Duncan: "This isn't justice. This is vengeance."Boiling oil and bear traps. I mean, really. This one is so bad on so many levels that I almost don't know where to begin.
Again, the long arm of almost incomprehensible coincidence strikes. Duncan, Tessa, and Richie go visit one of her childhood friends, and immediately get involved in an intense personal conflict involving another immortal, and a quasi-military siege on their chateau. Maybe it would have been more believable if it had been a cabin in the woods. Nah.
The unspoken comparison was that there are different rules for special people. The son of a wealthy diplomat, Mark thought he was outside the law and should have gotten away with raping a girl. Rules for the wealthy are much like rules for immortals, who think they should be able to get away with mounting an attack on a chateau and killing people who have offended them.
There was also an unspoken comparison between Richie, a basically good kid raised in poverty, and Mark, a rich, evil rapist kid. It was at least mildly dramatically interesting that Mark was a ghastly human being and deserved death, but they couldn't just allow it to happen. It would have been more of a cliche if he'd been innocent, or if we'd been led to believe that he was innocent for the first half of the episode.
Frankly, this episode would have worked better if it had been five minutes long. They could have given us that amazing duel in the forest at the end, and left it at that.
Flashbacks:
— 1815 France. This one was short and pretty much had no context. It appeared that Duncan didn't arrive in time to save some poor kid from an undeserved firing squad.
Bits and pieces:
— Duncan could "feel" Everett outside the chateau, way back on the lawn. How far apart do immortals have to be before the "buzz" kicks in? It varies depending on dramatic circumstances, of course.
— This episode had a high body count. What on earth would they have told the French cops about all of the bodies, and the weird ways that they died?
— At one point, Mark referred to Lori, his victim, as a blonde. Her hair was brown. Maybe they hadn't cast her yet.
— "Allan" was played by Anthony Stewart Head, who was listed as Anthony Head. He is best known as Rupert Giles the librarian on my absolute favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
— This is one of the earliest episodes directed by Dennis Berry, who did so many of their memorable ones. (Not this one.) You can tell by the trademark Dennis Berry fog throughout, which looked good but unfortunately failed to obscure the action.
— In this week's hair report, Adrian's kept escaping from his ponytail. It must have been getting long, but not long enough.
This was probably an idea that looked good on paper but translated into absolutely idiotic on film. One star,
Billie
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Billie Doux knows that there can be only one.
Didn't enjoy this one. On a production level - what was with the re-dubbing of actor's voices in that show? Inspector LeBrun was re-dubbed a lot in earlier episodes, as was Maya in Eye of the Beholder. Badly.
ReplyDeletePeter Guinness may have played Bellian, but that was not his voice.
Yet for some reason the Scottish Regiment in the flashback had French accents. They certainly look like a British army unit.
This re-dubbing was one of my biggest issues with the early series of Highlander.
Reposted for truth: "Frankly, this episode would have worked better if it had been five minutes long."
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