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The Sandman - Netflix

Thoughts on 2.4 to 2.6 ('Brief Lives') spoilers, etc.

Again, I probably should have read the comics again to refresh my memory but I haven't really felt like touching them in the last year. I think they changed a lot more here than in 'Season of Mists'. First of all my biggest fucking complaint: taking out Matthew teaching Delirium how to drive ias absolutely criminal. Maybe they thought it would encourage crazy people to try to drive cars with the help of a talking raven or something, I don't know. But it's fun, it should have been in there. In general they toned Delirium down. I think partly because they didn't want her to seem too much like a child? Or they didn't want to make it look like they're making fun of the mentally ill? She does have good moments, though, and as I said before Esme Creed-Miles gave a great performance. She has some really strong stuff with Dream and Destruction that's straight from the books. I'm glad they kept in the part where she makes her eyes go the same colour to help Dream, though it would have been more effective if she'd been more, well, delirious before that to contrast with her change in behaviour. WHATEVER, she was good and worked really well with Sturridge and that's probably the main thing.

I'm finding the compression rough. Looking over at my books (no I didn't BURN THEM) I can see there's supposed to be two volumes between 'Season of Mists' and 'Brief Lives'. And then another one before 'The Kindly Ones'. But instead we're getting the 3 of them one after the other. It just makes it all feel less epic. They do weave in some of the standalone stories here and there: the stuff with Orpheus singing in Hades was very good. I think they moved Thermidor back as I'm pretty sure in the books it comes earlier and you don't really know Orpheus' story. Telling it chronologically is a bit more boring but it was good to see Jenna Coleman again.

With 'A Game of You' completely skipped, there's no Thessaly so Dream is sad about Nada leaving instead. I guess this works fine if you haven't read the books.

Wanda being moved to 'Brief Lives' is the biggest change. We get some great scenes out of it, with her telling her story to Dream and Delirium and the scene with Dream and her aunt at the funeral nearly moving me to tears. But sadly we lose Barbie writing on the gravestone in lipstick and seeing Wanda on the bus with Death which I feel are pretty iconic moments.

Acting is all very good again and I love Barnabas and Destruction (even if I expected him to be Scottish.) Kirby Howell-Baptiste absolutely steals any scene she's in as Death. Orpheus' actor was good at singing.

So I think it's two weeks now until the last four episodes than there's a one-off Death special and that's it. I'm going to complain about it feeling too short again for sure.
 
I just finished ep 3. I decided since I have two weeks to watch the episodes that are out, I will stretch it out and not try to watch it all at once.

I liked Dream giving the key back to God. Makes perfect sense! I don't understand why Queen Titania made Nuala stay in the dream realm.

I'm glad Joffrey gets to be a mischievous imp.
 
I do wonder sometimes when I'm watching if my brain is just filling in the blanks when the show is lacking because I've read the comic, but I think that episode probably did work on its own if YOU say so.
 
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First episode of Season 2 in the bag. I think I liked it? It’s hard to pin down. Being familiar with the source material changes the experience and I imagine it lands very differently for those coming in fresh even after season 1.

As a season opener, it’s not exactly a knockout. It does a decent job setting things in motion, and I appreciate how difficult this material is to adapt, but it didn’t hit with the impact I was hoping for.

I wasn’t totally sold on Destiny. He came off more like a solemn bloke in a dressing gown than the embodiment of cosmic inevitability. Despair still doesn't work at all. I know why they changed her so drastically (it's obvious) but it just doesn't work. Even Death and Desire, who I think are well cast overall, didn’t quite have the gravitas they carried in Season 1. Still solid, but they didn’t own the screen like they did before.

We’re not here for them, though. Show me Delirium.

And… she was fine, I guess. Too muted for my taste. Not otherworldly enough. But honestly, that’s been a bit of a recurring issue across the board with the Endless. They all feel slightly too grounded. Delirium is a character who should feel like whimsy and tragedy, not just quirky. I also think she was cast a little too old, but I get the reasoning here too. The actress is fine, but I just didn't get what I was hoping from the direction. That said, the melting painting effect as she stepped through her portrait was a genuinely cool moment.


268363_manguinha_delirium-sandman.webp
I do get why they didn't go full tilt with it. It's an easy thing to fuck up badly. I was just hoping for a tad more.

The Nada storyline, on the other hand, was handled pretty well. It had weight, and I thought the emotional beats worked. But there was one really jarring moment when they walk outside the palace, and it’s just blatantly the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Now, I grew up five minutes from there, so maybe I’m biased, but it pulled me straight out of the scene. It’s a great location, one of the UK’s most iconic architectural landmarks, but it was the wrong world for the moment. Gorgeous building, wrong world. And a slightly strange choice to use such an overt example of Indo-Saracenic design to represent “the first people.” Maybe I’m nitpicking, but it felt off.

I do need to go back and revisit the books to see how Dream actually comes to his decision to descend into Hell and try to save Nada. Was it always this abrupt? I know he’s fickle and more than a bit of a dick -that’s baked into the character- but this felt like a pretty unearned epiphany. It just sort of… happened. That said, I might be doing the show dirty here. I genuinely can’t recall exactly how it plays out in the source, so possibly I’m being unfair.

There’s a lot of setup in this episode. You can feel the pieces being arranged, which is fine, but it does make things feel a little inert. I liked the scenes in Hell with Cain and the dream sequence with Hob was a real highlight. Honestly, the Hob and Dream relationship remains one of the absolute home runs of this adaptation. It's just good stuff.

All told, I did enjoy the episode. It wasn’t bad by any stretch. But it wasn’t the strongest season opener I’ve ever seen either. Again, I do understand how difficult this must be to adapt, but I probably would have chosen a few different ways to do things had I been in charge.

There is so much cool content to come I am really excited to see how they handle it going forward, and I am really hopeful that Delirium will get to shine when she's on the road trip with big bro.
 
ep 8

I really enjoyed this one. Jenna Coleman has the cutest nose. IMO

Oh he woke up the guy from season one, and then he woke up the guy with no eyes. DID LOKI REALLY BURN THE BABY? :rwmad:
 
2.7 to 2.11 ('The Kindly Ones')

So this is the end. And...again, it's so hard to judge just as a tv show. I have the comic in the my head all the time when I'm watching, it's impossible not to. So it's different in a lot of ways. That doesn't make it bad, of course. I do think the pacing is weird. They tell us right away that Morpheus is definitely going to die AND that Daniel is going to replace him. I feel like in the book we definitely didn't know these things right away? Like there was some hope that Morpheus would get out of it.

Puck and Loki's story is basically the same, but with added ROMANCE and drama, which is fine because it's a tv show. But the unfrotunate side effect is that Puck is basically a good guy in this version, which means Jack Gleason doesn't get to play the fun, mischevious version of him much. That seems like a mistake! On the other hand, Freddie Fox is EXCELLENT as Loki. He totally kills it every time he's on screen. He's so good I wish they'd expanded his part (at least have him at the funeral!) or been able to spin him off into some other related show somehow!

Instead of Matthew teaming up with Corinthian, it's Johanna taking his place. This makes a bit of sense to use Jenna Coleman more, and maybe having a CGI raven flying around doing detective work doesn't work as well on tv. And Jenna Coleman and Boyd Holbrock are GREAT in their scenes together, again so good that I wish it was just a whole show about them solving supernatural crimes. But the team-up only lasts one episode and by the end of it Corinthina is IN LOVE with Johanna, and even as someone who finds Jenna Coleman fucking hot this is a bit much. They end up together in the end and whatever lol.

So in the books Nuala works for Dream for years and has a huge crush on him. Here, the first time we see her since she went to work for him is the episode where she's called back from The Dreaming. They tell us how much she likes it there, but her love for Dream seems to be absent or reduced so much it's not noticable. They give her a big subplot going back to Fairy, but take out the tragic moment where she calls Dream to see her and it allows the Kindly Ones into the Dreaming. Instead, it's Titania who calls Dream...but who cares? We don't know Titania much at all, she's nasty to Nuala every time we see her. There's no tragedy to her calling Dream. They do try to give Nuala a big triumphic momen when she cuts Lyta's head off with a sword (which makes no sense as Merv couldn't hurt her with a gun) but it's kind of pointless when Dream dies right after and the Dreaming is safe anyway?

Mathew's part is reduced a lot. Maybe because of the difficulties of shooting a CGI raven, yes, but it's a shame because his friendship with Dream is one of the nicest things in the book. They don't even have the bit where he decides to stick around because Daniel will need someone to look out for him! That's a crucial part!

Delirium being reunited with Barnabas does not feel like the big deal here that it did in the book.

I'm glad they kept in the bit with Hob and Death, but it's severely cut down and doesn't take place in a Renaissance fair so that's not as good, really.
The funeral as a whole feels a bit too normal. As usual I very much miss the dreamlike imagery of the books. I know it's a tv show on a budget, but it feels like they could have made the effort for the ending. Remember the bit where a bunch of traverllers are stuck in an inn during a storm and they see "giants" (the Endless) in the sky? Yeah, that's not in here.
It wasn't until I saw the end credits that I realised adutl Daniel is Grey Worm from GOT. He probably didn't fine?
"All around me darkness gathers, Fading is the sun that shone, We must speak of other matters, You can be me when I'm gone
Flowers gathered in the morning, Afternoon they blossom on, Still are withered in the evening, You can be me when I'm gone.."

I'm sorry if this makes me a big WOKEFLAKE BABY but it still makes me sad when I remember some of Gaiman's beautiful writing and realise we'll never get anything like that again (though I wasn't really that into anything he wrote in the last 20 years anyway, to be honest) or that we'll never see an adaptation of his work again. Yes him being a bad person doesn't totally ruin things, I was still able to enjoy this show, but it does make a difference. Who can be Neil when he's gone (to prison for rape)? ((He'll get away with it.)) (((It's a civil trial he wouldn't be going to prison anyway.))) ((((I just think it's sad.)))) (((((I'm not good at articulating things.)))))
 
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