"The Puzzle Palace" left me feeling wrenched, like a disobedient cat who had just gnawed on my phone charger, only to revert back to its mischievous ways. The show, following an episode of "Talamasca" that was so stupid and yet so delightful, had me hooked again. But minutes after the blood-soaked glory of the Torso Chamber, "Talamasca" decided to revert to its early-season modality, becoming an overly talkative drama where characters I found unrelatable exchanged clichés while dramatic musical stings suggested I should be feeling something. It felt like a personal attack on me, the author of this recap, Lily Osler.
The best I can say about this episode is that for a brief moment, it maintained a tonal continuity with the previous goof-fest. Guy steps out of the same car he entered after his experience with the Disembodied Leg Chamber, steps into Jasper's oddly large private parking garage, and faces Jasper's wrath about "the girl" who tipped him off to Guy's plight. Guy, a true innocent, is offended and shocked that Jasper would be angry at him. "You're just using me!" he shouts at Jasper, almost in tears at having been used by the most obviously evil vampire in Anne Rice's Immortal Universe.
I feel silly for having assumed in episode three that Guy might be double-crossing Jasper. Guy Anatole does not employ strategy in his spycraft; he merely says exactly what he thinks at all times and melts down when this doesn't yield the results he wanted. This doesn't calm Jasper down; he climbs on top of Guy, starts punching him in the face, and moves his hips as if they were having sex with each other. I've been informed by my sources on Tumblr (hi, Olivia!) that "people on there really want that old man to explore that twink's [body part not suitable for publication]," so at least some people will be enjoying this episode.
Unfortunately, this sets us up for the episode's turn to the exceedingly boring. One important rule I've learned about "Talamasca" is that despite its many elements that might predispose it toward queerness (Jason Schwartzman's very gay vampire from episode one, whatever William Fichtner is doing in his performance as Jasper), it follows the logic of heterosexual action media. In other words, when the screen is filled with men, action takes place in intensity directly proportional to the size of said men. But when the screen contains even one woman that Guy Anatole is attracted to, the scene gravitates toward Talking. And "Talamasca," a show that airs scripts so cliché-ridden that I've wondered how involved ChatGPT is in that writer's room, is not a show that does well with Talking.
Worse still, based on his plan to get out of the U.K. alongside her, Guy clearly trusts Doris. This is likely a mistake for him in plot terms since he has had bad luck trusting people so far on this show. But I think it is also a bad choice in terms of making the show bearable to watch; Guy trusting someone will inevitably lead to Guy monologuing about all the things he's kept locked up in his heart for the last few weeks/months/however long "Talamasca" has been going on diegetically.
Indeed, the moment arrives when Guy Anatole spills his guts. He confronts Helen at his workplace, the peep show, where the two engage in a heated exchange. I have transcribed four random quotes from this scene to give you a sense of the quality of the wordsmithing:
"I need you. I need your help... and you're going to give it to me."
"There are bigger forces at play than you can possibly understand."
"If you won't help me, Helen... I'm dead."
"She helped me... and now I'm gonna help her."
Helen, after a laugh-cry that signifies her emotional turmoil, agrees to get Guy to a safe house, where he and Doris will hide for a few days before fleeing the country. At the safe house, the two complain about having nothing to do, then decide to fill their time with straightforward board games and reliving traumatic backstories. Guy, in a long monologue, tells Doris about the day he found out his mother had ostensibly died, then shares how it feels to know that she is still alive.
This part of the episode frustrated me immensely. While I usually give Talamasca a hard time in these recaps, at least it is usually pastiche, the hollowed-out scaffold of dozens of other spy thrillers. It may not be original or smart, but it generally knows where its beats are supposed to go and what they are meant to do. However, Guy's backstory dump doesn't even fulfill the bare requirements of the trauma plot. In Parul Sehgal's bitter formulation, at very least, the moment in which a traumatic backstory is shared must reveal that backstory to both the reader and the character's interlocutor. Guy fails to do this. He tells us a story that tells us something we've known since the show's premiere episode, and then shares some ambiguous looks with another character about whom we have learned exceedingly little. It doesn't reveal; it just lengthens. It's filler, barely a step above slop in the great chain of being.
The same can be said of this episode's reveals. For example, Helen and her twin were separated as children and bound for some terrifyingly huge project of Talamasca origin? I'm not certain why I should care, since the show has given us no compelling characterization of Helen or any sense of the material stakes the Talamasca's Child Experimentation Project might have. Olive was Jasper's mole the whole time? The soundtrack certainly wants us to think this is a twist, but all we know about Olive is that she works for the Talamasca and is ostensibly Guy's handler, although we virtually never see her actually handling him. Doris has had the 752 this whole time? That might mean something if we knew the slightest thing about who Doris is or what she wants or what she means to a single other character on the show. You cannot have character twists on a show that does not have interesting characters. You just can't.
"The Puzzle Palace" is an episode of television full of moments that have the cadence of big, eventful plot beats without anything—impactful character writing, engrossing performances, thematic clarity, actual spy-fictional intrigue—to make its viewers care about those moments. It hopes that you are a dull enough viewer to point and clap at the mere shape of a twist ending. Its characters speak only in clichés, its actors make only ambiguous facial expressions, because it thinks gesturing toward genre convention is enough. It is offensively condescending television. But worse: it's just fucking boring.
