The Fall of the House of Usher Season 1 Episode 2 Review: The Masque of the Red Death
Denis Kimathi
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Oh to be young, hot, rich, and have a wealthy daddy. That's the dream, right?
But what if that dream comes at the cost of millions of lives destroyed? And by destroyed, we mean they expired?
The Fall of the House of Usher Season 1 Episode 2 dove deeper into the workings of the Usher family's business, which was pharmaceuticals.
In the series premiere, we learned about the effects those drugs had on people, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Following the revelation in court, the children were apprehensive, and everyone was on edge because the mole could be anyone, which was scary.
We met Dupin in the series premiere as an older man working as a detective to bring the Usher family to justice for their crimes. Still, that scene didn't last long between introducing the storyline and setting up the characters.
Was it ever going to be enough? Over the years, I've talked to a lot of people who have taken your drugs. Soccer moms with headaches. Accountants with carpal tunnel. Kids with sports injuries. Their docs prescribe them Ligodone, pitch it like extra strength Tylenol. Fast forward a year, they're shooting up heroin behind dumpsters. Or they're dead.
Dupin
Dupin, who had felt like a secondary character, got more screentime as the episode traced his beginnings as a medical fraud investigator, and he was the one to catch onto Fortunato's dealings way before Roderick took over.
Dupin had always been an honest man who would do anything to get to the truth, and who can say he wasn't justified based on what he found out?
He asked hard-hitting questions that Roderick struggled to answer because he had no answers. He had been corrupted by money, and the thing about money is that one will always want more.
Profit was so much in his mind that he overlooked basic security and environmental concerns.
We found evidence of buried toxins. Oil, coal, pesticides, rotting debris, chemicals, heavy metals, including arsenic, benzene, chromium, mercury, and lead. One site had such a highly acidic concentration that--
Woman
If selling an addictive drug to vulnerable people was bad, learning about his industries' effects on the environment was straight-up evil.
From poisoned water to substandard buildigs, they would do anything to increase their margins.
Frederick: Any structure we own or control, if it's found in violation, and we are legally liable for that property, we'll bring it to code, or we will demolish it as soon as possible.
Woman: You've been saying that for a year. Over a year.
We knew Roderick's children were dead, but the circumstances were unknown.
The episode peeled back into the youngest of the Usher children and exposed a child so new to this world who was just looking to make a name himself in a family where name matters and money matters even more.
It was an opportunity for Saruyian Sakopta to shine, and he inhabited the character of Prospero so well that it was unimaginable he played the role of one of the sickly children in The Midnight Club.
The characters in this show were so different from others in the Mike Flanagan shows. If we were being honest, I'd say I didn't think anyone apart from Zach Gilford would be able to play their character convincingly.
The actor embodied the characters from the haircut to the mannerisms and line delivery that made the little confused Usher devil to watch.
The Usher children are not likable, but one couldn't help but root for him.
The first thing you have to understand about my son is that he was, if nothing else… crazy.
Roderick
He was the underdog, and it is usually great when the underdog emerges victorious.
All he wanted was to prove that he wasn't building castles in the air and deserved the Kickstarter money all the Usher children seem to get once they reach a certain age.
I wanted Prospero to prosper and his orgy to succeed because it's an orgy, like, come on.
But like his father, gluttony couldn't stop him from overlooking serious moral and ethical considerations.
Do you want to have an orgy? Great. But ensure people are safe and have enough water to stay hydrated.
But Perry had an idea and wasn't unwilling to sacrifice it.
Water bottles are less sexy than sprinklers raining water on the warm horny bodies of strangers only present at that event to indulge their sexual desires.
And like his father, everything was an opportunity to make money, the pain that'll cause be damned.
Verna was this family's kryptonite, and I questioned whether she was real or a manifestation of Prospero's conscience warning him of the mistake he was about to make.
It is worth pointing out that Carla Gugino has always been all that, and after the untimely end Jett met on Cinemax, it was great to see her back in action playing a complex character.
She was the complete package, from the looks to the acting skills.
Verna warned him, but Prospero didn't care. There is only so much you can tell someone before you give up and let things take their natural course.
There are always consequences. Take you, for instance. Someone, a long time ago, made a little decision, then another, then a big one, then one of absolutely no importance. And then by and by, you were born. On that day, you were the consequence of a harmless choice made by someone in a moment where you didn't even exist. And that choice defined your whole life. You are consequence, Perry. And tonight, you are consequential.
Verna
The orgy sadly didn't happen, and while that was a bit disappointing, the alternative invoked different but strong feelings. Hearing the sound of flesh burning from the acid to the screams, stampede, and scramble was a mixture of horror and comedy.
I wasn't sure if Prospero deserved that fate for the orgy and what he intended to do, but he must have done worse things.
Who was to blame?
Roderick fell on the sword and was right. Everything that went wrong in Perry's life can be attributed to Roderick's actions tracing back decades.
It was undeniable that Perry had a distorted idea about sex. To him, it was this physical thing people do that they put so much importance into.
He might have been right about some of it but he missed a a lot – and so did many of the Usher children.
Your brother's wife is not a conquest.
Perry: No one has to know. No one will ever find out. Yeah, it's my gift to you. Look… picture the perfect cock in your hands, in your mouth. The perfect pussy, if that's your speed or both. Without faces, without words, without judgment. Wet and hard… and all yours.
Morelle: How dare you? I'm your brother's wife.
Leo would let anyone with a warm mouth blow him.
Camille treated her assistants like walking sex toys.
Tamerlane was so into herself that she would pay women to recreate diners with her husband and masturbate watching that. What fetish is that? Because that's very foreign to me.
In The Fall of the House of Usher series premiere review, I mentioned that many of the supernatural horrors happening will have an explanation, and we can cross Roderick's hallucinations off the list.
He had CADISIL, a degenerative disease whose symptoms include seeing things that are not there, and the experience seems very real.
We also checked in on Young Roderick, who pitched a life-changing idea to his boss but was rejected.
There was something sad about seeing Roderick getting beaten by life while he had a wife and baby at home waiting for him.
He had an ass for a boss, and with a boss like that, one can never progress. A boss is responsible for uplifting their workers because the company cannot grow from the top.
Well, over to you.
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Denis Kimathi was a staff writer for TV Fanatic. He has watched more dramas and comedies than he cares to remember. Catch him on social media obsessing over [excellent] past, current, and upcoming shows or going off about the politics of representation on TV. Follow him on X.
