Dracula - Season Finale - Episode 10 - Recap - Let There Be Light
Dracula - Season Finale - Episode 10 - Recap - Let There Be Light
NBC is done with Dracula, for now (and likely for good, based on the poor ratings), and it's for the best as far as I'm concerned. Oddly, though, this episode is very straightforward and even quite good at times. As per last episode's cliffhanger, Lucy's been made a vampire (I incorrectly identified her as Jayne in last week's recap, whoops) and it is not treating her well. Dracula (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) turned her last week, revealing that his identity as American industrialist Alexander Grayson has been a ruse all along.
Dracula and Van Helsing prepare for their final assault on The Order of the Dragon. Grayson is preparing for the final demonstration of his wireless energy, a neat bit of science fictional alternate history whose continued presence on the show is utterly confounding to me. Anyway, some reporters are all set to do a story on the machine ahead of Grayon's big demonstration. Harker's a man of The Order now, though, and the reporters are there as saboteurs. The whole affair, much to Harker's dismay, will go boom when powered on. Harker rushes to Mina, trying to escape the blast radius before everything goes bad. Mina reaches Grayson easily enough, but the machine won't shut down. Most everyone escapes, but the whole building goes up in a fireball before Dracula can get out.
The Order preps for war a little differently. They've obtained a strip from the Shroud of Turin, soaked with the blood of Christ and therefore the most holy artifact in Christendom. They've also got a seer who can track vampires. Very useful stuff! The city-wide hunt is yielding good results, but Mrs. Browning (the leader's wife) is getting kid parts in the mail. Yikes! That's no good. Meanwhile, the seer seems to reveal that Grayson is a vampire, much to Lady Jayne's chagrin.
Van Helsing, to solidify the end of his association with Dracula, destroys his own lab and murders Mr. Renfield. Nooooo, Renfield. :( :( I liked Renfield a lot. He was a bastion of sense in the sea of abstraction that was this show. Anyway, Van Helsing captures Browning, using the kids as bait. He'd been the one sending parts, which makes sense, since he captured them in an earlier episode. He drops Browning into the basement where the kids are. They've been fed Dracula's blood and are now vampires, feasting on Browning while Van Helsing douses the whole cabin with gasoline. Damn, man. This is probably the cruelest and best twist of the entire show! I'm genuinely impressed by it.
Lady Jayne searches through the wreckage of the big explosion that interrupted Grayson's demonstration, finally knowing Alexander Grayson's true identity as Dracula. They fight in the dust and rubble, but it ends more quickly than I expected. Drac throws her across the room, her body impaling on steel rubble. She tells him not to turn her into a vampire, and he honors the request, ending her life by eating her blood. Dracula goes to visit Mina Murray, finally consummating their flirtations with a gratuitous sex scene.
That's the show! They end it on Van Helsing revealing the secret of Dracula's identity to Harker, a bit too late. This show was so weird. It ranged from legitimately engaging to having the sort of appeal of abstract art, the simple fact of its bizarreness being enough to hold my interest. Well, now its all over, and you can watch the one final preview below!