Around the World in 80 Days Review: Season 1 Episode 2

Well, the sky-high visuals were nice for the few seconds they lasted. Around the World in 80 Days quickly shows us that as Fogg doesn’t actually know how to fly a (then unheard of) hot air balloon, we’ll still be taking much of this adventure by land.

This of course adds to the travel times considerably, but we’re still early in the series, so nobody is panicking over 80-day deadlines just yet. Instead, with the trio left with little to do but sit and interact with their fellow travelers, we get several moments of reflection.

For Passepartout, this means he’s allowed a few more moments to sit with his grief for his brother, a painful but welcome point after rushing through the aftermath of this loss in the first episode. He spends much of the hour debating leaving the adventure altogether.

Fix quickly notices this and presses him on it. Their interactions soon confirm the hints already given to us—this shows wants us to want these two to get together, and are doing a pretty good job of making that happen. I was already shipping it in the pilot.

Even with their more lighthearted moments, including a drunken game of cards with fellow passengers that soon turns on its head, there’s too much weight in their scenes for much flirtation. Passepartout carries his grief and Fix resentment against a society that doubts her abilities.

That helps give a depth to the bond they’re already forming. They understand each other but are still more than willing to call each other out. It’s nice too to see them given so much time on their own in a story that has often been told for Phineas Fogg alone.

Still, Phineas is technically our main character and spends his lions share of the screen time reflecting on the postcard calling him a “coward” that spurs this entire adventure and bonding with a young boy who has lost his mother and is at odds with his father.

The postcard is a mystery we’re clearly meant to get invested in, although I’m not sure it’s working for me just yet. I am curious about who wrote it and the hints the author is someone Fogg knows, but there’s plenty of drama for the here and now which so far interests me more than any random motivation.

Case in point: his scenes with the young traveler are lovely and heartwarming. The fact that he has (for whatever reason) jaunted off on a worldwide venture gives an air that fits with him bonding with children. I wonder if the loss of a mother does as well.

It’s only logical then that this same boy is the one who winds up critically injured as the train screeches to halt to avoid hazardous passage across a cavern. I don’t doubt Fogg would risk life and limb for a stranger, but this tangent helps us care more, too.

It also helps prove that Phineas, who has at points been downright bumbling, can work wonders when he’s put under pressure, helping guide the train across a feel inches of steel with a thousand-foot plunge at risk—and all for to get urgent medical attention to his new young friend.

This is another example of how to flesh out a series across a multi-episode (and perhaps multi-season) story. In other retellings, we might not have time to dedicate an entire section to a single day’s worth of travel, and especially not one relying so heavily on episodic characters.

Here, we have more story to tell and plenty of time to tell it in. Around the World in 80 Days passes one critical hurdle of a good story: characters are more than plot points even if we’ll only see them once. And, perhaps even more importantly, they connect us still more to those we’ll see again and again.

What did you think of this episode of Around the World in 80 Days? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Around the World in 80 Days airs Sundays at 8/7c on PBS.

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