Penny Dreadful: City of Angels gets an uneven start to a new era

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels attempts to fill the shoes left by its gothic predecessor with an uneven opening hour filled with poor writing.

As a big fan of the original Penny Dreadful, it pains me to say that Showtime‘s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels left me thoroughly unimpressed after the first hour. Bad writing, too many subplots, and characters who function better as caricatures than real people marred an otherwise intriguing premise.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels forgoes everything about the original series, trading in the gothic horror of a Victorian London bogged down with monsters for 1938 Los Angeles simmering on the edge of a full-scale race scale. Throw in mobsters, evangelical radio hosts, and the rise of the Third Reich, and you’ve got the new series in a nutshell.

Oh, and the inclusion of a femme fatale Lucifer-type character squaring off against her sister, the famed Santa Muerte.

If you asked me to tell you what the plot of the show was after the pilot episode, I don’t think I could confidently say. What I can tell you is all the different pieces and plot-like elements introduced in the first episode, but it doesn’t get much more cohesive than that.

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To start, the show centers around the character of Tiago Vega, played by Daniel Zovatto. As a kid, Tiago witnessed his father and several other men die in a terrifying field fire started by Magda, Natalie Dormer’s devilish shapeshifting demon character, and sister Santa Muerte.

The saint was present at the scene, and in his father’s final moments, Tiago may have glimpsed her, something that his mother, Maria, brings up later in the episode.

As an adult, Tiago is celebrating becoming the LAPD’s first Mexican-American detective. He and his family, comprised of his brothers Raul and Mateo and his sister Josefina, drink and cheers to his promotion. But darkness hangs like a shadow over their celebration.

Soon their home in Belvedere Heights will be demolished by construction on a new motorway.

The police and the government don’t care about the Mexican lives they might uproot by bulldozing their town. If anything, they relish in the opportunity to get rid of them.

See, much of Penny  Dreadful: City of Angels‘ plot revolves around racism. You’ll understand that by ten minutes in because the writers beat you over the head with it. Seriously. Penny Dreadful has never exactly been subtle, but City of Angels takes things to a new high.

Speaking of the motorway, that leads us to Councilman Charlton Townsend, the man in charge of building the motorway as the head of LA City Council’s Transportation Committee. Guess who works by  Councilman Townsend side? Yes, Magda! Except with him, she becomes his righthand woman, a fast-talking American named Alex.

Magda coaxes Townsend into setting his sights on becoming mayor. She even sets up a meeting between him and Richard Goss, who has a direct line to Hitler. Richard will help Townsend become mayor if he climbs in his pocket and helps further Germany’s agenda on American soil.

Speaking of Nazis, Rory Kinnear ditches his Creature outfit and becomes Peter Craft in City of Angels. He’s a pediatrician and also the leader of the German-American Bund, a.k.a. another Nazi.

Maria, Tiago’s mother, works as Peter’s maid. He also has a wife who might be an alcoholic played by Piper Perabo, but we only see her in one scene during the first episode.

Magda infiltrates Peter’s life as a Berlin woman whose “son” needs special attention. She also pretends she’s a victim of abuse by her husband, seemingly to try and seduce Peter, perhaps to make him do more evil things?

See, the problem with Magda is I don’t really get what her end goal is. She’s one of the best parts of the show so far, with Natalie doing excellent work shapeshifting into different roles, but her only “motive” is to make humans do bad things by whispering in their ears.

She appears to be helping the white nationalist movement because she wants them to stir up chaos, I guess? But why does she want that? Apparently it is all part of some greater prophecy that involves her sister, Santa Muerte.

At the end of the episode, the citizens of Belvedere Heights take a stand against the construction of the motorway. It’s a veritable powder keg of all the simmering racial tension we’ve seen throughout the episode. She lights the fuse with a few precious whispers, causing a bloodbath between the two warring factions.

All of this results in Tiago being forced to shoot his own brother, Raul, who fell under Magda’s spell and went on a killing rampage.

That fulfills the prophecy that Santa Muerte has repeated throughout the episode: “There will come a time when the world is ready for me, when nation will battle nation, when race will devour race, when brother will kill brother, until not a soul is left. Are you ready?”

Now all of what I’ve said is already a lot, right? But it’s not even technically the main plot of the hour!

No, the “main” storyline is that Tiago and his police partner, Lewis Michener, get a call to attend a grisly murder scene. Four people dead and all of them wearing  Day of the Dead makeup. The police are worried about a race war breaking out if anyone discovers that a few Mexican residents slaughtered four people from Beverly Hills.

As Tiago chimes in, they don’t know for sure that a Mexican did it, but the cops have already made up their minds. Especially as there was Spanish written at the scene saying “if you take our hearts, we take yours,” and all four bodies were missing their hearts.

Tiago and Lewis do a little investigation into the deaths but then that sort of gets pushed aside and you almost forget about those murders by the time the credits roll.

It feels like a Ryan Murphy show in the sense that someone might have thrown a bunch of plot ideas at the wall and now they’re waiting to see what sticks and what doesn’t. Except unlike Murphy’s series, and unlike the original Penny Dreadful, City of Angels is severely lacking in the campy goodness and sense of fun that makes all of those shows so entertaining and watchable.

However, I seem to be in the minority as a lot of critics and “Dreadfuls” appear to like the show. It is just the pilot episode, and I will definitely give it more time to find its legs. But if this wasn’t a Penny Dreadful series and it didn’t have Natalie Dormer in it, I don’t think I would return for episode two. That said, it is, so I’ll stick it out and see if it improves from here.

It’s not all bad though, most of the cast is doing great work, particularly Dormer and Lorenza Izzo (who plays Santa Muerte and who I hope we see more of) and the production is gorgeous, it’s almost worth watching just to see the scenery, costumes, and Showtime’s version of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Odds & Ends

• There is another subplot revolving around Tiago’s siblings, Mateo and Josefina. Josefina is seen getting felt up by some random guy at a bar and Mateo throws him out. Josefina is all “you’re not my father!” You know, typical sibling stuff. No idea how it will play into the main story yet. Perhaps if Raul is gone it will become a bigger part of the show?
• One thing I don’t entirely understand is why Santa Muerte and Magda are squaring off with each other. The saintly figure says a few times that she doesn’t care about the living, only the dead. So why would she be opposed to Magda’s wicked ways? Maybe because she’s making people die before their time, or something similar? I’m guessing it will have to do with the “prophecy.” Obviously she isn’t quite as cold and unfeeling toward humans as Magda is since she does save young Tiago in the episode’s beginning.
• I’ll also mention that Maria considers herself a witch or a “bruja” as she’s referred to in Spanish terminology. She has an altar to Santa Muerte and summons her near the episode’s end.
• As The AV Club pointed out in their astute review, “That final shot, with Tiago standing in between Magda and Santa Muerte, sets up the rest of the season just as much as everything preceding it.”

What did you think of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels’ premiere? Do you plan to watch the rest of the season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

New episodes of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels air Sunday nights at 10/9c on Showtime.