FX

Taboo: Episode 5 Recap(Spoilers)

Oh, episode five(here for UK fans, here for US), of Taboo, what a way to begin.  The duel between James and Thorne. James rows in, dark as Charon.

Taboo on BBC One and FX

TABOO — “Episode 5” (Airs Tuesday, February 7, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: Tom Hardy as James Keziah Delaney. CR: FX

There is an island for dueling, and rules to be obeyed, regardless of Thorne’s murderous goal.
Poor Lorna becomes James’s second.
Thorne looks the worse for wear(hungover), but is still an excellent shot.
Too bad he is betrayed, but luckily for him, the exchange of bullets is very “polite”. For some reason James is very forgiving, but stabs Thorne with something sharper-his words.
Thorne runs home to Zilpha, and she seems surprised, yet relieved to see him alive.
Zilpha is the enigmatic one, even covered in fireplace ash.
Potatoes and champagne, for mourning and celebrating she has.
Thorne and Zilpha exchange words, and they are as dry as the ash on Zilpha’s hands.
Back with Lorna and James, Brace informs the pair what he knows-about a robbery of saltpeter, about Redcoats searching. James only replies that he wants breakfast with Lorna on the foreshore, and so they go, boiled eggs and exchanges aplenty, until James ends them with his usual straightforwardness.
But a little Mudlark appears and speaks with Lorna. James has promised to take her to America.
There is a search at Delaney Nootka, and it comes up bare.
But James is being followed, nonetheless, it is a dangerous occupation, as the man learns.
King or Company, he is asked, but he gets to keep his heart without an answer.
Cholmondeley is stirring, stirring. Probably more chemicals in his veins, but he keeps stirring and inquires after Lorna and where her affections may lie.
Back at home, Lorna has the papers James wants in a trunk. Brace is jolted by it’s appearance, it is a ghost to him, a dangerous one he thought long exorcised by water or fire.
Discussing Lorna, Cholmondeley is very frank about his intentions, but James won’t allow him near her. I don’t know if this is affection; I believe it is because she is not one of the damned James has in his circle.
James has come to fetch his son as an apprentice for Cholmondeley; is he damned as well?
Is he a result of James and Zilpha’s incestuous unions? Is he the shame Horace Delaney put upon Zilpha before he died?
James has rooted out a traitor, and that traitor loses a digit.
“I am inside your heads, gentlemen…always,” James says.
He meets with Helga, and hatches a plan. Legally, she and her prostitutes cannot be messed with at her brothel. She may help him, or become excised like the thumb he places along with a coin on her counter.
East India is near boiling like the water they put their tea in over James. They are in a bind, and no one puts EIC in a bind. At least they believe so.
Winter spies on one of Helga’s clients, and French Bill *ahem* comes to the rescue of the poor woman Winter alerts him to.
We are in James’s war painted dreamtime again for the briefest of moments, and are still left without a clue, save he thinks he hears an explosion.
There is none at the smokehouse, to his relief.
He checks in on his charge and his chemist, scaring the boy. He scares everyone, Cholmondeley observes.
James comes home to find the trunk, and to burn the letters his father wrote to him. Letters he never read, but Lorna admits to reading. This elicits one of James’s bemused grunts. He tells her of his mother. but Lorna corrects him on one fact as she stalks angrily off to bed.
Tom Hardy can say more in a grunt than most can in a page of dialogue.
Oh, Prince Regent, how you eat is none of my business, but a whole ostrich egg? All by yourself?
As the loss of saltpeter is discussed with the Prince, a contemporary Guy Fawkes in the East India Company may have been found to blame.
But despite that…a whole ostrich egg?
The American doctor has concocted a clever ruse to keep people away, and it is a great one. Doesn’t work for James, but James isn’t everyone.
But since James is about to be blackmailed, he may be wishing he was. The doctor knows everything. And the doctor needs some gunpowder.
He mentions the French Experiment-something that will make gunpowder quickly, involving chlorate.
Cholmondeley sets James straight about this very unstable experiment. Like the bats(with the exceptional dung) in the rafters, the warnings are over James’s head.
He wants chlorate, even if it means the possibility of blowing up his son.
Zilpha has the misfortune to speak James’s name in her sleep, and Thorne hears it. His response is swift and brutal, as is his plan for her.
And finally we meet George Chichester, a man that knows more than the EIC is comfortable with, yet there is little they can do. They underestimate him because of the color of his skin. Big mistake.
Sir Stuart is panicking, something he is not accustomed to. But again, he underestimates Chichester.
James meets with Carlsbad, to agree upon their treaty. They dance with words; like Lorna, she can keep her footing with him.
Cholmondeley has sent a gift to Lorna; James is not pleased.
And Thorne has decided to exorcise Zilpha. He has told the priest EVERYTHING.
Bound, she is exorcised against her will. Does it work? James seems to sense it has happened, and Zilpha seems to act so.
But then we see the truth…
Thoughts and questions from this episode of Taboo:
Is Zilpha a sinister woman?
Is she the reincarnation of James’s mother?
Would you be as angry as Thorne, given the circumstances?
I love that the women on Taboo can keep pace with James, and he prefers their company.
And again, I love how the show exposes the uncleanness, the darkness even with a hundred candles of this era. The clothes, everything are so wonderfully done without sanitizing as is so often with period pieces.

The questions keep swirling, as if Cholmondeley is stirring them, and they may be as combustive as the chlorate he most likely will receive.
9 stars this week, as the puzzle pieces slowly come together.
Taboo airs Saturday at 9:15 on BBC One in Great Britain, Tuesdays at 10:00 on FX in the US.

About author(s)

Angel Miller

Hi! I am from Kentucky, and am usually being a human. Love God, family, country, rescue animals, and my fandoms. Also chocolate. I get overly angry when people's glasses on TV are not right.

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