Somnambulant
Freud awakens in episode 3 of Freud to find himself in Fleur’s house. As he picks up a pocket watch from the ground, he jumps out the window which prompts Martha to awaken from her nightmare, breathing heavily. Dawn approaches and Kiss and Georg begin their duel. Kiss decides not to shoot his opponent in the head and instead, he shoots Georg in the thigh. As he bleeds out, given the severed artery he’s sporting Georg whispers “Taltos will come over you.” and dies. Kiss then returns home and greets his family warmly, especially after having conquered the demons weighing him down. Fleur has a bath whilst being told more about the seance for the Crown Prince Rudolf. The Countess greets Dr Von but manages to hypnotize him, telling Dr Von to kill himself and seemingly holding sway over his actions. Meanwhile, Freud continues to develop his skills alongside his associate Josef, who manages to make the paralyzed Elise move her toes in bed. However, he’s distracted by seeing Dr Von, who walks purposefully away from him in a trance. Before Freud can probe this further, the Professor berates him for going near Clara and takes his attention away from his colleague. Dr Von heads up to see Clara with a knife in his hand but can’t bring himself to slit his own throat. Instead, it rings enough alarm bells for Freud to follow him to the local bar some time later where the issue with Georg spills over. Dr Von riles up the group and as they start to chant, Freud hastily leaves the bar. The Crown Prince arrives at Sophia’s house where they learn Georg has passed away. However, Sophia remains optimistic over the seance as she and Viktor control Fleur to perform without a hitch. After some frightening visions of a bloodied singer, she collapses on the floor and passes out. Fleur is taken upstairs to rest but when the Crown Prince arrives to see her some time later, she’s nowhere to be seen. Freud heads back and speaks to Josef about Dr Von being hypnotized. As they keep talking, they bounce ideas off one another. In the aftermath of this, Lenore gives Freud a bath and comments on how he needs to get a wife. As she leaves, Fleur arrives and tells him to hypnotize her. As she goes under again, Freud guides her around the frightening vision she had earlier in the episode. It’s here she sees this bloodied creature reborn, rising up from the ground. She tells Freud that something bad happened in the past as she’s snapped back to reality. Freud arrives with Fleur in his horse-drawn carriage and convinces Kiss to ride with him. They head up to the Opera singer’s house together, where they find him bloodied and standing, rocking back and forth slightly while muttering “Stay calm”. When he sees Fleur he charges for her, only to be tackled to the ground by the other officers. Thankfully, Freud manages to knock him out cold with an injection, preventing any more issues arising. In the aftermath of this, Freud and Fleur discuss the hypnotic state she’s found herself in recently and contemplate what this state entails. While Freud tries to piece together the fragments of evidence he has to go on, Fleur returns home and threatens Sophia, telling her not to come near her again. Instead, Sophia turns her attention to Freud and visits him in his office, complaining of an arm injury. He looks to examine her cut but instead, she leans forward and tells him to sleep. Under her spell, she whispers for him to kill himself and to give in to temptation, leaving Freud alone in his room and wondering how he got there. He steps up to the window and looks set to jump, mirroring that same scene we saw at the start of the episode as the drama is left on a big cliffhanger. With a supernatural slant and plenty of hypnotism throughout, Freud combines this with satanic rituals, sexual and violent imagery to deliver a show that’s evolved slightly from its early procedural feel into something far more fantastical and hellish. While it’s still too early to see how this will develop over the second half of the show, so far at least the series has done an okay job with its material, even if the different plots aren’t quite as tightly wound as they could be. The edited segments of sandwiching in the same scene at the start and end of the episode with better context is a nice touch, while the big takeaway this episode comes from the mention of “taltos”, which looks like it may be an important development going forward. For now though, Freud bows out with another pretty good episode, even if this one isn’t quite as strong as what we’ve seen before.
