Dracula 1.02 “A Whiff of Sulfur” Recap

Romania, 1881: Van Helsing separates the coffin that was holding in Dracula, raising the first part enough to where the vampire can escape. He does so by levitating out of the iron prison he was in for years and comes out of his long slumber looking to fight. After aggressively coming after Van Helsing, the future professor stabs him in the foot with a blade in order to keep him still while he tells Vlad III that he knows of his past. The reason he’s decide to resurrect The Impaler from his tomb? Van Helsing wants to exact revenge on the Order of the Dragon for killing his wife and children and they would never face justice as long as Dracula was dead. He didn’t have the power or the ruthlessness to pay the organization back for what they did and once he’s finished with what he had to say, he takes the blade out of Dracula’s foot and allows him to feed on the other man in the room.

Present day: Van Helsing chastises Dracula for killing the huntsman Kruger and thereby driving the Order to activate the seers. The whole point of them being in London is to operate under the radar and stealthily begin chipping away at the Order’s fortune by wiping out their petroleum interests with geomagnetic power; it’s not for Dracula to act reckless and feed whenever he likes, even though he says he killed Kruger because the man saw his face. While getting his blood drawn in hopes of Van Helsing using it to create an elixir that allows him to bask in the sun, Dracula gets annoyed at the slow progress in the search for the antidote to a vampire’s greatest weakness, as it has been a decade since the professor began working on a possible cure.

Elsewhere, Lucy, Harker, and Lucy’s mother are attending a fencing tournament, where Alastair, the man Lucy has her eye on, is competing. She gives him all three of her purple ribbons to wear in hopes of pushing him through to at least the semifinals, while Mina shows up late with her hand taped up. Apparently, she had an accident while practicing for her upcoming final exam and cut her hand to ribbons, though it did give her a chance to practice suturing. While the match between Alastair and Daniel Davenport, the only son of Lord Davenport and defending champion in the tournament, begins, Lady Jayne and Mr. Browning watch from overhead and discuss the lack of vampire incidents since Kruger’s death. Rather than call for another huntsman, they’re opting to allow Jayne to handle this and she gets Browning to agree to calling the seers so they can find out where the vamp is and monitor its behavior patterns. Daniel wins decisively over Alastair and shifts his gaze toward the Laurents, as Lucy’s mother pays for their table since Harker doesn’t have the funding to do so.

The reporter’s raise at The Inquisitor is also on hold and he’s become more uncomfortable with the idea of not pulling his weight with Mina, especially since she’s inches from achieving her dream of being a surgeon. Meanwhile, Grayson summons for Lord Laurent and asks the businessman if he would be willing to consider selling off his shares in the coolant company; Laurent, of course, declines. Dracula then heads over to the Inquisitor with Renfield and explains that while he doesn’t want to turn Mina into a vampire, citing the fact that it would be an abomination, he doesn’t want to lose her for the second time and will thus begin attempting to get closer to Harker. He picks the reporter up and takes him on a carriage ride to Clive’s old place, which Grayson buys following a brief tour and offers to give Harker. The catch? He wants Harker to come work for him as his VP of Public Affairs, where his duties would be navigating Grayson through London society and its corresponding business community. When Harker is slow to respond, Grayson gives him until Monday morning in order to decide and leaves the keys with the man so that he can lock up the place.

The following day, Mina and Harker are out in town and she expresses just how nervous she is about her final exam, which, if she fails, will be the thing that stands between her and advancing past fourth year. She notices he’s out of it and he explains the offer from Grayson that’s been filling his head; Mina is beside herself with excitement at the possibility and begins trying to talk Harker into taking the opportunity. She explains that Grayson is a revolutionary and someone with a high success rate with his projects, while Harker is still unsure about the offer, citing that it feels too good to be true and that there’s not many records of Grayson’s activity. He eventually does seem to go over to her side and the two share a kiss in celebration. Meanwhile, Lady Jayne enters the den of the seers and threatens to have Mr. Browning bring down his wrath upon them if they don’t figure out where the vampire is. For his part, Browning is already worried about Grayson buying up as much coolant as he has and threatens Laurent from selling his shares, telling him that anyone who helps Grayson (and thereby hurts their petroleum interests) will suffer harsh consequences.

Grayson invites Jayne to dinner and performs a magic trick involving a disappearing coin in order to seduce her. It works and the two end up having sex. The next morning, Grayson invites Mina for a ride in the carriage as the rains are coming and he doesn’t want her to have to walk alone without an umbrella. She tells him of her impending exam and the fight she’s had to exhibit to make it this far, when other people tried to veer her off course into a nursing career; however, she’s extremely nervous about how important the exam today is and receives a piece of advice from her suitor: the only way to fail is to give up on your dreams. As Harker begins having second thoughts about the deal with Grayson, with the agenda of the American in question, Mina takes her exam in front of the entire class where she performs admirably, remembering what Grayson told her in the carriage about never giving up. Meanwhile, the seers use their powers to locate the vampire, only for Grayson to offer a counterattack and break the mirror that they were using to spotlight the vampire, leaving it bleeding after he’s done with it. Once Lady Jayne finds out about it, she’s surprised, considering that the vampire will have to be two or three centuries old in order to do something like this.

Just as Harker finds out his rent is raised again, he learns that Mina was first in her class and the first female physician to do so in her school’s history, so they’re ready to go out and celebrate. Harker decides not to go and ends up accepting Grayson’s offer, where his first duty will be to tell his superior about Lord Laurent’s dirty little secret. That happens to be found at the Swinburne Club that night, where Grayson gets in and sees Daniel Davenport and Lord Laurent kissing. He may not judge the lives of others, but he uses this knowledge, and the destruction it could cause two families, as leverage to presumably get Laurent’s shares of the company. Elsewhere, Harker is getting drunk with his newspaper friends on the last night of his employment and ends up telling them that he thinks Mina will get over the silliness of university and go on to more womanly pursuits – all the while she’s listening in the background, having come in unnoticed. As she flees the scene, Harker chasing her, Dracula waits for the last person to leave the club before hitting on the coat girl Sinead, the redhead from the pilot. He takes her outside and feeds on her, escaping at the last second before Lady Jayne can intervene.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-I’m not usually a big fan of flashbacks, but I wouldn’t mind if the show continued to use them to fill out Dracula’s backstory. He’s obviously lived a long life and anything they can do to either showcase dynamics between characters (i.e. the opening scene in this episode showing why Van Helsing sought him out and foreshadowing their relationship) or offer an explanation as to why he thinks/feels a certain way (i.e. fill out the relationship with Ilona) would be fine with me, since there are a lot of factors motivating his actions right now. It helps that I’ve liked everything they’ve done that takes place in the past, with ”A Whiff of Sulfur”‘s opening scene featuring some great visuals and a look at a very different Dracula.
-Poor Sinead. We hardly knew ye.
-I assumed that Mina’s injured hand would play into the episode more than it did. I don’t know what it could have been other than a surgical accident, but it felt like something that was going to have a deeper explanation.
-One thing I’d like to see the show utilize is color/clothing to differentiate character. It’s done that way with the women, as you’ll generally find Mina in blue, Lucy in pinks/reds, and Jayne in green, though there’s been some variation in terms of styling thus far. The peripheral male characters have been a bit tougher for me to differentiate thus far and styling would be something to stand out from one another.
-Interesting that they’re already fracturing (a very insecure) Harker’s relationship with Mina during episode two. I figured, given the pace of the plot thus far, that it would happen a little later in the season; I suppose, though, that they’re doing this in order to explore Dracula’s relationship with Ilona through his connection with Mina.
-I would watch a show about Lady Jayne, clad in all leather, fighting vampires across London.
-The tease of Grayson biting Jayne at dinner was nicely played and the sex scene, complete with him seeing her as Ilona, was well-filmed. It wasn’t as adventurously/sleekly directed an episode as the premiere, but this was still something to behold, especially when the sparse (but effective) score kicked in.
-Imagine having to cut into a dead body in front of your entire class. I get anxiety writing by myself, so I can only imagine what was going on in Mina’s mind during her exam. Since Grayson was watching during the exam, could he have used one of his powers to guide her to success?
-Lucrezia Borgia reference! I miss The Borgias, you guys.
-Next week on Dracula: Grayson investigates Lady Jayne’s involvement with the Order of the Dragon, while Lucy tries to help Mina get over her broken heart.