Dracula 1.04 “From Darkness to Light” Recap

A figure, covered in a black blanket, stays hunched over on an empty train car, thereby drawing in three curious vampires looking for an easy kill. However, the figure is actually an armed Lady Jayne, who lets the vampires get close enough to her so that she has a better shot at taking them out. She manages to behead one and slit the throat of a second, but the third, a male, sneaks out the back and escapes her wrath. Meanwhile, at Carfax, Grayson and Renfield discuss Jayne’s status as a huntsman, which Grayson has taken more as a challenge than a direct threat. He doesn’t plan to kill her, nor will he be ending the affair – he wants to make her give up her trust.

As Grayson gets confronted by the third vampire, who calls him master, while outside on his balcony, Jayne and Browning examine the two vampire bodies, neither of which old (or powerful) enough to have been the killer of the seers. The latest resident of Carfax turns out to be Josef Cervenka, Grayson’s right-hand man from years ago; however, he’s upset when he learns that they’re not going to kill Lady Jayne and physically destroy the Ordo Draco, instead focusing on attacking their source of power. He does get the invitation to stay as long as he wants, though, much to Renfield’s chagrin. The following day, Lucy is all abuzz with the impending engagement party of Mina and Jonathan’s, spouting ideas almost as quickly as they come into her head. But Jonathan is less concerned about fireworks and floral arrangements that he is Grayson’s next assignment for him – to find out as much as he can about General Arthur Ogilvy, who is leading the charge in the war against the Ottoman Empire even though, behind closed doors, he’s against it. The real culprit? General Colin Shaw, his highest-ranked underling and main threat to restore the Order’s oil interests thanks to the upcoming war. Harker is to figure out their weaknesses and failures, so Grayson has something to use against them.

While Josef watches Mina and Lucy from the floor above, the ladies and Grayson get a visit from Mr. Kowalski, Grayson’s chief engineer of the resonator machine. Lucy doesn’t want to watch the impending demonstration and gets sent on her way, as Mina gets escorted to the machine and watches as the metal casing the coolant is housed in overheats and nearly explodes. Grayson steps in to protect her from any shrapnel and when she leaves, he explains to Josef that he need not mention the physical similarities between Ms. Murray and Ilona again. That evening, Grayson is scheduled to meet Lady Jayne at the Savoy Hotel, but instead of joining her for dinner, drinks, and what promises to be a heck of a dessert, he leaves her there waiting.

Mina finds Harker after undergoing the near-explosion and expresses that she doesn’t think that having their party at Carfax is the right move, since neither of them know anything about Grayson’s motives. She feels as if he’s inserted himself into their relationship as if he belongs there and Harker argues that in a way, he does, as he’s the one who convinced the former reporter to go after Mina when the two were broken up. Harker then encourages Mina to bury herself in her work and let Lucy handle the details of the engagement party, which she does, only to find that Van Helsing gives her menial tasks to do rather than trusting her with something important. Elsewhere, Grayson gets injected with more of Van Helsing’s solar serum and gives himself a test run in the sun. Though he’s able to withstand more than he ever has before, he quickly catches on fire and Van Helsing postulates that the serum only works on the tissue surrounding the injection. For the serum to be distributed throughout the body, Grayson needs a working heart and a new dispersion agent.

As she tries to make the most of her afternoon in Van Helsing’s office, Mina finds that there’s a secret locked door that she hadn’t noticed before. She quickly finds the hidden key on a shelf and surveys the as-yet-unseen room; the student is drawn to a brown box with a false bottom, where she finds slides of live cells dated as far in the past as nine years ago, which she attempts to analyze under a microscope. Lucy comes by and admits that it hurts planning an engagement party for a friend who you don’t know if you’ll ever speak to again upon their getting married; Mina reassures her that they’ll stay friends regardless of what happens and goes back to her work. Meanwhile, Dracula arrives at Jayne’s and apologizes for standing her up the night before. He promises to take her some place thrilling and promises that if she’s not fully satisfied by their evening, she has the right to not call him again or accept his calls. The two wind up at an all-female mud wrestling match and have sex immediately thereafter.

The following day, Grayson learns that one of his servants, a cook named Elsa, was killed and fed on by Josef, while Harker can find no one to say anything bad about General Shaw. However, he finds it odd that he wrote a biography on the man when he was in school and that there are no facts out there that he didn’t end up including. Lady Jayne tells Browning and Lord Davenport that the American isn’t a great threat and the group decides to get closer to Harker as their next bit of strategy, with Davenport volunteering to lead the way. Just then, Generals Shaw and Ogilvy are brought into the room and offered something to drink as talk turns to turning control of the Persian oil fields to the Ordo Draco by March. When Ogilvy expresses that that might not be possible with the stand down decree handed down by the sultan, he gets choked to death using Browning’s powers and Shaw agrees to an offensive that coming August.

Davenport hires a contractor named Ms. Kleiberson with the intent of finding the one thing Grayson loves the most and obliterating it. Meanwhile, Harker receives a note from someone claiming to have the truth about Shaw and Grayson receives a note from Lady Jayne requesting his presence later. Renfield brings up to Grayson that Josef has no discretion, no self-control, and cannot be trusted since he knows what Mina means; however, Grayson calls him a brother and that he’s someone he knows will always obey, a classic soldier. Grayson then arrives at Jayne’s home where she terminates the relationship, something he calls predictable, in that she tends to dominate men and leave them when she’s bored. She, though, failed with him, which made her infatuated and caused her emotions to become intense enough to where she needed to reassert control, which she’s doing with the breakup. Her date for the evening then arrives to pick her up.

When Grayson returns home, Josef begs his master to let him kill Jayne, whose stench he smelled on him last night. He agrees, telling his friend to make her scream, while Harker meets with Peter Lang, who gives him the name Vera Markham and an address to find her. That night, Josef finds Jayne’s home and just as he’s about to attack her, Grayson grabs him from behind and starts stabbing him. The two tussle for a little bit and Jayne saves the day by bringing out a weapon and beheading Josef, turning him into a cloud of dust. She then takes a bath with Grayson, who explains that he often has insomnia and takes long walks on Jayne’s street, which is how he heard the man in her house. Jayne then takes the dust from Josef to Browning with the idea that this is the vampire responsible for killing the seers. He believes it since the vamp is old enough and admonishes her for being so reckless about finding out the identity of the killer.

Sad about Josef’s departure, Grayson tells Renfield that Jayne has now been declawed and will no longer be a threat to them both. However, when Renfield heads to Empire and Colonial to check into nickel-steel alloys for the metal casings, he’s abducted by Lord Davenport.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-Awesome opening sequence – seeing Lady Jayne in her element is always fun and it was an interesting enough change of scenery that hopefully is the first step in opening the world of the show up a little.
-I like how they didn’t feel the need to make Josef’s death sad by having him make some kind of emotional gesture toward Grayson. Just having Grayson be noticeably down at the loss of his friend, but understand that he had to sacrifice something in order to win back Jayne, was more than enough, especially since we got to witness an impressive first major power move. This is the first time in the series where Grayson’s reputation has matched up with his actions and I enjoyed what I saw.
-Lucy makes me sad – possibly closeted lesbian in a society that condemns homosexuality, about to lose her best friend to married life, seemingly no direction in her life aside from finding someone of status. She can rock a pink outfit, though.
-Grayson’s pronunciation of the word “chief” was weirdly British.
-The shot of Grayson and Lady Jayne in the bathtub was actually quite gorgeous, all the golden tones and such. Also cool, both visually and story-wise, was Josef’s death, which confirms that older vampires leave behind dust while younger vampires look like human corpses.
-I don’t know how I feel about Browning being gifted with powers. Makes sense given how much control over the world the Ordo Draco have had for centuries and the cult-ish visuals that we’ve seen from them thus far – I’m just not sure how what are essentially magical powers will play in a decidedly grounded universe.
-How do you think Grayson will get around not having a functioning heart when it comes to the serum?
-No check-in with the vampire at Jayne’s. I still feel like there’s a huge reveal coming in a later episode, that either it’s someone close to her or someone close to Grayson, hence his connection in the dungeon the night he stayed over.
-I assumed that Grayson took Jayne to see some kind of underground vampire fighting as a way of testing her reaction to such a thing. But nope, mud wrestling.
-So, Ms. Kleiberson is kind of a vampire hit woman?
-The truth about Shaw is that he’s part Asian? He likes Asian women? He’s married? I don’t know what Vera’s appearance is supposed to tell me.
–Dracula is on hiatus next week, but when it returns in two weeks, Grayson and Mina reveal their true feelings and Van Helsing’s attempt at using his solar serum is disastrous.