Duncan: "You make toys, Marek. Get over it."
Watching Adrian Paul do anything is rarely a waste of time, and this episode had its moments. But you know what? We've seen this episode already in season one: it was called "Bad Day in Building A." And wasn't there a movie with Bruce Willis?
No Methos, Amanda, or Joe, yadda yadda yadda. Why? The producers said they only had Adrian Paul for a limited number of hours in season six. Then why not use the rest of the cast, you idiots? That's what any other intelligent producer would do. You know, I have now written reviews for nearly every episode of this series as well as for each of the horrifically bad movies, and I honestly think the producers of Highlander succeeded by accident. They never knew what their strengths were. If they had had any idea what worked on their own show, season six would have been about the rest of the cast, a move in a new direction, and set-up for a spinoff that would have worked.
Okay, I guess I should stop bitching and talk about the episode.
The game thing and the princess in the tower was okay. I did like the way that the idiotic Dice thought the whole situation was a set-up for a video game, although he should have realized the truth a lot more quickly than he did. And I liked the way they incorporated that video theme into the flashbacks and the quickening.
Duncan ended his no-kill streak and took out Marek. Had to happen. I think they should have come up with a more important reason or a more important villain for Duncan to give up his new obsession with peace and zen thing, though. It was like, I gave it awhile after Richie died, but so much for that.
Flashbacks:
— 1634 Scotland. Post-Connor Duncan witnessed Marek's first death and didn't realize at first that Marek was a potential immortal, so he helpfully buried him. If Duncan had been more experienced, he might have saved himself some trouble several hundred years later.
— Another portion of the same flashback showed that Marek was doing that hunting humans crap when he died. And a third showed Duncan and Marek coming to blows.
Bits and pieces:
— Throughout the episode, I kept thinking, who is that woman, and why should we care? Of course, she was a plant by the bad guy. It couldn't have been Amanda, because she probably would have gotten out of that situation without Duncan.
— Along with Die Hard and "Bad Day in Building A," this episode also strongly reminded me of Slayerfest '98 in the Buffy episode, "Homecoming." There were even brothers.
— According to the Watcher's Chronicles, the idiotic Dice became a Watcher after this little incident. Fun little detail.
— Marek's company was Keram, which is Marek backward. That makes him number 47. And maybe I'm fudging it a bit because I'm hoping we hit 50 by the end of the series.
If this episode had aired in the first couple of seasons, I probably would have given it three stars. But now? Forget it,
Billie
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Billie Doux knows that there can be only one. And that's Methos.
So it's the best episode of this season so far, but that's some extremely low hanging fruit at this point. It was a bad B-movie plot but between Nazi bankers, killer sons of diplomats, and evil euro-warlords it was at least a semi interesting bad B-movie plot.
ReplyDeleteThere were also some cool visuals in the episode. When Duncan poked the broken stick into the bad guy's face. The water cooler that burst and drenched the camera lens. The broken girl draped on the chair with broken glass all around her after obviously being thrown out the window.
When the episode started and he was with the woman, I expected her to be another of the immortal babe auditions. Thankfully she wasn't. About half-way through the episode, I figured she was a plant. All I could think when she shot Duncan was "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
I realize Merak was the first immortal that Duncan saw resurrect, but at some point, shouldn't the experienced immortal take the time to learn more about the newborn before explaining all of the rules to them? Like you said, it would save some trouble later on.
I didn't catch that this was Duncan's first killing since Richie and I agree with your point about this. They made such a big deal about Duncan's grief that it would have been more fitting for his re-entry to the game to be to save an innocent rather than to save himself.
Having watched most of the movies and most of the series, I've also often thought that the producers have succeeded despite themselves. There is soooooo much bad Highlander that it's almost a wonder that it's as loved as it is. It's a testament to what a cool concept both the mythology of the immortals is and the story setup of a modern timeline with flashbacks from several points in history. I just wish that the producers of the franchise would stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.