Playing House
In the eighth episode of The Sandman, Rose visits Dream to plead for his help in finding her son. Jed is the only person who can close a new vortex that’s been appearing all over the world. Dream believes that Jed is being held by Gault, one of his former nightmares. ..
In a dream, Rose’s brother Jed is locked in a dank basement with Aunt Clarice and Uncle Barnaby. They’re using him for his money, and he’s miserable in his dreams because he doesn’t have any other dreams. In the waking world, people are using Jed for his money, and he’s miserable because he doesn’t have any other dreams.
Lyta has a fantastic dream in which her husband builds her a dream house and encourages her to stay with him. However, when she wakes up and speaks to Rose, Lyta is determined to find her brother and put up Missing Person posters relating to him. Rose first visits Ms Rubio at the foster agency, and convinces her to visit Jed. ..
Barnaby, Jed’s uncle, speaks to him when he finds out about the visit. Barnaby demands Jed be good and even offers to let him sleep in a real bed 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 seems to be doing 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.
In the beginning of her dream, Rose walks with Dream, who is her protégé. He encourages her to find her own path and to follow what she feels inside. Eventually, she finds young Zelda in a graveyard and follows this young child through a doorway to Jed’s dream. In Jed’s dream, he has a vision of a future where all the people of the world are living together in peace. He tells Rose that she can find her own path in this future too, and that she can follow it if she wants to.
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.
Jed wakes up 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 the story is going to get more chaotic in the coming chapters, and for those unaware of how the story plays out, be prepared – this one is about to get exciting! ..
