WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for BBC's Dracula.

Whether it's the Bram Stoker version of Dracula from the original novel, the master vampire from the Hammer movies or the bloodsucker seen in so many other movies and TV shows, it's hard to deny Dracula is a toxic male. Of course, at a time when when there's more awareness than ever about the dangers of predators and toxic masculinity, one would expect BBC's Dracula to be more sensitive in its portrayal of the character.

We didn't expect the show to dilute or significantly change the essence of the vampire king, but still, certain amendments and updates needed to be made to the character. Unfortunately, showrunners Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis attempts to do so were bloody awful and their story about Vlad the Impaler (Claes Bang) moving to England missed the mark terribly.

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In the first two episodes, "The Rules of the Beast" and "Blood Vessel," we're introduced to just one bride of Dracula and also see him stalking a church in Transylvania. He eventually slaughters the nuns there, building his rivalry with Sister Agatha Van Helsing (Dolly Wells), but it's all true to the character. In fact, we hoped to see more of his brides, but the one here is well done and not an overtly sexual object as these characters often were in past iterations. All in all, this is the kind of killer Dracula's meant to be.

This drastically changes when the show jumps forward 123 years to England in 2020. Now a playboy, Dracula goes clubbing and scours Tinder for dates -- and his next meal. Lucy (Lydia West) becomes the apple of his eye but it's a creepy scenario, worse than the source material. In the latter, Lucy was a young woman with several suitors who Dracula drained and turned into a vampire. For some reason, though, the BBC series decides to give this Lucy agency by "slut-shaming" her.

She's now a dolled-up 22-year-old millennial, constantly on her phone, and Dracula targets her after stealing Jack Seward's cell. The lure, apart from her beauty, is that she's a promiscuous girl, and the show takes jabs at her for sleeping around. Lucy says she'll continue doing so, even after she's engaged, which is what really keeps Dracula obsessed with her. It's a weird way to frame Lucy when all the series had to do was shape her as someone Dracula's smitten with because of her looks. We don't need any knowledge to her sexual habits here.

And it gets weirder as Dracula manipulates her in a Lolita-like fashion to be his toy. The vampire even feeds on her in a cemetery, and while initially the audience might think he loves her, Vlad's simply using her because he wants an undead bride. His motives are all style and no substance. When he bleeds her dry and the vampire Lucy is cremated and become a charred ghoul, it's as if the series is saying such charlatans deserve to be burned to death for sullying their reputations. To make it worse, when she confronts Dracula, he shows no sympathy for her plight, leaving Jack to take away the pain.

It's a very objectifying arc and also done to provide Jack with a mercy killing so he can say he helped Lucy redeem herself. The thing is, she didn't, she just chose the wrong man, so to now paint her in need of a savior diminishes and belittles her. There's just no purpose to what the Count does to the girl -- as much as the show wants to make it seem deep -- and the vampire just feels like an abusive frat boy. He has the air of being a sugar daddy out to seduce young girls, but this is basically the show punishing her for her one sin: being a bit too vain. It's demeaning, aggressive and comes across as victim-blaming as well, as if Lucy deserved what she got for being promiscuous.

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What also lacks flavor is how Dracula sucks Zoe Helsing's (Sister Agatha's descendant) cancer out in the end, mind-raping her as they have sex on the astral plane. Zoe never asked for the bite, she was comfortable dying in peace. But the Count decides to make it painless and merciful. The scary thing is on the astral plane, Zoe takes awhile to become aware of what's going on. She didn't want to be taken there, but he indicates that intercourse will ease her passage into the afterlife.

We're not sure how that got green-lit, but it's pretty invasive and disrespectful. Rather than nail this interpretation of Dracula as a toxic male who is cherrypicking women as brides, we get something tone deaf and cheap, with women who are only there to further Dracula's story. Lucy's desecrated to shape him as a man needing atonement, understanding and love, while Zoe is violated in the name of absolution. And by doing so, Dracula's a manipulative politician, using sex and, ultimately, rape to make us believe he's not just a dapper man but a lost soul who needs a woman to be purified.

Executive produced by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Sue Vertue and Ben Irving, Dracula stars John Heffernan, Dolly Wells, Joanna Scanlan, Sacha Dhawan, Jonathan Aris, Morfydd Clark, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Claes Bang as Count Dracula. The miniseries debuted on BBC One Jan. 1 and can now be streamed on Netflix.

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