So the second episode of ‘The Librarians’, S3. As I
expected, they continue to run amok over the Egyptian mythology – what gives?
In the season’s opening, they appeared to have confused Apep with Set; now, as
I suspected, they have thrown Anubis into the mix.
First, who was Anubis? Anubis was an Egyptian god of
the dead; a gatekeeper and a subordinate of Osiris, who was its’ ruler. Think
Charon from the Greeks, but with a good deal more of responsibilities and
oomph. Unlike the various monotheists, the pagans – Egyptians and Greco-Romans
at least – put their entire afterlife into the underworld, and that was okay. For
the Greeks and the Romans most of their dead spent the eternity on the asphodel
fields in a limbo of sorts; for the Egyptians, if you were not good enough to
live in paradise, Ammut, the devourer of souls, would devour you and that would
be the end. Appropriately, Ammut was a creature that was part lion, part crocodile,
part hippopotamus – the Egyptians knew just what creatures they feared, and
they had very healthy imagination.
…This is all very good, but what did it have to do
with werewolves? The short answer is – nothing at all. The Egyptians did not
have werewolves, because there are no wolves in Africa, not even in the ancient
times. There are so-called ‘Ethiopian wolves’, but these are more like jackals,
and jackals are the Old World’s answer to the coyote, not the wolf. They just are
not as scary as wolves are, not on the obvious level at least. Basically, when ‘The
Librarians’ decided to tie lycanthropy to ancient Egypt and throw good old
Anubis into the mix, they had no ties with the real-life Egyptian mythology and
just came with something of their own, out of the blue.
Again, this is no problem, it is just strange behavior
for a normally professional and precise show – seriously, the folks over ‘The
Librarians’ and TNT in general were too lazy to read Rick Riordan’s ‘Kane
Chronicles’ trilogy? Who knows…?
In other news, while ‘The Librarians’ appear to be
revamping their show in general, possibly for the ratings, ‘River Monsters’
(RM) is coming back in 2017. Sadly, I find much less excited about it than
before. For a long while, approximately for the first six or seven seasons, RM
was awesome; now, it is still very good, but it has clearly jumped the shark.
JW rocks, but he has exhausted his potential in exchange for ratings, and now
it shows. S8 of RM has ended with a whimper, and it was focusing on marine life, rather than the freshwater
one. RM still works, obviously, but it is equally obvious that it has jumped
the shark and no matter what it will do, it will be unable to change this state
of affairs.
Finally, AoS is returning this Tuesday, so yay. Of
course, Arrowverse is launching its’ own major four-shows ‘crossover’, so
Marvel, AoS and MCU are still the underdogs in the realm of television, but
perhaps the expanding ‘Defenders’ can do something about this balance…
Therefore, until next week, then!
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