One of the things that I loved was the disbelief that James showed when he heard the news. It's almost as though he started believing his own hype 'If she was dead, I'd hear her' is the biggest insight we've had to James' psychosis.

I think Chichester went to Delaney's house to get the documents was to have the characters fully mirror one another.

I get your point about the devotion to James, but I saw it more as 'in for a penny, in for a pound'. The Crown was going to kill them all, in that situation, I'd take my chances with Delaney. Plus, there's a lot of money to be made in Nootka Sound.

I get your point about the devotion to James, but I saw it more as 'in for a penny, in for a pound'. The Crown was going to kill them all, in that situation, I'd take my chances with Delaney. Plus, there's a lot of money to be made in Nootka Sound.

I haven't watched Penny Dreadful, but the entire point of the supernatural stuff in Taboo is that it isn't real. It's a part of Delaney's identity, and a method of unnerving his opponents (as well as possibly being a genuine religious belief).

Well, that's a better grade than I expected. Not by much, mind you.

Well, Imperial Britain wasn't exactly a great place for women.

Thanks! I think I'm going to give it a go. Once I've got it set up and published, well, how should I let people who might be interested aware that it exists?

What does he even want revenge for? EIC never actually wronged him before the events of the show. They trained him, he went MIA on a secret slave run, and then he inherited a valuable stretch of land. They didn't kill his father, or his mother. It was only when the EIC attempted to snatch the land away from him that…

I've actually been thinking about blogging about Taboo, because there's so much stuff to unpack, but I haven't actually got a blog yet. And, if I did, it would feel a bit like screaming into the void - like nobody would actually read it.

I'd say the Guardian is more liberal, or, at least it's more heavily focussed on politics because it's a newspaper (though the AV Club seems to have a million Trump hit pieces every month).

I don't think that's a fair accusation. Emily doesn't seem to object much to the show's portrayal of misogyny, racism and exploitation, because it's clear that the characters who are the worst in those regards are villains. If she led every review with 'Taboo is awful because it gratuitously exploits women' then I'd…

I don't want to toot my own horn, but it's a sad state of affairs if I can write something more insightful than a professional reviewer in 5 minutes.

So I just watched the finale, and it was good. Without spoiling it, a lot of things happened. But I know the review will be 'nothing happened' or 'it was boring/took too long, C+'.

I think there's 2 reasons.

Exactly. Not everyone is going to have awful public paedophilia comments floating around the internet.

Every week Taboo seems to get reviews here that, frankly, suck.

There are a lot of different ways the show could evolve. I thought that Joel would euthanize Sheila via slugger, only for her to rise from the grave.

Well, for one, treason would be worse than slavery (not morally, but socially) and could spell the end for the EIC. Similarly, piracy could be a worse crime. Imagine a rogue EIC captain turning to piracy, targeting British ships, or, worse, foreign (Spanish/French) ships while flying EIC colours to maintain cover and…

Possibly, but probably not. I think it never sunk. That's probably a cover story for something even worse than slavery.