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Moar Highlander (now up to 3x12, "They Also Serve")
Still mainlining the series at an alarming rate, but I figured that 3x12 was a good point to stop and post again, due to the EPIC SQUEE. (Actually I watched it first thing this morning, but it's taken me this long to finish writing this post.)
♥ ♥ ♥ DAWSON ♥ ♥ ♥
This season (and the end of last season) has been wonderful. Dawson and Duncan! Dawson and Duncan and Richie, oh my heart. Dawson and Amanda - the squee-o-meter is off the charts! Duncan still owns my heart, the big softie, but Dawson is giving him a serious run for his money. (There's nobody I don't like, though. I would like to know where the heck Charlie got off to; is there some kind of rule that they can only have so many characters at once or something?)
And canon has been very obligingly answering a lot of my questions about Immortals. I'd wondered if they can recognize specific other Immortals from the "tingle" they get, or if it's just a general sense of "someone's there", and that's been pretty definitively answered, as well as the question of whether they can recognize nascent Immortals before their immortality kicks in (which makes me want to go back and re-watch Duncan's first meeting with Richie all over again). And the episode with the kid Immortal! That was something I'd wondered about, too -- not to mention "adult in a child's body" is a scifi/fantasy idea that I find completely fascinating ... and have explored in some of my own (original) fiction, but I really loved seeing it done here, doubly so because the show was willing to actually go there and have him be evil.
But oh, oh, the characters. *flails* Part of my frustration with last season, I think, was that my big source of love for this show (er, besides the obvious: there can never been too many scenes of hawt guys swordfighting!) is watching the characters interact with each other, and Duncan was so isolated last season. This season, as well as last season's finale, has been giving me plenty of neat character bits, and those are ALWAYS going to be my favorite thing!
It does crack me up that Joe's bar seems to be the only place to eat or get a drink in town. It cracks me up still further that it's basically a cover for Watcher activities. Did I mention that I really adored 3x12 a LOT?
All the character relationships on the show are really neat, though. I love Duncan's mentorship with Richie, and his wary friendship with Dawson. The fact that Richie is now going to Dawson for advice will never stop making me giggle and squee. I even get a major kick out of Duncan and Amanda, though bickering lovers are normally a bulletproof squick of mine. But I think it doesn't strike me that way because it's not really a will-they-or-won't-they kind of bickering; they have a pretty well-established off-and-on "friends with benefits" thing, and they hit my bickering-friends squee buttons a great deal more than my bickering-courtship squick. I also like how their relationship has grown and developed over the last couple of seasons. Amanda is really a good person, deep down -- she was sympathetic to Joe losing Lauren, and she really does care about Duncan. (And she's trying to go straight! Badly!)
Man, the police in their universe suck, though. You'd think that they'd occasionally look into all of these decapitated bodies that are turning up all over the city. To the non-clued-in members of the public, it must look like there's some kind of serial killer running around. But it's not just the masses of headless dead people ... nearly every episode has some kind of crime that the police completely ignore. (Maybe the Watchers occasionally use their connections to help protect the anonymity of the Immortals? Maybe Duncan just spends most of his time hiding bodies.)
I am increasingly starting to wonder if all of Duncan's flashbacks can actually be pieced together into anything resembling a coherent chronology. He gets around a lot. *tries not to think too hard about it* But they do try, with flashbacks referencing other flashbacks, and at least some sense of internal consistency to where he is and what he's doing in any given time period. And somewhat surprisingly for a show of this sort, they've generally avoided having him meet famous people or get involved in pivotal historical events, aside from those that would be sort of inescapable for someone who was in that country at that time. I like!
I'm also becoming more and more impressed with young!Duncan versus modern!Duncan, because there is really a difference between them. Young!Duncan is so much more innocent and less jaded. All those generations of loss and betrayal have taken their toll. Also, his accent -- I'm not sure if he's supposed to have lost it over time or if he taught himself not to speak that way as an intentional choice somewhere along the way, but there's this point somewhere in the middle 1800s when he seems to lose it, and the show is pretty consistent about that.
Another thing I really love is the way the various Immortals' swords suit their personality and fighting style. It's something I've been noticing since the first season, and it's a neat little value-added thing each time he meets a new Immortal: what kind of sword do they have?
In conclusion: I LOVE THIS SHOW A LOT. ♥
♥ ♥ ♥ DAWSON ♥ ♥ ♥
This season (and the end of last season) has been wonderful. Dawson and Duncan! Dawson and Duncan and Richie, oh my heart. Dawson and Amanda - the squee-o-meter is off the charts! Duncan still owns my heart, the big softie, but Dawson is giving him a serious run for his money. (There's nobody I don't like, though. I would like to know where the heck Charlie got off to; is there some kind of rule that they can only have so many characters at once or something?)
And canon has been very obligingly answering a lot of my questions about Immortals. I'd wondered if they can recognize specific other Immortals from the "tingle" they get, or if it's just a general sense of "someone's there", and that's been pretty definitively answered, as well as the question of whether they can recognize nascent Immortals before their immortality kicks in (which makes me want to go back and re-watch Duncan's first meeting with Richie all over again). And the episode with the kid Immortal! That was something I'd wondered about, too -- not to mention "adult in a child's body" is a scifi/fantasy idea that I find completely fascinating ... and have explored in some of my own (original) fiction, but I really loved seeing it done here, doubly so because the show was willing to actually go there and have him be evil.
But oh, oh, the characters. *flails* Part of my frustration with last season, I think, was that my big source of love for this show (er, besides the obvious: there can never been too many scenes of hawt guys swordfighting!) is watching the characters interact with each other, and Duncan was so isolated last season. This season, as well as last season's finale, has been giving me plenty of neat character bits, and those are ALWAYS going to be my favorite thing!
It does crack me up that Joe's bar seems to be the only place to eat or get a drink in town. It cracks me up still further that it's basically a cover for Watcher activities. Did I mention that I really adored 3x12 a LOT?
All the character relationships on the show are really neat, though. I love Duncan's mentorship with Richie, and his wary friendship with Dawson. The fact that Richie is now going to Dawson for advice will never stop making me giggle and squee. I even get a major kick out of Duncan and Amanda, though bickering lovers are normally a bulletproof squick of mine. But I think it doesn't strike me that way because it's not really a will-they-or-won't-they kind of bickering; they have a pretty well-established off-and-on "friends with benefits" thing, and they hit my bickering-friends squee buttons a great deal more than my bickering-courtship squick. I also like how their relationship has grown and developed over the last couple of seasons. Amanda is really a good person, deep down -- she was sympathetic to Joe losing Lauren, and she really does care about Duncan. (And she's trying to go straight! Badly!)
Man, the police in their universe suck, though. You'd think that they'd occasionally look into all of these decapitated bodies that are turning up all over the city. To the non-clued-in members of the public, it must look like there's some kind of serial killer running around. But it's not just the masses of headless dead people ... nearly every episode has some kind of crime that the police completely ignore. (Maybe the Watchers occasionally use their connections to help protect the anonymity of the Immortals? Maybe Duncan just spends most of his time hiding bodies.)
I am increasingly starting to wonder if all of Duncan's flashbacks can actually be pieced together into anything resembling a coherent chronology. He gets around a lot. *tries not to think too hard about it* But they do try, with flashbacks referencing other flashbacks, and at least some sense of internal consistency to where he is and what he's doing in any given time period. And somewhat surprisingly for a show of this sort, they've generally avoided having him meet famous people or get involved in pivotal historical events, aside from those that would be sort of inescapable for someone who was in that country at that time. I like!
I'm also becoming more and more impressed with young!Duncan versus modern!Duncan, because there is really a difference between them. Young!Duncan is so much more innocent and less jaded. All those generations of loss and betrayal have taken their toll. Also, his accent -- I'm not sure if he's supposed to have lost it over time or if he taught himself not to speak that way as an intentional choice somewhere along the way, but there's this point somewhere in the middle 1800s when he seems to lose it, and the show is pretty consistent about that.
Another thing I really love is the way the various Immortals' swords suit their personality and fighting style. It's something I've been noticing since the first season, and it's a neat little value-added thing each time he meets a new Immortal: what kind of sword do they have?
In conclusion: I LOVE THIS SHOW A LOT. ♥