Information on Taboo can be found here for The BBC, or here for American viewers on FX
The episode begins with water, a memory or a nightmare for James, he is too enigmatic to tell us just yet.
There is a pounding at the door. The King’s men are pounding at the door for Lorna Bowe, for assaulting the Duke.
They take her to prison, and she is tempted to sign over her rights for Nootka Sound as she is stripped bare. If she cannot be tempted, she will be shamed. She is told that a key and a pen are her only weapons, the pen to sign her rights over, a key to open the cel to set her free.
She is nearly raped, but representatives from East India come, tipped off anonymously by James, to rescue her.
She walks, her face uncharacteristically without pride, when Brace appears, and he in turn is very uncharacteristic in his true caring for her.
Oh, but now we see East India’s own, apoplectic in their headquarters. James is playing the game better than they ever have, and it is not sitting well with these masters of manipulation.
The Prince refuses James’s offer for a monopoly, and is black marked to prevent him purchasing the needed gunpowder.
He is being laughed at, and it is exactly what James wants.
And at ease anywhere, he sleeps in Godfrey’s bed, asserting that he is only involving himself with the damned, including Godfrey.
A chemist, Mr. Cholmondeley, is giving a parlour show, and James later interrupts him at the worst possible time to put him in his employ, which James seems to be very good at!
At their home, James tells Lorna that she is weak, and reinforces his statement earlier that he is only working with the damned, and he insinuates that she is not.
James retires to his room to perform a ritual, one he did not learn in England. He is primitively painted, and visits his half sister in her dreams, arousing her. She recites the Bible, and the visit stops. Her husband finds her so, and forces himself on her.
Does this mean James believes her damned? What did she do that made him judge her so, and that he would torment her? Does he blame her mother, and by extension her, for the loss of his mother?
Again we see a pocket watch that has shown up at various times in previous episodes. It is morning, and James is waiting for someone outside a farmhouse. Is James running out of time? And if so, why?
It is the chemist Cholmondeley he is waiting for, who uses unorthodox methods to test for the quality of dung in making gunpowder. It is truly a jaw dropping moment. But it does make sense, I suppose, for a drug addled chemist to taste for chemicals he has probably consumed on purpose and by accident in his experiments.
Cholmondeley needs saltpeter, and James vows to get him some.
Outside, James is tending his horse, and it is skittish. The horse has sensed an assassin that has come for James. He clubs James in the head with a stomach churning CRACK, and James falls, seemingly dead to the ground.
As the assassin is dragging James’s “body,” James moves, producing a knife and hamstringing the man. As he tries to drag himself away, James pulls him using hay hooks towards the mill and slaughters the man.
James seems unaffected by the carnage he causes and has done to him.
What happened in his past that made him so numb and frank speaking in a society and time that did not welcome such brutal honesty?
Back home, he creeps up on Brace, who comments on his supernatural quietness.
James is invited to a ball, and invites Lorna. James does not dance.
James seeks the help of Helga, her prostitutes, and Atticus for a robbery.
The dance is a fine diversion, even if James knows his sister will be there.
She tells him she knows what he is doing in her dreams. The American doctor seems to know as well. He has been following James more closely than we found in the last episode it seems. How he knows, he will not say. He promises James that he can start a new life with his sister Zilpha in the States, and no one would know their secret; he even offers to have her husband killed.
Meanwhile, the prostitutes and Atticus’s men do their work, acquiring the much needed saltpeter.
Which-and please allow me to digress-had me laughing. Saltpeter had for a long time been sprinkled surreptitiously in boys’ food to curb their sexual appetites. Read into that what you will!
Lorna meets Zilpha,
TABOO — “Episode 4” (Airs Tuesday, January 31, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: (l-r) Oona Chaplin as Zilpha Geary, Jessie Buckley as Lorna Bow. CR: FX
and there is a tense moment. Lorna takes false comfort in finding they are half siblings.
Lorna meets James outside, and thinks he is falling for her as she is falling for him.
Just a reminder:
James does not dance.
It doesn’t matter, because it is time to meet
the Countess, and she is so much more than that.
Using a magic trick, they spend a few moments alone, much to the jealous consternation of his sister.
When they finally emerge, Zilpha’s husband finally sees him, and in a drunken rage, challenges him to a duel.
This is not to say that his inebriation excuses the things he says.
The screen goes black before James can reply…
This show keeps getting better and better.
This is the halfway mark for the season, and it has yet to drag(no pun intended, Godfrey).
It has shades of Edgar Allen Poe and Alexander Dumas, and keeps the viewer guessing.
I saw nods to the movies Labyrinth and The Crow in this episode, two of my favorite films.
I am giving this episode 10 stars, and believe me, the high ratings I keep giving are not disingenuous, this show keeps me engaged, keeps me off kilter.
We see James setting up the dominoes so that he can knock them down. We see the how of it, but still don’t know the why.
And that keeps me counting the hours on my own watch until the next episode.
Taboo airs Tuesdays at 10 on FX.
