I Am the Night (1.4) - Betrayal of the Unconscious

Over the past few episodes, we have guessed that the I Am the Night was going to continue to indulge in some of the show’s most sensual desires. The previous episode started with an orgy and while nothing so brazen kicks off this episode, we do get a deeper dive into the art world that George Hodel covets. In fact, the connection between that world and Hodel is seemingly the closest any of our characters have come to putting together the pieces of the mystery. While it was never confirmed in real life, I Am the Night feels comfortable leading Jay Singletary – and additionally Fauna – down the road to discovering her grandfather’s connections to the Black Dahlia murders.

Salvador Dali - The Melting Watch

Almost all of artwork featured in “Matador” is the work of the surrealists. The blending of dream and reality so as blur the line between disparate fantasy and everyday existence. Such is also the case with the numerous dreams that Jay has in this episode. He is visited by enemy soldiers in his sleep, and then by Sepp – as a police officer – in the interrogation room. Both of these dreams blend his dark reality with an even more nightmarish scene. While George and his ilk in the 1960s art scene turn those dreams into twisted, sometimes revelatory art, Jay is stuck unable to escape the most damaging aspects of his own psyche. Rather than use his unconscious as a tool to create something, he is beholden to its will.

Max Ernst - The Beautiful Season (1925)

In “Matador,” Jay and Fauna are also brought back together after Jay saves her from whatever screwed up thing that Sepp was about to do to her (he threatens to eat her calf in front of her, for context). At this moment, it seems as though our protagonists are inextricably linked and forced to trust one another for their own safety. One of the most peculiar scenes of the episode though is Fauna’s visit to a club Jimmie Lee (her adoptive mother, so to speak) is performing at in LA. The scene does not quite go anywhere, as Jimmie Lee once again hits her daughter for pursuing the truth about her own life. Though the scene does further characterize the difficult, often abusive relationship between the mother and daughter, it seems to tread in old water while feeling only tangentially connected to Fauna’s present in Los Angeles. We know that Jimmie Lee was the one that called Jay Singletary at the end of the first episode to warn him about George Hodel, but we do not know the extent of what she knows nor why she will not share it with Fauna if she is worried about her getting too close to her grandfather.

Man Ray

As much as I have enjoyed some of Sam Sheridan’s writing, this was the first episode that I felt it struggled to keep conversations afloat. There were so many interesting, odd, and ominous events occurring at once but most of the dialogue was flat. There were certainly exceptions, mostly in the form of Jay Singletary who at times feels like a mouthpiece for Sheridan to cut loose. After killing Sepp and stashing his body in the trunk, Jay starts drinking straight from the bottle in the driver’s seat of the car. Fauna looks at him and says “I don’t think that’s how you make a gin and tonic,” and Jay immediately replies as he downs more alcohol, “Do I look like a bartender?”

Victoria Mahoney gives us more stellar direction in this episode, particularly with the way she frames characters in any given scene. In I Am the Night, the foreground versus background action started with Patty Jenkins’ work through the first two episodes, but I have been impressed with the way Mahoney has picked up that style and made it her own. However, the editing in “Marador” is where the episode comes together and finds its greatest strengths. Mark Yoshikawa excels blending dreams, reality, and whatever exists between them across the episode. None of it comes together as well as the scene when Jay enters the room of George Hodel’s private art collection. Yoshikawa was also the editor on Tree of Life, a film that starts and stops with the various potent images spliced together. The same happens in Jay’s final scene in “Matador.” For both the viewer and their resident investigative reporter, everything comes crashing down. Both Jay and the viewer thought this was where the mystery would bring us, but nobody was sure how we would get here. We stare at paintings by surrealists like Dali, Man Ray, and Max Ernst putting the pieces together in the same way both Singletary is and Yoshikawa does with the images. We jump between the surrealist painting of dismembered bodies to gruesome images of the Black Dahlia murders. The pace of the scene speeds up, the cuts become quicker. Suddenly Jay looks over and sees the horns of a bull. A bull similar to the shadow he saw earlier after Sepp’s death. All at once, everything makes sense and nothing makes sense. We have our murderer but feel no closer to being able to say for certain. Yoshikawa’s editing purges the scene of words. The images speak for themselves. In “Matador,” that is when I Am the Night is at its best.

We only have two episodes to bring all of this to a close. I do not expect this pace to slow at all. Buckle in, because this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Until next time, thanks for reading.