The Sandman S1E7 REVIEW: It's a family affair in "The Doll's House"
Last week, on the world's Number 1 show, Dream had some familial bonding time with his older sister, Death. Together, they gathered up the souls of the recently dead. It was a lot more wholesome than it sounds, I promise. After that, Dream journeyed through the ages, on his never-ending quest to find the world's worst haircut ever. Along the way, he made friends with Hob Gadling, who had decided that death was a mug's game. It was also a fairly wholesome story. This was very much required, after the horrors of episode 5... This week, we embark on a new adventure, as Rose Walker tries to find her missing brother!
Rose Walker is, in no particular order: a loving daughter, who recently lost her mother; a devoted sister, searching for her lost brother; a loyal friend, to a grieving Lyta Hall and The Nexus of The Dreaming; and a being capable of destroying the minds of all humanity.
And, due to a convergence of all these factors, young Rose (who isn't actually young, and wouldn't have liked to be called that, even when she was) finds herself embarking on a rather bizarre journey across the globe in an effort to find her younger brother Jed, who she's not seen for nearly ten years!
Meanwhile, The Corinthian is up to his old tricks again. As his search for Rose Walker brings him into contact with a group of reprobates, who call themselves The Collectors.
This is all going to end really badly, isn't it?
A new arc begins! After tying off the end of "Preludes and Nocturnes" last week, Episode 7 begins the second major arc of The Sandman, "The Doll's House"! And, I have to say... this is my third favourite arc in the whole series, so I'm rather happy to see it come to life.
Sadly, this episode is a little lifeless. "The Doll's House" is a very dense arc; there are multiple threads woven together, and a huge cast of new characters are introduced. And basically all of that happens in this episode. A good 75% of this episode is people giving long speeches, or having long conversations, trying to quickly and efficiently explain large concepts, in a viewer friendly fashion.
And it works, more or less, but it does leave the episode feeling a little drab. Even Hal's high kicking dance number does little to bring life to a very exposition heavy episode.
It's not a bad episode, by any means. Vanesu Samunyai (credited as Kyo Ra) is fantastic as Rose and effortlessly controls the episode, with Razane Jammal delivering an incredibly sympathetic performance at her side as the clearly still grieving, but attempting to be stoic Lyta Hall. Her conversation on the plane with a kind stranger still hit me right in the heart, even on my second viewing.
But, due to the way the story has been compressed to fit into four episodes, it feels like we get two episodes worth of scene setting and character introductions crammed into one, and that leaves it all feeling a little but rushed.
But we DID get to meet my favourite non-Endless character in the whole of The Sandman: Barbie! Love her. We'll be seeing a lot more of her, later on.
The Sandman Season 1 is available now on Netflix. And if you can't wait for the rest of the epic tale of Morpheus, you can read ahead at your Local Comic Shop.
RECOMMENDED READING:
For Season 1, check out:
The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (1989, By Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcom Jones III )
The Sandman Volume 2: The Doll's House (1989, By Neil Gaiman, Kelley Shawn, Jones McManus, Mike Dringenberg, and Colleen Doran)
Taheg Gloder is a Freelance Copywriter from England. Obsessed with comics and Manga since his teens, he now splits his time between writing comic reviews and retrospectives for POP, and doing reactions on his YouTube Channel, The Dragon & The Hound. He lives alone, because he’s a hermit.
