Merlin 5.07 and 5.08
Nov. 26th, 2012 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the show really, really, REALLY would have benefited from a continuity editor. Or something.
Okay, to start with my main frustration first: 5.07. has Gwen acting like standard villainess No.44654344556, including secret evil smile and knifing of random unfortunate caught up in scheme 454466445666. This isn't Gwen brainwashed and twisted, this is only explainable as Gwen under a spell. Meanwhile, 5.08. while still letting do Angel Colby the secret evil smile, actually bothers to let Gwen react like a human being with past and present characteristics and is believable dark side Gwen. Note the sharpness with which she tells Arthur "I was a servant once", the disgust in her face while the Surrum (spelling?) brags of having tortured Morgana and Aithusa, and the fact she question's Morgana's plan of choosing the Surrum as a temporary ally. This isn't believable as Gwen-under-Imperius (so to speak, to loan a HP verse term), but very believable as broken-and-turned Gwen. So which is it, show? I do suspect the writers of the episode weren't told, either, just knew that Gwen for some reason was evil now and Morgana had to do with it, but nothing else, so one went with one direction and the other with another.
Similarly, SOMEONE should have noticed that the "help my sick sister" ploy is practically identical with the one Morgana blackmailed Mithian into a few episodes earlier the same season. It absolutely beggars belief on a Watsonian level that neither Gaius nor Merlin notice this, and on a Doylist level it's incredibly lazy, lazy, lazy.
What beggars belief even more is that Merlin, who discovers that Gwen isn't her old self and something is seriously wrong mid 5.07, takes until the end of 5.08. to decide to do something about it instead of behaving exactly as he did when it was Morgana and Agrivaine who were traitors-at-large. Because this is Gwen. Whom he has years and years of friendship history with. Once he was sure Gwen was running around knifing hapless servants and aiding Morgana, he should have acted at once, not just on Arthur's behalf but on Gwen's. He owes her better than this. So does Gaius. (Just as a note of comparison: in A Servant of Two Masters, when it was Merlin under the influence, Gwen and Gaius did not hesitate to intervene on his behalf.) I massively resent this horrible lack of characterisation just so we can spend two episodes treading water (especially with another wannabe Merlin assisination subplot - come on, we know the lead's unkillable, what kind of suspense is that supposed to be? - , especially since the cynic in me suspects this is just to feed the part of the M/A crowd who wants to see Gwen in an evil role and a Merlin hostile to her and resenting Arthur's affection for her, as in a M/A bad fic. At last the tag scene and the trailer tells me next episode we're finally to the point where we should have been one and a half episodes earlier, i.e. Merlin getting off his backside and doing something about the fact his oldest friend in Camelot (and that's not Arthur or Gaius, that's Gwen) is in this condition.
Having gotten this off my chest: the episodes actually offered things I enjoyed as well. The opening scene of 5.07. with Arthur, Gwen and yet unsuspecting Merlin felt, despite or because of the fact Gwen was playacting her normal self, how the interaction between the OT3 away from the court happens. Both apparantly bespelled Gwen from 5.07 and brainwashed-into-darkside Gwen from 5.08 were far quicker and more believable at improvising in any given situation than Morgana had been back in the day. Ironically, we get to see more of hers and Arthur's every day married life than ever before, and incidents like with the comb and their banter about it feel like they could have happened before The Dark Tower on a regular basis. We finally found out third party confirmation that Morgana and Aithusa were indeed kept prisoner, AND, even more importantly and going back to Morgana's scene with Aithusa in 5.02, that Morgana is still capable of loving someone and putting that someone's welfare ahead of herself. Though given that the guilty person died in the same episode I wonder whether this two years between seasons tale will go anywhere further, or whether that was that. If the show hadn't made me so frustrated with how inconsistently it handled Gwen these last two episodes, it would make me hope that however what happened to Gwen will be reversed might affect Morgana (to a degree at least) as well. Because that would be an actually interesting plot twist.
(Sidenote: if what happened to Gwen isn't reversed at all, I will hate the show forever and a day, but I really hope not.)
I heard about the cancellation today and right now I feel like I did apropos the tv show Alias - that maybe it should have ended after season 4 (which for my money was the best of the seasons so far). 5 so far come up with some genuine good stuff but also WASTED so many opportunities in favour of reemploying old clichés that I'm just tearing my hair out. So far I could love only one episode unconditionally, the one with Mithian, and that hasn't been the case in any other of the seasons. Maybe the last episodes will offer a turnaround; I hope so. At any rate, it is time for the show to end. It really is.
Okay, to start with my main frustration first: 5.07. has Gwen acting like standard villainess No.44654344556, including secret evil smile and knifing of random unfortunate caught up in scheme 454466445666. This isn't Gwen brainwashed and twisted, this is only explainable as Gwen under a spell. Meanwhile, 5.08. while still letting do Angel Colby the secret evil smile, actually bothers to let Gwen react like a human being with past and present characteristics and is believable dark side Gwen. Note the sharpness with which she tells Arthur "I was a servant once", the disgust in her face while the Surrum (spelling?) brags of having tortured Morgana and Aithusa, and the fact she question's Morgana's plan of choosing the Surrum as a temporary ally. This isn't believable as Gwen-under-Imperius (so to speak, to loan a HP verse term), but very believable as broken-and-turned Gwen. So which is it, show? I do suspect the writers of the episode weren't told, either, just knew that Gwen for some reason was evil now and Morgana had to do with it, but nothing else, so one went with one direction and the other with another.
Similarly, SOMEONE should have noticed that the "help my sick sister" ploy is practically identical with the one Morgana blackmailed Mithian into a few episodes earlier the same season. It absolutely beggars belief on a Watsonian level that neither Gaius nor Merlin notice this, and on a Doylist level it's incredibly lazy, lazy, lazy.
What beggars belief even more is that Merlin, who discovers that Gwen isn't her old self and something is seriously wrong mid 5.07, takes until the end of 5.08. to decide to do something about it instead of behaving exactly as he did when it was Morgana and Agrivaine who were traitors-at-large. Because this is Gwen. Whom he has years and years of friendship history with. Once he was sure Gwen was running around knifing hapless servants and aiding Morgana, he should have acted at once, not just on Arthur's behalf but on Gwen's. He owes her better than this. So does Gaius. (Just as a note of comparison: in A Servant of Two Masters, when it was Merlin under the influence, Gwen and Gaius did not hesitate to intervene on his behalf.) I massively resent this horrible lack of characterisation just so we can spend two episodes treading water (especially with another wannabe Merlin assisination subplot - come on, we know the lead's unkillable, what kind of suspense is that supposed to be? - , especially since the cynic in me suspects this is just to feed the part of the M/A crowd who wants to see Gwen in an evil role and a Merlin hostile to her and resenting Arthur's affection for her, as in a M/A bad fic. At last the tag scene and the trailer tells me next episode we're finally to the point where we should have been one and a half episodes earlier, i.e. Merlin getting off his backside and doing something about the fact his oldest friend in Camelot (and that's not Arthur or Gaius, that's Gwen) is in this condition.
Having gotten this off my chest: the episodes actually offered things I enjoyed as well. The opening scene of 5.07. with Arthur, Gwen and yet unsuspecting Merlin felt, despite or because of the fact Gwen was playacting her normal self, how the interaction between the OT3 away from the court happens. Both apparantly bespelled Gwen from 5.07 and brainwashed-into-darkside Gwen from 5.08 were far quicker and more believable at improvising in any given situation than Morgana had been back in the day. Ironically, we get to see more of hers and Arthur's every day married life than ever before, and incidents like with the comb and their banter about it feel like they could have happened before The Dark Tower on a regular basis. We finally found out third party confirmation that Morgana and Aithusa were indeed kept prisoner, AND, even more importantly and going back to Morgana's scene with Aithusa in 5.02, that Morgana is still capable of loving someone and putting that someone's welfare ahead of herself. Though given that the guilty person died in the same episode I wonder whether this two years between seasons tale will go anywhere further, or whether that was that. If the show hadn't made me so frustrated with how inconsistently it handled Gwen these last two episodes, it would make me hope that however what happened to Gwen will be reversed might affect Morgana (to a degree at least) as well. Because that would be an actually interesting plot twist.
(Sidenote: if what happened to Gwen isn't reversed at all, I will hate the show forever and a day, but I really hope not.)
I heard about the cancellation today and right now I feel like I did apropos the tv show Alias - that maybe it should have ended after season 4 (which for my money was the best of the seasons so far). 5 so far come up with some genuine good stuff but also WASTED so many opportunities in favour of reemploying old clichés that I'm just tearing my hair out. So far I could love only one episode unconditionally, the one with Mithian, and that hasn't been the case in any other of the seasons. Maybe the last episodes will offer a turnaround; I hope so. At any rate, it is time for the show to end. It really is.
