I am so far not liking the supernatural elements of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (CoA). Are they supposed to represent spirits, demons, good/evil and/or to mirror division of the races and the fear that gripped LA at that time period? All of it is mostly about people drama. The first Penny Dreadful series was straight up fun with monsters and evil. We all already know that people are evil. The new series does have cool costumes, though. Guess I need to continue to watch to find out how it will evolve. Oh wait….

I can’t! I needed to cancel my premium subscriptions because my greedy provider decided to significantly increase my monthly bill without explanation. Price gouging is not any urban legend here in New York. I get it, we are all under duress. Personally, I really need the TV (and/or streaming services) to take my addled mind off of the crapball situation that the world is persevering at the moment. The stories on my screen or in pages are some of the only things that make me feel better–or, at least, let me forget everything for a while. This is one of the reasons that I write–to gift that little slice of forgetfulness of the world to myself and others.  

Back to the CoA commentary, though. The soundtrack is quite good from what I can hear so far, sort of reminds me of the vibe of an Universal Hall Pass song, “Katrinah Josephina” (below). I will most likely seek out the CoA soundtrack for background listening while writing once it presents itself. 

The next item of commentary is on one of the killings that occur in the series that was quite realistic and exceptionally graphic (spoiler alert-ish, so beware). First of all, I must say that it is quite difficult to gross me out. Loving the Horror Genre as I do, there are only a handful of scenes over years of material I’ve enjoyed that have made me wince or get a little nauseous. Besides, after years of healthcare in both Baltimore and New York, plus working in Emergency Departments, you can imagine I see things that are horrible on moral, spiritual and physical levels in real-life, too. 

The scene that made me pleasantly disgusted was the killing of a member of one faction of the other by slitting his throat with a switchblade, which was wielded by an inexperienced youth. Generally, when throats are slit on movies/TV, it is a straight and unwavering sort of cut–deep and final. Those actors usually grasp their neck across a wound that resembles a choker-necklace made of blood as they make gurgly noises. More often than not, there is an open expression of surprise on their face as blood seeps through their fingers before they fall to the ground to die (and the bad guy inserts a witty comment right there). To be fair to the actors, I suppose I would also be surprised if that happened to me.

The one from CoA is different than the norm above, which is exactly why I liked it. This is what I would imagine it would really be like; needing several cuts and sawing through the sinew of the neck to ensure the vessels were caught. There was no mercy in it, just frantic sawing and stabbing, like a brutal butchering of an animal to make sure that it was dead, or else it may turn around its accusing eyes on its assailant. For the CoA scene, they may have well used a spoon with all that effort it seemed to take to cut through this guy’s neck. I’m thinking someone needs their switch blade sharpened. Well done, whoever thought of that one–I am glad that there are still creative ways to gross us out. 

As taken from ZeraFang’s YouTube post