First of all, we know that the show is funded for 22 episodes, so they’re not going to be killing the evil bad guy with the unspellable name any time soon. This made Zedd’s little monologue rather pointless and silly.
Speaking of the evil bad guy (let’s call him DR, shall we?) They really need to give him a personality, and now! We’ve seen him what, once? Worse from what we’ve seen, DR is a perfectly stereotypical generic bad guy. Boring, boring, boring!
The kid was an interesting character. He was a bit confused, almost bipolar at times, and I felt like it matched his character rather well. After all, being able to see inside minds would mess one’s emotional state up rather badly! I felt like the actor did quite well.
Speaking of getting inside people’s minds, I was disappointed with Kahlan’s back story. Why is it that so many strong female characters have to have a traumatic childhood? It didn’t even work from a dramatic perspective either. She never seemed particularly tortured or dark. Focused, certainly, but not traumatized! It would have been much better if they had hinted at it, led up to it a bit, instead of introducing it suddenly this episode. I somehow doubt they’ll even mention it again.
For the next intra-head item: I’ve been putting off discussing the Richard-Kahlan relationship for a while now. In the books (according to the ‘net, anyway) they love each other with some sort of ‘true love’ but can’t be together due to the whole seeker prophecy. I really hope that they don’t change this for the show. One of the most interesting facets of LotS is Kahlan’s relationship to Richard. She’s not a love interest, and not a mother figure. Since Zedd takes care of the mentor role, Kahlan at the moment basically basically plays A: platonic friend, and B: backup muscle! This is a highly unusual role for a female character, especially when both her and the main character are single. Hopefully they won’t ruin it for the sake of gooey love feelings!
Finally, a word on the music: I haven’t generally liked it. Usually, it’s not noticeable – and that’s a bad sign. When it is noticible, it’s usually because it is being used to artificially manipulate our emotions (see the campfire scene this episode). The one good bit? The heroic fight music, which seems new this episode, or at least, I didn’t notice it before (I’ll have to go back and check…). Curiously enough, it sounds quite like one phrase of the Xena theme:
Coincidence?