Dickinson Review: Grief is a Mouse (Season 3 Episode 9)

When Taylor Swift said “Oh Goddamn” in the chorus of her song “Ivy,” she was actually talking about Dickinson Season 3 Episode 9, “Grief is a Mouse.” The series’ penultimate episode put Emily on her intra-familial “make amends” tour, and towards what seems to be a satisfying ending.

This episode has a very big “last hurrah” vibe to it, particularly within the going away party scene. For some reason, even though these characters are supposed to be well into their 20s and 30s, it felt a lot like a senior class graduation party. It’s the kind of soiree where you celebrate with people you’ve known almost all of your lives, not knowing when/if you’ll ever see them again.

I suppose that’s how it might have felt going to fight in the Civil War, though I assume with a bit more melancholy hanging over the crowd. Dickinson has never been one to dwell on the sorrow though and threw together a really lovely sendoff for its peripheral characters.

We’ll get back to that in a bit.

Dickinson Season 3 Episode 9 begins with something that I think we’ve been severely lacking all season — a Dickin-sib scene. Much of this season has been dedicated to this idea of legacy, and what legacy we inherit from our parents. I think what it’s failed to consider, until this episode, is that our parents’ greatest legacy is often their children.

That finally clicked for Emily on Dickinson Season 3 Episode 8, “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun -,” when she realized that eventually, her brother would hold the same role in her life that her father presently does. 

What transpires is a really nice heart to heart between all three Dickinson children. With all of the “life” that got in the way, it’s been a while since we really just got to see their sibling relationship flourish. In the end, all, Austin wanted to hear from his sisters is that they believe in him, and all the girls wanted to hear from their brother is that he won’t treat them like property when their father passes on.

It’s a little unbalanced, sure, but for women in the mid-1800s, that’s a win.

Next on Emily’s reunification tour is her mother, who has been bedridden for far longer than any of the Dickinsons believed she would be.

Jane Krakowski has been an excellent comedic asset to this series as Mrs. Dickinson, but I really think it’s this scene that might be my favorite of hers throughout the series. It also brings Dickinson Season 3 full circle.

If you remember back to Dickinson Season 3 Episode 1, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” Aunt Lavinia’s funeral was a hot mess, as it was deemed less important than the funeral(s) of the soldiers fallen during the war.

It was at the funeral that Emily noticed a small yellow bird land atop the coffin and took that as a sign of both her aunt’s spirit and a sign to not give up hope. Emily has held onto that vision all season, and finally relays the sign to her mother hoping that it will spur her out of bed.

Mrs. Dickinson has always come off as indifferent to her eldest daughter’s quirks. This heart-to-heart that they have, about grief of all things, is a nice coda to their sometimes tumultuous relationship and shows a lot of growth from where the family started to where it’s at now.

The pair spot a mouse in Mrs. Dickinson’s room, which she takes as a sign from her sister’s spirit, and turns into a therapeutic outlet for her grief. If hope is the bird, then grief is the mouse. It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s poetry.

I have to give props to Adrian Blake Enscoe for a great performance on this episode. Austin Dickinson has been annoying at best through the first eight episodes of Dickinson Season 8. The scene with George and Sue is Enscoe at his best this season.

It also serves as a sort of truce between Austin and his estranged wife. While I’m still curious to see how the Austin/Sue/Emily dynamic will conclude when the series comes to an end, the two seem to have found some level of amity.

For someone who loves this show, I’ve never been one to really feel moved by poetry. There’s a level of appreciation I have for the art form, because it takes a genius to weave together stanzas into something that has layered meaning.

Maybe it’s because this episode felt like a sort of farewell, but the poem that Emily orates in the last scene of all of the young Amherstians got me teary. Maybe it’s because though set in the 1800s the world around Emily Dickinson isn’t too far off from the one we live in today.

Emily’s been mostly private with her words, preferring to write them down rather than say them aloud, so hearing her work, in her own cadence, is one of the largest signs of growth any character has had on this show. It’s also probably the greatest foreplay a poet and their lover could ever hope for.

The final scene of Dickinson Season 3 Episode 9 will leave Emisue fans breathless.

I’ve said all season that Emily and Sue need to simply communicate with each other, and a ton of their problems would be solved outright. The pair seemed in a good spot at the end of Dickinson Season 2, which has made their strife this season all the more frustrating — and they only have themselves to blame.

Sure, Sue’s child with Austin drove a wedge between them. But Emily has self-therapized herself this season enough to realize that at the end of the day, Sue is the most important person in the world to her.

As we saw in her inner inferno in Dickinson Season 3 Episode 8, her biggest fear in their relationship is feeling like she’s not enough, and that she loves having Sue as her muse more than she loves Sue herself.

Getting out of the inferno, thanks to the yellow bird of hope finally — finally!! — knocked some sense into her and allowed her to reconcile with her lover.

We’ve known that Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Hunt have insane levels of chemistry since Dickinson Season 1, and this episode is just further proof. It was also just stylistically shot and edited beautifully — sexy without being over-sexualized, and evocative even though it’s actually relatively short.

There’s one cut to someone’s hand tracing over someone’s collarbone and the hollow of their throat that might be one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen on television. Its vibe is very Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but rated PG-13.

It’s a long-awaited reunion for the two, who we haven’t really seen show any intimacy since the Dickinson Season 3 premiere. And while they haven’t really had a serious “talk” in the literal sense of the word, they at least seem to be back on the same page.

Emily: “You know this? This right here is better than any poem.”

In the end, all Emily needed from Sue was her authentic validation, with no ulterior motives like fame. And all Sue needed from Emily was to feel like she was desired more than writing was.

That the poetry overlay turned from its usual gold to red was especially, dare I say, poetic. 

For all the frustrations I’ve had with the middle group of Dickinson Season 3 episodes, I felt like this lead-in to the finale achieved a lot and put focus on the right places. If it wrapped up a lot of Dickinson‘s more myopic plots, It’ll be interesting to see where next week’s finale leaves Emily in the context of the Civil War.

And even if the Union and the Confederacy are still at odds, I’d say at least Emily was pretty successful with her own reunification efforts.

Stray Musings from this Episode:

• Lavinia Dickinson deserves a Tony for her work on ‘Sheep no More.’
• Mrs. Dickinson Quote of the week: “Oh don’t flatter me.” – when Emily tells her she’s a good broom sweeper.
• Henry didn’t have much going on this episode, but I am glad to see that at least he got a well-deserved promotion and that, hopefully, Higginson will bring his family some peace.
• Mr. Dickinson’s political future was a weird insert on this episode. Maybe it brought him a sense of clarity that we’ll see next episode.
• “Let’s Party my Platonic friend.” Remember when George and Emily had a budding romance in Dickinson Season 1? They were all such babies back then.
• The Grouplove song that played over the entire party scene was giving me such big FUN “We are young” vibes from the early 2010s. Yikes, that makes me feel old.
• George asking Emily to read her published poem aloud and then her saying I’ll do it but I’ll do it for Sue is the biggest flex I’ve ever seen.

What did you think of the penultimate episode of Dickinson? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Dickinson Season 3 is available to stream on Apple TV+. New episodes premiere on Fridays.

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