You are getting sleepy, very, very sleeeeeepy, and now you’re in the Kingdom of Dreams! Keep an eye out for King Morpheus, as he has some kind of character arc about being overly prideful, about sticking too closely to the rules, or maybe it’s about being too callous to others. We don’t really know for sure. What we do know is that this week’s episode is about The Sandman TV show, the latest comic book adaptation to hit the small screen. Did we like it? And if not, then why? You’ll find out, but only in your wildest dreams… of listening to a podcast.
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Textweaver. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Chris: You’re listening to the Mycreants Podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Wes Matlock, and Chris Winkle. [opening song]
Oren: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mythcreants Podcast. I’m Oren. With me today is Chris and Wes. Now, how do we know that this podcast is real? That we’re awake? We could all be a dreeeeam!
Wes: Ooh!
Chris: Oh no!
Wes: I’d rather be a nightmare.
Chris: Well, whatever we are, apparently that’s apparently what we inherently are and Morpheus is not gonna let us change, so….
Wes: No, he is not gonna.
Chris: Nothing we can do about it.
Oren: There’s something weird about TV shows and movies and books and the way they portray dreams. It’s never random enough. It’s like, you know, we have this one guy who has an easy to follow narrative of feeling conflicted over his multiple personas, and then we have this lady who’s on a fairly traditional high fantasy adventure, and my last dream was grabbing a plate of pasta out of a snowman and then getting upset because the pasta was made out of little corn cobs strung together. Everything was sideways, and I thought about the corn cobs so hard that I woke myself up.
[laughter]Where’s that representation in these various dream shows? Never.
Chris: It’s hard to make a coherent story out of that. I do think it works better, and it’s more realistic if the dreams are short. I still think the Avatar Last Airbender episode [Season 3, Episode 9, “Nightmares and Daydreams”], where Aang is having nightmares about facing the Fire Lord is probably one of the best depictions of dreams because it’s real short and it reflects what he’s worrying about and it spontaneously changes on him in the way that dreams do [laughs] where he’s revealed to have no pants.
Wes: The Avatar world, as far as we know, doesn’t have [The] Dreaming, which is high fantasy.
Chris: But it’s Sandman and movies like Inception, right? They all depend on us believing that the dream world is this really cool, you know, alternate reality that’s kind of surreal, but still holds together pretty well.
Oren: Or, in the case of Inception, is basically just a normal reality where everything’s normal and we have lots of gunfights. I’m still annoyed at Inception, but we’re talking about the Sandman today, not Inception because that was a show that exists, and there’s gonna be a lot of spoilers. So if you haven’t seen it, go do that, if you care.
Chris: We’re gonna spoil all the things.
Oren: If you dream about seeing it unspoiled, then go do that. It’s a weird thing to dream about, honestly (maybe talk to someone about that) but, you know, if you do…. Except for the, I haven’t seen the special secret episode that they dropped, just cause I don’t really have any interest in that storyline. The “base 10”, I think we’ve all seen that.
Wes: The episode that they dropped is actually two episodes. And the one that is cats, I watched the cats one, because it’s only like 15 minutes long. The other one, I don’t know. Probably not.
Oren: I remember those storylines from the comics and I was like, “Okay, I don’t really think I need to watch those.”
First, good things! I thought the atmosphere was very strong. It was great.
Wes: Anything Neil Guyman works on, we can usually rely on the atmosphere being good.
Chris: That’s pretty much his calling card.
Wes: It really is.
Oren: And they managed to translate that into the screen, and it was great.
Is it “GAY-men” or “gai-MEN”? I’ve been saying it “gay-MEN” for my entire life. [Transcriber’s Note]
Wes: I think I’ve been saying “gay-MEN” also, but, we’re probably wrong. Sorry. Maybe we should bring him on and correct us.
Chris: Maybe in the dream world. It’s “GUY-man”.
Wes: Oh, I like that.
Oren: It could be that’s how you know you’re in a dream. Wah!
But we got that real Neil Gaiman experience with this very atmospheric story, and to complete the experience, the plotting was also bad,
Chris: Right, also classic Neil Gaiman.
Oren: Right! You can’t make the plotting good. It wouldn’t be a Neil Gaiman story anymore!
Chris: Now, to be fair, the fact that this is adapted from a comic book that was essentially lots of little stories is also a major factor in why the plot is such a mess, right. There’s two reasons, but he’s definitely a contributing factor.
Wes: Yeah, the blessing and the curse about this Netflix adaptation is that it stays close to its source material. That is the good and the bad; comes down to that really,
Chris: Which may not have been a choice that they had to make. I don’t know if it was because they were afraid of alienating fans or if it was because Neil Gaimen was involved.
Wes: Adaptations are just always divisive. Just pick one. And I’m surprised they picked the one they did because Netflix, their metrics for success is how many people binge it in the first week, or something like that. Lots of people ended up watching Cowboy Bebop–which was passing– not in the first month, so they canceled it. And that’s why Neil Gaiman has been on Twitter, hawking this show, explaining how Netflix’s metrics for success works, so that more people will stop savoring it and just watch.
Oren: Do we need to watch more than one episode a night? Sorry, I can’t. I can only watch one episode a night. What do I have to do? Just set up an algorithm that just continually plays it?
Wes: I mean, I’m feeling pressured too!
Chris: Just to get Netflix to not cancel the show? Come on, Netflix! This is ridiculous.
Wes: I mean, you could just hit play and then go to sleep for the night, and then you’re good.
Chris: And then just watch it again, and be like, Netflix, like, “Wow! They really loved it! They watched it twice.” Set up a bot that just is always binging Netflix shows so that they keep making that?
Wes: It does sound like a lot of work.
Oren: I don’t know what to do with you, Netflix. I don’t understand how you make the choices you make. Granted, HBO is out here showing that you can do worse. So that’s nice.
Chris: Yeah, I’m sure what Netflix is going for is a measure of enthusiasm. Right? They wanna see how enthusiastic the people who watch the show are about the show. Probably because they feel like that’s a measure for how many people are going to subscribe to Netflix just to watch the show, if I were to guess.
Wes: Yeah, that makes sense.
Chris: So that’s probably why they’re doing that, but it is obnoxious, and it’s hard to imagine that your viewership doesn’t count if you don’t take the day off of work and call in sick, [laughs] just watch.
Wes: And just watch the whole thing, yeah!
Oren: It’s like, “You don’t really love me if you won’t sacrifice everything.” And it’s like, “I, I don’t think this is a healthy relationship here.” Hmm.
Chris: About the plot: so, of course, interesting thing is that we have arcs of multiple sizes and you can have a TV show that’s episodic, and you have a TV show that’s serial or happens in an overarching plot, but mixing them is not something that’s normally done. And, personally, I think that it’s possible to mix them, but it’s about setting expectations.
And one of the things about this season is it feels like two seasons because we have the, the first five episodes are following this arc where Dream has to get his mojo back after being captured. And it’s really weird when suddenly that concludes at the end of the fifth episode, right? And that kind of violates expectations. It was like a mini series.
Or we had a situation where there were one-off episodes that slowly built up an overarching plot, a serial plot, like mini shows do. That works, or some way so that we know what to expect out of it. Personally, if I were to adapt this, if I were in charge of this adaptation, I would stray from the original a little bit and just add more content to that first arc, however big that season is, so that we have something a little meatier to get people through that.
Wes: Yeah, I completely agree with you, because The Corinthian was a good villain, and when The Corinthian was in the show and featured in some, of like, the better episodes, it’s because The Corinthian was there doing things. The reveal, the desire, I guess, was kind of the “Big Bad” kind of, but like not really….
Chris: [dramatic] “Didn’t, you know, it was me all along?! I’m the puppet master!”
Wes: Yeah, exactly. It’s just like if The Corinthian had been truly the “Big Bad” that, and had more of a hand in, I don’t know, Morpheus losing his tools, then acquire the tools to just go defeat The Corinthian. I mean, that’s kind of basic, but at least it would keep it together.
And I think that right there is what we talked about. They made an adaptation, they could have decided to make it more thrilling if they wanted to, but they didn’t.
Chris: And I would say that I think it would be also fun to have a similar show with some of these smaller stories. The big question is, how can we do this in a way that viewers know what to expect, and it feels like a cohesive show? Right? Like, start the smaller stories and build the bigger arc, or just have something people expect, like a couple smaller stories and then the arc starts, or, you know, some kind of rhythm, right? So people know what they’re gonna get.
Maybe we have season one, and then for the little episodes, a Season 1.5, [laughs] Season 1A, Season 1B, you know, something to communicate. Because, otherwise it’s a little off-putting when you think the arc is gonna continue building and it suddenly ends, or you think that an episode is gonna continue the arc, and instead it’s a tangent or all those things.
The funniest episode is Episode Six because it feels like it’s two different stories cuz we spend the first part of the episode hanging out with Death and the second hanging out with Hob, and technically they have a character arc that binds them, but it doesn’t feel like everything that Dream is doing is directly related to it. So, it’s just not enough to hold it together. And just really odd stuff like that that doesn’t normally happen in a TV episode.
Oren: I was admittedly a little unclear what Dream’s arc in that story was supposed to be. It’s like, “Okay, so he starts off being unsatisfied because he doesn’t have a quest anymore?” It’s like, “I mean, fair enough; I would prefer if you had a quest,” and then he hangs out with Death for a while, and then we flashback to his relationship with this immortal guy who’s cool. I like that guy a lot.
Chris: Yeah, I like Hob. I really enjoyed that friendship arc as much as it was really random in the context of the show. [laughs]
Oren: Right, and then Dream goes and acknowledges that they’re friends because in that arc, he had a problem of not acknowledging that Hob was his friend. How does that address how he was feeling, you know, ennui at the start of the episode? How are those things the same thing? What is happening here?
Chris: It’s supposed to be that, “I’m feeling ennui,” and then Death is like, “Didn’t, you know, that what you’re missing is friendship?” It’s like, okay, well, I feel like we would need more explanation to understand how friendship is the solution to ennui. [laughs]
Oren: I feel like the message that episode was building towards was that Dream needs to be kept busy cuz Death is always working, but apparently Dream spends most of his time just hanging out at the Dream Realm. [It] doesn’t actually need that much, you know, hands on supervision from him. So I thought, maybe, the lesson of that was gonna be that he should get more involved in dreams and like, managing the Dream World somehow, but instead it was “go be with your friend,” which is like, I guess?
Wes: Well, and I remember, this is much later in the comics and they, you know, allude to this in the season, but you wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t read the comics, but one of the Endless is Destruction, who’s missing, and you’re right, Oren. Dream needs a job and he could work, but it seems to work without him. And that’s Destruction’s main point when you finally meet him is, “I don’t need to do my job. They’re gonna do it anyway.”
Oren: Yeah. I found that remarkably unsatisfying in the comics, I was just like, “Oh, okay, so I guess the Endless are pointless then?
Wes: Very, yeah.
Oren: I mean, that’s also kind of a retcon because when Dream was imprisoned–
Wes: Yeah.
Oren: –uh, a bunch of bad stuff happened, but apparently not anymore? It’s like, “What was the point of that?” I don’t know what I was supposed to get from that, other than, “These characters aren’t actually important and what they do doesn’t matter,” which is a very weird thing to put in your story.
Wes: I mean, he’s got a realm. I don’t know what Death has.
Oren: Death is just everywhere. Also, doesn’t Destruction blow up one of his exes to stop them from finding him?
Wes: Probably. [laughs]
Oren: I feel like that happened for sure, and that also made me not like him. [laughs]
Chris: Okay, so, since both of you have read the comics, right? To some extent? I’ve only read a little bit of them. Just have a question for you. I know that the summary of this Sandman series is supposed to be, “The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die and makes his decision,” and it was really weird for me when he had a character arc in Season 1 where he seems to change at the end.
Is there… is there gonna be… is he gonna revert back? Does he need to change more?
Wes: Yeah, I honestly was a little surprised by that. He’s–I guess the answer is he’s going to need to change more because ultimately in the comics, he owns up to something that destroys him. He accepts–I forget the nature of the crime–but he basically kills his son. They kind of nod at this too in the Netflix adaptation. Desire got that dreamer pregnant. So it was a child of The Dreaming, and Dream had one very quick line when he confronted Desire about, “You almost got me to kill that person with all the fallout [and] the ramifications that that would’ve had,” which basically is him kind of saying, “I would’ve killed my kin and that would’ve basically, like taken me out too.”
Oren: Something bad would’ve happened.
Wes: Exactly. And so that’s kind of where it goes in the comics, is him finally owning up to his fate.
Oren: Yeah, I barely remember that part of the comics. My memory is–not to be punny here–but is very “dreamlike” of those later comics. [Wes laughs] I don’t think I really understood what was happening when I was reading them. I was like, “I guess the Furies are after Dream, and it has something to do with his son Orpheus? I guess that’s happening,” and then Dream died, and it was like, “Look, Here’s a new dream!” And it’s like, “I don’t care.” And I stopped reading. [laughter] So, I legitimately couldn’t tell you.
I do know that in this show, they definitely want Dream to have a character arc. They don’t know what it is, but they really want them to have one.
Chris: Yeah. So, I found this very interesting because I felt that the problems with this character arc in this season were similar to what I actually see in a fair number of manuscripts, where you can tell that there’s something going on, but it’s not exactly clear what. Either there’s too many character arcs, or it’s defined too broadly, right? So it’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what his issue is supposed to be, and during the show we see at least three different things.
Number one, he’s obviously prideful and we see that. That’s why he initially rejects Hob’s friendship and why he doesn’t negotiate with his captors to get freed in the first episode and probably also in many cases, why he continues to assume too much responsibility and not let Lucienne take any of it.
We know that he sticks to tradition too much, right? He continues to insist that everybody has their purpose and that can never change. Again, goes back to that unwillingness to change. Which seems to change [laughter] at the end of the season. It’s just a little confusing, right?
Oren: But also not, because at the end of the season, he’s gonna do the thing he’s supposed to do, which is kill the vortex. And he actually broke tradition by not doing that earlier. And then he gets saved from having to kill Rose Walker because we put the vortexness in an older lady who was okay with dying. So we find a loophole, but he’s still definitely doing things by the book, so I don’t know what that’s supposed to teach him.
Chris: Similarly, those two things do not explain what a jerk he is. [all laugh] He’s just, again, when he decides that something has to happen that will hurt somebody else, he could still insist on doing it, but also try to do it in a sensitive manner. We even see this in the last episode when he’s going to kill Rose, but he’s trying to be, like, really nice about it. Right? He says he’s sorry, he gives her a nice dreamland, and be like, “Hey, after you die, you can stay here.” Right? And he’s trying to soften the blow the best he can. But through most of the season, he does not care.
It’s like, “Well, bye-bye dead husband. Also, I’m taking your baby someday,” and just does not care that this is just horrible and other people are made to suffer.
Oren: Except for when he does, when he’s weirdly nice to John Dee, the torture man. And it’s like, “That’s weird. Where is this compassion coming from?”
Chris: Or the cafe scene at the end, when he is talking to John Dee and he’s like, “Oh, but don’t you see all these people have dreams?” and it’s like, “We have never seen you care about humans’ feelings before, Dream! What’s going on here?”
Oren: But literally, there was a scene earlier, where Constantine basically had to beg you into mercy killing her girlfriend. I guess the implication is that you were just gonna leave her to die horribly otherwise? Cuz you said that she couldn’t be saved, and so your thing that you agreed to do after Constantine begs you is mercy kill her, so what’s going on? [all laugh]
Chris: It’s like he has to be a jerk, but the writers also know that if he goes too far, he’s gonna be unlikable. So sometimes they make him randomly compassionate to preserve his likability. But this being callous to feelings is just not a necessary part of any of the other components of his arc. So, they could have just not done that. I mean, maybe it would deviate from the comics a lot….
Wes: But it would’ve been okay. The secret to his compassion in the season finale, you know what it is, of course, is Fiddler’s green (AKA Steven Fry) telling him what’s up. [all laugh]
Oren: Yeah, I mean, I guess if Steven Fry gave me a life lesson, I’d take that to heart. So, fair enough. [laughs]
Wes: Yeah, exactly. You can’t say no to that guy. [laughs]
Chris: The problem with these three different weaknesses he has is they all seem to operate independently, as far as we can tell, which means that each one needs a turning point and a lesson, and we need to see him change in timing with when he’s actually supposed to learn a lesson. And, you know, even if it’s all well done, that’s a lot to keep track of [laughs] for viewers, but even so, it just doesn’t seem to be mostly consistent.
I mean, we do see him learn some lessons. He learns Lucienne was right about the vortex and he was wrong once, so maybe that would help with pride? But it’s just, again, altogether, Death tells him he should value humans, but he hasn’t just become not callous after he has that experience with Death. Again, there’s just too many things going on with his arc. It’s kind of unfocused.
Wes: And it’s tough too, when there’s episodes where he’s just basically not in it. It’s called The Sandman. Are you in this episode? No? Great. [laughs]
Chris: Right. Again, from the comics, they’re just miscellaneous stories. Not all of ’em are actually about Dream. And that’s the thing about the vortex plot, which is basically the Season 2 within Season 1. It feels like Rose Walker is now the main character and Dream’s not the main character anymore. He becomes more present. And I like Rose as a character. I can feel for her and her pursuit of her brother and trying to find him [and what] happened to her family, but it is not the show that we were promised. [laughs]
Wes: Nope.
Oren: I also just felt like the Rose Walker storyline, despite shoving Dream out of his own show for a while, was starved for time. She has all of these really weird people whose house she lives in, and I was desperate to know more about them. It was like, “No–there’s no time for that!” And so at the end, it’s like, we say our goodbyes and it’s like, you know, I barely know any of you. I feel like you guys should be more important cuz you’re a bunch of weirdos in a magic house, but no, there’s no time for that. We’re done. Moving on.
Wes: Weirdos in a magic house that are like the friendliest, most helpful people anyone could possibly suddenly meet.
Oren: Yeah, I mean, I like the Adams family, right? Like that’s kind of what this is.
Wes: Yeah.
Oren: Let’s go for it. Let’s embrace that… or not.
Chris: That’s both a plus and a minus for this show where it has so many characters and great actors, and they really stick out and make an impression (most of them) right away. And then, “Bye-bye!”
Wes: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: And, and it was very strange in the first episode especially where it feels like Dream is doing nothing. And I think it’s supposed to be a kind of downward storyline where he makes the wrong choice and then has to face consequences for it, but unfortunately, the way it’s structured, it doesn’t really feel that way. It just feels like he’s sitting around doing nothing. We didn’t really have a good turning point moment. Not enough, I don’t think.
So, he’s just sitting around not talking, so he’s practically a non-entity, and then we develop all these other characters who are gone by the end of the episode. And that’s their very first episode, which is when a show usually sets impressions for which characters are important, “Let’s introduce them to you.” [laughs] They’re just gone. It’s like, “Why did we do all that?”
Wes: I know! I put this in my show notes because Netflix did a season preview after episode one. That preview had screaming and like hellfire and like all the hallmarks of a more traditional thriller. It’s almost like, yeah, we know that that was an episode, but we promise you that there’s excitement coming. It’s like, “Wait, what?”
Oren: [sarcastically] Okay.
Wes: AKA, we can’t lose money on this.
Chris: It’s usually a sign to skip the episode. I mean, when you have these comics and they have so much different material, it just feels like you could do a lot more picking and choosing again though, not having read all the comics, maybe that would be hard.
Oren: Well, I mean, they were willing to make some changes. Her brother, you know, having the nightmare giving him nice, cool dreams, that’s not from the comics. They merged two very disparate, weird little storylines to create that one, which was the right choice cuz those two would’ve been even harder to fit into this. So, they’re not afraid to make changes. And, I don’t know, I’m not sure if making more changes is the right course of action, but I kind of feel like they should have just because I didn’t dislike it, but there were large sections where I was bored, right? I was like, “I feel like maybe something could be happening here.”
Wes: I found a review from this IndieWire reviewer that said that it’s all world building and little else. And if you fall asleep, you won’t miss anything. I was like, “That’s harsh, but accurate.”
Oren: Yeah. I mean, it’s not wrong.
Wes: But, I mean, you know, if you’re well rested, you know, like we said, the camera work, the costumes, the design, it’s all gorgeous. They made strong casting choices, like we brought up Death. I love Kirby Howell-Baptiste, just in general. She was great in The Good Place. She was phenomenal as Death and also making Death a black woman was a great choice because we love seeing all those bigots get riled up over choices like this. [laughs]
Chris: [creepily] Feed us, your anger, delicious.
Wes: Feed us your anger, yes. And then Lucienne, that was also a change to a black woman, Vivienne [Acheampong], (I cannot pronounce her last name. I won’t try. Uh, we’ll put it in the show notes.) and then Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer. That’s also just–
Chris: Mm-hmm. That was great.
Wes: –awesome. So fun. [laughs]
Oren: I was a big fan actually–and I did not expect to be–of the first part of the diner sequence when John Dee is doing his radical honesty magic. I was like, “Yeah, this is actually pretty neat! This is showing how he’s making their carefully constructed social web fall apart. And it has, like, tragic consequences.” I actually thought this was good cuz I’d forgotten how this went in the comics, so I thought this was building to them becoming his followers or something. And I was like, “That would be really cool!” And instead he was like, “No torture yourselves to death.” I was like, [sarcastically] “All right.”
Chris: Yeah. I liked him until suddenly, he jumped from radical honesty to just like, “I want people to suffer. It’s like, what, how did you get there?”
Oren: Hang on.
Chris: Before I could understand what your motivation was for this extreme, radical honesty position. But now this is just nonsensical and kind of comical and cartoonish. Did not like that.
Wes: Did not like that. Huge tone shift
Chris: [angrily] You had a perfectly serviceable villain and then we had to ruin it.
Wes: Well, and then also, to further bring up issues with the John Dee situation, is that then when he fights Dream, Dream doesn’t win that fight, like at all. Dee accidentally breaks the ruby and then suddenly all the power floods back into Dream. [laughs] [sarcastically] Cool.
Oren: [sarcastically] Yeah. Great.
I was a little unclear; was that what Dee did or did Dream suddenly realize, “Oh, right. Yeah. I made the ruby. I can take it back.” Is that what happened?
Chris: Nope.
Wes: Dee broke it and Dream said like, “I would’ve not thought to break the ruby.” Like.
Oren: Oh
Chris: Yep. So, Dee basically defeated himself.
Oren: Yeah, good point.
Chris: I mean, at least Dream has more agency than Shadow in American Gods.
Wes: That’s true. Yeah.
Oren: Yeah. I guess if we were gonna rank this on Neil Gaman adaptations, it’s uh, better than American Gods, not as good as Good Omens.
Chris: Yeah, well, Good Omens also had Terry Pratchett involved in the original, so….
Oren: That’s true.
Chris: And Terry Pratchett can plot. [all laugh]
Wes: Also John Dee defeats himself, and was Dream just gonna lose to Lucifer if Patton Oswalt, AKA Matthew the Raven, didn’t give him a little pep talk?
Oren: We need something for Patton Osraven to do, okay. Like he follows Dream around for the first four episodes and does nothing.
Wes: Does nothing. Yep.
Oren: That whole, like, “I’m smarter than you,” “no, I’m smarter than you,” times infinity is not a duel between magical creatures. That’s like a playground argument.
And why does Dream win when he says, “I’m hope”? Lucifer could say, “I’m the death of hope. We’ve already done that in this fighting.” [all laugh]
We already had her be like, you know, he was like, “I am all life.” And she’s like, “Well, I’m anti-life.” And it’s like, that sounds like cheating, but apparently it was allowed!
Chris: Yeah. Not only does it feel like a childish one-upmanship game, but I just can’t help but feeling how fast the meta would grow stale. Like, the next time somebody plays, if hope really wins they’ll just be like, “I’m hope,” you know.
Oren: It’s like, what destroys hope? And it’s like, I don’t know, an American electoral cycle? [all laugh]
Wes: Yeah.
Oren: I can think of a lot of things.
Wes: Yeah. Open the Internet and find like the latest Karen and you’re just done.
Oren: Here, a sudden medical bill. Boom.
Chris: Twitter.
Oren: Yeah, I mean, there’s just so many things that destroy–hope is actually very fragile, Sandman.
Wes: One gripe. I had–another gripe I had, I guess–I liked Gwendolen Christie a lot as Lucifer. The cliffhanger that they put at the end of the season finale? It’s…. Okay, so they made an adaptation very close to the comics and the source material, and then knowing that a lot of people have read it, and then they give us that cliffhanger, for those of us who have read it, it’s like, that is not a cliffhanger.
Oren: Right. It’s like, “I’m gonna do something I’ve never done before.” And it’s like, “Okay, but that thing is that you’re just gonna go live in the human realm, right?”
Wes: Yeah. Like, I mean!
Oren: I’ve read the comics. I know what’s happening next!
Wes: Is that supposed to be a surprise the start of Season Two? They’re like, “Oh, so Lucifer quit, and Hell doesn’t have a leader.” [sarcastically] Great twist
Oren: I mean, I assume we’re gonna do that storyline because that’s like one of the few storylines that actually lends itself to Dream’s position as the king of a magical realm, right? One of the many problems with the comic is that Dream is the king of The Dreaming, and so he has responsibilities in his kingdom, but Gaiman clearly wanted to write a story about a character who went on random magic adventures, and that’s not what Dream is. Dream’s not a random adventurer, he’s a king. And so having the storyline where a bunch of people come to Dream to adjudicate what happens to Hell is probably the best fit for that character.
Wes: Yeah. Agreed.
Oren: So, you know, I’ll watch that. You know, presumably this is gonna get a second season, cuz according to Gaiman by whatever witchcraft metrics Netflix uses it’s doing pretty well. So….
Chris: Well, Gaiman told everybody to binge it, so we did. [laughs]
Oren: So maybe Season Two, we’re gonna get to see Dream as an estate executor. I’ve never wished for anything more.
Okay. Well, with that, I think we are going to have to wake up from this dream of a podcast, which means the podcast is over. Everyone go home.
Chris: Mythcreants now has a discord server for patrons. So, if you’d like to chat with us, just become a patron at patreon.com/mythcreants.
Oren: And, speaking of patrons, I just wanna say a thank you to a few of our existing ones. First, we have Callie Macleod, then Kathy Ferguson, professor of political theory in Star Trek. Next, there’s Ayman Jaber, an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And, finally, we have Danita Rambo. She lives at therambogeeks.com.
We’ll talk to you next week.
[Outro Music]P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
Really enjoyed the unmarked spoilers for the comic book, folks. No notes…
Are spoiler alerts common for material published 20-30 years ago?
They should be if the subject matter is not the material, but an adaptation of only a small part of it. If I knew there would be discussion of late plot points in the comic book, I would have chosen to wait before listening.
This is not some spoiler-free review, but an analysis – it’s usually presumed that if the title of the episode is The Sandman, the plot of The Sandman will be discussed.
Also, research shows that knowing “the spoilers” increases the readers’ enjoyment of stories.
I don’t know what “research” that is, but that’s beside the point. The episode starts with a spoiler alert for the show, so that’s what I expected spoilers for. It’s really that simple.
I think a way to improve the plotting of this show would be to change perspective and have Rose as the main character.
I mean she felt like the one with the most at stake during the season 1B, she was at the center of the events (as a vortex should har har), she’s foreign to this wonderful universe of the Dreaming and Endless so we can discover it along with her.
It would require a couple of changes but not much, she could be the one to free Dream for example, striking a deal with him : she would help him regain his powers and in exchange he, once back as the King of Dreams, would help her find her missing brother.
Then as he regains his attributes he starts to feel something is going on with her.
Perhaps he leaves for a bit, to do research about this (instead of already knowing what a vortex is and what he has to do), and so we have the two storyline running parallel : Dream rebuilding his realm, having some adventures etc… and Rose living in the House of Super Interesting Characters, spending some time with them in search of Jed, giving them more screen time.
And the climax would be something similar, except that having spent time with Rose he could have grown fond of her (thereby ongoing a character arc) and that would make him having to kill her much more emotional.
At least that would make the whole thing a bit less all over the place and disjointed.