Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 1, 2014
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Penny Dreadful, “Demimonde” (Season 1, Episode 4) [Stream on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Penny Dreadful was one of those shows where it was a miracle we ever had it on TV in the first place. A wildly inventive mishmash of Victorian-era horror characters — we’ve got a wolfman, a few vampire hunters, a witch, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster(s) — all situated in filthy, sexy London town. In the first season, as we were still figuring our characters out, we got one particularly eye-opening moment that was never really touched upon (uh, so to speak) again. Which is a real shame.
To set the stage, Ethan Chandler is a werewolf, though at this point in the story the audience doesn’t know that yet. He’s mostly just helping Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) and Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) in their investigation into the evil that claimed his daughter and hunts Vanessa. Due to his wolfy secret, Chandler is a mysterious sort. He spends much of the first three episodes in disbelief at this world of monsters and mayhem. He’s also semi-romancing terminally ill prostitute Brona. But the character was a bit at odds and ends.
Enter Dorian Gray, played with infuriatingly lithe arrogance by Reeve Carney. Gray’s deal is that he’s immortal but for the aging portrait in his attic. On Penny Dreadful, he’s not quite the villain he’s made to be in the book, but his decadent amorality keeps him on the sidelines for some of the more straightforward crusades. He’s also wildly sexual, in basically all directions, throwing a captivating eye at Vanessa every now and then.
But the scene with him and Ethan Chandler in episode 4 — coming at the tail end of the episode — comes out of nowhere. It is a purely instinctive and sensual scene, where Chandler’s uncertainty and Gray’s curiosity lead them both into a most unexpected (but wildly hot) sex scene.
