All 11 episodes of The Sandman, ranked worst to best

Episode 8: “Playing House”

We have another in-between episode as Rose begins to grasp what it means to be a dream vortex. The best scene of the episode involves her walking through the dreams of her housemates, some of which are quite surprising. I appreciate that the show leans into the weirdness of it all; I didn’t have confidence that we would get the strange spider-women, or that we’d see a glimpse of Barbie’s high fantasy life this early. I didn’t know if we’d see it at all, but it looks like The Sandman is committed to doing right by Gaiman’s work.

That said, there are changes. This episode involves Rose and Dream looking for Jed in the Dreaming, where he spends his time as a superhero called “the Sandman” who battles an array of colorful villains rather than face his waking life with his abusive foster parents. I found the scenes with the parents a tad melodramatic, but they were tense.

The main action goes down in Jed’s dreams, which are enabled by an escaped nightmare named Gault, who is taking over the role of Brute and Glob from the comics. They add in a new wrinkle where Gault is tired of being a nightmare and has dreams of making people happy, which Morpheus is not pleased with.

I don’t mind the change; frankly, this whole story was a little awkwardly put together in the comics, and it reads a little awkward here. Still solid, though. Onward: