'The Count of Monte Cristo' Is Trapped in "The Red Room"
Edmond (finally!) puts his revenge plan into motion, and it turns out his new alter ego is a complete creep.
The transformation of The Count of Monte Cristo is (finally!) underway this week, as the man formerly known as Edmond Dantès kicks the moving pieces of his complicated revenge plot into gear. This involves everything from the purchase of several houses, a trip to Italy, a little casual murder, a tedious visit to the opera, some light drug use, and an attempted infanticide thwarted at the last possible moment.
(Reader, I only wish I were kidding.)
Unfortunately, none of this is as fun as it should be, probably because the show repeatedly chooses the most staid and uninteresting ways to depict its lead character. Sam Claflin is not in any way an incapable actor, yet Monte Cristo smothers every inch of his charisma, and he seems to have been told to play every scene as if he is dead inside.
It isn't a completely inaccurate read of where Edmond would likely be, mentally speaking, at this point in his life. But it makes for exceptionally dull television, a fact that's doubly unfortunate when you consider how completely ridiculous almost everything that happens in this episode is. A baby is stolen and buried alive! Edmond orchestrates the kidnapping of his ex-girlfriend's large adult son to ingratiate himself with their family! Everyone seems completely fine with rolling up to the house of a complete stranger! This is (or, well, should be) deliriously campy stuff!
Yet, for whatever reason, the show plays it all completely straight, whether we're watching Edmond realize that Mercedes has had a child without him or set a guy in a literal devil costume to follow her son through the streets of Rome. (These things are not the same!) His plot to befriend Albert and his bestie, Franz d'Epinay, while the pair are on a trip to the Eternal City, makes a certain degree of sense, at least as an entry point into Paris society.
But as he's forcing the two young men to watch a public execution from the comfort of his hotel room and ranting about how true justice involves making wrongdoers suffer, it's strangely unclear whether viewers are meant to be rooting for Edmond or put off by how deeply messed up he's clearly become.
Those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, by the way. Or, at least, they shouldn't be. A decade in a hellhole prison is enough to damage anyone, and a big part of Edmond's arc at this point should be about how messed up he is. But, like another show that's airing on PBS Sunday nights at the moment, The Count of Monte Cristo isn't exactly big on nuance.
After Edmond rescues Albert from a kidnapping that he himself orchestrated — with the help of a gang of brigands he tipped off about the cops while escaping — he heads to Paris, where he immediately starts doing drugs, buying real estate, and carefully inserting himself into the lives of his enemies.
To the surprise of no one, his enemies still seem to suck. Gérard de Villefort is now not just corrupt, but also a would-be baby killer. We've not yet been clued in as to why he tried to bury the child of another man's wife in the backyard garden of the house that Edmond now owns, but one has to assume it's not great!
As for Danglars, he remains an odious climber, but one who is easily impressed by the trappings of Edmond's home, particularly his coins from Japan and his collection of sailing knots. (Is the Count of Monte Cristo actually the most boring man in the world? Maybe!) Fernand remains conspicuously absent for most of this episode, but Mercedes seems rattled by her meeting with the Count.
(A likely development, given that his level of disguise is basically like Superman putting on a pair of glasses to indicate he is someone else.)
Yet, somehow, although Edmond's now hosting awkward dinner parties at his new estate that's full of weird historical trinkets and regaling his guests with the tales of his new home's dark history, the most memorable part of all of this is how absolutely no one seems to be bothered by the fact that they don't know the Count of Monte Cristo's name.
Outside of one random inquiry from Villefort about his birth name, a full forty-five minutes into the episode, everyone seems completely fine with referring to him only by his title and taking his stories of casually depositing four million francs in the local bank at face value. Everyone refers to him as "Count" or "The Count" and seems to have absolutely no problem heading off to meet him in strange locations like hotel rooms or houses he suddenly claims to own. (It's so jarring every time this happens that it seems like it has to be on purpose, yet... nothing has come of it. Stay tuned.)
Anyway, these people are so dumb that they deserve to get revenge-scammed. Let's take it up a notch next week, shall we?
The Count of Monte Cristo continues with new episodes airing and streaming on local PBS stations and the PBS app on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET through mid-May 2026. All episodes are available to binge on PBS Passport for members and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.
