose. The demon offers to tell Dream who has the helmet if he’ll stop Constantine from doing the exorcism, and Dream appears to be amenable to this dream. Constantine is not. She’s all, “Run along and fuck off back to hell,” and I’d die for her. Dream just stands there in disbelief that Constantine has ignored his commands to stop exorcising. The funniest bits of Sandman are always the moment when someone out-fuckboys Dream, which is what has just happened to him here. Dream cannot cope with not being the biggest fuckboy in the room! His eternal life has not prepared him for such an eventuality!

After a bit of farewell flirting with her vicar friend, Constantine comes out to have a chat with Dream, who is looking extra skinny and doomed. He tells her that they have to find the pouch of sand, lest dreams disappear forever. “Does this approach generally work for you?” Constantine asks. “You just turn up and order people about?” (Probably her time on Doctor Who prepared Jenna Coleman for this line read in particular.) Dream says, “Yes.” It is not unsexy (see previous posts re: Tom Sturridge having good chemistry with everyone, all the time). Constantine agrees to help him, but says that she works alone and refuses to be followed around London by Dream and his friend. This is shocking to Dream because he has no friends.

The friend in question is a raven. The raven’s name is Matthew. Dream does not need a babysitter. (As he is explaining to the raven that he does not need a babysitter, Constantine bounces. I love her, your honor.) The raven explains that he lived on earth all his life and can be really helpful to Dream, but Dream doesn’t want another raven. He recounts what happens to Jessamy as evidence for not wanting another raven. I cannot believe we are having a multi-episode arc about Dream’s grief for this extracanonical raven. That said, I spoke to my friend who is watching this show but has never read the comics, and they love the whole Jessamy thing, so maybe this is an entry point for people who did not read the comics.

While we’re discussing plot lines that aren’t as good as Jenna Coleman, I might as well run quickly through what’s going on with Ethel and John, over in Arkham Asylum. John resents many of Ethel’s parenting choices and does not believe in the Sandman. He thinks the person they’ve been running from is his father, actually, and he knows his father’s name, from reading The History of Ritual Magic in England. The moment of truth arrives! He says that if Ethel wants the ruby, she has to tell him everything, and be honest about it. Ethel comes clean, and John says he’s changed the ruby so it only works for him. He doesn’t want to give it back to Morpheus, he wants to use it to create a world without Morpheus.

Just as they are having a little bit of a moment, John asks her to bring him the ruby. She says that she can’t, because last time he had it, he killed people. Instead, she offers him the amulet of protection and tells him she’s sorry she was such a shit mum. Without the amulet, she ages swiftly and dies in his arms. I’m sure this will not end in tragedy. Jokes! It immediately ends in tragedy. John straightens up, splats the guard that comes in, and escapes the asylum, splatting two more guards in the process. Then he runs into the Corinthian, a very stable and reassuring presence! I’m sure this will not end in more tragedy!

Okay, so fine. That’s John and Ethel, setting up episode five, which we are all prepared to find very troubling. Back to Jo Constantine, my girlfriend! She dreams again, but this time we see the end of the dream/memory: Astra came running in when she was in the midst of doing her exorcism, and she was taken and killed, and Constantine couldn’t save her. (If you’re keeping track at home, the count is now at two people of color who have died gruesomely in this episode.) Constantine wakes up to find Dream in her room, and he offers to fix her bad dreams if she helps him find his pouch o’ sand. Now we’re cooking with gas, y’all. What we need, I have discovered, is someone irreverent and chatty to bounce off Tom Sturridge’s haughty sulk, and that is Constantine in spades. She gets it out of him that he was imprisoned in Roderick Burgess’s basement for decades, and he retaliates by finding a photo booth strip of pictures of her looking happy with another lady.

The woman in the picture is called Rachel. Constantine ghosted her because Rachel thought things were getting serious, and Constantine is a fuckboy, even when she’s Jenna Coleman. She and Dream agree that love never ends well. (Certainly that is very true for protagonists of comic books.) They roll up to Rachel’s flat, and Constantine insists on going in alone, probably because she doesn’t want Dream to witness firsthand the aftermath of her fuckboyitude. The flat seems suitably haunted for what I know is coming, but like… don’t other people live there? Do they mind living in this very haunted block of flats? As Constantine psychs herself up to chat with her ex, Matthew is giving Dream whatever the opposite of a pep talk is. Dream looks tremendously aesthetic in this mood lighting with the rain behind him. I don’t know if it’s altogether a sulk—I’m going to have to think about it—but it has the aesthetic of a sulk.

Constantine and Rachel have an awkward conversation that turns into kissing that turns into more awkward conversation that turns into… well, Rachel’s face sort of sloughs off into sand. Again, I am delighted that the show has started to lean a little more into the body horror that very much characterized the comic; but again, Rachel is Black and I wish that these grisly fates had not befallen three characters of color in a single episode. Dream is there in the clinch to wake Constantine up from this dream, and he explains that it’s the sand making her think she saw what she saw. In reality, Rachel is ghastly, gauntly ill in bed, her hand clasped around the pouch of sand. Dream takes it from her hand and starts to walk out, but Constantine demands that Dream do something to help Rachel. He’s bewildered that she thinks this would be necessary. “We’re all just Roderick Burgess to you,” she says with searing accuracy. “What is the point of you?”

Whatever you can say about Dream, he does his duty when someone makes it clear that it is a duty. After Constantine apologizes to Rachel and leaves the room, Dream mercy-kills Rachel. You can see that he is thinking, as he does this mercy killing, “idk what if I were slightly less of a fuckboy?” He puts this thought into action when he gets outside by telling Constantine that she’s not Roderick Burgess. Which is nice! Even nicer, he tells her that he’s taken away her nightmare for her.

Matthew and Dream have a little argument about whether Matthew needs to go home to the Dreaming or can be allowed to come with Dream where he’s going. Dream accedes that he might have use of Matthew where he’s going. Which is Hell. “I don’t get a sense that you’re listening,” Matthew says. “So fuck it! Let’s go to Hell!”

How I’d fix this episode: This episode is genuinely really good, and I enjoyed it a lot! Jenna Coleman is terrific as Johanna Constantine, and I love her with Dream. I would, however, rethink the casting of the three people of color who wind up gruesomely dead. I am all for creating a more diverse cast of characters, but I do want the show to think critically about how — in particular — its white characters interact with / violently murder / witness the violent deaths of its characters of color.

Number of things Dream cares about in this episode, other than his duty: Fucking Jessamy, still. Jesus Christ with Jessamy. I can’t believe we’re still hearing about Jessamy. He doesn’t in fact care about Rachel’s horrific plight, but he does accept her as his duty when Constantine points out that he should, which captures Dream as a character much better than him crying over the gargoyle. (Apologies to Gregory, who was a very sweet gargoyle, and none of this is Gregory’s fault.)

Does Dream do a sulk? I’m going to say no! He has a sulky energy at times, but I don’t think he properly goes into a sulk the way we’ve seen him do in the prior two episodes. When he briefly attempts to sulk, he loses track of Constantine, so I guess that teaches him that he can keep up with Constantine, or he can do a sulk, but he can’t do both.

Fuckboy energy: 9/10. If Dream had done what he intended and left the room with Rachel dying in there, I’d have awarded him the full ten points. The fact that he comes close is perfectly in character. Maybe he can learn something from Constantine’s cursed love life.

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