Loki, S1 finale - July 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now what about ‘Loki’ S1 finale?

It works. It is clichéd, predictable, and what else have you, but it is delivered well enough, and yes, the final villain…

The final villain, He Who Remains, (or what else have you), is an original character; for once, MCU stopped giving pre-existing names to original characters, as they did in AoS and in ‘Runaways’, (especially the first two seasons); now, they are actually creating their own characters, and-

…And yes, the actor for this role has been a star of the ‘Lovecraft Country’, or whatever the show had been called, is playing – did play – the good ol’ He-Who. I confess that I was never a big fan of LC; Mr. Lovecraft himself had been a controversial person both in life and in death, while his literary creations are something else…and LC played fast and loose with them; for example, shaggoths of the Lovecraft mythos are not variant hellhounds, but are something much more formidable, regardless of what the show would have you believe.

The racial angle of LC…that was something else. There are people on the Internet, especially on YouTube, that accuse Disney, MCU, and etc. of being ‘woke’; LC had been much more so, and not in a good way. When done right, as in Tom Holland’s ‘Spider-Man’ films, progressive values can work, and without people even realizing that they’re there; when done wrong, as in the ‘Dark Phoenix-2019’ film, they can backfire spectacularly, and LC, it can be noted, was cancelled, with or without regrets. Cough. Where were we?

Ah yes, the S1 finale episode, FATA. Fata-morgana or the mirage. Sylvie loves Loki – the titular one – but sends him back to TVA…only it is a different TVA or something, so he has to start anew…or maybe it is the same TVA just with something different: when one messes with time and space, some things are just liable to be changed, for better or for worse, yes. What next?

A shout-out to the now finished TV series called ‘Primeval’, done by Impossible Pictures, which themselves were reabsorbed into BBC. Now that is a pity, but what I want to point out here, is that they too – I’m talking once more about ‘Primeval’ here – had a reality change between S1 and S2, a relatively small one, from Claudia to Jenny, but still. It did play a role. Here, in the ‘Loki’ S1 finale, we have something similar with Mobius and B-15. Interesting.

Oh, and judge RR, who is actually a Rebecca something that starts with a T, is not a villain, but has just left TVA for her own journey. How wonderful. A journey can be either a blessing or a curse, as the Flying Dutchman has demonstrated, (the actual legend, not the PoC element), and so did the Wandering Jew, (which is an even older story, and one that is probably not very appropriate for our times, nor is it very politically correct at all). My point here is that Loki – the titular Loki – might end up running all over the multiverse for a very long time, before he can reunite with Sylvie – or else he might lose her, and himself, for good. Only time will tell.

Moreover, yes, the multiverse is here at last. Officially too – huzzah, hooray! Disney & Marvel plan to celebrate it with ‘What If?’, it looks like, but we have already discussed this upcoming show before, and anything else would be nothing else but speculation. The S1 of ‘Loki’ in itself was a mixed bag, and not entirely all good, but it worked long enough for the season to reach its’ conclusion, (not that it had long to go, with just 6 episodes, and this is what it did.

…And yes, I am aware that the official reaction to that fact had been rather lackluster, at least for today, but that is a discussion for another time. For now, though, this is it, see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Honeymoon' - April 14

‘The Honeymoon’ was aired last night. And…AoS continues to disappoint. Why? Because it is disjointed.

Let us try again. Firstly, AoS continues to disrespect its’ characters by constantly redesigning them. In this episode, general Hale – who still lacks a first name, but by now is taking her hair down, on occasion, making her look more like her daughter, Ruby – talks about ‘the chamber’ with her latest right-hand woman, how she wants Ivanov to go into it first, to learn what it will do to human flesh, etc. This does make her sound ruthless, as a Hydra head should be, but…

But Ivanov is a robot by now; in S4, AIDA has destroyed his old body completely and remade him into several LMDs. Whatever LMD of Ivanov survived, they would be completely inorganic as well, (save for the brain, maybe), and as such the chamber’s effect on Ivanov would be completely different from what it would be on Ruby, because the latter doesn’t appear to be an LMD or an android; so far she appears to be wholly organic. This will change in the next episode, but still a point must be made, beforehand.

The same goes for Yo-Yo. Poor NCB, (aka the actress). Clearly, AoS cannot afford to give her character special effects in regards to superspeed, so they made her a cyborg instead; Yo-Yo still has speed, she just cannot use it, because it hurts her very badly instead. This is a crummy thing to do a character; Yo-Yo was built around her speed and now she will be rebuilt from scratch just because – but we talked about how AoS disrespects its’ characters…without any good reason.

And now we have the disjunction on top of disrespect. Not so long ago, the Marvel comics ran a promo picture-collage for AoS: S1 promo on top, S5 on the bottom. The two pictures just did not match – not just because Ward is back, while Mack and Yo-Yo have toughed it out, but because the style, the layout, the depiction, the atmosphere, everything is different; from S1 to S5 AoS became a different show completely!

Now, this does not make AoS unique; ‘Primeval’ of ‘Impossible Pictures’ (IP) has done the same thing, with fewer episodes than AoS has…and it is gone now. IP tried to reboot the series with ‘Primeval: New World’ (P: NW), but it has died after just a single season, and yes, the Primeval series and the rest of IP had a bad break regarding their mother company the BBC and the entirety of ‘Walking with…’ franchise, but the fluidity of its’ acting cast – we’re still talking about the original ‘Primeval’ series here – didn’t help the situation either. At least AoS is constant in that each of its’ seasons was about 22 episodes long – ‘Primeval’ didn’t even had that; its’ various seasons had different amount of episodes, and thus ‘Primeval’ suffered…

Back to AoS? The title of this episode reflects the honeymoon of the FitzSimmons, but the episode itself didn’t do such a good job with it; the FitzSimmons’ plot line was only one of several featured in this episode, (and the entire episode feels rushed); at one moment, Simmons comments to Fitz about how they know now how to strap on a parachute correctly, but…

But the reference is of that S1 episode, when Simmons got infested with an alien virus, and while she did get cured, she did jumped out of the plane to prevent infesting the others…and Grant Ward, now forgotten, jumped out and caught her. Fitz did not. Ergo, this statement of Simmons is devalued and is meaningless, or even a lie. The way that the FitzSimmons fought Hydra’s robot soldiers in synchronisation again reflects how…Grant and May, (or maybe Coulson and May, I am not sure), fought a bunch of rebel soldiers in another S1 episode, so how does that relates to the FitzSimmons directly?

…And then, of course, there are the Star Wars elements; in particular, Jemma Simons is lately dressed – and wears her hair – in a style vaguely reminiscent of Ray from the new trilogy and of Jyn from the ‘Rogue One’ movie. What is up with that?

…SW references aside…this episode of AoS was a mess, and not even the FitzSimmons could save it. They, together with Yo-Yo, have tricked Mack, causing him to stay on the base, just in time save Deke, who had been shot helping Daisy, by being a doctor, right alongside agent Piper.

…Neither Mack nor Piper showed any signs of being medically savvy ever in AoS before; yes, Mack did help Simmons graft the cyborg arms onto Yo-Yo recently, but the key words here are ‘helping Simmons’. Ever since Piper appears in AoS in S4, she was shown to be only May’s protégé, nothing more, and May herself is not that medically savvy either.

So. AoS numbers continue to fall; they have come up, or rather – come upwards – in the last week’s episode, but if AoS continues to, well, disrespect itself, it’s doubtful that this streak will last for very long.

…That is it for this time; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'The Last Day' - Jan 20

‘The Last Day’ got aired last night. And?

And it was something of a letdown, primarily because of Robyn the InHuman seer, or more precisely, because of how she was depicted. As a young girl, Robyn came across as a vapid, annoying, so naïve that she’s actually dim girl, rather reminiscent of Sansa Stark…in some fanfics. As an old woman, Robyn was…the same, and perhaps even more childish and mentally unbalanced than she was as a girl. ‘The Last Day’ may have also supposed to have start May exploring her more maternal side…but this was already began to be explored back in S2 in relationship to Daisy, (the entire Phil & Mel as parents dynamic), so on one hand ‘Day’ didn’t give us anything new, and on the other hand…what happened to Robyn’s mother, to Morse and Hunter?

…Well, we already know that Palicki, (who played Morse), got a job in a non-MCU-related movie in RL, so it’s simply unlikely that she’ll re-appear in AoS anytime soon, but surely some throwaway scene of Hunter, (played by Blood, remember?), could’ve been put into ‘Day’? …Apparently not, since there was no sight of him, but rather Daisy bonded with Deke, (sort of), over their fathers: she has mentioned Cal… just not by name. (What gives?) There goes this reference of an earlier season for this week. And apparently Deke’s last name is Shaw; how nice; for a show that has made a big whoop over racial diversity since the very beginning, AoS certainly likes to avoid interracial couples; WASPs are paired with WASPs and PoCs with PoCs; there are Phil and Mel, but they are often downplayed, and frankly their relationship in canon is depicted in different ways from one episode to another.

…Right, never mind that, back to Hunter? No, not really, though Enoch certainly seems to be coming and going and no one appears to notice when he does that, even though by now all of the titular characters got stuck on the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s old Zephyr megaplane or whatever it is supposed to be. Of course, this also raises a question as to why the xenomorphs have not invaded it and eaten everyone, because Synera was able to find it without much trouble, but-

Yes, the new monsters technically are not xenomorphs from the AVP franchise; they are based on an MCU alien race, but in the comics, the aliens in question are sentient, and the not-xenomorphs are not. When shown more clearly, they are a mix of future predators, (giant derived futuristic flightless bats), from ‘Primeval’, (remember that show? It was good!), and the alien cockroach from the first ‘Men in Black’ movie. Wow. The audience must be overwhelmed.

…And why were the xenomorphs shown more clearly? Because Mack and Yo-Yo were helping Flint the teenage InHuman in saving the rest of the remaining humans from them. So far so good, but what was Flint wearing? Is he being set up, (by the show), as some sort of a king/leader? You know, as AoS’ attempt to tap into the upcoming ‘Black Panther’ movie, because of obvious reasons? It could happen, because otherwise, the teen in question looks simply ridiculous, and that is not right.

Anything else? A bunch of ragged followers of the seer tried to kill Daisy to prevent her from returning to the past, thus saving the world – they failed. The agents are returning to their present time – they just gave to defeat the Kree here and now, so odds are defeating the Kree and fixing the present to prevent the future is going to occupy them for the rest of S5 to come. Fair enough. Good luck to them, then.

…And as for us? See you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Patriot - Jan 17

‘The Patriot’ was aired yesterday; was it good?

On a certain, technical, level – yeah. ‘The Patriot’ promoted the series plot further; it gave Jeffrey Mace, (the titular patriot, technically speaking), character development, and it brought back general Talbot…

Well, actually, it brought back Hydra. Right now, they are still not back to being 100%; they are still being dominated/integrated into the Watchdogs, (and is anyone surprised? Really?), but they are back, and at least one of them has this oversized machete – apparently, he is setting himself up to being Mack’s nemesis…maybe.  

This has happened before; in ‘Primeval’, they killed-off their number one villain, Helen Cutter, at the end of their S3…and quickly realized that they didn’t have anyone to replace her; they brought her back, sort of, at the end of S5, and-

-And then they got cancelled; both them, and P: NW, (the spin-off), which is a pity; both shows had plenty of problems of their own, especially the original ‘Primeval’, which replaced about 80% of its’ main cast by the final, fifth, season: even AoS isn’t that bad – they really just replaced Brett Dalton (Grant) with Henry Simmons (Mack), while Nick Blood (Lance), Adrienne Palicki (Bobbi) and Luke Mitchell (Lincoln) just left – Luke in particular is doing well over at ‘Blindspot’ as Roman…

Pause. Stop babbling. Try again.

One of AoS’ main issues is its’ inability to move forwards, (something that is also plaguing the new SW movies, BTW). The S3, (especially the second, post-Maveth, half) felt like a continuation of S2, with Andrew/Lash being the male counterpart to post-Terrigenesis Raina. (They even looked similar, gender differences aside). Now, with Talbot back, and Hydra back, and Radcliffe & Aida Mk II acting almost like a softer version of Whitehall and agent 33, the LMD arc feels almost like AoS’ S2 revisited…again.

No, seriously, I wrote about this. In S2, Hydra tried to capture May and replace her with a doppelganger – Kara Palamas, wearing a photostatic veil. Coulson uncovered the truth within an episode: guess these days his Maydar is on the fritz or something. However, the point is that Radcliffe and Aida (is Aida Mk II even an android or what?) have done the same thing, and AoS itself has done the same thing: it has Ning-Ma Wen, (i.e. May) play two characters at once – May and agent 33. In second Maya Stojan took half of S2 Kara’s role…but AoS handled Kara’s plotline very badly, so I’m not getting in-depth into this.

What I am getting in here is that the ‘LMD’ plotline follows a similar premise, save that the LMD May does not have the same scarred face that Kara-as-May had. Seriously, was May supposed to be a villain on AoS? She even had her own flashback back in S2 – so far the only other people who had it were Grant in S1 and Gideon Malick in S3, both villains. By contrast, ‘The Patriot’ did fill-in the gaps of Jeffrey Mace’s backstory, but without a flashback, and he is being presented as a sympathetic and not-really-evil character, so yeah?

…Of course, odds of Mace dying at the end of S4 are still fairly good, as AoS has real life problems of holding onto cast members ever since the pointless kill-off at the end of S2, so there is that.

In addition, I confess – I am mentioning AoS’ S2 excessively often, but as far as I am concerned? AoS itself just cannot let go and returns to it, plotwise, repeatedly, so S2 cannot be avoided if you are talking about AoS, so let us talk about something else. ‘For Honor’, maybe.

Not only its’ beta testing starts this month, (Jan 2017), but the final three playable characters were unveiled. They are the Valkyrie, the Lawbringer, and the Nobushi. All three of them are armed…not with ranged weapons, but with weapons that have reach – greater reach than the weapons of the Raider, the Warden and the Kensei, for comparison.

The Valkyrie, (named, naturally, after the Valkyrie of the Norse myths), is armed with a specialized buckler and a spear. It is an ordinary spear, unlike the Nobushi’s naginata, which is also a spear, technically, but with a proportionally longer blade, which is also designed for slicing, (as a sabre would), rather than for stabbing. DW S1 featured, compared and contrasted the two weapons both in the episode 1x02, ‘Viking vs. Samurai’ and in the first part of its’ ‘Back for Blood’ special, where the Samurai faced off with a Spartan, also armed with a spear, (and lost). While the Europeans used their spear for directly forward, straight thrusts and stabs, the Samurai used his naginata almost like an axe, or even a polearm, using more sweeping moves, (similar to the greataxe used by the Viking in their battle).

Speaking of polearms? This brings us to the Lawbringer’s poleaxe, which is basically a halberd, (also used by various fighters in DW, in all three seasons, BTW). A poleaxe has an axe head for slicing, a spearhead for stabbing, and a hook for grabbing and pulling down enemy cavalry fighters. This makes it different from such weapons as the bardiche and the Dane-axe, (used by the Raider of ‘For Honor’), which are just axes on extra-long handles. This sort of brings as back to AoS, where Mack just uses axes as his signature weapon for no particular reason, but hey! He now probably has an archenemy of his own, armed with a machete, (a signature weapon?), and-

That fight was important in other ways. First, LMD May discovered that she is an LMD because of it, (also, her metal flesh is tough enough to bend saw blades), and second, she fought the machete-wielding Hydra agent with a shovel. WTF with that? It is probable that initially it was Adrienne Palicki, Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird, who was supposed to be Coulson’s team in S1, while May would have joined it in S2 as part of Gonzales’ crew - or maybe as the initially brainwashed, but later redeemed agent 33…who knows? This did not happen, S2 handled Kara’s plotline very badly, and right now, NCB/Elena ‘Yo-Yo’ Rodriguez is playing a recurring Latin-American character on AoS instead…

(Of course, the position of AoS and the rest of MCU in the acting world is somewhat ambiguous in itself: recently, CNN released a mini-series called ‘Creators’, featuring Ruth Negga – Raina of AoS. AoS was not mentioned at all. WTF with that? It is not so bad.)

To conclude: just like ‘Broken Promises’, ‘The Patriot’ was a good and solid episode, which isn’t necessarily what the AoS needs right now. It tried a partial reboot with its’ S4, but it needs to complete that reboot, or else it will not work. Conversely, ‘For Honor’ is shaping to be an awesome wargame; regardless, this is it for this talk – see you all later!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Maveth - Dec 8

And so, AoS mid-S3 finale had come to a conclusion. Was it shuttering? Yes and no. Not unlike “Purpose...” (ep 3x02), AoS aimed to depict the agents as a well-oiled team, a machine, and now, since the finale of S2, it has done it. Lincoln is with Daisy, Mel is going to be with Phil, and the FitzSimmons are the FitzSimmons. For further drama, Andrew/Lash is out there, acting the villain not unlike how Ward had done it before, since the beginning of S3, Simmons is going to be mad at Fitz over Will, and, well, Brett is going to be now playing some sort of a space monster, now that Grant is dead (as a canon character). It is simple, straightforward, and predictable.

Boring, basically.

The greatest strength of AoS was the unpredictability of its’ characters, the breaking of the comic-book canon in S1. By making Grant a villain with a chance of redemption, they made it interesting. Then S2 happened, and the show’s script writers went all over places, fiddling with Grant’s redemption (until the last 3 eps of S2), trying temporarily to pair Skye/Daisy with Lance, trying to figure out where Raina fit in, etc.

Then the S2 finale occurred, Grant finally became purely a villain, the rest of the team – purely heroes, and S3 rolled in. Predictability rolled in. The characters got settled into their roles as people, not just as agents. Marvel™, backed by Disney™, is a powerhouse in terms of the finances, which allows them to play out their films (MCU), as well as AoS, on an epic scale, if by ‘epic’ you mean ‘expansive’, ‘extensive’, and ‘large’. The TV-medium does not allow the same mass media depictions as the movie screen does, so even “Maveth” did not have the same impact as any of the MCU movies would. The music delivered, the actors delivered, but the old, unpredictable S.H.I.E.L.D. of S1 died. What is left, what will appear for the rest of S3 and beyond is predictability; in fact, given the ‘grand musical number’ at the conclusion of “Maveth”, AoS could’ve ended right here, with a bang – the Earth is saved, the agents are (mostly) happy, etc.

...Oh wait, Grant Ward had been resurrected by the alien horror. Of course he was – Brett’s from the main cast, so he cannot disappear the same way that Trip did, for example. He has to remain on the show, even with a new role, driving forth the agents as the antagonist to their happiness and family values. Hooray!

...This had been done before, in ‘Primeval’, made by Impossible Pictures™. There, Helen Cutter, too had evolved from an ambiguous, and even helpful, character into a pure villain...that proved to be the main driving force of the show: she was killed at the end of S3 (Ward made it barely to the middle), but she still had to be brought back post-mortem by the end of S5 as she almost destroyed the world even from beyond the grave. Remind you of anyone?

As for the other Ward scion, Thomas...AoS was always about killing off the guest stars. So far we see no sign of him joining the main cast, so odds are is that he will die by the end of S3 if not sooner – Grant’s resurrected corpse is going to get him, most likely, or perhaps Lash/Andrew will. His showdown with May was very reminiscent of Grant’s showdown with Skye back in S1, and AoS showed that it isn’t above ‘recycling’ the old characters into new – Rosalind was reminiscent of S1 Raina, Lash was clearly based on her S2 second half, etc. Thomas is going to be the redeemed Ward, most likely, which is sad – couldn’t they have found a way to redeem Grant? Ah well, it was obvious that he was going to die since the end of S2, when Kara died. His heart died with her, after all.

So, from now on, it is going to be a completely different ball game. AoS has put behind the chaotic and ill-defined S2, the embarrassing episode 3x01 and has become solid, powerful, predictable. The critics say that S3 had revitalized the show...yet the ratings still are nowhere high enough to what they were in S1, and now there is a big break – until March – so odds are that the ratings will go down, as they did in S2. So for now we will wave farewell to AoS and wait for March with more reviews.

(Or not, if the show will prove to be too predictable at that time.)

Agent Carter - general remarks

And so, with LG taking a midseason hiatus (never mind that it is the last season of the show, so there really is not any need for a hiatus), things are rather slow in the TV land. True, there is Marvel’s Agent Carter airing, but despite it being the same solid piece of work as S.H.I.E.L.D., there is something missing from this show, some sort of a spark.

Let us rewind: Howard Stark, (the father of Iron Man), has been framed, (supposedly) into being a terrorist of some sort. He gets Peggy Carter to clear his name and to recover his stolen inventions. Peggy has to outrun both the bad guys (communists rather than Nazis here), and the SSR (the prototype S.H.I.E.L.D.) with the help of Jarvis, Howard’s human butler (unlike his son’s version, which is an AI). 

Sounds exciting? It is, yet despite all of that, plus historical accuracy of the series, plus a rather lively cast of actors, plus the show’s address of such important issues as gender equality back in the early Cold War era, the show somehow remains less exciting and interesting than S.H.I.E.L.D. was. The characters, they go through their motions, yet the audience does not get touched by them – not really. The fanbase remains largely untouched – Carter is barely more popular (as a show) than ‘Naturally, Sadie’ or P: NW are, even though both shows have been finished, done, ended. Even the online Wikia, or rather – the ‘Fanbrain’ section of it – have gotten somewhat disenchanted with the show, reducing its’ intake of the Carter episodes down to the bare basics: i.e., this is Junior Juniper, who died thusly on the show, while in the comics, he has died thisly – etc. 

So why does this happen? What has gone wrong?

Unlike LG, for example, or Primeval, Carter does not suffer from such problems as continuity, consistency of the cast, or even common sense – everything is solid with her, the character development, as well as the plot, develops and progresses as it is supposed to, one step at a time and no further.

The historical accuracy, the feel of the historical accuracy, rather, is also present in the series without any deviations or inconsistencies. The actors act too just fine, without any over the top or hammy acting, as it happened in other shows, such as Primeval or IP version of Sinbad, for example.

And yet, it is not enough. There are no surprises in Carter, as there are in S.H.I.E.L.D. – you just know that Sousa will figure out that Peggy is a double agent of sorts; that Thompson is going to become more respectful of Peggy, as will chief Dooley; that Peggy will be able to retrieve all of Howard Stark’s missing inventions; etc. There are no surprises, save that Dottie Underwood is an undercover Leviathan or Red Room agent; since she’s also female, odds are that she is going to be the one to have one final showdown with Peggy before the miniseries end. Of course, it’s also possible that Peggy will convert Dottie into a good guy, but unlike Whedon’s earlier series, BtVS and AtS, S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t big on redemptions; odds are, neither is Carter.

There are no surprises, but there is a rush – sort of. Carter is not a hackneyed job and there are not any plotholes, but neither there are any secondary plots; even Sousa trying to figure out if Peggy is the blonde or isn’t, is part of the main plotline: Peggy seeking to outrun both Leviathan and SSR in a race to recover Stark’s stolen inventions. There is Angie, Peggy’s waitress friend, who appears to be somewhat aware that Peggy’s more than what she seems, but because Carter is a mini-series without much time to waste, Angie appears to be largely comic relief for now, as are Peggy’s other neighbours (except for Dottie).

Then there are the special effects and CGI – there almost isn’t any. Carter is very historically realistic, but it is based on a comic series, so historical realism and accuracy is not that important to it. There are no super villains either, not yet, so the comic book element of Carter feels rather downplayed as well.

And the show is predictable, unlike S.H.I.E.L.D. or even LG. You just know that Carter is going to kick the villains’ ass while looking good in it. Some of the good guys are going to die, including SSR agents in the process – and that is another thing.

Because Carter is a mini-series, all of the characters present there are either episodic roles (literally), or main cast, who will likely last until the end. There are no secondary characters, and while the same is largely true for S.H.I.E.L.D., the fact it is a longer, multiseason show, gives it some leeway in that department, for example the Koenig brothers, making it different from Carter, and more exciting too.

And so, Agent Carter does not quite fall short of being a great series, it just is not one. Period. It is a very good series to watch, less so to review, so do not expect too many reviews of it here.

Cheers.

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!

Lost Girl, Feb 16 - Dark Horse

And so, the last episode of S4 of LG had arrived, and it was good! Was it great, however? Sadly no, and here are the reasons why.

For one thing, the series’ characters did not appear to come and go into nowhere as they did in the previous episode. Mind you, “Origin” and “Dark Horse” were shaped to be a two-parter, even though the series did not acknowledge this for some reason. “Dark Horse” continues directly from where “Origins” ended, including the mention of Rosette. Frankly, it is not surprising that Bo was not surprised – after her misadventures with the crows, more of late Rainer’s treacherous minions, she was subconsciously expected Rosette not to be any different from them.

Why Rainer’s late? Because the druid killed him. LG tried to make him sound like Tolkien’s Gollum at one point, but he came across more like BtVS Warren Mears from S6, including invulnerability and insanity. And yes, it worked, even if he and Lauren just flickered from location to location, and why did he take Lauren? One may think because the Morrighan, his mother, commanded him to, but the latter not only helped Bo and Lauren to stop (and kill) him, but she also spent a good amount of time at Trick’s getting drunk. Yes, that was a break in the tension, but also a break in the plot, and it gave no good excuse as to why the druid just took Lauren almost everywhere – yes, he was lonely, but not in that manner, sadly.

On the other hand, Bo did kill him at the end, distracting and tricking him long enough for Lauren to steal the twig of Zamora and destroy it, making the druid vulnerable and mortal. Comment: Hale is not the last of Zamora, back in S2 he had a father and a sister...who had not been seen since. Interhouse warfare, maybe? 

This is beside the point, however: Hale is dead, the druid is dead, Vex has apparently fled to London (but all of S4 is famous by not having all of the LG characters in its’ episodes) and Kenzi has self-sacrificed herself to save the world. One can guess that Ksenia Solo (Kenzi), just as K.C. Collins (Hale) and maybe Paul Amos (Vex) had had enough of LG and decided to leave. Fair enough; IP’s Primeval, for example, was notorious for the cast changes; and the already-mentioned BtVS changed its cast a lot since S3, actually.

In any case, Vex went to London, Hale went stabbed from behind, and Kenzi went through self-sacrifice, dying to prevent Bo’s father, the titular Dark Horse, from coming into the world. It was wonderfully done, but Kenzi/Ksenia’s parting smile was supposed to be kindly, understanding and forgiving – instead it was slightly serpentine and creepy. Ah well, that happens; Kenzi still died, and Tamsin took her to Valhalla.

And yes, Valhalla (and Hel) was discussed previously, but firstly, “Dark Horse” once more showed it a) with vaguely Christian connotations (a Norse Valkyrie is not a Christian angel) and b) with one of its entrances in a Toronto seedy alley. That is just weird.

Also Dyson carried Tamsin away from the gates of Valhalla (they took Kenzi’s corpse in, but did not accept Tamsin herself?) bridal-style. Since one of LG’s trademarks is the tangled love interests between the main characters, we are seeing the beginnings of a new love triangle, especially since Lauren may be dropping out of the old one and taking care of the Morrighan/Evonie for now.

Sigh. The last love interest of Lauren’s that was not Bo was the waitress (Crystal) at the beginning of S4 – and she probably ended up made into sushi or burgers by the Dark Fae. The Morrighan is doomed. 

Finally, Mr. Trick. It was very noble of him to come to aid of Team Bo at the end of this episode, but he also was the new Ash, or the substitute Ash, or something. He could have at least tried to get some of the Light Fae to help save the world, but instead he spent his time with the Morrighan and Vex with mixed results. Does he even take his new job seriously, or has he quit with the death of the Una Mens? If so, then the Fae world may start to experience anarchy, and Bo is subconsciously already ready to step in.

To elaborate: S4 has changed the Fae society by adding the Una Mens, who apparently were beyond the Fae council as shown by lord Blackthorn back in S2. Bo, with Rainer’s help, killed the Una Mens, and was later acknowledged as Queen by Dyson, Tamsin, possibly Lauren – she is the granddaughter of a King, so the title is hers by blood too. And with Una Mens gone, a Queen just might be the right person/entity to take charge of everyone, especially since the scriptwriters, including Michelle Lovretta, has largely forgotten about the council from S2 by now, so what happens next is anyone’s guess.

So: Kenzi and Hale are gone, Vex may also be gone, after being mostly a semi-convenient plot device from time to time, Lauren may’ve found herself a new girlfriend, Bo, Dyson and Tamsin may be forming a new triangle, and Trick has told Bo the circumstances of her conception. That, incidentally, raises the question of when did this happen and how – if Bo’s father is trapped in another direction, how he was able to conceive Bo? And if he is not trapped, then the whole season 4 just does not make sense – and this is why “Dark Horse”, just like “Origins”, is a good episode, but not a great one.