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You Are Now Entering the Cruel World: Texas Killing Fields, the Film

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No Spoilers

You are now entering the cruel world
bridge sign near The Killing Fields

Since the 1970s, at least 30 young women and girls have been abducted, disappeared, or been found murdered in an isolated and spooky 50-mile area of Texas bayou country dubbed “The Killing Fields.” Based on the true and never solved serial killings in that area, the screenplay for the 2011 film Texas Killing Fields, (also known as The Fields), was written by federal agent Don Ferrone, who investigated the killings and missing girls. Texas Killing Fields, despite any writing and production flaws, is an intense and creepy film, with strong performances by its principals.

Based loosely on investigators Brian Goetschius and Michael Land, respectively, Detective Brian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Texas Killing Fields ©

and Detective Mike (Sam Worthington)

Sam Worthington in Texas Killing Fields ©

become deeply involved in the cases of the missing and murdered girls after Mike’s ex-wife Pam (Jessica Chastain),

Jessica Chastain, Texas Killing Fields ©

who is also an investigator, albeit in another county, contacts Brian for help when a missing girl’s car is discovered at the boundary of the desolate area known as “The Killing Fields.”

Detective Mike, short-tempered and alcoholic, is initially not interested in getting involved in these cases since it is not in their jurisdiction. Detective Brian, however, feels more morally obligated to investigate them, as evidenced by the map and photos of missing girls he has hanging in his office.

Chloë Grace Moretz, Texas Killing Fields ©

The story of the murder investigation is interwoven with the story of Little Anne (Chloë Grace Moretz), whose mother Lucie (Sheryl Lee) flirts with prostitution, and whose brother Eugene (James Hébert) works and parties with his spooky pal, Rhino (Stephen Graham).

Stephen Graham, Texas Killing Fields ©

Detective Brian is familiar with Little Anne since he has clearly been attempting to save her from sinking into the moral and criminal abyss already inhabited by her abusive family.

Chloë Grace Moretz & Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Texas Killing Fields ©

The detectives get more emotionally involved in the case when Little Anne disappears, causing them to plunge into the wilderness of The Killing Fields in a desperate attempt to save her and to stop the serial killer.

The Killing Fields, Texas, © CBS News

Though compelling and creepy, Texas Killing Fields isn’t perfect. It’s never clear why Jessica Chastain’s character is in the film in the first place, and her character, although she provides some very minor backstory for Detective Mike, could have been completely eliminated without the film’s suffering from her loss.

Worse, the film has some serious lighting issues. While it might be “atmospheric” to have much of a serial killer film taking place in the dark, at night, in a desolate area that has no lighting whatsoever, when an audience can’t see what’s happening onscreen, especially during one of the climactic scenes involving Detective Brian, that’s a problem. In fact, the lighting problem may be one of the things that earned the film some of its lower reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.

Sam Worthington & Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Texas Killing Fields ©

The real killings on which Texas Killing Fields was based were never actually solved. Though law enforcement had a strong suspect, authorities were never able to find any evidence definitively connecting their suspect to the disappearances or killings. The film deviates from this fact, as well as from the facts about what happened to the character on which Little Anne is modeled, but that’s Hollywood: even in a movie about serial killers, Hollywood wants an (almost) happily-ever-after ending.

Even with its flaws, Texas Killing Fields is intense and worth watching. The performances of the principal actors alone, including young Chloë Grace Moretz, are strong and well-done.

If you’ve seen season 1 of True Detective, you’ll wonder which came first: TKF or TD. No matter that some of the viewer-reviews compare the film to True Detective season 1, Texas Killing Fields predates the HBO series by quite a few years, and it gets credit for that, at the very least.

Available on Amazon ($4.99 or free with a 7-day trial subscription to Starz) and YouTube ($5.99). Free for Starz subscribers.

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Dead, Dead, BOOM: Taboo’s Disappointing Finale

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Serious Spoilers

Tom Hardy as James Delaney © FX

I’ve read that we should view the gritty FX series Taboo as a chess game, with all the pieces in place from the beginning of the show, and I guess that metaphor would work if you love chess (I do) and if you also did not know from the start of the “game” that Tom Hardy’s James Delaney was predestined to win (and that he would break most of the chess pieces just because he could, so there…).

Two of the bumblers from the East India Company © FX

I know that the East India Company has been portrayed with extreme historical inaccuracy and prejudice, and not just because every single person who worked for the villainous Sir Stuart Strange, especially the bunglers Wilton and Pettifer, was unbelievably stupid and incompetent, nor because everyone in the East India was so irredeemably wicked that the audience cheered when one of them got killed (oy, talk about bad writing and one-dimensional characters, even if it was slightly emotionally satisfying to see the bad guys eventually get knocked off).

The Prince Regent © FX

I knew James was going to somehow “escape” or negotiate his way out of the Tower of London, if only because the Prince Regent has been portrayed as one of the most disgustingly grotesque and inept characters in television history, and because his man Coop, for all his political power and threatening demeanor, has proven himself an incredible amateur, even with an experienced torturer-executioner doing his nefarious bidding, and with the prisoner James arrested for treason and confined in a prison as historically escape-proof as France’s Bastille.

Atticus and James © FX

If you’re a man on Taboo, i.e., if you’re a man who has also been helping James throughout the season, I know that you’ve already won a coveted spot on James’ new boat, commandeered by the East India expressly for James in exchange for the coveted Nootka Island & Sound, and that you’re going to acquit yourself admirably in the finale’s big and explosive Shoot-Out At the Docks.

I knew, after the opening scene of the finale, that if you’re a woman on Taboo, you’re meat for the grinder, or food for fishes, as they say, no matter how much James Keziah Delaney claims to love you and no matter what he does to rescue you from someone else’s clutches.

James, having a vision, © FX

I knew that James Keziah Delaney was going to be on that boat (no matter how he ultimately got one) headed for America at the end of the Taboo season finale no matter what happened to him in the series — assassination attempts, duels, torture, waterboarding, seizures, hallucinations, visions, betrayal, etc. — because he was the star, I mean, the STAR of the show and not just because he was played by Oscar-winner Tom Hardy who is also one of the producers and whose father “Chips” helped write the series.

How do I know all these things?
Because they are some of the weaknesses in Taboo’s writing, present during the entire season, but magnified exponentially in the finale.

Despite its flaws and weaknesses, Taboo was intense and intriguing enough to make me look forward to it every week, albeit in the hopes of an emotionally satisfactory finale that might reveal some strong historical political commentary (e.g., on slavery, the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism), some startling moral commentary (e.g., on incest, madness, slavery, imperialism, colonial rebellion, war), or some impressive exploration of the metaphysical (i.e., James’ visions and his ability to “hear the dead sing”) and the relation of the spiritual, metaphysical world to the physical one (e.g., that James and Winter were actually both ghosts who were able to significantly impact the physical world around them).

Unfortunately, Taboo didn’t deliver in the areas that most interested me. Instead, the finale deteriorated into a predictable, although well done, Shoot-Out on the Docks, with James and a chosen few of his (mostly male) comrades finally heading off to Nootka on a ship that replaced the British Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes because everybody on board was somehow transformed miraculously into “Americans” with a Safe-Passage extorted (by James via “stepmother” Lorna) from the spymaster Countess Musgrove.

But before we get to the important questions that didn’t get answered in Taboo’s finale, which made both the finale and the entire series ultimately disappointing, let’s recap what happened to all the characters.

Representing King and Country

The Prince Regent © FX

The Prince Regent
(Mark Gatiss, in prosthetics and extreme padding)
Still eating (almost always with his fingers, it seems), last we saw of him.

Sir Solomon Coop © FX

Sir Solomon Coop
(Jason Watkins)
Penultimately seen cursing aloud to himself as he walked down the royal hallway into the presence of the Prince Regent to inform him that all their plans were bust.
Last seen just standing there while his Highness made pronouncements, between bites of food, about hanging the traitor James.

Chichester © FX

Sons of Africa Attorney Chichester
(Lucian Msamati)
Last seen standing alone in James’ bedroom attic, holding two now-useless testimonies against Sir Stuart Strange, whom he wanted to prosecute on behalf of the Crown for (illegal) slave-trading.

Representing the American Colonies

Dumbarton © FX

Dr. Dumbarton
(Michael Kelly)
Dead. Stabbed by James after he revealed that he knew Dumbarton was, in reality, a spy for the East India, which no one — and I mean, no one at all — saw any evidence of before the finale.

Countess Musgrove © FX

Spymaster Countess Musgrove
(Marina Hands)
Probably returned to playing cards and drinking with her society lady-friends after giving Lorna the Safe-Passage for James et al.

Representing Society’s
Downtrodden & Unfortunate

Winter © FX

Winter
(Ruby-May Martinwood)
Dead. Murdered by Pettifer of the East India after being one of the few truly likable characters in the show.

Madame Helga © FX

Helga
(Franka Potente)
Dead, killed in the Shoot-Out after being “rescued” from the East India.

Representing James’ Cohorts

Atticus © FX

Atticus
(Stephen Graham)
Last seen on the ship bound for Nootka after admirably acquitting himself in the “rescue” of Helga and companion, and in the Shoot-Out at the Docks.

Cholmondeley © FX

The womanizing but still charming chemist (& medical doctor) Cholmondeley
(Tom Hollander)
Dead, hoist by his own petard (i.e., killed by an explosion of his own gunpowder), during the Shoot-Out on the Docks, though he was carried onto the boat before he expired.

Representing the Oh-So-Wicked East India

Thoyt © FX

Family attorney Thoyt
(Nicholas Woodeson)
Last seen???

Wilton © FX

Wilton
(Leo Bill)
Dead. Shot in the head after delivering the East-India-commandeered boat to James and his men.

Pettifer (foreground) © FX

Pettifer
(Richard Dixon)
Dead. Killed by Atticus after allowing Helga and the other whore to be “rescued.”

Godfrey © FX

James’ childhood companion, the “Molly” Secretary Godfrey
(Edward Hogg)
Last seen huddling onboard (below-decks, I think) with James et al, headed to Nootka.

Sir Stuart © FX

Sir Stuart Strange
(Jonathan Pryce)
BOOM!
Dead and splattered as he sat behind his desk in the East India, cackling with glee as he opened what he presumed was the deed transferring Nootka from James to the East India (in exchange for the rescued whores and for the boat).

Representing James’ Family

James’ mother, in a vision © FX

Mother
Dead, though we don’t know when or how.

James’ father © FX

Father
(James Fox)
Dead. Poisoned with arsenic by servant Brace because… because Old Man Delaney was wearing makeup? because he wasn’t a Christian any longer? because he was wearing makeup and because he wasn’t a Christian anymore? Brace’s motive wasn’t made entirely clear.

Brace © FX

Loyal family servant Brace
(David Hayman)
Last seen alone, sobbing in the dark, abandoned in the family home with an aging doggie, presumably because he poisoned James’ father with arsenic, and despite his poignant pleading with James to be allowed to accompany him to Nootka.

Lorna © FX

Stepmother Lorna Bow
(Jessie Buckley)
Last seen Unconscious on the boat to Nootka, shot in the shoulder or upper arm after proving herself not only the sole developed female character of the series but a serious Bad-Ass besides since she could fire a gun with the best of the men in the Shoot-Out on the Docks. I assume her character lived.

Geary © FX

Brother-in-law Thorne Geary
(Jefferson Hall)
Dead. Killed with a hat-pin through the heart as he lay sleeping, by his spouse-raped wife Zilpha.

James’ & Zilpha’s son Robert © FX

Son, by incest with his sister Zilpha, Robert
(Louis Serkis)
Last seen on the boat to Nootka with James.

Zilpha © FX

Supposedly belovèd sister Zilpha
(Oona Chaplin)
Dead.
Suicide by jumping into River Thames in the finale after James cruelly abandoned her and cast her off himself in the penultimate episode.
Dead.
Or, as Vulture reviewer Sean T. Collins wrote, “tossed off a bridge by writers who couldn’t figure out anything more interesting to do with Oona Chaplin.”
Dead.
Killed by the writers in a ridiculously stupid move that takes all the “taboo” out of Taboo.

Taboo’s Big
Unanswered Questions

Alas and alack, some of my most important questions, which were raised by Taboo itself during its first seven episodes, never got answered, not even in the finale.

• Is James Keziah Delaney dead, resurrected, or was he just born with a really strange ability to hear the dead “sing” to him?
• What are all the dark things James did that are so much worse than what the East India obviously did?
• What, exactly, did the East India do to James that made Sir Stuart state that “this was all about revenge” and make Sir Solomon Coop ask, “My god, what did you do to him, Stuart?”
• Did Sir Stuart and the East India sell James into slavery? If so, did Sir Stuart, who owned the sunken ship on which James was the sole survivor, sell James into slavery because he refused to cooperate in the drowning of the slave “cargo” bound for Sir Stuart’s brother’s plantation in Antiqua?
• Was James a slave himself?
• What happened to James’ mother?
• What did James’ father regret so much that he stood on the banks of the river calling to James in Africa?
• Did James’ own father sell him into slavery for incest with his sister Zilpha?
• Does James really love his sister or does he just like having sexual relations with her?
• Did James cast Zilpha off for her own protection while he dealt with the murderous East India and the Crown’s Sir Coop-ster, or was James really that much of an SOB?
• Is that single tear the sole evidence we’re going to get of James’ grief over the death of his belovèd sister? I mean, come on, now, you writer-guys…
• Is James really and truly a ghost and is that why no one in Great Britain, emphasis on Great, can kill the boy?
• What in God’s name is so important about Nootka that everyone and his brother will commit the 7 Deadly Sins and break all the 10 Commandments in order to have that silly little island?

And why didn’t we get to see more of the gorgeously buff-to-the-max Tom Hardy as James Keziah Delaney in this kind of scene?

SERIOUS TRIGGER WARNING HERE
Do Not Say I Didn’t Warn You
Proceed At Your Own Risk
The Boy is Obviously Nude

And this one?

And this one…

(which, I admit, looks like it was clandestinely taken by a Taboo crew member or extra since it  doesn’t look like anything that FX could have shown here in America but which could have been in the original BBC production and then cut from the US show which really annoys me if that’s what happened because we’re all adults here and… I’m just saying…)

Zilpha & James © FX

Now that Zilpha is dead, and I can only assume that she is, indeed, dead since she “kissed” brother and love-of-her-life James “good-bye” in his vision of her body underwater, there’s no more “taboo” in Taboo and it doesn’t look like anyone much cares if there’s going to be a second season any ol’ way.

Taboo’s finale, though action-packed during the second half of the hour, neglected to answer any of the most intriguing moral questions it posed during the season.

Because the writers also killed off the woman who was half of the “taboo” relationship, the finale was ultimately unsatisfying and disappointing.

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Menace and Mayhem in FX’s Taboo

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Spoilers
No Spoiler Taboo review at
Tom Hardy and FX’s Taboo: Creepy Good

Tom Hardy as James Delaney (from FX’s Taboo)

Reviewers are calling FX’s new show Taboo everything from a “jazzed-up” revenge tale to a “grimy revenge tale” that is “utterly ridiculous but totally absorbing,” from “a reanimated corpse of … drama tropes” to the “Tom Hardy Show,” which was a compliment to the actor. When I think of a revenge tale, I think of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, whose protagonist is confronted by the ghost of his father in Act 1, a ghost who relates the tale of his murder by his own brother. In Hamlet, the eponymous protagonist dithers and dallies and overthinks every single move he wants to make to get revenge on his murderous uncle. Hamlet may be considered one of the most psychologically interesting characters, but most readers aren’t really attached to him until almost the end of the play, when he finally does something besides ruminating aloud about revenging himself against the uncle who murdered Hamlet’s father, married Hamlet’s mother, and usurped Prince Hamlet’s throne. If Hamlet is a classic revenge tale, Taboo is more menacing than any revenge tale I’ve ever read.

Tom Hardy as James Delaney (from FX’s Taboo)

Taboo‘s protagonist James Delaney (Tom Hardy) is much more interesting than Hamlet, too, if only because we don’t get long monologues betraying his thinking, let alone monologues revealing ceaseless brooding. Instead, viewers follow James around a seedy, dark London as he attempts to claim his inheritance (the island of Nootka off the northwest coast of the United Stated), protect his island from the powerful men of the East India Company who covet it, re-establish his father’s shipping company, and discover his father’s murderer. Viewers don’t even know if James is dead or alive, “half-dead or possessed by spirits” since he regularly has visions or memories triggered by his surroundings. Returned from Africa after ten years and plagued by these visions, Hardy’s Delaney is effectively fierce and foreboding in a show where everything is darkness, menace, and mayhem.

Tom Hardy as James Delaney (from FX’s Taboo)

When James arrived in England in episode 1, “Shovels and Keys,” the first thing he did was bury something, bury it as deep as his arm-to-his-shoulder in the mud. In the second episode (“Episode 2”), he unearths that bag, revealing a cache of unpolished diamonds. When he sends one of them to his sister Zilpha (Oona Chaplin, formerly Robb Stark’s outspoken foreign wife in Game of Thrones) without a note of any kind, she seems to know he’s sent it to her, and she hurriedly hides it from her husband. At the funeral of their father, James told Zilpha that Africa was unable to kill his love for her, and later he surreptitiously observed a young boy about 10 years old, whom viewers quickly suspected was the siblings’ incestuous love child, sent away to be raised by strangers.

Oona Chaplin as Zilpha Delaney Geary, from FX’s Taboo

In episode 1, Zilpha asked James to keep their past a secret from her husband, Thorne Geary, who already hates James just for existing, apparently, since he didn’t recognize James when he arrived at the church for the funeral. Confronting Zilpha at a society musicale in “Episode 2,” James asked her to come away from her friends, with him, ostensibly so he could answer her “Did you really eat flesh?” inquiry. When he revealed his memory of her “straightening her skirts after…” (we know where this is going, given the show’s title) and not looking back at him, Zilpha acted startled and said, “I walked away?” letting us know that the two of them have some really intense history in common, but they don’t recall it the same way.

Tom Hardy as James Delaney and Oona Chaplin as his half-sister Zilpha (from FX’s Taboo)

Does Zilpha care as much about James as he does for her, or does she just really like diamonds? Is it love between them or merely forbidden sexual attraction? Zilpha seems intensely drawn to James, in what actor Oona Chaplin calls “an incest plot as the ultimate will-they, won’t-they, should-they love triangle of Taboo.” Both actors do a wonderful job making the relationship as forbidden, menacing, and exciting as possible.

Of course, Zilpha’s husband Geary hates his brother-in-law James, and that hatred increased at the Reading of the Will, where it was revealed that Zilpha inherited nothing. Geary was the one who had arranged the sale of Nootka Island to East India — a sale that was thwarted when the Island was left solely to James.

Stephen Graham as Atticus (L) and Tom Hardy as James Delaney (R ) from FX’s Taboo

Underworld figure Atticus (Stephen Graham, perhaps best known to US audiences as Boardwalk Empire‘s Al Capone, above L) told James in episode 2 that it was Geary who tried to hire Atticus a year earlier to kill Old Man Delaney. For some reason unknown to viewers, Atticus refused the job, perhaps because it appears that he and James had some prior relationship (of which Geary would have been unaware).

Jefferson Hall as brother-in-law Geary (from FX’s Taboo)

If Geary (Jefferson Hall, above) wanted Old Man Delaney dead so that he could sell Nootka, then he certainly won’t hesitate to attempt to kill his resurrected brother-in-law James, especially after officially learning that his wife Zilpha inherited nothing. Geary’s shouts at James after the Will Reading were even louder than the shouts of Old Man Delaney’s creditors, though James paid all the creditors — to the shilling — after Zilpha and her angry husband left. Geary is almost as threatening as Sir Stuart Strange (Jonathan Pryce, below) of East India Co, though Geary might be more ineffectual (unless he was the one who poisoned his father-in-law after failing to find an assassin in Atticus).

Jonathan Pryce as head of the East India Company, Sir Stuart Strange (from FX’s Taboo)

Sir Stuart, on the other hand, is openly menacing and looks like he has the power to carry out his threats. After angrily insisting that James accept East India’s offer to purchase Nootka Island, then getting livid when James refused to even open the envelope and see what the offer was, Sir Stuart decided that James must be killed. That seems a bit drastic and melodramatic, and perhaps historically inaccurate as well: though East India was, no doubt, an immensely powerful company, it’s being set up as nothing but The Big Bad Villain in Taboo, one of the show’s few weaknesses. Still, Jonathan Pryce (Game of Thrones’ High Sparrow) is a delight to watch, if only because he gets to be openly threatening and frustrated. When not ordering his underlings to either murder James or lose their jobs, Sir Stuart is raging about James’ buying a ship, and ranting about his being in league with Americans (with whom Britain is at war) when wondering aloud where James got the money to buy said ship.

Tom Hardy as James Delaney (from FX’s Taboo)

It was that ship that sent James tumbling into visions (or memories) in “Episode 2,” visions that have to do with slavery. James discovered manacles and chains on the ship he’d purchased. After finding the manacles, James stripped off his clothes, revealing a multiply tattooed (and hunkily buff) body, scraped a bird of sorts into the ship’s flooring, and mumbled or chanted in a foreign language. One reviewer noted that there was a “subtle, creepy [almost hidden] ghost behind Hardy in the scene,” but I missed it completely.

The manacles caused James to react so violently that I’m beginning to suspect that James himself was sold into slavery, perhaps by his own father after James begat the child on his sister. If James was sold into slavery, rather than being a slave trader himself, that could be the reason everyone in England was so sure that James died in Africa: because it was arranged that he disappear permanently. Such an arrangement could also explain Old Man Delaney’s guilt toward the end of his life, guilt that had something to do with his son James.

In any event, it’s James’ creepy visions that make some reviewers wonder if he’s dead, and make me wonder if he wasn’t sold into slavery by his own father, albeit for having an incestuous sexual relationship with his sister Zilpha, because, as menacing as James seems, I just don’t get the feeling that he’s the villain in this drama.

Tom Hardy as James Delaney and Franka Potente as Madame Helga (from FX’s Taboo)

It’s not just James’ visions that make me wonder about his character: he seems to know things that no one else does, or, at the very least, to be able to unearth other characters’ secrets without too much effort. A young mulatto girl named Winter warned James about Madame Helga (Franka Potente), whom James had ordered to vacate his father’s business offices, which she was using as a brothel. Winter claimed that Helga was discussing James’ death-by-murder with a “man with a silver tooth.” After finding no one on the ship that Winter claimed belonged to the man with the silver tooth, James set it on fire. Afterward, James confronted Helga.

When he asked her about the mulatto Winter, Helga denied knowing anyone like that, insisting that she’d be delighted to have a mulatto, since customers would pay more for her. Helga wanted James to have sex with her as the price for information about Winter, but James refused, offering, instead, his own theories about the mulatto girl: he said that Helga’s eyes were like Winter’s, coming to the conclusion that Helga was Winter’s mother.

Helga didn’t deny it, but that doesn’t mean that Winter actually exists: she may be a ghost, coming into James’ life because of his horrific past, and Helga may not have answered James’ accusations that she’s Winter’s mother because she doesn’t know anyone named Winter and because, furthermore, Helga’s frightened of James. After all, when he ordered her to vacate his father’s dockside offices, threatening her with bodily harm after she had attempted to threaten him, Helga suddenly said, “I remember you,” adding that she remembered what he did to some girls, and that didn’t sound good. Everyone’s so evil and menacing in Taboo that it’s difficult to discover who we’re supposed to root for.

We also don’t know if Winter’s warning James about Helga’s attempt to murder him or about one of Helga’s clients’ discussing the murder plot in her whorehouse. And if it weren’t enough that Sir Stuart, Helga, brother-in-law Geary, and the person who hired the man with the silver tooth all want James Delaney dead and out of their lives, “Episode 2” threw in another person who might want him killed.

Jessie Buckley as Lorna Bow, widow of Old Man Delaney (from FX’s Taboo)

An Irish actress showed up and, after practicing her lines sotto voce, declared to everyone present at the reading of the will, that she’d married Old Man Delaney and, as his widow, is thus a claimant of James’ inheritance. Attorney Thoyt (Nicholas Woodsen) verified that Lorna Bow (Jessie Buckley) was actually married to the elder Delaney, but it’s not necessarily true that she has some claim to the inheritance. It seems that she would have to actually file a suit to get some of it. In any event, it increases the number of people who seem to want James dead, or who might have hired the man with the silver tooth to kill him.

At the conclusion of E2, the man in the silver tooth ambushed James and stabbed him, leaving him in an alley to die, though not before James tore open the murderer’s throat with his teeth, reminding us of Zilpha’s question, “Did you really eat flesh?” Of course, I doubt that James is going to die, despite the big knife sticking out of his gut, if only because his character is the major protagonist of the show. Instead, we’re given a hint that James’ is not as omnipotent as he seems, nor as omniscient, since, despite being warned of the hired murderer, he wasn’t prepared for the deadly encounter.

Menace and mayhem abound in FX’s Taboo, and Tom Hardy is absolutely riveting as James Delaney. Despite the fact that sometimes it’s difficult, if not outright impossible to understand what some of the actors are saying (Stephen Graham as Atticus was especially tough to understand, though David Hayman as the Delaney family servant Brace was also hard), and despite all the characters that are continually being introduced and which seem peripheral to the main storyline (King George’s annoyance about the colors in a map and his rant about East India Co come to mind), Taboo is staggeringly well done and intensely fascinating.

A limited mini-series of 8 episodes, Taboo airs on FX on Tuesdays at 10pm ET. Watch the premiere free with FX’s Premiere Pass, or every episode free with FX and DirecTV.

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