Pennyworth Review: Cilla Black (Season 1 Episode 6)

A horror tinge finds its way into the events of Pennyworth Season 1 Episode 6, “Cilla Black,” as Alfred’s anger and need for revenge takes him down a mystic path while Martha finds herself locked into a house of monsters.

Alfred’s main antagonist being a guy he cracked a joke about back during the war is the biggest left turn. It robs the emotion of the revelation as it comes down to a random character becoming a main villain. The Captain is hopefully a red herring, because as of now, it’s the least interesting choice so far. He can’t take a gun from its holster without cracking up, and so as a threat for Alfred, it doesn’t match.

Alfred’s dream sequence, with the return of Spanish, his dead comrade, is at least a fun little moment, ghosting and doubling images passing by with every turn of his head. Pennyworth always has some unique style in its production, even if the events around them can struggle a tad from time to time.

The episode takes on the strange with a hint of horror this time; on other episodes there are moments of oddness and peculiarities, while here it takes on a more dangerous tinge, chiefly with where Martha finds herself.

The satanist party is certainly a sex party, without a doubt, but there comes this level of malice from the seemingly endless loop the rooms create so that escape isn’t an option. The flirting with the satanist leader is part grimy and part revealing, as he mentions his intention to break Martha in passing.

That it leads to her ending up nude in a field, several days later, is a supremely dark outcome. Did Patricia let this happen? She’s in the crowd, watching Martha pass without flinching. Or is there something in the drinks, as Martha slammed back quite a few of them, leading to potential disorientation and why the room kept spinning back to the beginning.

Either way, the imagery and the strangeness of the location makes for a unique setting, but the outcome feels a little unnecessary. Leaving Martha in such a state could have been done in a more elegant manner, rather than resorting to a potential assault angle. The levels of disorientation and a psychological direction could have been a larger benefit, with her guilt over Esme bleeding into it.

The Raven Society and No-Name League truce comes after its more intriguing episode, but with Lord Harwood coming back to claim everything for himself, it’s a given to blow up just as the dust settles. It does come as a surprise that he’s so game to come back into his former life after showing such anger at the mere mention of it the previous episode, Pennyworth Season 1 Episode 5, “Shirley Bassey.”

At least it’s bringing Bet back into the fray, having been on the sidelines for a rather long time now.

The outcomes to each of these stories leaves an unfortunate disappointment to settle in. It’s a difficult direction to take the each storyline, as they don’t end up inspiring confidence in what’s to come. Each direction is the least exciting to take the characters and their journeys, as it treats them all as victims of circumstance out of their control. They are not active participants of their own stories.

Pennyworth Season 1 Episode 6, “Cilla Black,” finds qualities through its strangeness and surprising visuals. But it struggles with left turns and sending characters down paths that are not as engaging or emotionally fulfilling as initially promised. It’s still a fun show around all of that, and can easily right the issues, but it’s not an inspiring step into the second half of the season.

 

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Pennyworth airs Sundays at 9/8c on Epix.

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