Constant Thoughts

Hey! Look who’s finally on the show! Darken Rahl, the Big Bad! He even has real lines. We find out that he’s very suave, but loses his temper easily.

But his general/assistant is *boring*.

So the terrific trio’s plan is, sneak into the castle, steal the box, distract the bad guys, and possibly kill the big bad. Except we know that can’t happen yet!

Anyway…

That was one evil little girl. And one very good one – almost to the point of silliness. This episode banked on the cuteness factor, and I think that it mostly succeeded – as far as cuteness can go, anyway.

I do believe that this is the greatest contrast between two episodes of any show I’ve seen in a long time. Last week, torture. This week, cute children. It’s just a bit disconcerting, somehow. And although they tried to make certain parts of this week’s episode all serious and such, somehow the danger factor just didn’t seem that high. Almost as if the whole thing was, well, a puppet show.

Perhaps they were trying to make up for last week’s being so miserable, but since the stakes were supposed to be even higher, I would have liked the intensity to increase similarly. Even the ending just didn’t seem all that scary, despite the head chopping and wrist slicing.

On the other hand, the fight scenes were very nice (not so over-the-top). And the episode was cleanly written and produced. I enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t very deep.

And Rachel was a very sweet little girl.

Random Thoughts:
Zedd could have used more magic earlier, and gotten the same result.

Does Kahlan not want the Darken Rahl chase to be over? I hope that the ‘one in white will betray’ prophecy wasn’t fulfilled last episode. I think that there’s still more milage to be gotten out of it.

What are they going to do with the box?

How did Darken Rahl know his comm. book was hacked?

Will the slow pan starting from the feet, while the subject buckles up her/his armor ever get old? And look – no cleavage, for once! Denna’s voice seemed a bit girlish for the part, though. I could have done without her Lara Croft hair, too – wouldn’t short hair have been more effective?

Kahlan’s dream was very well done. Her response (kissing Richard, and then leaving) made sense too, but I couldn’t help but wish that they had built up to this point a bit more gradually. It still worked very well.

I was quite surprised at how dominatrixy Denna turned out to be (especially in terms of vocabulary, etc.) Not something that I’ve ever seen on TV, certainly. Is this is a good thing or not? I don’t know – but it was certainly different! And very creepy. Not quite, say, Callisto creepy, but getting there.

It seems they could show more of Darken Rahl. I know, I know – they’re trying to make him all mysterious and such, but it’s hard care about someone who is never seen at all. I’m starting to become very curious:

How did he get to be super-evil-guy?

What’s the organization of the world, the government? How big is DR’s domain vs. the size of the world?

Are all of the evil-types directly derived from Darken Rahl – is he some sort of ultimate evil? Or his he just in charge of all of the warlords, Mord’Sith, etc. (a la the ‘Source’ in Charmed) with only a tenuous grip on power?

Is he really just a cookie-cutter bad guy, or is he more interesting than that?

Anyway, the best part of the episode, by far, was Kahlan and Zedd’s moral dilemma over the other Confessor’s enslavement of the villagers. They all agreed that the whole situation was wrong, but were willing to use the confessed if they really had to. Finally a ploy that’s really not all black and white. It seems that the whole ‘confessor morality’ issue isn’t going away, either. Excellent job.

I don’t really have very much to say about the final few scenes, except that they were very uncomfortable to watch, and that the whole dominatrix theme was played up just a little too much to be really believable. Also, where were Constance and her friends during the last fight? You would have thought they would have stuck around for extra security, instead of going to the club, or wherever they were!

In any case, LotS just became much, much darker.

Random thoughts:
In a moment of weakness, I read a bunch of the Hulu comments, and while they were mostly inane (“I love this show!” “This show sucks!”) I noticed an interesting pattern among people who are fans of the book series. They have two complaints: 1. Not enough torture and rape (thank heavens they don’t get their wish!) 2. Doesn’t exactly agree with the world mechanics and minor plot details. The latter complaint is interesting – why does it matter? Apparently Kahlan is supposed to be the last confessor, not just a confessor, Richard was supposed to stop Kahlan from kissing him, not vice versa, Kahan didn’t tell Richard what she was nearly so soon, and on and on and.

But so long as we become emotionally invested in the characters, and care about what happens to them, and as long as they tell an interesting story, does it matter? Really?

Damn fanboys!