In the ninth episode of Baccano!, my wrongness is displayed for everyone. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Baccano!
“Claire Stanfield Faithfully Carries Out the Mission”
- I FELL FOR IT SO HARD. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD.
- WHO IS THE MAN BEHIND THE PILE OF BOOKS AT THE DAILY DAYS? STOP DOING THIS TO ME. WHAT THE FUCK.
- OH MY GOD. Claire. CLAIRE.
- WHEN RACHEL WALKED IN AND IT WAS THE WOMAN IN FATIGUES, I WAS SO FUCKED UP. BUT
- BUT
- BUT SHE WAS
- OH MY GOD
- I literally said she looked assassin-y. Just bury me here forever. I can’t believe this happened. I AM SO EMBARRASSED.
- And this is just the start, since this episode upends pretty much everything I thought I knew. Good god, Rachel works for the Daily Days and collects information for them. That information? IT HAS DESTROYED ME.
- Y’all, I forgot about Dune. I forgot Dune had killed the original conductor and switched uniforms with him. I forgot that we never saw the actual death of the two conductors; we just saw their bodies.
- Oh my god, the entire bit of dialogue where Vino/Claire Stanfield explains how to survive – “to kill them before they kill you” – was a clue to his whole identity anyway. THAT’S HOW HE’S GOTTEN AWAY WITH BEING THE ASSASSIN FOR THE GONDORS. It’s how he assumed the role of the Rail Tracer. He took a myth that already existed, and he hid inside of it.
- JESUS CHRIST, VINO IS THE RAIL TRACER.
- There’s a point later where the director of the Daily Days mentions that in his own sick way, Vino has a code by which he kills. I think we can see that in the murder of Dune. Dune is killed for murdering the conductor, Tony, who had taught Vino everything he knew about trains. He also killed all of Huey’s followers for hijacking the train. But what about the Russo folks? Don’t they count?
- Are we ever going to find out who the hell Lua is? I’M SO LOST.
- It makes sense, then, that because Vino became obsessed with trains as a method to assassinate people for the Gondors and to kill for himself, he’d memorize things like the passenger manifest. He’d know who was supposed to be on board every trip, and that’s why he knew that Rachel was essentially a stowaway.
- MY GOD. HIS WHOLE BACKSTORY. Orphaned, raised by the Gondor brothers, spent years honing his physical craft with time in the circus, THE REASON HE’S CALLED VINO. Goddamn it, I FELL FOR THIS SO HARD.
- THE GONDORS WERE AT THE TRAIN STATION IN NEW YORK. I KNEW THAT, I JUST FORGOT IT.
- Vino is getting married? To WHOM???
- MEANWHILE, DALLAS GENOARD. I’m seriously expecting him to die in one of these episodes, but for now, he’s alive and immortal. We learn that Szilard kept him alive specifically to fight the mafia men who were guarding his box of the immortality elixir. Well, it’s more specific than that, of course; by keeping Dallas and his men alive, he can set them loose to clash with the Gondors so that Quates and his group can simply sit on the sidelines. The whole thing has this horrifying class element to it, too, since Quates and his men are perfectly fine using lower class “thugs” to act out all this shit so they can be all proper and safe behind the scenes. UGH I HATE QUATES. ENNIS, GO KILL HIM.
- Whoops, I was so distracted by all the other plots that I forgot about the Lemures’ plot to get Senator Beriam to release Huey. WHOOPS.
- There’s just so much going on here, I swear.
- WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ENDING??? WHY IS CZESLAW ASKING LADD TO KILL EVERYONE IN THE DINING CAR??? I DON’T GET IT. I DON’T UNDERSTAND.
- I’m sure I’ve said that sentence about a thousand times while writing about this show. Y’all, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.
The video for Episode 9 can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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