Here's Every Minute of Harnett on 'Penny Dreadful'

Who would have thought that we would see Josh Hartnett on Showtime? (You know, unless Wicker Park is playing on a Saturday afternoon.) Hartnett may have been the ultimate early 00s heartthrob, but circa 2007 his career flatlined faster than the plot of Pearl Harbor. And apparently, it was all his fault — Hartnett admitted that his fame came "too fast" and that he chose to take a bit of a breather from the Hollywood scene. Okay, fair enough — especially now that he's back, baby. Hartnett stars in Showtime's Penny Dreadful as Ethan Chandler, a former western show actor who will do just about anything for a quick buck. Let's just say that Chandler is pretty flip about being a hired gun.

The show, which was co-created by American Beauty director Sam Mendes, will intertwine mythologies from literature like Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Grey but, in all honesty, it's not the Shelley/Wilde mashup we're watching the show for. Nope, we're watching it to see what the hell Hartnett is doing on this Showtime show.

Unfortunately, the answer is barely anything at all. Seriously. I watched the pilot ( Penny Dreadful is available to watch online before the premiere on Sunday) and Hartnett is about the least interesting part of it. He spends most of the episode acting as the audience, asking questions that are rarely answered in anything other than metaphors, and staring off into the distance, pondering all the things he's just seen. Look, if I wanted to watch Hartnett gawk at monsters in uncomfortably-dark-picture quality, I would have just watched 30 Days of Night. Let's hope that Chandler (and therefore, Hartnett) gets a bigger, meatier role in Episode 2.

Here is absolutely everything that Hartnett did in the first episode of Penny Dreadful.

He pretended to be a cowboy.

He had sex with this prostitute.

Didn't even know her name.

He smirked, cooly.

I think he mastered this look in The Virgin Suicides. Oh, Trip...

He did his best Josh Brolin impression.

Considering casting him in my Josh Brolin biopic.

And his best Christian Bale.

He wore this hat.

And was caked in a weird, greenish light.

Unclear if this scene needs color correction or is stylized to look like this.

He possibly forgot his line for a second there.

But, above all, he was devilishly handsome.

Yeah, I'll totally watch Episode 2.

Penny Dreadful premieres on Showtime this Sunday at 10 PM ET.

Images: Showtime (10)