“Julien’s Victrola” was a workhorse episode. Okay, yes, Jojo and Daphne are still in the thrall, and yes, the house is still falling down. But no, we don’t have an update on Sip or the other Mayfairs! On the bright side, we learned an awful lot about Scotland. And you know what? We’re having fun.
We’re ready, we’re motivated, we’re using our creative brains … except for Rowan, whose brain is trapped in Julien’s Victrola. Instead of locking us into a 45-minute departure episode with Julien and Rowan alone, à la season one’s “The Thrall,” Julien (thank God) splits Rowan’s personality into two halves when she tries to bail 30 seconds into this experiment. So we get to split our time between Rowan’s intellect, which is stuck with creepy Julien in his netherworld, and Rowan’s emotion, which has traveled back to the land of the living sans brain.
If I were Rowan, I might be a little offended if I suddenly lost my capacity for complex thought and nobody noticed. For a full hour, she walks around the house like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, and not one of her loved ones stops to say, “Hey, Ro, you seem a lot stupider than usual.” In fairness to them, she kind of doesn’t.
Rowan is not so much a character as she is a cardboard cutout of a character. You can put clothes on her, and you talk to her, and sometimes you can make her do tricks, but rarely does she exhibit a distinctive trait. Right now, her personality has been divided into two extremes, and neither of them is noticeably different from her personality this morning.
For instance, Lark breaks into the Mayfair house without knocking, full of indignation, and demands answers about Rowan’s freaky genetic profile, which, by the way, he obtained through stealthy means and tested without her knowledge or consent. Rowan is supposedly all emotion when Lark and all 600 of his red flags come barging into her house, so why isn’t she bursting into tears? Rowan and Lark are in love, a thing we believe because the show told us so, but I promise you can feel angry and in love at the same time. But, no, Emotional Rowan is just sort of serene and mildly points out that this is illegal and unethical.
Overcome with goo-goo eyes, I guess, Rowan immediately tells Lark the whole truth about being a witch with a demon-seed son and starts pointing out all his ruptured discs and broken tibias to prove it. Then she gets down on her knees and starts making out with him after briefly forgetting Jojo’s name. “This isn’t you,” says Brainy Rowan, who is watching from above. Um, babe, you were sending this man all kinds of incriminating drunk texts not two days ago; this very much is you.
Rowan could … she should … erase herself from Lark’s memory using the elixir Dolly Jean has just whipped up for this purpose. It’s the best way to protect the family. But Rowan doesn’t care about that right now because she’s too busy naming her and Lark’s unborn children in her head.
Actually, it’s a good thing she doesn’t let him drink the brain-blaster tea because Lark, unlike Rowan, has a productive idea. He’s going to use the genetic material from Lasher’s baby teeth (shudder) to make a concentrate, allowing the cells to multiply and hopefully create enough Lasher essence for Rowan to tap into his powers again. And it almost works! Science!
Speaking of that forgetting potion, it’s what Julien used to erase a pertinent moment from Cortland’s memory. Luckily, Moira, with the help of Deirdre’s leftover Thorazine and magic powers, is available to lead Cortland in a guided hypnotherapy session to recover these memories, which happens to be the only context in which I would trust recovered memories. The journey into Cortland’s psyche is dark (shocker) but fruitful.
When Cortland was a boy, his father took him to Donnelaith, a mythical place that nonetheless has a physical location in Scotland. (I suppose sort of like how Narnia is also technically in England?) In Cortland’s memory, there is a girl, lots of sheep, and a blond psychopath in a very chic chunky knit sweater. That’s his brother, Ian, we learn, and he’s terrifying. Who even knew Cortland had a brother? Not Cortland. Anyway, Julien, who has a gambling problem, made the boys compete in a game of blood-sacrifice chicken to see who could “better please the old gods.” Ian slaughtered all the sheep and then also slaughtered the girl, so he wins. Somebody get Dr. Phil on the phone! Just kidding, Dr. Phil is a monster, and nobody is really worried about Cortland’s trauma right now, anyway. The point is that we learned something important.
While all of this is going on, Rowan, trapped in the Victrola (which Julien has staged like a Victorian pub, for some reason), is just blowing through lore exposition thanks to her suddenly unencumbered intellect. While Brainy Rowan waits for her dumber half to notice she’s missing and pull her out within the hour — the only way to escape without dying, according to the rules Julien just made up — she keeps herself busy figuring out various aspects of Julien’s evil plan. Helpfully, Julien keeps a little dollhouse version of the real Mayfair house, so Rowan can see and hear everything happening back on Earth in the meantime.
Basically, the hard-core Mayfairs like Julien, Ian, and Rowan’s great-grandmother Marguerite do magic the old-fashioned way by honoring (i.e., sacrificing virgins, etc.) the original deities, called the Taltos. These Mayfairs are based in Scotland, and they have a scotch distillery in Kilbride, which is helpful for narrowing down the real-world coordinates of the mythical Donnelaith. At the last minute, everyone finally realizes Rowan is only half a person, and she sucks herself out of Julien’s gastropub from hell just in the nick of time.
But that’s not the good part. The good part takes place in that castle in Scotland, which is obviously where Albrecht has taken Lasher. I’m curious to know why Lasher is dressed for the Ren Faire, but I’m trying not to get distracted because Ian just walked in. Ian, the besweatered tween and sheep murderer from Cortland’s recovered memory, is all grown up. Before Albrecht can even finish giving Lasher-care instructions, Ian goes full Lady Macbeth and slits Albrecht’s throat right there in the stairwell. What an entrance!
Additional Questions, Comments, and Concerns
• Has anyone ever considered just asking Dolly Jean anything? She is clearly an untapped resource here, and it’s making me bananas.
• “Lasher” in Scotland is “Alshar.” Interesting.
• Bold of Lark to let Rowan give him stitches in this state.
• I like that Dolly Jean keeps her spells in the same type of little countertop box where my mom keeps my grandma’s sugar cookie recipes.
