Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Highlander: Family Tree

Richie: "You never found out who your real parents were?"
Duncan: "No. But after a couple of hundred years, you get over it."

What a snooze.

This was wall to wall character development, and not very good character development. But it did successfully set up Duncan, Tessa and Richie as a pseudo family unit. And it also firmly established that both Duncan and Richie were foundlings with mysterious origins and no known parents. Which hit us over the head with a big metaphor mallet that Richie could be a potential immortal. Which in turn explained why Duncan "adopted" him.

This episode also showed us a lot of Richie, who is basically a pretty good kid. Even though he himself was robbing the place only one episode ago, he has already committed to Duncan and Tessa and was terribly upset when Joe/Jack robbed the place. And he was kind to Joe/Jack, even though it wasn't deserved.

Duncan showed his age: he was fatherly toward Richie, and he was cynical and loathe to trust strangers. He was also able to tie Clinch, the big legbreaker, into knots, and he did it with total confidence and a smile on his face. Duncan clearly enjoyed tromping on a bully.

Flashbacks:

— 1622 Scotland. The sepia-toned flashbacks were more interesting than the A plot, showing Duncan's first death after a battle, and his rejection by his adopted father. Duncan's father said Duncan was a changeling left by forest demons.


— Since Duncan was born in 1592, this would make him permanently 30. Not 35, as Tessa said in the pilot.

— Duncan's hair was as long and possibly even longer than in the Indian flashback in the pilot, like down to his waist. That's really long hair, especially for a guy.

Bits and pieces:

— The guy who played Richie's pseudo-father looked nothing, and I mean nothing, like Richie. It might have created more suspense if they'd cast someone who looked more like Stan Kirsch.

One star,

Billie
---
Billie Doux knows that there can be only one.

No comments:

Post a Comment

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.