If you missed my review on the rest of Season 1, you can find it here.
To my excitement, a bonus episode came out for the series. This episode is a two-for-one, and I love it. The first is a short story with cats, one that I hadn’t seen by Neil Gaiman. I could be wrong. The second is about the muse Calliope. Let me explain.
In the first part, all the cats in the neighborhood round up in the graveyard, so I first thought Death was going to talk to the cats. It was first a thought when the other cats were calling her “Mistress”. It was another cat sharing a message. She, a pure-bred siamese cat, had a one-night stand with a tom cat. She got pregnant, and the man that owned her got rid of the babies.
In her dream, she met a skeletal vulture. I believe Neil voiced him. After that, she had to go on a journey, and it was a rough one. She went through the cold and wet and all kinds of stuff. At the end of the journey, she meets the Cat King. He showed her the power of dreams. This is the message she carries.
The second story follows a writer’s greed, rise, and fall, all because he held a divine being captive. Her name is Calliope. She is the youngest of the nines muses of the Greek pantheon. Rick Madoc had success with a novel he wrote. He got an advance for his second novel but has an insane case of writer’s block. As a writer myself, I can tell you it sucks to go through the drought. Rick brings a ball of hair extracted from a woman’s stomach surgically to Erasmus Fry in exchange for a woman.
By the laws that govern the Greek gods, Erasmus Fry ensnared Calliope fair and square, and she was bound to him. For years Erasmus took inspiration from Calliope against her will. I am sure you can guess how. Finally, Erasmus transferred Calliope’s binding from him to Rick. She was now bound, again fair and square, to Rick. He tried to woo her (not very well or hard, if you ask me), he tried asking her nicely, and he tried begging her. She told him she would bless him after he released her. He finally also took inspiration from her as Erasmus did, and he found more success. With that success, he was less willing than ever to release her.
When she could take it no longer, she begged the maiden, mother, and crone to help her. When they could not, they suggested she appeal to her ex-husband, Dream. She refused. Unfortunately, he was a captive of someone else. One day she read that the sleeping beauty had woken up. Finally, she caved and called for him. He answered and was extremely upset when he found out her plight, having gone through being captured himself. Plus, she is his ex-wife and the mother of his son, Orpheus.
Morpheus tries sternly requesting Calliope’s release from Ric (he dropped the k). Ric refused. He needs her for ideas. Dream decided to give him ideas. It overloaded Ric during class, and he begged for it to stop. He released Calliope. Dream wanted to keep it going, but Calliope appealed to Morpheus to let Rick go. So Dream wiped his mind.
I loved this episode. We got to see a softer side of Dream but a scary one too. I will pass on pissing off Morpheus. What about you? Would you risk making Dream of the Endless mad? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, have fun storming the castle.
