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The latest episode of Dickinson is called ‘Sang From the Heart, Sire’, from a lesser known but still evocative poem that seems to be another about love and hurt love:
Sang from the Heart, Sire,
Dipped my Beak in it,
If the Tune drip too much
Have a tint too Red
Pardon the Cochineal-
Suffer the Vermillion-
Death is the Wealth
Of the Poorest Bird.
Bear with the Ballad-
Awkward-faltering-
Death twists the strings-
‘Twasn’t my blame-
Pause in your Liturgies-
Wait your Chorals-
While I repeat your
Hallowed name-/em>
The episode starts with Emily getting a very supportive response from Colonel Higginson where he highly praises to the degree that Emily shouts that indeed, her poetry is not dead, but alive. There’s then a setup as Lavinia shows up, having a vow of silence in ‘solidarity with the soldiers’, which Emily approvingly notes as performative and almost ‘avant-garde’. Of course, we know that by episode’s end, she will break her vow, the only question is how.
But otherwise things are getting complicated. At a local fundraising fair, where we get what I believe is an entirely original song about quilting in the soundtrack and some cutesy jokes about art not having to make sense. But then Edward is confronted about his supportive letter on behalf of his brother in Georgia, for which he is excoriated as being an ‘apologist for villainy’ by Conkey, showing off Robert Picardo’s furious range.
Edward doesn’t seem to know what to do, split between his beliefs and his family, although we do get a pretty funny moment when everyone takes a break from being angry at him to wish him a happy birthday. The setup for the final act is the idea from Emily to have a family sing-along like their old days, which is something that finally resolves the three season long tease about the singing capabilities of Hailee Steinfeld and Jane Krakowski.
In the meantime, we dip back into Henry trying to teach the freed slaves how to read, giving us another one of those ‘mixed reality’ moments as we formally get introduced to the mysterious Erasmus, who describes time as a fiction and explicitly implies he is Anansi, the well-known trickster from African folklore. The name Erasmus itself may be a reference to the famous philosopher of the same name, although it may be just that it has a similar feeling to Anansi.
Erasmu also entirely is said to predict and then does predict the future, saying that the Emancipation Proclamation will be signed on January 1st, 1863 — but the past is the future, as he said, which is especially true when it is us in the future looking back into the semi-fictional past. It’s a great little scene to get us more familiar with this new crew and also for Henry to give a stirring speech that does serve to get everyone on his side.
Meanwhile, Sue is feeling sad and out of it with her difficulties looking after the baby, but her spirits are buoyed by Emily’s newly phrased proclamation of love. But things are unfortunately not so easy with Austin, who drunkenly demands more time looking after his son. Although there’s a progressive idea there, and Sue is being regressive in saying that it’s only for women, he is also drunk all the time. And then Sue gives him a truly cruel barb, saying that if he fights in the war, maybe then his father will finally be proud.
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Despite all this drama, the sing-along starts going swimmingly for a while, giving us teases of them all until we finally hear Ella Hunt and Jane Krakowski sing beautifully like we know they can. All of the songs they sing are in fact historically accurate to the era, and after spirits are raised, the Dickinson parents tell a great, hilarious story about how they met and wed — that ‘you’ll always be that child bride to me’ with Vinnie wincing got me.
But there’s a hint of something stormy as Sue discusses Emily’s poem ‘Safe in their alabaster chambers’ that she sent to the Colonel — but Emily lies about it and Sue mentions that although the first stanza is great, maybe the second one doesn’t need to be there? And then we finally, finally hear Hailee Steinfeld sing on this show, the 1854 highly popular song ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’, which obviously she sings like an angel — and it’s only made more difficult when Austin comes in and perfectly harmonizes with her.
Because then he tells Sue he plans to divorce her and tells his father he plans to leave his firm and start his own, while calling out how Edward hit Vinnie when she was a little girl. Edward admits that he can’t change the past, but will never give up on the family or Austin either for that matter. Unfortunately things only get worse, as Mrs. Dickinson falls down the stairs and Vinnie finally breaks her vow to proclaim that their family is insane.
Emily angrily tells Austin she chooses her father over him, but this isn’t even the worst part, as Sue confronts her over the lie. For the second time in the episode, she jabs at someone with cruelty, telling Emily she only thinks she’s fighting for something, but is really just running away. And we leave the episode as ‘Everybody Here Hates You’ by Courtney Barnett plays over the credits, leaving us with some emotional highs and lows in another great episode. So far the season has really done a great job of introducing all of the conflicts that we know will inevitably come to task.
What did you think of this episode? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
New episodes of Dickinson stream Friday on Apple TV+.
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