Later in the episode, Lorna agrees to be Delaney's guest at a debauchery-fueled party and insinuates to his half-sister Zilpha Geary (Oona Chaplin) that she has romantic feelings for the scoundrel. I'd watch a sitcom where they hang around their dusty house and get into hijinks. The three of them have a pretty odd dynamic, but, unlike most people on this show, they at least seem to enjoy each other's company. Despite that, she's taken a liking to our top-hat-loving hero, exchanging knowing glances with him and trading banter with his weary butler, Brace. And just as tedious.Īfter her release, Lorna for some reason agrees to team up with Delaney, who basically admits that he just put her in this dangerous situation to play his two rivals - the East India Company and the British government - against each other. If you regularly endure similar scenes on Game of Thrones, this one will be regrettably familiar. He stays true to his word, though not without forcing viewers to sit through yet another darkly lit, leering sequence of a female character being stripped naked, humiliated, and threatened with sexual assault. As Limp Bizkit would say, they did it all for the Nootka.īefore she leaves, Delaney tells Lorna, "You will hold out," and reassures her that he will recruit the East India Company to rescue her. That's one of the more refreshing things about Taboo: even when the plotting, dialogue, and character motivations are opaque, it's always safe to assume any given scene is actually an argument about Nootka Sound. What does he want? Her rights to Nootka Sound, the parcel of land that's caused all this conflict to begin with. Lorna Bow is officially on Delaney's side nowĪfter last week's exciting murder of the Duke of Richmond, Episode 4 opens with Lorna Bow, the actress widow of Delaney's dearly departed (and insane) father, getting shipped off to an underground dungeon and interrogated by Solomon Coop, the Prince Regent's sniveling assistant. Let's take a closer look at exactly what Delaney's extremely dirty dozen accomplished this week.
Think of it as Ocean's Eleven, but instead of smarmy movie stars in fancy suits, it's a bunch of British character actors covered in soot. What did Delaney need this team for? To carry off a thrilling saltpeter heist, of course.
But last night, in by far the most sex- and violence-crazed episode of the series so far, Delaney began to assemble his own #squad of the damned. From the first episode, Tom Hardy's mumbly protagonist James Delaney has been portrayed as a Clint Eastwood-like antihero who rides into town in his muck-covered coat and makes life hell for the maniacal East India Company, the corrupt Prince Regent, and any dirt-covered miscreant who gets in his way of Nootka Sound. Loyal viewers wouldn't have it any other way. Moments later, the same character declares his need for "50 gallons of human piss." In case it wasn't clear: feces and urine are essential parts of the Taboo experience.
There's a scene in the fourth episode of Taboo, FX's grimy historical drama, where a chemical-crazed doctor eats a piece of cow shit, considers the taste of the animal excrement on his palate, demands a piece of pigeon poop, and then nibbles on that too. Note: This article contains spoilers from the first four episodes of the FX drama Taboo, an amazing show that everyone should be watching.