What's fascinating about "Forgive Us ..." is that it stands on its own as an episode and it is also a fairly complicated follow-up to a number of different threads from past seasons ... but without being especially heavy-handed about it. It's clearly not just fannish over-investment to see the follow-ups to all of these plot threads in that episode, particularly in the Duncan and Methos relationship, but you can easily watch and enjoy the episode without really paying much attention to that aspect of it, I think.
You asked before about whether Duncan's flashbacks make sense when you put them in chronological order: my answer is yes. While there are places where you kinda have to squint, for the most part it's wonderfully coherent.
Yeah .... there are a few places where I'm not convinced the chronology makes good sense in terms of his overall character arc, but in general, it works pretty well in both logistical terms (that is, not having him be in two places at once) and also in terms of his growth as a person.
Another thing I absolutely love about how they handle Duncan is how indelibly Scottish he is, not in terms of personality stereotyping but of how his heritage, his culture, his nation is a deep and important part of who he is. They didn't just slap an accent and a kilt on him and call it good. And it's still an important part of who he is, even after centuries of living elsewhere and even though he's managed to do a pretty good job of letting go of his old prejudices and hatreds.
On that subject ... For the most part, watching the deleted scenes and outtakes, I've been really happy with how they cut the episodes -- one of the points I keep meaning to make in my HL posts is how on most shows, when they have to cut something, the character bits are the first to go ... we've been watching the outtakes on the Fringe DVDs and that's exactly what they do there, as on SGA and other shows. HL in general is pretty good about not doing that -- they keep as much of the character stuff as possible, and cut extraneous bits of plot or trim longer scenes to keep the best parts in. But one bit I really wish they'd kept was just a few seconds from the longer version of the scene in "Deliverance" where Methos hands him his sword and Duncan lapses briefly into his childhood accent and tells him that he doesn't have the right to take it. It was such a neat little Duncan character thing.
Both the humor episodes were great ... and so needed to balance the darkness. I'm continually impressed with how the show handles both its lighter and its darker side. If it didn't have the humorous side, it would still be a good show -- the amount of character and plot continuity is so far beyond what I thought I was going to get with a show of this sort that there just aren't words *g* -- but it would be hard to get through without that leavening of humor to break up the heavy parts. There have been certain points in the series (seasons two and three mostly) where I was really struggling with that aspect of it; there were times when it felt like unrelenting gloom all the time. But they hit a really good mix in seasons four and five; even though I think they've actually been darker in terms of some of the overall plot arcs, the humor balances it out and keeps it from being too much of an emotional bludgeon. And what impresses me is that the funny episodes don't actually feel out of place. The show can do these sudden 180 turns from tragedy and pathos to farcical comedy and back again, sometimes in the same episode, and it works.
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You asked before about whether Duncan's flashbacks make sense when you put them in chronological order: my answer is yes. While there are places where you kinda have to squint, for the most part it's wonderfully coherent.
Yeah .... there are a few places where I'm not convinced the chronology makes good sense in terms of his overall character arc, but in general, it works pretty well in both logistical terms (that is, not having him be in two places at once) and also in terms of his growth as a person.
Another thing I absolutely love about how they handle Duncan is how indelibly Scottish he is, not in terms of personality stereotyping but of how his heritage, his culture, his nation is a deep and important part of who he is. They didn't just slap an accent and a kilt on him and call it good. And it's still an important part of who he is, even after centuries of living elsewhere and even though he's managed to do a pretty good job of letting go of his old prejudices and hatreds.
On that subject ... For the most part, watching the deleted scenes and outtakes, I've been really happy with how they cut the episodes -- one of the points I keep meaning to make in my HL posts is how on most shows, when they have to cut something, the character bits are the first to go ... we've been watching the outtakes on the Fringe DVDs and that's exactly what they do there, as on SGA and other shows. HL in general is pretty good about not doing that -- they keep as much of the character stuff as possible, and cut extraneous bits of plot or trim longer scenes to keep the best parts in. But one bit I really wish they'd kept was just a few seconds from the longer version of the scene in "Deliverance" where Methos hands him his sword and Duncan lapses briefly into his childhood accent and tells him that he doesn't have the right to take it. It was such a neat little Duncan character thing.
Both the humor episodes were great ... and so needed to balance the darkness. I'm continually impressed with how the show handles both its lighter and its darker side. If it didn't have the humorous side, it would still be a good show -- the amount of character and plot continuity is so far beyond what I thought I was going to get with a show of this sort that there just aren't words *g* -- but it would be hard to get through without that leavening of humor to break up the heavy parts. There have been certain points in the series (seasons two and three mostly) where I was really struggling with that aspect of it; there were times when it felt like unrelenting gloom all the time. But they hit a really good mix in seasons four and five; even though I think they've actually been darker in terms of some of the overall plot arcs, the humor balances it out and keeps it from being too much of an emotional bludgeon. And what impresses me is that the funny episodes don't actually feel out of place. The show can do these sudden 180 turns from tragedy and pathos to farcical comedy and back again, sometimes in the same episode, and it works.