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Merlin 4.04; Holy Flying Circus!
I need a dragon icon. Also, I have no excuse for putting two reviews that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other in the same post except I don't have the time to write two posts today due to Darth Real Life. First, Merlin, with the one guest starring Gaius Baltar James Callis:
This was the expected breather that last week's ep was not, of sorts, since for all the slapstick serious things did happen was well. Colour me amused they called Callis' character Julius (Borden), but, well, "Gaius" is already spoken for on this show. I was delighted to see him again on my tv screen, and found it interesting that the show kept Julius Borden on the ambiguous side of shady. Note that he actually doesn't kill anyone, as opposed to, say, Morgause, who dispatches five guards in her introduction scene without particular need, or Alvarr who kills quite a lot both with and without need in his episode, or what's his name the king who held Gwen and Lancelot prisoner. Whereas Borden knocks out various guards and Merlin and when incapacitating Perceval gives him a leg wound, not a head shot. Granted, whatever he used in the soup to render the knights unconscious looks like it could have been more serious but for Merlin's intervention, but his death score is still 0 by the end of the episode, and while his plan - using a dragon to rule the land - definitely is on the villain side of things, his methods are still far life preserving than is common for villains on this show. Both the script and Callis' performance also give some intriguing hints about his past (given that he's talking to Gaius who knows him without being aware of Merlin as a listener when he says he didn't want to stay to support Uther, it doesn't seem to be a lie). I wonder whether we'll see him again, Leon's "nobody could survive that" utterance notwithstanding.
Merlin spent much of the first two seasons swerving between Gaius and Kilgarrah as mentors, with Kilgarrah usually coming in for the more ruthless decisions (aka Mordred and Morgana). I barely had time to glance at other reviews, but I've seen the objection that the placing of this episode seems random and it could have taken place just as well at any other point of the show. Mayyyyyybe, but I'd argue Merlin's firm and immediate pro-dragon stand here and his determination to save another magical creature was additionally fired by the for him crushing outcome of The Wicked Day. One of many details I love about The Fires of Idrisholas is that moment directly after Merlin has set Kilgarrah free, when despite the fact he knows (thanks to his earlier vision) this will likely result in disaster he can't help but feel thrilled by the raw magical power unleased and a magical being free. The bond between Merlin and Kilgarrah was always stronger the more Merlin feels isolated from his fellow human beings, and that's certainly the case here.
(Meanwhile, Arthur whose last experience with a dragon was when Kilgarrah torched half of Camelot and killed a lot of its inhabitants while he was at it definitely isn't into dragonkind continuing. No kidding.)
Selfish aside: I'm just the tiniest bit Jossed for Here Be Dragons but not much, and I feel tickled that Dragon Lords do have the power to summon dragons from their eggs and that names are that important because that actually fits with my story where the messing with dragon eggs by a human magician, resulting in dragon lords, is an important plot point.
Given young Merlin summoning dragons (a white one and a red one or am I misremembering?) for Vortigern is a key moment in the myths, the moment with Kilgarrah and the newborn Aithusa is also a nice allusion to that.
Lastly: it fits that the birth of a magical creature, and not any but a dragon who symbolizes both the awesomeness and the potential for destruction of magic, revives the optimism in Merlin for the future of Albion.
Trailer for next week: and it seems we're back to entirely serious, Agrivaine and Merlin clash as Arthur's advisors, and Arthur is tested in a Uther-or-not-Uther? position. Keep it up, show. I'm loving this season so far. EXCEPT FOR THE LACK OF GWEN IN THIS EPISODE. (Also I grieve for the Gwen scenes from last episode that the now posted script contained, though admittedly in the case of last week's ep I am not sure what other scenes could have been cut instead.)
I wish I could make a clever transition involving the Knights Who Say Ni, but I can't, so without further ado, on to the film involving Monty Python, Life of Brian and the 1979 reaction to same:
Writer Tony Roche, responsible for In the Thick of It, made the daring decision to structure this not as a straight based-on-real-events type of biopic but, well, as a Monty Python film. Complete with massive fourth wall breaking, fantasy sequences a la Terry Gilliam, the actor playing Terry Jones also playing Michael Palin's wife (does that mean he ships Michael Palin/Terry J, corrupted me wonders) as a variation of Terry Jones' usual female characters, and Stephen Fry as God. The result could have gone spectacularly wrong given the cult status Monty Python has today (and given that of course the film directly alludes to various MP classics, including, for example, a variation of the What did the Romans ever do for us? scene from Life of Brian), but instead it went hysterically right. (And the Guardian's Sam Wollaston complained it was "too clever". Good grief.)
One favourite moment among many:
Newspaper vendor to John Cleese: “I notice you haven’t made fun of the Muslims. Are you afraid of them?”
JC: “It’s 1979. No one in this country knows anything about Islam!”
Vendor: “OK, imagine it’s the future and there are, I dunno, two and a half million Muslims living in Britain, would you make a film about them then?”
JC: “No. They would still only represent four per cent of the population, assuming the population had risen to, let’s say, 61.5 million.”
Cleese, by the way, is played by Darren Boyd as a variation of Cleese's Basil Fawlty persona which is pointed out half way through the film in a "Party Political Broadcast on behalf of John Cleese". All the Pythons are gleefully their personas, with Michael "The nicest man alive" Palin as the hero of the story in a great performance by Charles Edwards who resembles the genuine article amazingly. (The script makes fun of them along with everyone else, but in a laughing with, not laughing against manner. Unless Eric Idle is offended by the running gag about his, err, financial acumen. (Aka "And Eric won't do it" - i.e. go on tv to debate Life of Brian - "because they won't pay him." "Damn right!") The only characters depicted without saving graces are Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, who infamously during the tv debate with Palin and Cleese lost by sneers and relentless personal attacks while the Pythons remained polite and serious, whereas the less sophisticated Christians whom at first you think are only set up as figures of fun in the end turn out to be far more open minded and decent in a way these two are not.
In conclusion: always look on the bright side of life. :) (Though sadly they didn't play that song at the end of the film.)
This was the expected breather that last week's ep was not, of sorts, since for all the slapstick serious things did happen was well. Colour me amused they called Callis' character Julius (Borden), but, well, "Gaius" is already spoken for on this show. I was delighted to see him again on my tv screen, and found it interesting that the show kept Julius Borden on the ambiguous side of shady. Note that he actually doesn't kill anyone, as opposed to, say, Morgause, who dispatches five guards in her introduction scene without particular need, or Alvarr who kills quite a lot both with and without need in his episode, or what's his name the king who held Gwen and Lancelot prisoner. Whereas Borden knocks out various guards and Merlin and when incapacitating Perceval gives him a leg wound, not a head shot. Granted, whatever he used in the soup to render the knights unconscious looks like it could have been more serious but for Merlin's intervention, but his death score is still 0 by the end of the episode, and while his plan - using a dragon to rule the land - definitely is on the villain side of things, his methods are still far life preserving than is common for villains on this show. Both the script and Callis' performance also give some intriguing hints about his past (given that he's talking to Gaius who knows him without being aware of Merlin as a listener when he says he didn't want to stay to support Uther, it doesn't seem to be a lie). I wonder whether we'll see him again, Leon's "nobody could survive that" utterance notwithstanding.
Merlin spent much of the first two seasons swerving between Gaius and Kilgarrah as mentors, with Kilgarrah usually coming in for the more ruthless decisions (aka Mordred and Morgana). I barely had time to glance at other reviews, but I've seen the objection that the placing of this episode seems random and it could have taken place just as well at any other point of the show. Mayyyyyybe, but I'd argue Merlin's firm and immediate pro-dragon stand here and his determination to save another magical creature was additionally fired by the for him crushing outcome of The Wicked Day. One of many details I love about The Fires of Idrisholas is that moment directly after Merlin has set Kilgarrah free, when despite the fact he knows (thanks to his earlier vision) this will likely result in disaster he can't help but feel thrilled by the raw magical power unleased and a magical being free. The bond between Merlin and Kilgarrah was always stronger the more Merlin feels isolated from his fellow human beings, and that's certainly the case here.
(Meanwhile, Arthur whose last experience with a dragon was when Kilgarrah torched half of Camelot and killed a lot of its inhabitants while he was at it definitely isn't into dragonkind continuing. No kidding.)
Selfish aside: I'm just the tiniest bit Jossed for Here Be Dragons but not much, and I feel tickled that Dragon Lords do have the power to summon dragons from their eggs and that names are that important because that actually fits with my story where the messing with dragon eggs by a human magician, resulting in dragon lords, is an important plot point.
Given young Merlin summoning dragons (a white one and a red one or am I misremembering?) for Vortigern is a key moment in the myths, the moment with Kilgarrah and the newborn Aithusa is also a nice allusion to that.
Lastly: it fits that the birth of a magical creature, and not any but a dragon who symbolizes both the awesomeness and the potential for destruction of magic, revives the optimism in Merlin for the future of Albion.
Trailer for next week: and it seems we're back to entirely serious, Agrivaine and Merlin clash as Arthur's advisors, and Arthur is tested in a Uther-or-not-Uther? position. Keep it up, show. I'm loving this season so far. EXCEPT FOR THE LACK OF GWEN IN THIS EPISODE. (Also I grieve for the Gwen scenes from last episode that the now posted script contained, though admittedly in the case of last week's ep I am not sure what other scenes could have been cut instead.)
I wish I could make a clever transition involving the Knights Who Say Ni, but I can't, so without further ado, on to the film involving Monty Python, Life of Brian and the 1979 reaction to same:
Writer Tony Roche, responsible for In the Thick of It, made the daring decision to structure this not as a straight based-on-real-events type of biopic but, well, as a Monty Python film. Complete with massive fourth wall breaking, fantasy sequences a la Terry Gilliam, the actor playing Terry Jones also playing Michael Palin's wife (does that mean he ships Michael Palin/Terry J, corrupted me wonders) as a variation of Terry Jones' usual female characters, and Stephen Fry as God. The result could have gone spectacularly wrong given the cult status Monty Python has today (and given that of course the film directly alludes to various MP classics, including, for example, a variation of the What did the Romans ever do for us? scene from Life of Brian), but instead it went hysterically right. (And the Guardian's Sam Wollaston complained it was "too clever". Good grief.)
One favourite moment among many:
Newspaper vendor to John Cleese: “I notice you haven’t made fun of the Muslims. Are you afraid of them?”
JC: “It’s 1979. No one in this country knows anything about Islam!”
Vendor: “OK, imagine it’s the future and there are, I dunno, two and a half million Muslims living in Britain, would you make a film about them then?”
JC: “No. They would still only represent four per cent of the population, assuming the population had risen to, let’s say, 61.5 million.”
Cleese, by the way, is played by Darren Boyd as a variation of Cleese's Basil Fawlty persona which is pointed out half way through the film in a "Party Political Broadcast on behalf of John Cleese". All the Pythons are gleefully their personas, with Michael "The nicest man alive" Palin as the hero of the story in a great performance by Charles Edwards who resembles the genuine article amazingly. (The script makes fun of them along with everyone else, but in a laughing with, not laughing against manner. Unless Eric Idle is offended by the running gag about his, err, financial acumen. (Aka "And Eric won't do it" - i.e. go on tv to debate Life of Brian - "because they won't pay him." "Damn right!") The only characters depicted without saving graces are Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, who infamously during the tv debate with Palin and Cleese lost by sneers and relentless personal attacks while the Pythons remained polite and serious, whereas the less sophisticated Christians whom at first you think are only set up as figures of fun in the end turn out to be far more open minded and decent in a way these two are not.
In conclusion: always look on the bright side of life. :) (Though sadly they didn't play that song at the end of the film.)
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