Checking in with a review of the next two-part episode of Vienna Blood - #s3 and 4, on PBS - aired two weeks ago, and the week before last. Another excellent historical whodunnit, which, much like the first two episodes, made you feel like you were in Vienna in the first decade of the 20th-century, even though I was never there.
The big takeaway of this second story is that Max and Clara have finally come to their senses, and ended their betrothment - or, rather, Clara has come to her senses, after nearly being raped by a bad guy who is not the murderer, though that had little to do with her decision. But Clara realizes that Max loves someone else.
That would be Amelia, Max's cured patient, who previously told Max she couldn't see him any more, in any way, given that Max was engaged to Clara, whom Amelia met with Max. Clearly, Max and Amelia are falling in love, but that raises an ethical issue which the fledgeling Freudians of that time likely have not yet considered: transference, or patients falling in love with their therapists, and some kind of vice versa. I was a Psych major for a while at CCNY in the 1960s, and I don't remember exactly when the psychoanalytic group became aware of this phenomenon, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite that early.
Meanwhile, regarding other accoutrements of that Edwardian age, we again got to see a disk playing music, and someone mentioned getting a call, which in context sounded like it referred to a telephone call. Good. But I was surprised that dueling was still so apparently common in 1907 Vienna. The last time I heard about it was Hamilton vs. Burr in the United States more than a century earlier. Did Europe hold on to that medieval-rooted custom a century longer?
In any case, Vienna Blood is a top-drawer series, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
See also Vienna Blood 1-2: Demons in the Architecture
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