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Highlander: Manhunt

Carl: "The man thinks he's a piece of garbage, but he's not. Nobody's garbage."

So the moral of the story is, fame and immortality just don't mix.

Carl was absolutely right to crave justice for what had been done to him. Who could blame him under those circumstances? But Matthew McCormick had a point that Carl should have started his new immortal life by quietly moving north, instead. I was less sympathetic with Matthew's desire to avenge his former slave-owning in-laws, but I guess they had to insert more conflict in there somewhere.

Carl certainly experienced a whole range of extremes in white people. Enslaved, victimized and murdered by a white man. Rescued and mentored by a white man. And then Trey Franks, a stereotypical cracker who even described himself as white trash, gave up his freedom to save Carl from prison. It bugged me that, at first, Carl was just going to let Trey throw his life away like that – especially since Trey the nobody was an intentional parallel to Carl the slave. Carl didn't learn a whole lot during his long life, did he?

But at least the end was satisfying. Matthew turned out to be cool. Carl stopped being an ass, accepted that he had to give up his current persona, and moved on. Carl will never be one of my favorite immortals, but at least he was somewhat memorable. Plus we got Eric McCormack from Will and Grace as a fun immortal cop with an extreme Southern accent. I wouldn't have minded more episodes about Matthew.

Flashbacks:

— 1859 Louisiana: Carl was a slave murdered by his master, and rescued as well as mentored by Matthew McCormick. After immortal indoctrination, Carl went back and killed his owner. Oops.

— There were flashbacks to 1926 segment in "Run for Your Life."

Bits and pieces:

— One thing they usually glossed over on Highlander (when it wasn't necessary for the plot) was all those headless bodies. Here, they actually had one crash down in front of several of Carl's fans.

— Guest star Eric McCormack played an immortal named Matthew McCormick. A fun coincidence, I assume.

— I liked Matthew's analogy of immortals as slinkies: with enough stairs, they keep going forever. Plus a lot of them are twisted. (I added that last part, but it fits, doesn't it?)

— Carl and Duncan fought again, and did serious damage to the dojo. At least it wasn't with swords this time.

— Myron Corman was the thirty-seventh evil immortal with a K/C name.

Three questionable stars,

Billie
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Billie Doux knows that there can be only one. And that's Methos.

1 comment:

  1. No coincidence. The producers were thinking of creating a spin-off - a mix of Highlander and X-Files. Immortal law man investigates mysterious beheadings and serial killers. Are the killers immortal? Mortal? Some mix? Never went anywhere.

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