LG: God opens a Window - Dec 28

And so, lo and behold, another episode of LG has occurred. One could expect it to be called excellent, but sadly, this is not so.

Let us start with the main plot line. A young Fae comes to town, pursued by a Hunter, and turns out to be not just a shifter, (LG stand-in for the more mundane werewolves), but also Dyson’s son that he did not know that he had. Fair enough; Dyson offers to take Mark in, but he refuses, so Dyson instead kills the Hunter who had been stalking Mark and killing anyone that came close to him. What is wrong this picture?

Everything. Firstly, it clashes with the LG canon that had been established in the previous seasons; in this case it is S2, when it was shown that Dyson had problems of committing to Bo because of his earlier love to Ciara, a Fae woman that conveniently appeared in modern Toronto during the same season, and got killed by the Garuda at the end of it. Dyson’s unrequited love for Ciara and a more casual relationship with Mark’s mother just are not very compatible. 

True, there had been other shows that had problems with continuity; Primeval of IP was notorious for it, Sinbad – or rather the version made also by IP – had such problems too; but even Primeval messed mostly with its’ characters, not the plotline and continuity itself. LG does, or rather – it had started too back in S4, and since then it developed problems that were not there initially...

Back to LG. This particular episode had Dyson act OOC as well, when he killed the Hunter. True, he did it to protect his son, but it is still jarring, especially since he had Vex to help him as well. 

Vex deserves a mention of his own, since this is the episode when both he and the Morrighan have returned to LG. Vex, in particular, had returned from England, and no one’s really happy to see him, due to his involvement with the late Massimo the druid. Vex, of course, is unrepentant, and will not back down even before Dyson, even though the latter is the stronger Fae out of the two. That, and the fact that Vex just cannot shut up, almost resulted in the Mesmer getting shot, but almost doesn’t count, so now it seems that Dyson have gotten himself a new sidekick instead...and it is a dark Fae. (Vex was always dark, do not forget it.)  This, in conjunction with Dyson almost killing Vex as well as actually killing his son’s stalker, makes Dyson a ripe candidate for joining the dark side ala Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader style.

As for Mark himself...he just does not appear to fit in very well with the rest of the crew. There is no one in his age bracket, for a start. If Kenzi was still around, it would be different, but now there is just Tamsin, and Tamsin still does not fit in Kenzi’s role, or mold, very well – a minor plotline of this episode is that the two of them argue about various aspects of their professional relationship all the time. 

Bo, of course, sleeps with Mark, because he subconsciously reminds her of Dyson, among other reasons. This, of course, creates a nice awkward scene at the end of the episode, when Dyson praises Bo for being a good big sister to Mark...yeah, when Bo was a big sister to anyone? Well, maybe Kenzi, but Mark is not Kenzi, though he may be filling her role, if Tamsin will not cut it...

Finally, there is Lauren, and her frenemy relationship with Evony the Morrighan. Firstly, her attempts at a British accent are truly cringeworthy, whether on purpose or not... Secondly, why exactly would she want to cure Evony? She turned her into a human in the first place in order to get revenge on all Fae in general so why the sudden change of heart? 

Then, thirdly, we learn that Evony has married...either a human or a Fae, but also a man, rather than a woman, who does not really know about Evony’s Fae past either. And finally, because Lauren appears to be at least unmotivated to create any sort of a cure for Evony’s humanity, Evony left some sort of a thingamajig with some sort of a monster inside in Lauren’s lab as a motivator. Considering that S4 showed that Lauren can resourceful and ruthless herself, a mere monster, small enough to fit into a large box, probably won’t be much of a challenge...unless LG S5 will disregard all of her character developments from S4 as well – we’ll just have to wait and see.

So: Dyson has found and lost his son, (who may or may not stick around), Vex is back, Evony is back and is at loggerheads with Lauren once more, Bo and Tamsin are still working things out, and, oh yes, Trick is still the acting Ash, while Amanda Walsh’s character appears to be killing people with lightning now, the same lightning that manifested when Dyson put three different parts of a tattoo into one, a fancy-looking triangle of a sort. What will of this amount to? We will find out next week, most likely!

LG: Big in Japan - Dec 22

And so, yet another episode of LG has come to an end. Isn’t it great?

Sadly – no, not really. After a very exciting two-part season starter, this particular episode of LG was not so good.

What was it about? Bo is in the dumps due to Kenzi’s departure and will not feed – on chi. She is a succubus, and so she needs chi to survive; without it, she will die. To make matters more complicated, she and Tamsin are hired by some Japanese Fae ex-samurai as bodyguards, while in the B-plotline Lauren goes to Dyson for advice on self-defense – boxing or whatnot. So?

So, the entire episode (“Big in Japan”) was primarily dealing with team Bo dealing with Kenzi’s departure on one hand, and on the other, the cast and crew of LG had to figure out the new dynamics with Ksenia gone as well. As a consequence, the entire “Japan” episode feels disjointed and rushed, with the characters having little motivation behind their actions, especially Dyson and Lauren. The two of them just do not mesh this great together, not at all.

Bo and Tamsin had a better time working out the team dynamics between them, but all of the Japanese stuff got in the way. Yes, the ‘Hel’ duology had plenty of terms of Norse and Greek myth in it, but LG took all of those terms – Valhalla, Tartarus, etc – and put its’ own spin on them. Here, in ‘Japan’ the Japanese myths, depictions, associations, allusions, etc are straight in the foreground, and are rather overwhelming on one hand, and pointless on the other. There just was not a lot of Japanese-Fae action in this episode, period; it just gave a feeling of procrastination to the team Bo resolution.

On the other hand, in the Dyson-Lauren plotline we had a nurse/assistant of Lauren’s, whose purpose was to be held hostage by a junkie of a patient at first and then to be murdered by Amanda Walsh’s character; this is the fastest introduction and disposal of a character that isn’t a red shirt in a Star Trek episode...

So: team Bo got over – sort of – Kenzi’s departure, and Amanda Walsh’s character is getting ever closer to Bo and her friends. That is good. Otherwise, this episode did not have a lot going on for it. Thus – a C+.

LG: Hel part 2 - Dec 14

And so, last night gave us the second part of the season starter episode, and it was not what most of us expected. More precisely, there was little violence, no fighting as it was, for example, the Hel part 1 – or is it Hades?.. Instead, we get Bo running around in a dilapidated run-down building of an underworld (or is it the otherworld?) while her friends work out how to get her out – a typical Team Bo event, in short – if you disregard the lack of violence. 

On the other hand...let us start with the elephant in the room – the underworld. In the first part, LG showed that in place of Heaven it had Valhalla, and now, in place of Hell, or even Hel, it got Hades, the Greek underworld. Sigh. The Greek version is the easiest way out, especially after Rick Riordan had finally completed his series about PJ and friends vs. Gaea. If they didn’t want to do a Norse Hel, for example, they could’ve used a Sumerian one, or a Japanese one, etc – but instead they went for the Greek. It’s the easy way out, period.

The depiction of Hades (yes, it is the name of both the god and the kingdom – one of the three Greek kingdoms – of the dead) is very unusual, though: it is the abandoned, broken-down version of ‘hotel Valhalla’. In this version, though, there are no customers, for Hades the god is losing his powers, and dwells in a third domain, which is featureless in its’ darkness, save for one giant mystical candle, which Bo steals for reasons given to her by Persephone, (who is more of a sister role here to Bo, rather than a stepmother, even though she's Hades' bride, as it is in the Greek myths), after the obligatory sex scene, of course, ‘cause this is Bo.

That brings us to Lauren – apparently, in LG, the world of the living and the world of the dead (or at least Hades’ old haunt) are connected, and certain messages and sensations can come across the border, so to speak. Or maybe it was because Dyson distracted Tamsin’s sister Valkyrie Stacy, and the doorway between the world of the living and Valhalla didn’t close, until Bo was able to escape. Persephone got eaten, though…

Getting back to Lauren…she was little more than comic relief in this episode alongside Kenzi, as was Kenzi herself. In fact, Kenzi and her role were something of a weak link in this episode, as after getting rescued from her coffin, Kenzi (with Lauren’s help) messed around with an Ouija board, and trapped some sort of a spirit – perhaps the same puca that harassed Bo while the latter hanged around Persephone – and then shot it at the end of the episode, saving Bo, before leaving the show for good. (Well, her actress did, that is.)

Lastly, that scene, when Kenzi came to Bo’s rescue felt tacked-on, giving Kenzi at least one more heroic thing to do before going to Spain and away from Toronto, Canada. Firstly, for Kenzi to leave ‘her Bo-Bo’ behind is definitely OOC. And in-between lies the fact that Kenzi’s character in this episode was underplayed and little used – perhaps the actress just wanted to leave the show for good, but was forced to say for the season’s starter, who knows?

With Kenzi hanging in the background, the same can be said for Lauren (who in this episode was little more than Kenzi’s sidekick), and Trick, (who had to run his bar, probably), leaving just Tamsin and Dyson to deal with Valhalla and Stacy. 

Stacy, as it was said before, is Tamsin’s sister Valkyrie, and for the record let it be noted that LG did a very masterful job with the Valkyries’ make-up during Tamsin and Stacy’s final confrontation in this episode. As far as Valkyries go, Stacy is competent and not as blonde as she looks, but she tends to be obnoxious… that is probably her fatal flaw, so to speak. Either way, without others to back her up, Stacy tends to lose to Tamsin, it seems, which is good. And who knows, maybe she’ll even stick around, as a special guest star or a regular of the cast.

Finally, Dyson. He kept the gates of Valhalla from closing long enough for Bo to escape. That’s what he did in a nutshell. He also tried to send Stacy after Vex (who left for England, or thereabouts, at the end of S4), but failed to trick her – Stacy isn’t as clever as Lauren, but she isn’t too dumb either…

So: Bo is back, Kenzi has left for good, the LG canon is going to undergo some final and drastic changes, and Bo also got her mystical candle and lit it, which forged some sort of a mystic bond with a mystery character (the actress’ Amanda Walsh, BTW), who also has a similar candle. Who knows what’ll happen next?!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Become - Dec 9

And so, “Agents” have come the mid-season finale in their plotline – and in a big, exciting way, too.

Firstly, this episode established all of the main couples by now. There are the FitzSimmons, with Fitz doing his best in getting out of the ‘friends’ zone to which he’d been relegated by Jemma. There are Phil and Mel, with the two of them finally realizing that they are more than friends and colleagues, and there are this season’s newcomers, Lance and Bobbi, who appear to have made-up, even though Bobbi (ala the Mockingbird) has a secret hidden on some sort of a memory stick. Hopefully, she is not another double agent for Hydra, because that would be bad.

Finally, there are Ward and Skye, with Skye shooting Ward in the back because of karma. Ward had betrayed his teammates back in S1 (in case anyone has forgotten), metaphorically shooting them in the back, and Skye has repaid him by literally shooting him in the back. Ward is still more than ‘just’ competent, (in particular, Skye hadn’t killed him – he had Kevlar under his clothes or something similar), but he is also selfish, and thus he is limited as a person, unlike Skye, who is selfless and is part of a team (a very important traits in the world of ‘Agents’, not so much in the real world), and who thus gets to be zapped with the alien crystals at the end of the ep.

And what’s more, she seems to remain basically human in appearance afterwards too. Tripp, who became caught in all of the excitement died, sadly; Raina (just like another new character, who had appeared at the end of the episode), might have become inhuman in appearance; and Skye has not. The setting of the episode finale, including the music, suggest that Skye has become something more, perhaps superior, than an ordinary human as well, just as her father had told her. (He also told her that her name was actually Daisy, but that is another story.)

This episode also has Whitehall killed off, hopefully for good (with stolen alien organs you never know), and we learn that the true name of Skye’s father is Cal, while Skye/Daisy herself is half-Chinese, though she does not look like it. This ties-in with May and Coulson being her surrogate parents, and if one remembers that the previous episode has started with Skye dreaming – among other things – about a baby being abandoned by a couple, (talking about a poison fruit from a poison tree, BTW), played out by Phil and Mel, (and Coulson is Anglo-American, while May is of an Oriental descent), then one may wonder if Skye’s pre-orphan days weren’t as rosy as her father makes them out to be. Of course, he is also quite unbalanced, (and possesses superhuman strength and endurance), so whatever information he shares, is probably biased to begin with.

What is left? Tripplet dies when the crystals are destroyed (by him); Mack recovers once the same crystals are destroyed; and agent 33 is also alive, unlike Whitehall, and helps Ward get to safety. Hopefully now Ward will have to rethink some of his previous choices and do something else with his life – or not. He and Skye are Buffy and Angel/Angelus of the ‘Agents’ world, with the Inhumans playing the role of demons and the supernatural (a man who can see without eyes is a good example of that sort of thing), and the role/function of Acathla is still up for grabs...probably.

So: Ward had been outmaneuvered by Skye, who had been outmaneuvered by Raina; Whitehall is dead, Skye’s father and agent 33 are alive; Tripp is dead, though the other agents are alive; and aliens from other worlds are about to make an appearance. When ‘Agents’ S2 resumes in 2015, this is going to be really good!

LG: Hel part 1 - Dec 7

And so, the 5^th – and final – season of LG has begun vigorously! This season begins where S4 has ended, with Hale and Kenzi dead and Bo doing what she can to fix this state of affairs. In this particular case, it is on with a pair of magical slippers and off to the Valhalla, the current version of the LG-verse afterlife. 

Now, let us be frank. Valhalla, just like the Valkyries, is Norse, whereas the first seasons had a more Celtic bend to their mythos, but just like the departed Una Mens, the last seasons of LG have a different take on things than the first; something, apparently, has changed (or someone has changed, gotten replaced, quit, etc) on LG behind the scenes, and so LG has changed itself.

One may argue that this statement is unimportant, for LG take on Valhalla is ambiguous at least: from the inside it is a swanky hotel (more US than Canadian in style); from the outside – it is a snowbound wasteland with a statue of (apparently) Odin standing tall. (Or maybe it is Thor – who knows?)

Fair enough, but the choice of the afterlife for LG is still interesting: unlike Heaven, Valhalla was more materialistic and real, just like the Norse, who had invented (or imagined) it, less with the matters of the spirit than with the matters of heart and body – LG appears to be following this sort of reasoning too: when Bo meets Kenzi, the latter is enjoying luxuries such as food and clothing; but food and clothing alone do not make a person (well, not every person) happy, and that’s why Kenzi wants to get out. 

...And, because Bo is a selfless succubus of a character, she wants Kenzi to stay in hotel Valhalla instead, marry Hale, and finally have some happiness in her life. Well, her afterlife, if you want to be technical. Sadly, Bo’s father has other plans, and apparently he has shanghaied Hale from their wedding, and Bo has to confront him (her father) and possibly rescue Hale.

Among other characters whom we have met already in this season are other Valkyries (with whom Tamsin does not get along, apparently), and their mistress (and the Lady of Valhalla, perhaps), Freya or Freyja. The latter (alongside a reference to Bifrost, a bridge/highway/elevator between all of the realms) is another nod to the Norse myths, and again, it is a true one. The Norse did consider Freya to be something of a queen/mistress of the Valkyries, the only goddess, who could stand up to Odin, besides his wife Frigg (but there is confusion between the two goddesses, and one of Freya’s husbands was named Od/Odd/Odr, so let’s just assume that Freya and Frigg may be one goddess with two names). So far, Odin himself is absent, so naturally that Freya is the one in charge – of Tamsin’s fellow Valkyries (like Stacy) and of Valhalla itself.

This brings us to Tamsin, who really does not like Valhalla – apparently, as she tells Bo, whenever she is home, she does something to it. So far, however, it appears to be the other way around: Tamsin briefly went crazy (in a homage to Stanley Kubrick), and Bo had to smack her out of it. So far it is Valhalla one, Tamsin zero.

Or maybe it is more than one for Valhalla. At the end of this episode, as Kenzi wakes up in her coffin (a la the bride in “Kill Bill 2”) and Bo is riding the elevator to Hel (one ‘l’ in the Norse version, not two, as the episode’s title might indicate), more of the hotel Valhalla’s staff are holding Tamsin, while Stacy gloats – but perhaps Dyson and Lauren can rescue her.

Dyson and Lauren, now, they have been mostly background characters in this ep; Dyson hanging around with Trick (who had been left to man the rear guard at the end of this episode); Lauren – at her own personal clinic, which deals with Fae as well, since there’s at least one fire-breathing patient in it.

Of course, the question as to how Lauren got this sort of clinic after she had turned Evony human back in S4 is a plot hole, just one of the latest plot holes that had haunted since S1 at least. The plotline shuffling since S4 had not helped matters either – but otherwise, in Lauren’s case, the episode has held-up.

The only other weak point of the episode was the hotel Valhalla’s crowd – it came and went without any sense or planning. Sometimes it was there, other times it was not, and it did not make sense, not even in the LG version of Valhalla. But the episode still worked, it was a good one, and it promises a lot of excitement to come before the show finishes!