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djwiththejd · 7 months

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The Fall of The House of Usher (2023) Episode 2

I'm back, back in the New York Groove ~

Like I said before, I'm writing this because I need a hobby. I do feel like after sleeping on everything I typed up for with episode 1 that I can do with a reorganization of sorts. I simply cannot point out every one liner, clue, and reference to something obscure in this show without developing carpal tunnel.

So, with that, I'm going to change the layout of how I type up this episode and see if I like it better. At the moment of writing this, I have already finished Episode 2 and I'm chomping at the bit to write about it. SO without further ado, some analysis I was too tired to bring up in my first post.

Firstly, once I saw that The Murder in The Rue Morgue had its own episode title, I got the gist that each episode would be focused around the death of each sibling. I sincerely hope by now that this isn't a spoiler however, as the entire family has to die in order for the fall of the House of Usher to actually come to fruition. Luckily everyone in the family except for possible Lenore and Juno are shit people. So anyhow, the 8 episode layout where Episode 1 begins with the introduction, six episodes in the middle each center around the death of a sibling, and then the last episode will probably be reserved for the death of the twins. What's great is that you can assume that structure is what is intended and still be surprised by plot twists and modernization elements to make the story new, fun, and exciting. It's the journey, blah, blah, blah.

ALSO, I've never seen any other piece of Mike Flanagan's works, so this is my first time delving into a horror anthology. I am sure I liked Hill House things when it first came out bc people were very funny about it on here, but I was too much of a chicken to watch it.

Anyhow, now we move onto the next bit, background and plot!

So first, I have not read The Masque of the Red Death. I am literally just copy/pasting the first paragraph of the plot summary from Wikipedia, hyperlinks and all:

The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut to ensure no one enters or leaves.

Unfortunately, the episode does not start with our young prince Prospero. It starts with a flashback of Dupin in 1979 taking a photo of an exhumed and empty grave. At this point Dupin's plaque titles his as "Junior Fraud Investigator," and apparently isn't a police officer. The most important bit here is how Dupin pushes back against his boss and the boss asks him: "Say you win. If you could catch them all, take all of it, all the greed, the foulness, the rot in the world and sit down across from it, what would you say?" and then it immediately cuts to Dupin in that dilapidated childhood home of Roderick and Madeline Usher, and Dupin gets to ask "Was it ever going to be enough?" There's more there, but the callous way Roderick responds indicates that the mask has come up again briefly. He's defensive about Ligodone, he's defensive about his wife, he refuses to explain why there is no number of dollars in the world that will make him and Madeline feel satisfied with their success.

It was also important that in the past, Dupin tells his boss that "This world needs changing." This is the same ideal that the twins have, but the intent and the implication behind those same words these people said at approximately the same time culminates in them leading very different lives. For now, that's all I have to say on the matter.

Now, moving on. Perrie's corpse appears behind Dupin this time. This time Dupin does turn around but sees nothing, so we can assume that the corpses are just visions. The ghosts of Roderick's past coming back to haunt him, quite literally.

So when we first see Perrie in this episode, he's introduced in bed surrounded by naked bodies, sex toys, etc. I'm sure it is meant at first sight to shock the senses, but personally I couldn't stop thinking about how we are visually seeing Perrie being "boxed in" this hedonistic cage of his own making. This is Perrie's own bed, the people he chose to spend his time with, but as we see in the episode when we look at how his family interacts with him and how Verna speaks to him, Perrie has basically put himself into a box of his own deadly sin, Lust. In this vein, I wonder if I can do an analysis of each child as one of the deadly sins, omitting Pride. Pride has historically been seen as the worst sin, or the highest sin that brings forth all the other sins, so if I did do this analysis, I would immediately take Pride out of the equation only because I would ascribe it to the twins as the head of the family and as the parents of all of the other sins. I haven't watched the other episodes yet so I'm not sure if this analysis will keep up going forward but for now I have a general idea which sin I would ascribe to which child.

So moving on with the plot, Perrie wakes up and comes out to two people in his apartment and I recognized one of them! Molly Quinn, famously known for being Richard Castle's daughter and also the daughter of the other RV owning family in We're the Millers. She's a fond part of my childhood, and I'm loving her haircut. However, we see a weird, almost violent display of power when Perrie thinks his expensive eggs were eaten by his "friends" and I put friends in parentheses because I'm not entirely sure yet if Perrie does see these people as his friends, lovers, or even equals.

They discuss disappointment at Roderick vetoing supporting the Prospero club venture he had pitched, and Perrie says it might have been an overall good thing. He gets a call from Frederick, lovingly saved in his phone as Dickwad. Apparently he's supposed to be shadowing Frederick, but as soon as he walks in, his immaturity and naïveté derails the entire meeting with the Feds over Fortunato's poor environmental business practices. This enrages Freddie, and he accuses Perrie of being the mole informant. The continuous bit that Freddie struggles to differentiate between the two is actually quite funny, especially because Perrie has just shown his ass to not be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even he can keep those two different concepts straight in his head. Freddie really says some demoralizing shit to Perrie though, you can tell he sees himself above the other children, similarly to how Tamerlane's musings about the informant likely being "one of the bastards" from the first episode. Just because Roderick says you're family doesn't necessarily show that the children saw it the same way even when paternity is established.

Perrie lays out the details for the sex and drug-fueled club event to his two lackeys, and Verna briefly pops up on the roof of the building before Perrie looks back and sees that she's gone. We cut to the Rue Morgue, and Victorine and Alessandra lose another monkey. Victorine takes it hard and Alessandra tells her the last thing they should be talking about right now is human trials. However, we see that she's lying through her ass to her father, who is fast tracking this process because he's the person who needs that surgery.

Cut to Perrie asking Leo for drugs. So many drugs. Leo has funny quip in heres, but he's important because he tells Perrie that he's "better than a dealer, smarter than a DJ," and that "this is beneath you." Leo sees potential in Perrie that I saw a glimpse of when he was crunching numbers and setting entry fees for the guests. It is a shame that Perrie doesn't choose to listen to him in the end. And yes, another funny viagra quip.

We cut to Bill T. Wilson's...workout video? So that's what BILLT nation is. I will say the half-confused, half-concerned, half-disgusted, half-almost fascinated face Camille has is priceless here. We then cut to her watching a testimony from an alleged whistleblower at the Fortunato trial. Camille's willingness to find something about this whistleblower if there isn't anything to find speaks a lot about how she is as a PR manager. Ruthless, merciless, and focused on the ends to justify the means. The informant issue is eating at her because it was a factor she could not see or control. She zeroes in on Vic's clinical trial because she thinks it stinks, and we know it does, but she's got some ulterior motive that we don't know yet. The guy was admittedly fair in asking what Vic did to her, but it was one of those things you keep inside and never voice because Camille 100% has the ability to ruin you. Her glare was iconic. I was scared but also a little excited. I was hoping for some action but we cut to Perrie again instead.

A drop of water from the ceiling drips and lands on a phone. We talk about how to access the party, Molly Quinn uses her vocal fry to whisper sing an ad-libbed version of WAP, and we see the sprinkler again while Perrie asks about the water. We move to discussing the sprinklers to "make it rain" for the party and the guy for it says the sprinklers are shut off and Perrie calls bullshit because they dripped on his phone. He has this entire bit about hooking up the sprinklers to the filtered water tanks on the roof, etc, and starts talking about "The Golden Rule." I know this rule well, and while Perrie doesn't get to finish saying it before we cut to Roderick, I can confidently say as someone without money that money can solve many, many problems. So yes, whoever has the gold, does make the rules.

Roderick tells Dupin about the comic where he read about it. Before he can also finish saying "rule" Perrie's corpse appears to stand before him, and WOW he looks horrific. The SFX team deserves major props for this work, because he looks like a human anatomy model. 100% my money is that there's acid rain in the sprinklers/in the water tanks in the roof, and I'm probably right, but once again, the beauty of good media/literature/stories isn't about guessing the plot twist or the ending of the story before you get to it, it's about enjoying the process as you go along. I'm having a great time.

Roderick switches to something called CADASIL. Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. (The subtitle person for this deserves a raise.) It is apparently a hereditary form of vascular cognitive impairment. "Before it kills you, it causes symptoms very much like dementia. Affects thinking, problem solving, spatial reasoning and memory. It can even cause hallucinations."

Ah. There it is.

Roderick has this. And there's no cure. And he's refusing all the medications. AND the only hope is preventative. THE EXPERIMENTAL SMART HEART MESH HE SPENT $200 MILLION ON THAT HIS DAUGHTER IS WORKING ON?! Ah, so he is spending the gold to make sure the rules can work for him. Even if it means cutting corners and costing lives. Amazing how much money can really take away your sense of humanity though.

He brings up Rufus Griswold and that unfortunate cemetery business. What I laughed at was the dry, subtle way Roderick just calls Gris "the original gangsta." I had to rewind to make sure my eyes and the subtitles weren't playing tricks on me. So apparently all of this, as we are finding out, starts there. In Gris' office. With the Gris himself, "the original cocksucker."

Oh, it is a flashback. Young Roderick goes in to talk to Gris, but what about? Gris pours himself a drink and acerbically mocks the FDA. The "Fuck Dicks Association." Roderick is clearly not used to this kind of vibe, but he plays along poorly, not that it seems to matter much to Gris. Then again, this is a man who succeeded the helm of Fortunato. When he talks, he expects others to play along, he doesn't care how badly they do it as long as he's the one speaking and in charge. Roderick tries to make a pitch but Griswold is unhappy to hear it. He's about to kick Roderick out but decides fuck it, he's already here. Might as well just pretend to listen and kick him out. Obviously he doesn't say that, but I did debate for most of high school. Some judges walk in biased and you know you've lost before you even open your mouth. This happens with WASPy soccer moms judging their kids' debate tournament, this happens with judges on a local and federal level even though we pretend it isn't true, and it is certainly happening right now with Roderick Usher about to try to pitch something to Rufus Griswold. It is a shame Roderick doesn't know it yet.

He pitches ligodone, the same drug that dupin is in modern times currently trying to nail Fortunato and the Ushers for for falsely advertising as everything Roderick is pitching to Gris now. It is a really good pitch, very idealistic. I think Roderick may believe ligodone is the cure for everything, but I'm hooked on his line "this world...needs changing." He's as idealist as young Dupin at this time. I am so committed to seeing what goes wrong.

The pitch continues, Griswold pushes back, and Roderick suggests that Fortunato will become a miracle and Griswold will become the new Messiah. This piques my interest. We've got the ultra-religious mom, the children being allegories for the deadly sins, and a reference to the head of Fortunato with ligodone as the next Messiah. It certainly invokes a sense of hubris with inevitable downfall. But then Roderick brings it back to his mom and how much pain she was in. It really throws me for a loop because I think the humanity of it all is really at the bottom of Griswold's mind.

We cut to a new location and a crying baby. we see Madeline first and then a woman with the crying baby. We quickly figure out this is Roderick's wife Annabel (hur hur Annabel Lee) who consoles him for not winning his pitch. Madeline looks out of place, uncomfortable being there and more focused on things outside of the domestic sphere like Roderick's failed pitch. When we cut to the silent time after the baby is quiet at night, we see Roderick in the middle of these two women, with Madeline at his right hand side. When Annabel expresses remorse about the familial ties Roderick has with Fortunato, with his mother and father, Madeline seems shocked that he would have told his wife about such a detail? Like ma'am, that is your brother's wife. I just get this codependent vibe from the two of them that really gives me the ick. Annabel really does her best to bring them back to humanity by saying money isn't everything, but Madeline is not buying it. Madeline is completely jaded, turned off by men, turned off by love, basically anything where human emotion can show off even a sense of vulnerability. and she's just kind of disrespectful towards Annabel. (There's a bit here about AI writing movies and TV shows, I see that insert, I acknowledge it, I will move on.)

Madeline starts salivating at the thought of using algorithms to mimic human consciousness and ho it speaks to immortality. This is the first time I've seen her care about anything since I've seen her in this house, so I'm writing this immortality bit down as a note for later.

"Fuck that tiny little man in his big office with his tiny little ideas. WE are going to change the goddamn world, and if Fortunato won't help us get there, we will trample them on our way."

Ah. Spoken like a true capitalist, Madeline. Annabel can't fight off this insatiable, almost rabid thirst of Madeline's to move forward, and clearly since she isn't in the present with us, clearly Madeline must have won Roderick over to her side either by force or by choice. Shame, since Annabel was the paragon of virtue and humanity in this argument, and just goes to show how almost inhuman Madeline has become in this pursuit to change the world.

In the present, Madeline is talking to Lenore about answering a bunch of questions. Apparently she's making an Ai-approximation of Lenore by havingher write a journal every day for four months, answer 10,000 questions, and have it worm its way through the internet and collect all of her virtual data. This is impressive, actually. I'm doing some research on AI right now for an old law school professor so I've learned a lot about AI in the past few months and I have some background on this AI approximation that Madeline is trying to create. I might write a separate post about it altogether.

Back to Madeline. She assumes everyone wants to live on after they die, like the ancients. She had her Ancient Egypt phase, I see. This is Madeline's Roman Empire. She unboxes the mummification tools the Ancient Egyptians used to scoop out the brain, but there's a bunch of other artifacts behind her as well, propped up like trophies. She calls it her "immortality collection," so it isn't about Ancient Egypt, her hyperfixation is the concept of immortality.

Pym comes in and tells her she was right about something. Perrie's bank statements show that he's spending less. It either means he's "coming down in his old age" or that he's spending more cash. If so, he's dealing, pimping, or taking a payout in cash from the Federal government. Juno doesn't have her own accounts, she's co-signed on Roderick's. MAdeline here treats Juno with derision, calling her "the child bride" but ma'am. Once again, the common denominator here is that your brother picked these women to marry! Those are his decisions, deal with it! Either way, she's also intent on finding the informant.

Lenore walks in on Juno and Roderick being handsy in his office, but they quickly settle themselves. Juno is hilarious here, but it does highlight that Juno and Lenore are closer in age and interests than anyone else in this household. Blegh. Ok, maybe Madeline's comment about the whole child bride thing was on point. Juno is such comedic relief here, I'm not gonna lie, this actress is stellar, and I love her Irish accent. I think after all that tension and analysis, it was good to have a break. These things are too long, I need to shorten them for Episode 3.

Oh, cut to Perrie trying to drop off documents for Froderick. Dickwad. Frederick. Freddie. Morrie answers the door and tells him she's sorry about how Freddie can be. She tells Perrie she gets it, and idk, am I getting "battered wife" vibes here or is this just an act to try to get him to warm up? Perrie instead decides to be a degenerate and invite his shitty's brother WIFE to his expensive orgy. She scoffs and rebukes him, but he pulls some psycho manipulation about sex that as a demi person I can't relate to, but I appreciate her being all "How dare you!" about it. I still think if the show is going to put moving music in the background on it that she's going to end up going though, so maybe an early RIP to Morella Usher? Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Morrie is considering it, so wow.

Cut to Tamerlane. She's watching Bill set the table and then the bell rings. Off screen she invites a woman in who asks if a wig works for her? Ok, so this girl looks a bit like Chloe Fineman from SNL, but she just walks in wearing a wig and says hi to Bill like she's done this a million times before. Is this some type of roleplay? Ok, they're paying her in cash and Tamerlane is explaining her roleplay? She wants a romantic, intimate dinner? But she wants this girl to pretend to be her? Wait, she's sitting down and watching? Ok, so Tamerlane is sitting down and watching a hired girl pretend to be her, watch Bill treat her like he treats her, and Tamerlane gets off by watching it all as a third party observer? Her sexual fantasies literally start at dinner. I mean I just said Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Tamerlane kind of is one on a whole other, more voyeuristic, self-insertion level. I am confusion.

Cut to Camille watching Bill's workout video and kind of following his workout in a fascinated way? I'm also confusion. Anyway, her interns walk in and she turns it off, but then asks for updates on Vic's clinical trials and is frustrated that Toby can't get any results. She then goes into background of the testing facility "Roderick. Usher. Experimental." R.U.E. So she sets up the bit about the Rue Morgue. My favorite Poe short story. Tina goes into the paralytic nerve agent but Camille is uninterested. She looks through photographs and then..gets up to join them in bed? I had to rewind again. I didn't even realize they were undressing while debriefing her. And Camille's wearing a rope bra. And they're her interns! Besides the ethical and workplace violations from the freaking PR person for Fortunato, this whole family is FULL of sexual deviants. Wtf. I am confusion. AGAIN.

Cut to ships in a bottle. Frederick is showing Lenore how to make a ship in a bottle for Grampus Roderick. Morrie is headed out and apparently she's going to the orgy party. Great...

Everything is stuffed into lockers and masks come on. Perrie is overlooking this domain like the young Prince Prospero from the story. He gets excited when he sees and realizes his dickwad brother's hot wife showed up to his orgy. Morrie plays dumb, but Perrie tells her to try some drugs and one of the twelve bedrooms before he says he will find her later.

Cut to security cameras. Perrie points out all the famous/famous adjacent people who showed up. He reveals his plan to use the security footage form this hedonistic orgy to blackmail everyone who arrived at the party. Suddenly, inviting his dickwad's brother's hot model/actress wife makes a lot more sense, and he says it out loud. He drops a tidbit about Freddie is afraid of using elevators. Mght be useful for later. He then proceeds to give his lackeys ecstasy through mouth to mouth and they all head out to continue partying before a woman in a skull mask walks through the door. We know it is Verna, but Perrie doesn't know who she is. Verna and Morrie briefly make eye contact before Verna slips away and Perrie follows her to ask her who she is.

Verna finally removes her mask and she and Perrie somehow end up in a private bedroom. I don't know if the red lights are indicative of the seventh room in the original story, but if it is just a stylistic option, it also looks fitting. Verna tells him he can take off his mask. He asks her if she knows him, and she says she knows everyone here because this is her kind of party. She talks about the music, the lights, the beautiful flesh. She really leans into "the smells of it." And no, it isn't what you would think. "All the sweat, the perfumes, the lotions, the musk. sex, yes. But with a dash of Rome."

Verna asks him to tell her, and not lie, if this party is everything he wanted it to be. He says, "Not yet. Almost." She responds that "nearly realized is the sweetest. It is better...in the moment just before than in the moment after." She tells him he did it, and there's still time. For what? He asks. Verna responds..."To stop it."

She tells Perrie "Things like this, all things in fact, have consequences." He tells her that's not what is happening here based off of his invite (even though he KNOWS he plans to blackmail everyone in this room later.) Verna responds there are always consequences and talks about him. About choices that lead to consequences, and how his existence is a consequence. I wrote down the whole speech because those sequence of choices will likely be illuminated once the entire series is over, so I want that to reflect upon during each episode.

It is a shame, because even though Verna tells Perrie that tonight he is consequential, he doesn't even realize how serious she is. She gives him a chance to take it all back, and then the two of them could have had fun, and that she's got a weakness for bad boys. She tells Perrie "you are a pretty, pretty little thing" before she disappears into the party again. Perrie chases after her but she's gone. He takes something, puts his mask back on and returns to the party. Verna is seen whispering into the ears of the security guards, the bartender, etc before she appears behind Morrie and tells her to "Go. Now." So Morrie is given due warning. Now the decision is up to her whether to leave or stay as midnight approaches. Morrie stays, and has to deal with the consequences of her choices.

The acid rain in the sprinklers rains down and proceeds to basically liquify the entire party. Everyone looks like anatomical models, but Perrie is still moving a bit. Verna approaches his melted body and whispers "You beautiful boy" and kisses him on the lips as he dies before placing her skull mask on his face. And that's the end of the episode.

There's a lot there. I feel like I have to immediately start Episode 3 in order to recover from the whiplash of all of that, but this is going up now. I think for Episode 3 I will take it "scene by scene" as I plan to watch the entire episode in full since Rue Morgue is my favorite short story and I wanna see how it plays out with Camille. If I'm lucky I'll get Episode 3 up today but I am very much at the whim of my moods and medication.

Overall this was a good episode, we saw everyone else's freaky sex interests and I do think Perrie gives me "lust" deadly sin vibes, especially because his penchant for lust is what got him killed. Verna calling him beautiful before and after the acid rain is intriguing. She could be saying his demon-esque look is appealing because she herself is a demon. I got a google notecard/ad type of thing for an article saying that Verna is the Raven because it is an anagram, but I'm interested in seeing other explanations as to what Verna could be. She could be the literal devil that the twins made a deal with to get where they are, I'm not entirely sure. I just want to get through this series with as little spoilers as possible to see how accurate my guesses are.

#the fall of the house of usher #house of usher #tfothou #tfothou spoilers #carla gugino #molly quinn #mike flanagan #fall of the house of usher #tv series review #netflix series #netflix #seven deadly sins #prospero usher #verna #the raven #rue morgue

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