Category Archives: Television

Screening History: “The Tudors” (Season 1)

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I’m not sure why I recently decided to watch Showtime’s The Tudors, that sudsy and soapy and gloriously sexy series about Henry VIII and his wives. Obviously, I’m a history buff, and the past is never far from my mind, and it’s true that I haven’t had a chance to revisit it at length since it finished its run way back in 2010. Whatever the reason, I decided to just binge the whole thing again and share my thoughts with all of you.

There’s much to love about the first season, and the supporting players are a key part of that. Henry Cavill is a fantastic Charles Brandon, bringing just the right mix of rascality and nobility to his portrayal. His doomed romance with Henry’s sister Margaret is a little rushed, and it excises a great deal (including the three daughters that they had together, all of whom would come to play an important part of Tudor dynastic politics).

The MVPs of the first season, however, have to be Sam Neill and Maria Doyle Kennedy as Cardinal Wolsey and Katherine of Aragon, respectively. Of course, one always expects the best of Neill no matter what he appears in, but he really shines as Cardinal Wolsey, the most important member of the Tudor court outside of Henry himself. Watching him you can actually believe that he is the son of a humble butcher who managed to claw his way up the hierarchy of both temporal and spiritual power by sheer grit alone. Though he is a polished courtier, he’s also not afraid to use physical force when necessary. His fall from grace–and eventual death by his own hand–is one of the most moving aspects of the whole season, a heavy reminder of the wages of serving a capricious monarch like Henry VIII.

Maria Doyle Kennedy is, in a word, exquisite as the saintly Katherine of Aragon, though I realize that not everyone sees her in that light. (In fact, I was recently reminiscing with a friend of mine about the series, and her impression was that the series intended us to see Katherine as boring and old). For me, she embodies everything that I’ve always associated with Henry’s first wive. She is at once tenacious, vulnerable, loving, compassionate and, when her ire is aroused, vengeful. Somehow, Kennedy manages to combine all of those things, and you genuinely feel for her as she is increasingly distanced from Henry and from the court that she has ruled over for so long.

Though she won’t come into her own until season two, Natalie Dormer also deserves a lot of credit for her portrayal of Anne Boleyn. I strongly suspect that, along with Geneviève Bujold, hers will go down as one of the definitive portrayals of one of the most infamous queens to have ever strutted her way across the stage of English history. With her lips always slightly pouty and her unique looks (is there anyone who looks at all like her in film and television today?) she seems to have been born to play Anne Boleyn, a woman who was similarly described as being like no other woman at Henry’s court. What makes The Tudors so effective is that it makes us appreciate and understand her perspective–particularly the impossible position she occupies as a woman in this patriarchal world, her desires always submitted to theirs–even as it also allows us to occupy Katherine’s. For Anne’s part, she early on realizes that she will have to put aside her love for Thomas Wyatt, or else they will both face Henry’s wrath. Her spurning of him is one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the entire first season.

However, there is one huge, glaring problem with this season, and the series as a whole, and that is Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry. It probably goes without saying that he looks absolutely nothing like the historical figure. Aside from being far too young, he is also significantly shorter than Henry, and his dark brown hair is a far cry from the signature Tudor red of Henry and, except for a brief moment, he doesn’t sport a beard. It’s more than just his appearance, though. He seems to have three settings: shouting, brooding, and sexing. As a result, his depiction of Henry is curiously one-dimensional, and he emerges as little more than a petulant, screaming child, one giant, pulsing id.

That said, there are some redeeming qualities about Meyers’ portrayal. Though his style leaves much to be desired, and though he looks nothing at all like the real Henry, his model physique and face–both of which are sculpted, razor-sharp, and defined–manage to convey Henry’s capriciousness. Henry VIII was a man, after all, who was known for using and jettisoning courtiers at an almost frantic pace (sound familiar?) Furthermore, the fact that Meyers is little more than an id is, itself, a commentary on Henry’s reign which, in some ways, driven by Henry’s whims and sexual desires.

Thus, contrary to what most people at the time (and since) have asserted, I actually think that the series does have something serious to say about history, at least implicitly. While the series’ creator Michael Hirst commented–hopefully somewhat tongue-in-cheek–that Showtime commissioned him to write a soap opera and not history, he actually managed to do both. It is certainly true that The Tudors, especially the first season, pays more attention to the suds and the sex than it does to the events of the past, but that may be precisely the point. While it does allude to significant historical events–the meeting with Francis at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, for example–The Tudors is primarily interested in making us feel the past, to understand sex and desire as key to the unfolding of grand historical events. This may not be what many define as historical understanding, but it is a form of engagement with the past, and it should be recognized and respected as such.

Stay tuned for my review of the second season which, in my humble opinion, is when the series reaches its apotheosis.

The Great Golden Girls Marathon: “Sisters” (S2, Ep. 12)

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Okay, I know I say this every time I begin a new blog post about The Golden Girls, but I really mean it this time. I have always loved this episode, and I can say in all honesty that it is definitely one of my favourites. In this episode, Dorothy invites her aunt Angela to come to a Miami for Sophia’s birthday, not realizing that the two of them cannot stand the sight of one another. The result is some of the funniest one-liners in the history of the show.

A big part of what makes this episode so side-clutchingly funny is Nancy Walker. After all, when it comes down to it, how can you not love Walker as Sophia’s sharp-tongued sister Angela? Somehow, she manages to come across as exactly the kind of person that you would expect to be Sophia’s sister, full of zingers and stories that are just this side of believable. There’s also an undeniable chemistry between the two women, even when they are in the midst of one of their truly epic shouting matches with one another, in which they call down various outlandish curses (such as “may you put your dentures in upside down and chew your head off!) This a fine display of not only the show’s writing finesse but also the ability of two tried and true actresses playing off of one another’s strength to exceptional comedic effect.

Yet beneath all of the hilarious banter, there are two serious issues at stake. One is the power of memory and our ability to contort the past to conform to our own agenda. The entire episode hinges on the fact that each women recall the events of a party 30 years earlier very differently, and they’ve allowed their skewed recollections to poison their relationship to a pathological degree. Its both hilarious and a poignant reminder of the importance of checking ourselves occasionally and keeping lines of communication open with our loved ones. It is, in other words, one of those key life lessons that The Golden Girls, particularly in the episodes devoted to family, is so good at conveying.

The other important issue is, of course, family, and the complicated factors that often go into the types of feuds in which Sophia and Angela have engaged. As Dorothy says to both of them, this may be the last time that they see one another alive and, while it seems like a bit of a throwaway line, it’s one of those statements whose real profundity really hits you. Neither of these women is young anymore, and since they are separated by an ocean, they really do have to confront the reality of their own impending mortality (another recurring theme in the show). Though of course it’s no surprise that they end up reconciling (this is a sitcom, after all), it’s still a touching reminder of the power of family to overcome difference and rediscover love.

All in all, I’ve always found this episode to be both touching and hilarious and, underneath it all, startlingly profound. And, thankfully, it’s not the only time we get to meet Angela (who appears in a later episode of season two). Of course, this does also cause some problems in the series’ continuity down the line–when Angela is replaced by Bill Dana as Angelo–but, as with so many other incidents in the show, you just have to go with it.

Next up, we once again get to see Dorothy’s ex-husband Stan, who faces a health crisis. See you next time!

The Great Golden Girls Marathon “‘Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas” (S2, Ep. 11)

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And so we come to that staple of most 1980s sitcoms, the Christmas episode. After exchanging their gifts, the four women are held captive by a deranged Santa while picking up Rose from her job at the counseling center. Though their plans to visit their own families out of state are ultimately foiled, they come to realize that they are more like family than they ever realized

The true highlight of the episode is, of course, the calendar that Blanche gives to the other girls, entitled “The Men of Blanche’s Boudoir.” Of course, we don’t get to see what is contained in said calendar, but that just makes it all the more hilarious when the women–particularly Dorothy and Sophia–respond to the…endowments of the men on display. Sophia’s remark is, unsurprisingly, very earthy (“I’m surprised you were able to walk in October,” she exclaims), and we find ourselves both vastly amused and very curious.

Despite the fact that we don’t get to see the men, there is something more than a little subversive about this moment. As most people will agree, it is typically women who are rendered into objects of spectacle for men, their bodies a source of erotic delight (the film theorist Laura Mulvery has a remarkable essay on just this subject). As they so often do, the women manage to flip the gendered dynamics that society so often relies upon, and it does so in a way that is all the more subversive for being played for laughs.

The real emotional center of the episode, however, occurs after they go to a diner to commiserate over their seemingly ruined holiday. The friendly waiter (played by Teddy Wilson, who would return in a later episode as a different character) remarks that, given how they were carrying on and teasing one another, he had assumed their family. This casual remark from a stranger forces the four women to recognize that, in reality, they are a family in all of the ways that really matter. This might seem trivial to some people, but to me it’s one of those moments in the series where you really start to realize how much these four women mean to one another. For queer people in particular–who often have a strained relationship with their families–there is something especially resonant about the way in which these wonderful women find such profound emotional fulfillment with one another.

Now, admittedly, there is something more than a little problematic in the scene that takes place at the counseling center, especially since it uses those with mental illness as the punchline. However, in cases like this it’s important to remember that, as progressive as it often is, The Golden Girls is still very much a product of its time.

Overall, I’ve always found this to be an enjoyable episode, even if it doesn’t pack quite the punch of some of the others in the second season. Next up, we’ll be talking about one of my all-time fave episodes, in which we finally get to meet Sophia’s estranged sister Angela (played by the inimitable Nancy Walker).

The Great Golden Girls Marathon: “Love, Rose” (S2, Ep. 10)

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In today’s entry, we’re going to talk about one of the more touching episodes of the second season. In this episode, Blanche and Dorothy, dismayed at Rose’s loneliness–and at the lack of success she has when placing a personal ad–decide to pose as Rose’s perfect match, Isaac Newton (played by Paul Dooley). Unfortunately, things hit a snag when Rose actually contacts Isaac and asks him to go to a dance with her. Hijinks, of course, ensue.

This episode marks one of two times that the veteran character actor Paul Dooley appears (he makes another appearance at the end of season 5, in what was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a series starring him and Rita Moreno). Though he’s never really ascended into the ranks of top actors, I’ve always had a lot of respect for Dooley (and not just because he’s from West Virginia, though admittedly that also plays a role). Somehow, he manages to imbue the character of Isaac–who is, to put it mildly, something of a tool–with some measure of humble humanity. It’s tempting to wonder what might have happened had Rose continued to date Isaac beyond the confines of this episode but, alas, that will have to remain in the space of conjecture.

Admittedly, the scheme that Blanche concocts is absurd in the most sitcomiest sense, but it’s also touching in its own way. Both Dorothy and Blanche clearly have a lot of love for Rose, and the fact that they’re willing to go to such a bizarre length to make her feel better about herself says a lot about the depth of their feeling for their friend. Just as importantly, it’s also a convenient way for the series to channel its subversive queer desires into a joke, a means of defusing queer desire in a safe way. Indeed, it’s hard not to feel more than a little verklempt at the scene in which Dorothy and Blanche confess that they met every word that they wrote in those letters.

One final, somewhat throwaway comment. My boyfriend and I were discussing the other day the fact that my sitcom scenarios from the 1980s would never happen now because the technologies and cultural practices that were their foundation no longer exist. It occurs to me that this entire episode is premised on a cultural practice that is now extinct: the personal ad. This entire episode couldn’t be written today (or, more precisely, could not take place in exactly this same way in our present moment), simply because no one reads print newspapers, let alone personal ads. Even such institutions as the personals on CraigsList have gone the way of the dodo, and hookup apps are a very different sort of creature than their print predecessors. Come to think of it, it’s actually a rather amusing game to think of how a Golden Girls episode would play out with Tinder…

Coming up, we’ll be talking about one of the series’ Christmas episodes, which is by turns infuriating, heartwarming, and sad. Stay tuned!

The Great “Golden Girls” Marathon: “Joust Between Friends” (S2, Ep.9)

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Moving right along with our episode-by-episode breakdown of The Golden Girls, we come to another of those episodes where two of the women square off agains each other. In this case, the catalyst is Dorothy’s employment at Blanche’s museum. When it looks like she is going to outdo Blanche, the latter quits in a huff, not realizing that Dorothy has been put in charge of planning a party in her honor. Meanwhile, Rose adopts a dog, much to Dorothy’s chagrin.

This episode falls squarely into that set of Golden Girls episodes that explores the fraught territory of female friendships. This time, though, there’s no middle ground, since it’s pretty clear from the beginning that Blanche is in the wrong. Dorothy, as their therapist remarks in a later episode, cannot be blamed for being competent. And, of course, Dorothy takes the high road, even when it would be easier to give in to her baser instincts and just tell Blanche the truth. It’s also worth noting that the scenes of confrontation between the two of them–including and especially when Blanche pleads for forgiveness and Dorothy tearfully responds that she doesn’t know whether she can give it. As comedic as these scenes ultimately are, they still showcase just how extraordinarily talented these women were.

And yet, one can’t help but feel at least a bit of sympathy for Blanche and her plight. As she says to Dorothy, she’s been working at the museum for a number of years by this point, and to see Dorothy come in and do her job in such a short time is incredibly disorienting. Maybe it’s just my innate sympathy toward Blanche (to say nothing of my own fragile ego), but I can see where’s coming from, even if I think that her reaction to the situation is a bit overblown.

One of the things I like most about this episode is the fact that it’s Sophia that tells Blanche that Dorothy has been planning her surprise party, thus quite thoroughly shaming her. As biting as Sophia can be when it comes to interacting with Dorothy, incidents like this show that her loyalty to her daughter is deep and true. It’s one thing for her to insult Dorothy, but when someone else does–even if it’s someone who is like a daughter–she will definitely come out swinging. It’s one of those wonderful moments when we get to see just how strong the bond is between the two of them.

Of course, there are a number of continuity questions that this episode raises, particularly in the sequence where Blanche is describing Dorothy’s experiences (this is, I think, the only time that we hear about Dorothy’s study abroad experiences). Likewise, Dorothy’s reluctance/hostility to dog ownership is somewhat at odds with what happens in later episodes but still, it is touching to know that it stems from her deep, and ultimately devastating, love for a former schnauzer that lies at the root of her current antipathy toward pet ownership.

Overall I found this to be a very entertaining episode, even if it falls more into the category of filler than some of the others in this season. As always, we emerge reassured that Blanche and Dorothy have made peace with one another, at least until the next blow-up threatens their friendship.

Next up, Blanche and Dorothy concoct a clever (if ultimately rather silly) plan to make Rose feel better about her barren dating prospects.

The Great Golden Girls Marathon: “Vacation” (S2, Ep. 8)

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Hello, fellow Golden Girls fans! Since I’ve now made a commitment to finishing up this marathon fairly soon, I wanted to jump right in with another installment. In today’s episode, “The Vacation,” Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose decide to go on a much-needed vacation to the Caribbean. Once there, however, they find that the advertisements were, to put mildly, misleading, and that they have to share their room with a trio of surly and spoiled young men. Sophia, meanwhile, takes this time to finally pursue a little dalliance with their Japanese gardener.

There are some truly funny sequences in this episode, and the sparring between the three women and the men are particularly amusing. The highlight of this portion, however, comes near the end, when the three of them are sitting on the beach, having survived the wrecking of the men’s boat. This incident brings out the best and the worst in the women, as each of them confesses some of their dark secrets that they’ve been hiding from one another (including the fact that both Dorothy and Blanche slept with Rose’s cousin). This sequence also features a very funny bit where Rose asserts her dominance over her squabbling fellows, one of those hilarious instances where Rose reveals that, beneath the midwest nice persona there’s a core of iron and badassery.

Now, admittedly, the sequences that actually take place on the island are more than a little problematic, perpetuating as they do the idea that places in the Caribbean are full of corrupt bureaucrats, decadent politics, and violent revolution. Now, I know that it’s played for laughs, but it’s worth emphasizing that, as progressive as it often was, there were times when The Golden Girls was problematic. It’s important to remember that there was substantial unrest in the Caribbean at the time, including notably the uprising that toppled the president of Haiti (an incident that Sophia alludes to in another episode), so it’s hardly surprising that this would have some impact on the series’ storylines.

As hilarious (and problematic) as the main plot is, to my mind the more significant aspect of the episode is Sophia’s little love affair with the gardener Mr. Mitsumo. The scenes between two of them are actually incredibly sweet, as they somehow manage to overcome the language barrier (he speaks only broken English and she, of course, doesn’t speak Japanese) to find that there is something deeper between them. The part of the scene where they kiss is incredibly endearing and I, for one, love seeing Sophia just as prone to feeling the prick of Cupid’s arrow as the rest of the girls.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable episode of The Golden Girls, though I would probably rank it in the bottom third overall. There’s not much significant political or emotional heft to the episode as a whole, and the humor is a little simplistic. It’s pretty average sitcom fare, and that’s perfectly okay.

In our next outing, we get to see yet another conflict between Dorothy and Blanche as they compete for accolades at the art museum.

The Great “Golden Girls” Marathon: “Family Affair” (S2, Ep. 7)

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Sorry for my extended absence. I’ve been pretty swamped with a variety of projects, so I haven’t had as much time to devote to this blog (and this Golden Girls marathon), as I would like. Rest assured, I’m going to really try to publish at least a couple of these episode analyses per week, in the hopes that I can get all the way through the show within the next several months. That’s a tall order, but I do love a challenge.

This episode marks the first appearance of Scott Jacoby as Dorothy’s son Michael (woh would go on to appear in two other episodes as the same character). His visit to the women happens to coincide with a visit from Rose’s daughter Bridget, and while she is a future Oxford student, Michael he is a struggling musician. This doesn’t stop them from having a little afternoon delight, however, leading to a brutal fight between Dorothy and Rose that puts an intense strain on their friendship.

It’s hard to deny that Scott Jacoby is a very cute young man, and he has a fair amount of charm (certainly more than his brother, who played Blanche’s grandson David in an earlier episode). As a character, however, Michael exhibits the same sorts of frustrating behavior that so often bedevil the women’s children. Michael’s essential flaw is that he refuses to take life seriously; unlike his no-nonsense mother, he bounces through life, from job to job, with nary a care in the world. What’s more, he seems to have no sense of common decency, since he has sex with his mother’s best friend’s daughter. Hardly the behavior of an upstanding young man, is it?

The emotional center of the episode, however, is the vicious argument that breaks out between Dorothy and Rose regarding which of their two children was responsible for their liaison. Rose, in a rare show of aggression, declares that Michael is nothing but a loser, while Dorthy responds that Bridget is a tramp. The tension between White and Arthur has been noted (most especially by White herself), and I suspect they might have been channeling some of that into this emotional confrontation, which helps to give it a raw intensity that it might have otherwise lack. In the long annals of fights between and among the women, this one is right up there. It’s hard not to feel uncomfortable watching it, precisely because it feels so real and immediate.

What’s more, it allows the show to explore the often fraught space between one’s friends and one’s family. In this case, neither of the women is comfortable accepting uncomfortable truths about their children and, as a result, they start to take it out on one another. Usually, family strife in The Golden Girls is restricted to one of the women and whichever family member they happen to be feuding with (daughter, son, brother, etc.), so this change is actually quite refreshing.

Ultimately, of course, both Dorothy and Rose overcome their differences fairly easily. It’s not so easy, however, to come to grips with their children’s foibles. On Dorothy’s part, she has to recognize that her son, as much as she loves him, is never going to be the responsible adult that she wants him to be. Rose, on the other hand, in her innocence and naïveté, has to grapple with the reality that her daughter is an adult with sexual desires. Ironically enough, it is Rose who actually has the harder time accepting the reality that her daughter is now an adult.

Next up, we come to one of the more problematic episodes of the second season, in which three of the women take an ill-fated trip to the Caribbean.

Book Review: “I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution” (by Emily Nussbaum)

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Note: My thanks to NetGalley for generously providing me a copy of this book to review.

There’s a peculiar joy that comes from reading sound media criticism. A very few people can somehow capture their intellectual passions in a way that makes their work intelligible for mainstream audiences (something that a lot of media scholars struggle to do).

Thankfully, Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic for The New Yorker, has done just this in I Like to Watch: Arguing my Way Through the TV Revolution.

The book is a collection of pieces, most of which Nussbaum wrote for various publications and a few that she wrote especially for the volume. Some are simply short reflections of a particular TV series, while others are more in-depth explorations of a particular series or showrunner (her lengthy piece about Ryan Murphy is one of the best in the collection). Though they vary in subject matter, they are united by Nussbaum’s distinctive voice and intellectual clarity, as well as her deeply personal encounter with the medium.

What I particularly enjoyed about the book as a whole was its willingness to look at television series that fall squarely outside the quality TV designation that seems to be all the rage (or was, at any rate) among those who think and write about television. Indeed, she begins the book with an anecdote about how it was watching Buffy, the Vampire Slayer that drew her into wanting to write about television.

Some of my favourite pieces in the collection focus on these “bad” texts, including Sex and the City, Behind the Candelabra (the HBO film about Liberace), Hannibal, and sundry others. However, she also gives sustained attention to more traditionally quality TV, and her essay on The Sopranos is particularly compelling and insightful. I also loved The Sex and the City essay, which makes the compelling case that this HBO series deserves just as much credit for vaunting HBO into the upper echelons of television production as more male-oriented series.

While most of the essays in the book focus on contemporary television, some also delve deeper into TV’s past, including a particularly erudite exploration of “bad fandom” and All in the Family. Thus, one of the through-lines that runs through the entire book is Nussbaum’s interest in fandom, both her own and that of others. All too often, fandom is something to be confessed to, rather than embraced and celebrated. The fact that Nussbaum, writing for one of the premier intellectual publications in the country, so openly embraces her own identity as a fan is refreshing.

Nussbaum’s style is nuanced and deeply thoughtful yet very accessible. If I have one quibble with her, it’s that I sometimes feel that she (like many mainstream critics) seems to believe that her realizations emerge out of a vacuum, when in fact there are huge bodies of scholarship conducted by television and media scholars that often reach the same conclusions that she does. Since this seems to be a problem with many working for mainstream publications–not just television critics–I won’t be too hard on her.

All in all, I very much enjoyed this foray through Nussbaum’s encounters with television. Highly recommended.

TV Review: “The Shannara Chronicles”–“Paranor” and “Crimson” (S2, Eps. 5 & 6)

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Full spoilers for the episode follow.

In a special double feature, our intrepid heroes Wil and Mareth continue their quest to bring the Warlock Lord’s skull back from the past, the politics of Leah grow ever more complicated, and Allanon must confront the reality that he is dying.

The Warlock Lord continues to loom as the series’ potential Big Bad, the force that will bring about the fall of the Four Lands and all of our noble (if seriously flawed) heroes. At this point, it’s pretty clear that we are going to see this figure return from the dead, though it’s equally certain that Wil will have to defeat him.

The Queen of Leah continues to be a compelling and deeply flawed character. Despite the fact that she does what she does–the scheming, the manipulating, the backhand dealing–she does for the good of her people, she inadvertently has set in motion the very destruction that she originally set out to prevent. In the end, she not only sees her ambitions come to nothing when Riga slaughters her retainers and Ander himself (which was both brutal and hear-wrenching), but she has also put her daughter at risk. The Crimson is a destructive force that will, it seems, make the Warlock Lord’s mission to bring the world into darkness that much easier. There is clearly a dark poison working its way through the bloodstream of the Four Lands, and one can hope that Wil is able to cleanse it before it does any more damage.

We finally learn the secrets of Eretria’s legacy, as one of those whose ancestors survived the Great Wars; as such she has the potential to be either a being a saviour or a demon. If I’m being completely honest, this feels a bit tacked-on, a means of giving Eretria something to do besides mope around after her sundry love interests. Don’t get me wrong: Ivana Baquero is probably one of the better actors in this show, and it’s that fact that keeps her character so continually interesting to watch.

For his part, Manu Bennett continues to chew scenery with abandon, but that’s part of what makes him one of the best things about the show. One thing The Shannara Chronicles gets right is the fact that Allanon is a ruthless manipulator, one who is willing to sacrifice anyone in his efforts to save the Four Lands. At the same time, we also get to see the toll this has begun to take, both physically and emotionally. I, for one, have no doubts that he’s not going to make it through to the end of the season, and that will actually fit well with the series’ clear intention of breaking apart the myth of the triumphant hero.

I can’t shake the feeling that the show-runners know that this is going to be the final season, and so they are pulling out all the stops (including showing two episodes in one night). It’s really a shame, though, since the series has taken some interesting turns. Still, I rather wish that they had chosen to adapt most of The Wishsong rather than doing a grab-bag of the various other parts of the Shannara mythos. Doing so has really short-circuited some of the season’s narrative threads, though fortunately “Crimson” managed to bring things together in the end. Still, it’s rather irritating to see the characters wandering about doing nothing consequential and then abruptly having a climactic moment that is moving but doesn’t really feel earned.

Overall, these two episodes were…good. However, it’s hard not to shake the feeling that the series is verging on the edge of going completely off the rails. There are just too many sub-plots going on–time travel, sinister wraiths, anti-magic users–and the show hasn’t done a great deal to bring them all together into a cohesive whole. The time travel plot in particular feels both strange and unnecessary, and I for one am glad that that plot is done with.

At this point, I will be satisfied if the series comes to a satisfactory conclusion, with all of the sundry plot threads wrapped up. I really don’t think it would be wise to leave anything hanging (as happened last season). I guess we will just have to wait to see how things pan out.

TV Review: “The Shannara Chronicles”–“Wraith” (S2, Ep. 2)

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Having escaped from the dark spirits sent to murder him, Wil attempts to save his uncle Flick from the imminent danger he faces, while Alannon leads King Ander to the kingdom of Leah to seek the aid of its queen. The Crimson continue their quest to destroy those who wield magic, and Mareth wants to find her father (allegedly Allanon). And of course the Mord Wraiths persist in their quest to destroy Wil and resurrect the Warlock Lord.

The series continues to move along at a brisk pace. For those familiar with Brooks’s novels, this is in keeping with the Shannara universe, in which the action is always tightly woven and driven by a powerful momentum, and the episode both poses several enigmatic questions about the past and the future, forcing each of the characters to confront the secrets of their identities and their histories.

Despite its brisk pacing, the series continues to ask a fundamental question: is there price that is too high for heroism? One of the characters states that “history is made by those who survive,” a rather bleak assessment of the future of these characters. Having barely recovered from a near-apocalypse, they still have to keep going, no matter how many lives are lost in the process. (Needless to say, this season is much grimmer than the last, and that is definitely a good thing).

This episode introduces us to two new characters. The first if the weapons master (and bounty hunter) Garet Jax. The other is Queen Tamlin of Leah, a formidable political player determined to make sure that she gets the best out of every bargain. Both of these characters remain enigmas, with their own murky motivations, and one of the episode’s strengths is that it doesn’t tell us too much about them just yet.

One of the things I love the most about this adaptation is its willingness to cast people of colour in roles that don’t render them as simply a fetish or a projection of orientalist fantasies (I’m looking at you, Game of Thrones). Garet Jax truly shines in this episode and, given that he’s always been a favourite of the fan-base, I’m going to assume that people are happy with his portrayal here. I’m going to be quite honest: he’s gorgeous, and if you don’t like him, then I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

The Shannara Chronicles continues to showcase its obviously-substantial budget, with some gorgeous scenery and a lush colour palette that is truly a feast for the eyes. The palace of Queen Tamlin is truly resplendent, a stunning confection of gold and light. I know the series rather gaudy techno aesthetic isn’t to everyone’s liking, but I for one find it a unique take on Brooks’s imaginary world. It might not have the grandeur or dignity of some other fantasy adaptations, but that doesn’t make it any less pleasurable to watch.

If there is one casualty of this season, it’s Allanon. While Manu Bennett is still as badass as always, he does seem to be a bit out of his depth. When he is struck down by the Crimson and taken away, it’s hard not to see it as a sign of his growing weakness in the face of the threats assaulting the Four Lands. I do wonder if he will make it out of this season alive, and whether he will be able to defeat Bandon (who, for his part, continues to combine beauty and evil in equal measure. One wonders whether he is beyond redemption or if there is some hope for him).

Lastly, I’d like to note that one thing I particularly appreciate about this series is the way in which it plays with sexuality. This is, I think I can say without fear of contradiction, one of the most straightforwardly queer fantasy series I’ve seen on television. It’s not just that the characters entertain same-sex attraction; it’s that there is a free-wheeling play with gender and sexuality that I find truly refreshing. It feels honest rather than merely titillating.

Overall, this was another strong episode. I’m curious to see how it will continue to adapt Brooks’s oeuvre, especially since they seem to be using the vast timeline of the book series (which covers multiple generations and several hundred years) as the basic ingredients for very different stories. As a longtime reader of the books, I find this approach to be a uniquely enjoyable one; though I have an inkling as to how the entire season will end up, I am just as in the dark as non-novel readers. Truly exciting stuff!