Can We Get A Face Off Challenge Showing How A Makeup Artist Could Make Clive Owen Look So Terrible?

What might Captain Robertson "owe" Thackery for, and how does fucking Barrow get the balls to ask about it?

The first part is more of a rhetorical question: who the hell knows what kind of scandal Robertson might have gotten snarled up in at some point in the past, and what Thack might have done to fix it and/or cover it up. Baised on Robertson's disdain after Thack's arrest, it's probably not drugs -- mistress "in trouble," maybe? (That would obviously be ironic given his daughter's situation as revealed in this episode.) The question here is more whether we'll find out what it is in the finale, or if it was a dropped breadcrumb intended to pay off in what was, at the time of filming, only a hypothetical Season 2. The more salient question is what IN THE WORLD made a grubby striving embezzler like Barrow think that Robertson might ever confide in him about something that was such a big deal only fixing junkie Thack's arrest would make them square. He offered you a ride home, dude. That doesn't make you bros. Know your place!

We all saw THIS one coming, right?

Right. I'm not saying Eleanor SHOULDN'T get hauled off to the booby hatch at the end of the episode -- she clearly should -- but maybe if Gallinger were a better husband (and doctor, for that matter), a perfectly innocent Irish orphan might have lived long enough to have probably died of typhoid or something.

Isn't $100 kind of a lot in 1900 dollars for a sex act?

I'll grant that sticking your foot in a dude's mouth while he's banging you out adds a certain degree of complexity to the prostitutory transaction (not to mention difficulty, particularly in a time before the widespread practice of yoga increased women's flexibility). And maybe Ping Wu increased what would have been his usual offer in consideration for the fact that Lucy's a respectable nurse as opposed to a busted hooker. But, like, he also knows that she's at least a drug moll, if not a junkie herself, so she's not that fancy. I bet a hooker today would let you nail her for around the same amount of money -- never mind the ten grains of opium -- and throw in the toes for free.

How's Cornelia going to find out about Sister Harriet's secret sideline?

Even though this scene happens before Algernon realizes he's not going to be able to bring himself to terminate Cornelia's pregnancy due to the fact that...you know, he co-created the embryo, putting these two characters together feels like foreshadowing for the moment in the finale when their relationship will undergo a big evolution. That, or it's for the sake of Sister Harriet's reminder that, in the Catholic faith, unbaptized babies totally don't go to heaven so that Cornelia will feel even worse about not bringing the pregnancy to term. Some might say the whole concept of Limbo is so unconscionably harsh that it might drive any reasonable person from the Catholic church, but trust me: those babies know what they did.

When's Lucy going to put poor Bertie out of his misery?

This poor asshole's trying to tell her things his weird dad has said about their relationship when she's on a cocaine quest for Thack? Girl, quit making this goon dangle.

Can we get a Face Off challenge showing how a makeup artist could make Clive Owen look this terrible?

I love that, as far as the show's concerned, Thack's "bottom" isn't breaking into a pharmacy and getting caught by the cops with a syringe in his hand and his shoe and sock off, but going to a purveyor of sketchy patent medicines and offering to put his name to one after all if it will mean he gets money for a fix -- or maybe they can just pay him in cocaine! But man, his face in this scene. Sure, Clive Owen has always been more striking and/or sexy than "cute," but I would love to see the paint and creepy contact-lens work that resulted in this mug. Of course they can't put THIS on medicine labels! Try coming back when you're a little more Brawny paper towel guy and less Count Chocula.

Where's the trademark German efficiency at the so-called German Hospital?

"Hi, I'm a [checks notes on hand] NURSE, and I'm here for...stuff. Where are the drugs? NO REASON."

Could Cornelia and Algernon actually raise a child together in Europe in 1900?

I feel like Cornelia's being reasonably pragmatic and Algernon is in denial, but then again, he did live in France (and has the shoes to prove it!). So this one's for the history nerds: which of them is righter? In terms of her own personal happiness and satisfaction, not to mention on moral and ethical grounds, marrying Algernon or at least running away with him and having their baby is maybe what Cornelia should do, except if it meant the two of them would be unable to find a landlord who'd rent to them, or jobs, or go a day without some ignorant (yet for-the-time mainstream) bigot spitting on them. But does it? Is Cornelia too scared, or is Algernon too naïve?

How distracting was THIS cameo?

I'm not sure if "I'm a PC with an old-timey moustache" is the last thing I'd want to see right before the butterfly nets went over my head...

...or if it would be strangely comforting. I'll let you know when my husband has me sent off to the crazy house, which seems inevitable.