Shadows House (S1E1-5) (continued)

The third episode, "The Soot Sickness," basically confirms things that had only been ominously hinted at in the first two. For instance, the fact that living dolls who fail to content themselves with superficially happy, mindless service will be executed.

Likewise Shadows who displease the Lord Grandfather (who it turns out also has a bunch of other titles, but living dolls aren't supposed to speak any of them unless it's strictly necessary, as his epithets are sullied by the tongues of such lowly creatures as the living dolls). The debut ceremonies are where most of these purgings - of both Shadow and Doll - are conducted.

But no need to stress over that. No wasting time thinking about trivial things.

The nature of the Shadows themselves is also made (even) more ominous with the introduction of a new plot element. It's not just for the sake of cleanliness that the living dolls need to constantly wipe up the soot their masters leave everywhere, but also for security. If too much soot builds up in one spot, it apparently congeals into a living, malevolent Studio Ghibli-looking creature called a scorch. On their own, scorches are small, vicious monsters that can pose a threat to lone people. Several of them can fuse together into a "phantom," which is a much bigger threat.

Thanks to the dolls' fastidious cleaning, phantoms form only very rarely; once every several years at most. But, one of them has formed today.

While rallying with the other dolls to contain and destroy the rampaging monster, Emilico also learns that ash-creaturs aren't the only threats she has to be wary of. It turns out that there are living doll kapos. It is here that the cheery, superficially-homey facade over their servitude drips away completely, and brute force oppression makes itself brazenly visible.

The battle reveal the scorch/phantom creatures to also have a significant degree of tactical intelligence. After the dolls break the phantom up into a swarm of scorches that go scurrying off and need to be hunted, the scorches use sophisticated baiting and ambush tactics to isolate small groups of dolls, refuse into proto-phantoms, and try to overwhelm them. Emilico and her friends are one such small group, and one of their number ends up with a proto-phantom engulfing her head and trying to drag her away.

It almost looks less like a predator grabbing its prey than it does like some type of parasitic fusion.

Considering that the soot these creatures spawn from is generated by the Shadows, and the Shadows have a kind of telepathic link they develop to use their "faces," well. I'm getting the impression that the soot itself is some type of malevolent, parasitic life form.

And we saw that Kate (and presumably the other Shadows) have human skin under their coating of soot.

But then, they each also have a human "living doll" shaped just like them. Hmm.

Well, for now they manage to destroy the creature attached to Rosemary, but she's clearly not okay. Aside from suffocation, she's showing other symptoms that the more experienced dolls attribute to "soot sickness." Rosemary is taken away by the living doll medical team, who assure Emilico and the others that she'll be back healthy and just fine soon enough, don't worry about it.

I was very surprised when they turned out to be telling the truth at the end of the episode. Rosemary (or else a very faithful clone of her) does indeed return from their care in the following episode, all healed up and chipper again. I feel like there has to be a dark secret behind this that hasn't been revealed yet, but so far the ominous implications seem to have just been a fakeout.

...on the flip side, there's also a scene in the meantime where Mia cheerfully tells Emilico that she's "very lucky," in response to Emilico saying how much Mistress Kate yells at her. Cue the reveal that Mia's back is covered in scars. Not really a surprise, given what we've seen of Mia's own mistress, but unpleasant nonetheless.

The episode ends with a discovery that probably should have bothered Emilico more than it does, even with her conditioning to not think about thing. That little chicken-doll she made of spare cloth and stuffed with soot starts to move on its own a little, and - despite having just seen what soot moving on its own signifies - her reaction is enchantment rather than alarm. On the other hand, there is a mitigating factor that comes right on the heels of this; when Emilico shows the doll to Kate, Kate discovers - to both of their amazement - that Kate can control the doll's movements.

Emilico is a bit less surprised by this than Kate. After all, she herself thinks that she's an (inexplicably flesh and blood) doll that was brought to life by the power of the Lord Grandfather, so it only makes sense that lesser Shadows can animate lesser toys. Kate, who knows a bit more of the truth (though seemingly nowhere near the entire truth) than Emilico, is more pensive.

Emilico does briefly wonder, during her writing of unwanted thoughts in her notebook that night, if the scorch/phantom entities are actually independent creatures after all, or if they're being animated by an outside force. Of course, the notebook is for things that she intends to not think about, but it's also for things that the audience is intended to think about.

Well. We already know that the soot is the pent up rage and negativity of the masters, inflicted indirectly on the slaves. Those negative emotions sometimes animating some of the soot as hate-elementals could be a natural extension of that, but there also could be more to it. The malice actively felt by shadows might be "activating" soot that's already accumulated, in a monsters from the id kind of way.

Alternatively, there's some kind of conspiracy going on within the Shadows House, and someone is deliberately animating and directing those monsters to attack the help as part of some intricate political ploy.

Of course, if they can control the soot that much, it seems like they shouldn't need slaves to clean it all the time. Hmm.

In any case, Kate swears Emilico to secrecy about what they've discovered wrt Kate's soot-animating powers. She's not sure what to make of this unknown ability of hers yet, and she doesn't know what the consequences of revealing it might be. I believe her in this case, and frankly I also agree with her decision. It might turn out that all Shadows can control the soot and it's no big deal, but it also might be that only the Lord Grandfather is supposed to have that power and he'd kill her as a potential rival.

Speaking of him, this episode's stinger has him and some other upper-echelon Shadows planning the upcoming debut ceremony. He's definitely less human-looking than the others, as I expected.

Humanoid, but three times the size of a normal person and with a distinctly amorphous look to how he fills out his clothes. Like I said, about what I expected.

Episode four, "Watchers in the Night," begins with Emilico and a couple of other living dolls running afoul of their resident kapo during the next hall-cleaning session, and being assigned punitive duties. Specifically, they're being ordered to patrol the great hall and other common areas of their wing all night for the next week to see if they can find any more signs of scorch activity. They still aren't sure where that big phantom last episode came from, and the management is very eager to find out which work team slacked off badly enough to let that much soot build up in one place.

Along with Emilico, this penal night-patrol includes a prickly - but kindhearted - boy named Shaun, and a very quiet nervous girl who eventually names herself as Rum. Shaun is nearsighted and hasn't been given any kind of corrective lenses or the like. Rum seems to have an anxiety disorder. Both of them underperform in their cleaning duties because of this, and Emilico made the mistake of trying to stand up for them when the kapo was bullying them for these shortcomings.

Additionally, all three of them are attached to pre-debut Shadows, and they were baited into bringing kapo-girl's attention down on them by the machinations of another pre-debutant's doll on his master's instructions. He seems to think that overworking his rival's dolls and giving them less time together in the time leading up to the ceremony will make him look better by comparison.

Patrick Shadows may or may not be right about how that works, but either way he's a dick. His doll Ricky who actually did the baiting for him, well...I'm going to wait before judging him, considering the amount of power Patrick has over him.

The first couple of nights are uneventful. Eventually though, sleep deprivation starts to catch up with them, and Shaun decides to bring pillows and blankets so they can sleep on the job since it seems like no one is paying attention to them anyway. Shaun is smart; he seems to have intuited that this whole thing is a plot to undermine their ability to serve their masters in the coming debut.

He's also nice, even if he acts sarcastic and condescending. He brought extra blankets for the other two as well.

Emilico and Shaun bond a little bit while Rum shivers and apologizes for nothing under her breath. Emilico tries to get through to her, and seems to actually be making progress, when a newcomer in the great hall gives them all a scare. It turns out to not be a phantom like they feared, but rather a "veiled doll." Masked, adult-sized living dolls who never speak, never interact with the others, and are only seen bringing and taking things to the kitchen and laundry room.

I have a suspicion that these are the zombified would-be faces of shadows who fail to pass their debut exam. Something like that, anyway.

Unfortunately, the nervous Rum fled the room before they could learn that the newcomer was harmless, and she doesn't come back afterward. With phantoms and possibly worse things potentially being on the loose, the other two decide that they need to go find her. Even when their search brings them to one of the hallways they are forbidden to enter.

It turns out that the Lord Grandfather really, really, really doesn't want living dolls poking around in that hallway.

Actual pressure-plate-activated arrow traps. I'll bet there'll be mimics, gelatinous cubes, and spheres of annihilation hidden in statues' mouths up ahead.

It's Shaun's fast reflexes that save Emilico from the arrow trap. But, after he regretfully urges her to turn back and just hope Rum survives, it's Emilico who hears Rum's timid whimpering and intuits the presence of a hidden revolving door similar to those connecting each doll's sleeping compartment to their master's chambers.

Hidden doors to circumvent the arrow traps. Yeah, there's definitely going to be mimics.

Rum, for her part, has been hiding in this filthy little crawlspace behind said hidden door telling herself that the others will never forgive her for abandoning them and that she should just die and get it over with already. I'm not sure how she's supposed to have gotten into this space, but I guess she managed somehow. Her finger tries to reassure her, in a high pitched voice, that there is still hope.

She talks to her finger, a la Danny Torrance from "The Shining." Not sure if she's actually got a plural thing going on, or if it's just an eccentric habit of a deeply lonely child.

Her finger turns out to be correct; the other two do come for her, and don't hold anything against her at all. Her finger is clearly the one with the best judgement, she should defer to its opinions henceforth.

Rum's hiding actually ends up giving them a lucky break; exploring this mysterious crevice turns out to be the key to a successful mission. A trapdoor in the ceiling leads into a long unused attic-like space, and this place is all full of soot. Trace amounts of soot particles that happened to blow upward toward the ceilings seem to have very slowly built up in this attic, and everyone seems to have just forgotten the place existed until the lock on this trapdoor rusted apart and let the scorches that had been gestating there escape.

Well, that's the optimistic interpretation. The other is that someone's been deliberately using the attic as a soot-storage that they can animate "monsters" from as needed. But at this point it really could be either.


The fifth episode is "The Debut." I think it, and my parting thoughts, will require a post of their own.