The Amazing Digital Circus E3: "The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor"
This review was commissioned by @skaianDestiny
This episode is a masterclass of setup and payoff. Both in terms of things that are stood up and knocked down over the course of the episode itself, and in how it pulls on some threads that the previous instalment left dangling. Its pacing drags a little bit too much for me to call it better than its predecessor (I think the story being divided into one too many subplots is to blame for this), but it does more to move the series forward.
Thematically, the big thing for "Mystery of Mildenhall Manor" is composition. The makeup of a body and mind, or the lack thereof. That's obviously a major subject for the series as a whole, but episode 3 doubles down on it and makes the focus very explicit.
The episode starts out with both establishing the theme and setting up a plot point for later payoff. The gang are standing around taking turns holding their breaths and seeing what cartoony effects it has on their bodies. They feel the need to breathe, and holding their breaths for a long time makes them feel like they're about to suffocate, but the sensation is purely psychosomatic, so they can do it until the discomfort overcomes their will.
It's not the most thrilling entertainment you could ask for, but it's still better than asking Caine for something to do. Unfortunately, Caine shows up and gives them something else to do anyway. He has another stupid adventure he wants them to play, this one based on horror games. Naturally, it's every bit as much of a ChatGPT word association trainwreck as the previous episode's Candy Road game.
Caine's inability to understand why different subgenres of horror don't mix well, or what makes Luigi's Mansion a fundamentally different kind of artwork than Amnesia: Dark Descent, is as deadpan hilarious as I was expecting. Especially when we see what Caine thinks an eleventh hour twist is supposed to look like (memorable line from one of the humans: "Wait, how could he have recorded these tapes from Hell?"). But I won't spend much time on it, because it's mostly the same type of jokes about the same type of bad art as last time. What's going on between the characters is where the meat of this episode is.
After bringing them to the Mildenhall Manor foyer and telling them each to choose if they want the G-rated or PG-rated versions of the game, Caine realizes that one of the humans - Zooble - has snuck away. He made this game with Zooble in particular in mind, since Zooble made the mistake of mentioning they liked horror when Caine was listening, and he doesn't want them to miss it. So, he goes to find Zooble back in the hubworld, while the others get split between the two routes on account of Jax getting bored and pushing people through doors. We end up with Pomni and Kinger taking the 2spooky4u door, Jax, Ragatha, and the mask person taking the not2spooky door, and Zooble in the hub having to put up with Caine interrogating them about why he doesn't want to play his adventures.
The Jax-Ragatha-masky group gets the least screentime, which means we finally get to explore some of the characters who the show has explored the least up until now. Zooble - who I think barely spoke ten words in the first two episodes combined - gets to be protagonist of their own plot thread where they put up with Caine, and eventually get the AI to reveal some crucial information. Kinger, who the previous episode teased might secretly know more about the Digital Circus than he's letting on, gets to share the meatiest chunk of the episode with Pomni.
I'll start with Caine forcing Zooble to go through cognitive therapy to help them appreciate Caine's adventures more. This is apparently not the first time that Zooble has had to sit through this. Which in turn means that all the others probably have too. Zooble knows from experience that complaining about the adventures themselves will just lead in circles, asking for freedom will go in one ear and out the other, and trying to ask for other changes to their environment will just prompt Caine to come up with more dumb adventures. Zooble takes a longshot and tries telling Caine that they doesn't feel comfortable with this cutesy tinkertoy abomination of a body they have in the Circus, which prompts Caine to offer them some new tinkertoy bodyparts to replace the old ones with.
Up to this point, the therapy scene seemed to be providing evidence for the "is Caine actually sentient?" question, in support of the "no he isn't" side. Watching Zooble try to reason with Caine and get him to think outside of the box he was designed for shows us Caine at his most robotic. But then, when the subject of body dysmorphia and being made of unfitting or defective parts has already been raised, Zooble hits Caine with the obvious truth that NO ONE enjoys his adventures. Every single one of the imprisoned humans despises them and copes with it in different ways.
If you'll recall, in the previous episode there was one brief moment where Caine appeared to be experiencing a genuine emotion. It was short and ambiguous, but it showed a crack that now gets bown open. If the Creative Artificially Intelligent Networking Entity is no good at creativity and networking, then what even is he? What defective components is he made of? Where is he, why is he here, why is he doing any of the things that he's doing?
The entire hub starts glitching out as Caine has a panic attack. It falls on Zooble to play therapist for him for a moment, walking on eggshells as they talk Caine down long enough for the latter to bluescreen, reboot, and forget about the disturbing revelation.
Caine IS sentient, then. Or, if not, then he's just barely at the cusp of self-awareness, with built-in contingencies that force him to reboot if he evolves any further. That makes the situation more complicated, but also less hopeless; if there really is someone in there who can be talked to, then the potential exists for change.
The reboot naturally leads into a humorous tone shift, where Caine - back in wannabe therapist mode - tries a Rorschach test and asks Zooble to say the first word they think of when they see the blot.
Lmao.
The next subplot, and the one that fills the most screentime, follows Pomni and Kinger as they navigate the ultra spoopy version of the game that was made with Zooble in mind. There's an inversion of the two's usual levels of sanity (normally Pomni is one of the sanest prisoners due to her not having been in here very long yet, while Kinger is a longtimer who can usually barely communicate). It turns out that being in dark, quiet environments helps calm Kinger's agorophobia and lets him be closer to the person he used to be. Pomni, meanwhile, has always been very sensitive to horror, and the fact that this horror sim is stupid fake nonsense doesn't help; it just makes the anxiety she feels because of it more embarassing and frustrating.
Like the shitty cartoon bodies they're all stuck in, this part of who Pomni is works against her, refusing to synchronize with the whole.
Eventually, Pomni starts crying. Wondering aloud if she really is in hell. Not the dumb haunted house "hell" level that's part of Caine's simulation, but actual hell; like, the Digital Circus itself is some kind of punishment for sinners. Kinger consoles her, mostly by pointing out the same thing I commented on at the end of my previous TADC review. That is this was a hell, meant to maximize suffering and allow no hope or comfort, then Caine wouldn't give them opportunities to be kind to one another. The feeling of belonging that they're able to grant upon each other is the one most important thing for making life worth living, and as long as they have that then nothing else is really all that important or terrible.
He recounts a formative experience of his, from early on in his imprisonment. When his wife abstracted, but - like him - the darkness that the two happened to come face to face in seemed to calm her. She didn't un-abstract, but she seemed to recognize him. The jagged edges of her glitchmonster form softened and shrank, momentarily, and he was able to embrace her one last time - without taking any glitch damage himself - before Caine put her in the cellar with the others.
He likes to think that the memory of that moment will give her something to live for, even as she languishes in the vault. And the fact that she still had the capacity to feel that, and to make him feel it in turn, proves that there's some hope for even the abstracted to someday be restored. How much more hope, then, should they who can still think and communicate clearly fulltime be able to muster?
Pomni is a little too scattered to miss the bombshell revelation here. She does wonder aloud at how Kinger could have had a wife within this virtual world, but in her emotional state she doesn't think to ask whether they were married after meeting in the Circus, or if they arrived that way. Likewise, the implications of him mentioning that she (is? was?) an entomologist, and also the offhand reference he makes to himself having a doctorate in computer science.
In the last episode, there was a moment that seemed to imply that Kinger knew more about their situation than he was letting on. Turns out, he - alone among the prisoners - remembers his human life outside of the simulation. And he was a computer scientist. Putting these facts together, it seems like he did not arrive here the same way that the others did. Which in turn makes it likely that he was one of Caine's creators.
Like I said, this goes over Pomni's distracted head, but it's very easy for the audience to put together.
Escaping from the villain of the haunted house adventure requires them to hold their breaths to avoid breathing in the ghost-smoke. And also, playing off of another thing that was set up earlier on, taking advantage of the haunted house sim apparently giving them the power to detach their own eyeballs to navigate the smoke-shrouded hallways ahead of themselves.
At the beginning of the episode, Pomni discovered that holding her breath makes her turn a succession of pastel colors. Someone else mentioned that Kinger starts glowing when he does it, but we didn't see what that actually looks like until now.
The creator behind the demiurge is - if not a true, ultimate divinity - then at least proximate to it. At the very least, this entity (usually a mother goddess figure, but not always) serves as a kind of guiding star to the seekers of gnosis, which is why she's almost always depicted as a radiant figure. Kinger's ability to remember the outside world and keep the others hopeful for a return to it corresponds to this mythic role, and as one of Caine's (probable) creators, well, we kind of have a Pistis Sophia to go with TADC's spin on Yaldaboath.
They thus navigate through the enemies - including a monster made up of multiple detached parts, and a malevolent ghost that's been separated from its body altogether - and make their way back to the foyer. Kinger gets less coherent again once their surroundings get brighter and noisier, but Pomni knows he's in there, and she knows how to reach him again in the future.
Meanwhile, the group who took the G-rated route meet a friendly ghost who sits them down for tea and just tells them the entire plot of the adventure because they asked nicely.
The "asking nicely" part required them to bind and gag Jax, but frankly they should be doing that by default anyway.
They get a congratulatory automatic message from Caine, for managing to solve the mystery of Mildenhall Manor through the "pacifist route." Not that they were even given any opportunities for violent solutions in the first place, taking the G-rated version. Maybe pacifist route and nonspooky door version are just synonyms, who knows.
When the two groups are reunited, Pomni makes a point of telling Ragatha how much she appreciates the effort Ragatha puts into making her feel welcome and accommodated. Ragatha seems to appreciate the gesture in turn. Thus, Pomni acts to strengthen the others against the risk of abstraction and keep their collective hope stronger, making herself a contributor to their struggling little community in here.
They return to the hub and reunite with Zooble, who probably had a more nerve-wracking time than any of them did for their trouble. But hey, they learned the most important thing so far; Caine might not be persuadable, but he has the potential to be turned into an entity that is persuadable. If they can get Kinger coherent again and combine that data, they might be able to start working on a plan.
Well. Before that, Pomni is going to have to realize the implications of what she herself was told. That might end up taking a while. But hey, it's definitely plot progress.
Great episode. Eager for the next. I really like what's being foreshadowed in terms of how they need to "defeat" Caine by making him whole, and that in order to do so they'll need to first do the best they can on their damaged selves. Really positive, uplifting message for an otherwise dark series.
