Constant Thoughts

This episode seemed very short and simple. I’m sure it was just as long as the others, but not much happened, so it seemed short. That’s okay, though. Simple is good.

Anyway, the ghost story thing. Couple was estranged in death, so they possess the bodies of the nearest handy living people to be reunited. Yes, this has been done before. But they did it pretty well, and I happen to have a soft spot for that sort of thing – so I really liked it. There’s really not much to say about the main plot, though.

Two things: First, isn’t it interesting how the wizards are obviously stronger than both the seeker and confessor combined? It’s as if the seeker is only important because of the prophecies. It’s an interesting concept, really. I tend to be a bit obsessed with free will, myself, and the idea that there might not be any bothers me. That said, there is a sort of romantic thrill to this idea of determinism, though – especially when it’s wrapped up in a prophecy. We know Richard is going to kill the bad guy, but does it matter how much or little of a hero he is otherwise?  They need to explore this more.

Second, I loved the ending bit. “Oh, look, a tracking cloud.” “I’ll cast a simple spell to get rid of it.” There’s <i>got</i> to be more to this than that!

Much better than last week’s!

It’s bottle show time! I was really interested to see how this one would turn out. If Xena did anything at all right, it was the exceptional bottle shows. (‘The Xena Scrolls’, etc). I’d hoped LotS would continue this tradition. It didn’t.

The whole trick to bottle shows is to find an excuse to show a bunch of flashbacks. “Tell us the story of your dream!” is not a good excuse. Rahl’s assistant provided boring and useless commentary. And where did Anna come from? He seemed awfully in love to never mention her.

I did like the opening bit. It felt like it was poking fun at the “and he woke up. It had all been a dream.” But the teaser went on for almost a quarter of the episode. Boring!

The middle was – even more boring. And the ending didn’t make any sense. It all happened too fast, for one thing. It also seemed like a bit of a ripoff of the last scene in the Matrix. A longer buildup would have helped, I think.

Yay! for true love, I guess.

Question: If they could get to the box so fast, why didn’t Zedd and Kahlan just go move it without Richard?

Oh, well. You can’t expect too much from a bottle show.

This episode was excellent. The best since the pilot.

It’s not perfect yet. There’s still too muck awkward dialogue, and the ending felt a bit flat (too Scooby-Dooish), but the show is really getting there.

Anyway – Kahlan really messes up this episode, and she knows it too. Richard thought he did, too. The whole thing reminded me of the Buffy episode ‘Ted’ (when Buffy kills her mother’s robot boyfriend). But Kahlan actually did kill somebody innocent. She was too eager to get justice for her friend, and it backfired.

The more the protagonists screw up, the better it gets!

Also, the detective thing actually worked. They’ve done it a couple times before; it seemed a little cheesy then, but I thought it seemed better this time. Richard make a decent Sherlock Holmes, and the Confessor=Judge+Jury+Executioner aspect doesn’t seem like a farce the way, say, the ‘legal’ scenes in Xena were.

As a whole, I’m really beginning to like the pace of the show. Sure, they’re supposed to be saving the world, but the show is more about the small, ‘everyday’ problems more than the overall plot. At least, that’s the way they’re moving. At first, there was too much urgency, too much emphasis on getting the main bad guy, (and we knew they wouldn’t kill him – otherwise, there wouldn’t be a show!) I felt this way about the Sarah Connor Chronocles – the first two episode felt more like the beginning of a movie than the beginning of a TV show. It obviously wasn’t, though. LotS is starting to even out in the same way.

Random Thoughts:

• The side plot with Zedd’s brother was a bit – predictible. I did like that they gave so much screen time to the not so young and sexy, though.
• Richard’s streak of failing to notice someone sneaking up behind up continues. Why didn’t the consteble kill him after he was knocked out? Was he that much more scared of Kahlan than of the D’harans?

This episode begins with a cliche: “Men don’t ask for directions.”

Sigh. The creators of LotS were right when they said that the show was supposed to be like Xena, only with less campy fun. Their attempts at humor are dreadful, and we’re paying for it with characters who are harder to relate to!

Anyway, after this horrible humor attempt, the Mother Confessor shows up. Cue whining from the fans of the book. “Kahlan’s supposed to already be the Mother Confessor.” I wasn’t so keen on the MC’s acting either, but the scene worked well as a whole.

Random Thought:
Kahlan’s “stand and fight” speech would have sounded better before she found out that there were no other confessors left. As it was, it just seemed stupid. I blame the editors!

Kahlan finds out that her sister isn’t dead. Naturally, she has to find her. This was a really good idea. Back in the review of the pilot, I complained that the big emotional scene of the sister’s death fell flat. It seemed pointless to have her die when we didn’t even know who she was. But now that she’s alive, the whole thing works. Our only knowledge of this character is that she was willing to die, and that makes her interesting.

There’s more bad editing after the opening sequence. Richard’s idea just comes out of the blue, and then – whoops, here we are at the prison. Whatever.

Kahlan (or Bridget Regan, rather) looked really good as a Mord’Sith. She also seem like less of a parody in that role then the actress who played Denna.

Anyway, that trick (dressing Kahlan up as a Mord’Sith) works so well, I wonder they don’t use it more often. The whole rescue scene was very good, and just the right length. I was expecting (from the episode summary) for the whole plot to center around rescuing the sister. It was pleasantly surprising for them to walk in and rescue her so easily, and rather center the episode around the baby.

Speaking of which, I have a lot of Feelings (with a definite capital ‘F’) concerning the whole baby issue, but I’m not really sure of anything. At least it wasn’t (as I feared it would be) a PSA for or against abortion. On the one hand, the pragmatic (and supposedly moral) choice was to kill the child. On the other hand, the mother’s choice was to let him live.

Or wasn’t it a PSA? After all, Richard’s point of view (abortion is *bad*) conveniently turns out to be the ‘right’ one. And if the kid turns out to be evil, who will be right, after all? Still Richard? The world of LotS does

Good episode, though. And the fight with the evil general’s “army” (well, it was just 30 guys) was pretty cool.

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!