Playing House
Episode 8 of The Sandman picks up right where we left off, with Rose standing before Dream and Lucienne. She dreams her way into an audience with the King of Dreams, but he welcomes her and allows Rose to talk. Now, it would seem that Dream believes he’s partly responsible for the birth of a new vortex. When Dream mentioned Jed, this appears to have been the trigger to bring Rose there. Dream believes that his missing Nightmare, Gault, is the one holding Jed. Dream encourages Rose to continue looking for her brother, promising to help out in her dreams while she searches in the waking world. Now, Jed happens to be locked in the dingy basement of a nasty house, with Aunt Clarice and Uncle Barnaby keeping him under strict surveillance. They’re using him for his money, with Jed’s miserable existence made slightly more tolerable by some fantastical dreams about being a superhero called The Sandman, courtesy of Gault. Speaking of fantastic dreams, Lyta ends up dreaming of her husband, who builds her dream house and encourages her to stay with him. Lyta doesn’t though, and instead awakens and speaks to Rose. Determined, she’s printed out numerous Missing Person posters relating to her brother and wants Lyta’s help in putting them up. Rose first visits Ms Rubio – the woman working at the foster agency – and convinces her to visit Jed. Uncle Barnaby speaks to Jed when he finds out about the visit, demanding he be good and even offers to let him sleep in a real bed… but only if Jed keeps his mouth shut and follows orders. If not, then Barnaby will break every bone in his body. Ms. Rubio shows up and all is well for a while, but when Jed takes his leave and hugs the agent, he slips a note into her bag. Unfortunately, this backfires. Barnaby manages to infiltrate the letter and promises to make Jed pay that night. While Jed prepares for Barnaby’s wrath, The Corinthian finds Ms Rubio and kills her in his usual way, even eating her eyeballs while reading Jed’s file. Rose begins dream walking, accompanied by Dream who serves as her protégé. He encourages Rose to find her own path, as she wanders through fantastical dreams being conjured by all her friends. Eventually, she finds young Zelda in a graveyard and follows this young child through a doorway to Jed’s dream. Jed soon shows up before Dream, telling him that he’s the Master of Dreams. Dream is bemused over this title, but everything is thrown out of whack when Rose appears. Dream shows Gault’s true form, which has shape-shifted from Rose’s mother into her celestial form. As for Rose, she urges Jed to tell her where he is… but the dream ends before he can say anything. Thankfully though, Rose figures out where Jed is being held and takes off, courtesy of the landscape in his dream. As for Lyta though, she awakens from another dream with Hector to find out she’s inexplicably pregnant. Meanwhile, Dream dispatches Gault and banishes her to the darkness. Lucienne isn’t exactly pleased with this though, pointing out that Gault has changed and this Nightmare only wanted to dream and inspire rather than cause fear. Speaking of inspire, Jed awakens to find his house empty and a complete state. The Corinthian greets him at the basement landing, claiming to have been sent by Rose. With his guardians dead, Corinthian drives off with Jed, exclaiming that he’s looking forward to meeting his sister.
The Episode Review
The Sandman returns with another good episode, this time turning the attention across to dreams themselves and Rose’s part to play in all this. As the Vortex, she has the ability to dream hop and switching between these different dreams accompanied by Morpheus himself is a nice segment and quite reminiscent of that brilliant sequence in episode 6 where Death walked through the final moments of various people’s lives. The ending hints that we’re going to get a lot more of this in the coming chapters, and for those unaware of how the story plays out, strap yourselves in – this one’s about to get chaotic!
