Highlander mid-season-five 2-parter

[sholio]

Wow. That was seriously epic. This show! *catches breath*

And the Horsemen of the Apocalypse thing ... did not see that coming AT ALL. Well, okay, having seen those clips of barbarian!Methos did spoil me for that twist once the episode got underway (as soon as Cassandra brought up the horsemen, my reaction was "HOSHIT METHOS"), but yeah ... again with managing to remain unspoiled for what is probably one of the easiest spoilers to run across in the whole fandom. *g*

I'm still processing a lot of it. I love, as always, how complicated the show makes things -- it's not as simple as Methos going along with Kronos & co. out of fear, or because they're his friends, or because he's tempted by what they're offering, but perhaps a little of all three, in different measures depending on the moment. I liked seeing the less pleasant side of Duncan's moral absolutism: that it's both a strength and a failing of his. I liked the recognition that the Bronze Age Eurasian world was rough and cruel and brutal (Cassandra's fate -- captured, raped, her people killed -- was the fate of a lot of women in her time), but also that the same kind of cruelty and brutality still exists today (the Vietnam comparison -- that whole conversation with Joe and Duncan -- was brilliant).

I suspect that when I dive into the fanworks for this show that I'm going to find a lot of stories in which Methos is written as a guilt-ridden woobie, and, I don't know, I guess one of the things I really love about him is that he's not? I don't get the impression that he's sitting around being eaten up with guilt for those days. He just doesn't want to do it again; like he says at one point, it was a phase he went through, and now he's moved on. Which is not to say that he doesn't have regrets or guilt at all -- obviously he does for specific things (like what happened to Cassandra). But, again, not to the consuming level, and I don't think he hates himself for it or anything.

I don't think anything in these episodes changed my general impressions of Methos that I was talking about in the last post, but it added a lot of depth and complexity.

So, yeah ... still pondering the character stuff in the episodes, still kind of blown away by the action and the epic scope.

Comments

[sholio]

I may need to watch those episodes again! OH NO, WHAT A HARDSHIP. *g*

One of the things I was pondering last night, after posting this, is that all of the characters on the show are, in their own various ways, imperfect people, and it's one of the things I love most about them: they're damaged, they're flawed, they're broken, they're outsiders, they're really kind of a mess, but they love each other anyway. The "island of misfit toys" thing is one of my bulletproof fiction kinks and this show hits it hard. Methos's past is more checkered than most -- okay, yes, a thousand years of killing, that's kind of an understatement *g* -- but it's not like anyone in Duncan's group of weirdo, misfit friends has any sort of claim on normalcy.

[sheron]

I don't think, nor did I mean to imply that Cassandra was stuck in the past. I brought up Methos talking to her purely as an example of his behavior, without even looking at hers. I realize how what I said it might have carried implications I didn't intend to be there.

So we are in agreement on that :)

[sheron]

It's tough to remember that far back, but I'm pretty sure that episode really rocked my world and made it very tough to like Methos for a good long while. I'd eventually come to accept his manipulative side, but it was a road to acceptance on my part.

And you're completely right, it's really interesting to see where he draws the line. I like the paralels of his separating Kronos and Duncan fighting by setting the place on fire, with the way he stopped Kalas and Duncan fightning the first time they met. It's intersting to see him use his mind like that to get what he wants.

[sheron]

Word!

[sheron]

OMG another word!

That's one of the favourite things about HL for me -- the band of misfits, surviving the rocking waves. *g*

LOVE IT.

[trobadora]

they're damaged, they're flawed, they're broken, they're outsiders, they're really kind of a mess, but they love each other anyway

Yes, this! It's sort of a bulletproof kink for me as well. :D

Re: The answer is yes. Oh, yes.

[liz-mo.livejournal.com]

I am not sure whether it was before or after the horsemen eps were filmed when Peter Wingfield supposedly said something along the lines of "What I like most about Methos (as a character) is that he can be read in the way that everything he has done up to now was to get Duncan to a point where he can kill him".

[trobadora]

I like the paralels of his separating Kronos and Duncan fighting by setting the place on fire, with the way he stopped Kalas and Duncan fightning the first time they met.

Yes! and I think this is why it often doesn't matter whether things were planned in advance or not, and why everything still holds together so well - because they keep referring back to things that already happened, and tying things together that way.

Re: The answer is yes. Oh, yes.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

*laughs* In Philly at the PWFC roadtrip Peter showed that clip and the entire room recited it as the vid played right along with it. Peter thought that was a hoot that we all knew the words.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Heh, sorry for reading more into your comment than you intended! I tend to knee-jerk react and want to defend Cassandra due to, well, you know how fandom is at times! But yes, we're in agreement. :)

[calime]

Yes to the imperfection thing - which makes them much more human than many a supposedly human fictional hero. Ironic in a way that in a show about immortals they're really really human *g*
The thing I've always thought about Methos is that he's a kind of an oxymoron - on one hand, it's pretty much unimaginable what living for 5000 years would make a person into - IMO maybe a bit too alien concept for any of us, brief creatures, to grasp (and going on a tangent re: socipathic tendencies - maybe in a way, an ideal coping strategy for living so long and still being or seeming relatively sane) - and on the other hand, for some reason he often seems the most human of the Immortals, in his tones of grey and fallibility, and selfishness and selflessness, screwing up or just maybe doing things because he wants to, likes to, cannot resist the temptation of, while having unexpected flashes of generosity and self-sacrifice - yet we can never be 100% sure what his motivations are, deep down.
Well, or maybe we can just go with a cracky, but perfectly reasonable explanation and say that he's part human, part cat *grins*.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it's a matter of accepting/forgiving Methos's past, though, so much as trusting in his future -- that he won't kill again.

Yes, I think you're right, that it's more about Duncan trusting that Methos isn't that man any more, he isn't that kind of killer, than about Duncan having fully accepted Methos' past. I'm not sure Duncan could ever fully comprehend a thousand years of massacring, and it'll take some time to find peace with his own feelings for Methos (in a friendshippy, non-slashy way) now that he knows this about him.

And to some extent, he was not just saving one friend but saving two: stopping Cassandra from making a choice that Duncan wished he hadn't made in the past.

This is very true. I've never seen Cassandra as a fighter; she probably hasn't taken many heads. And each killing is a burden, regardless of its righteousness or lack thereof. But then I'm a huge fan of reconciliation--there isn't a lot of fic dealing with Methos and Cassandra reconciling, but the few I've read have been wonderful.

[sholio]

Hee! And this right here is an analysis of Methos that I am perfectly on board with -- yes, yes, to everything you said! :) He is flawed and fallible and very, very "shades of gray", totally capable of screwing up for good or bad reasons, and then, when it comes right down to it, suddenly he'll come out with something genuinely sweet or heroic or selfless that makes you stop and go, "Wait, was that there the whole time? *reassess, reassess*" And he's been through so much that in some ways he's more distant from the humans (and younger Immortals) around him than they could possibly imagine -- and yet, just as you said, in some ways he's the most human (weak, flawed, fallible, yet capable of better things) of them all.

He really is a fantastically complicated character! I'm still working out exactly how I feel about him, but there is no doubt that seeing Peter Wingfield's name in the credits makes me squee, because I know it'll be a good episode and all his scenes will be great. :D

[sholio]

*nods* That theme of rearranging your life, and changing, and becoming something new -- I love it SO MUCH, all the more because this show gives us both positive and negative examples: good people who went bad, and those who were cruel, hard or cold and learned to be otherwise. You are what you make yourself, and the show gives us a whole huge gamut of possibilities.

... And Methos is maybe winning me back. ♥

[trobadora]

"Wait, was that there the whole time? *reassess, reassess*"

And this sums up the Methos experience perfectly. :D

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

100 % in agreement with our Methos here *g*.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

heeeeeeeeeeee. I've been waiting in anticipation for you to get to these episodes. I've been biting my bottom lip, keeping comments down to an absolute minimum in case I inadvertently spoiled you. Quite often, I think that it would be really nice to be able to selectively wipe parts of your fandom memory and rewatch or reread certain things.

I remember watching this with my mam (Duncan fan) and me (Methos fan) and OMG, Methos is a BAD GUY. It was very much a black and white response on both our parts (my mam to this day is still a little superior that *her* Duncan is a good guy). But after some fairly significant pondering on my part, for me it boiled down to Methos is über complicated character and that is a lot of fun to write. When does the statute of limitation on being Death and killing and enjoying killing run out? Were they crimes when he committed them? Can you impose 20th Century culture on a Bronze Age civilisation? Or is Methos now fundamentally a new person: grown and essentially changed over time to a new person; a more dominant quickening overtook the 'original' Methos; or a synergism of many quickenings induced a personality change; can people change? et cetera… take your pick. There are fic out there.

The element of forgiveness is a really interesting aspect of the whole debacle. Frankly, I hadn’t of really liked Methos before those episodes I probably would have dropped him like a hot potato, which is an interesting observation all on its very own.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

He was being FORCED to do it for a thousand years!

And big mean Duncan should beg his forgiveness for everything Duncan has done/said/thought about Methos ever because it was ALL WRONG. And mean. *nods firmly*

Ah, poor wee woobie Methos. I thought the 'cries-at-drop-of-hat' variety was particularly well-characterised. /snark

[winter-elf.livejournal.com]

Oh good, I can stop sitting on my hands! :) I've been waiting for you to see these major eps and hear all about what you thought of them. Was your jaw on the floor ? :) Now, goes to read all the comments of people who's LJ was obviously working before mine! *sobs*

[trobadora]

The suicidal version was pretty good too, wasn't it? LOL.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

is the story of the vengeance seeker who nurtures their hatred through the years 'til finally they find their enemy ... except the enemy is now a changed man

This doesn't address your above comment exactly, but is somewhat related:

I had a discussion with selenak not long ago about HL fandom's reaction to Cassandra's accusations. Sometimes my knee-jerk desire to defend Duncan and Cassandra as characters gets confused with my anger over some of the rape apologia I've seen in fandom surrounding the Horsemen arc; I get so pissed off that I end up defending Duncan and Cassandra perhaps more vigorously than I normally would, if I were more objective.

I love Joe, and I love that he brings up his own past in Vietnam in an effort to understand Methos, but what gets overlooked by HL fandom too often is that his first reaction is to deny that his buddy, his good friend Methos, could be what she says he is. "Someone lives with thoughts of revenge for that long, it becomes an obsession. Maybe she's delusional. Maybe she's a liar! What do you really know about this woman?" I mean, it's practically ripped from the headlines. How often do we hear this kind of crap?

I don't blame Joe for wanting to defend his friend; of course he's loyal. I do blame those in HL fandom for saying that Duncan should have said what Joe said, that Duncan should have trusted Methos, his buddy, over Cassandra, a woman who titillated young Duncan.

But what I love best about Duncan here is his response: "No, I believe Cassandra is telling the truth. I'm not going to assume she's lying to me about her rapist." In his gut, he doesn't believe it of Methos, but just because he doesn't want to believe it doesn't mean he's going to ignore Cassandra and trust Methos blindly. He goes to Methos for answers... and gets all the answers he could want.

So yeah, what I said before about HL the show treating female characters with more respect than HL fandom does, this is what I mean.

[sholio]

Oh, absolutely! Actually, though I generally agree with what you said in the above comment about liking reconciliation as a general theme in this sort of storyline (I do too!) where I stumble into sticky territory with Cassandra and Methos is that I do not particularly want to see Cassandra reconciled with her rapist. I'm fine with the way the episode ended, and letting go of her anger is something she's got to learn to do for her own sake, but ... then there's a line that I have trouble going past. True, it was 3000 years ago and they were both someone else then; and I even think that, in the end, her feelings about Methos all those years ago were somewhat more complicated than just Stockholm syndrome. (I'm definitely not going to call it love, but hell, history is full of women who had absolutely no choice about who they had sex with, or married, and found ways to be content with it anyway. And she seemed to be on a road to something like that.)

But still. He raped her (among many other women) and I think canon is pretty unambiguous about that. And I was generally pretty happy with the way that both the magnitude of his crimes towards her, and Cassandra's right to her own anger and autonomy, were treated in canon. (I was similarly happy with the handling of the rape-victim-revenges-herself-on-rapist plot in season one; I don't remember if I posted about it at the time, but I really loved that the show both a) had him be guilty, and b) allowed her to ultimately be the one to fire the bullet, rather than her father or Duncan doing something first.) I liked the way that the Joe and Duncan scene played out, particularly since I felt that canon was having both characters be true to themselves and to how people do react in situations like that, for good and ill -- loyalty to a friend vs. trusting a rape victim over the person she's accusing ... and there were assorted extenuating circumstances on both sides, which I thought canon did a pretty good job of handling. I'm continually impressed with how this show handles sticky moral dilemmas, including those that carry a lot of real-world baggage for viewers; it's not perfect, of course, but it's head and shoulders above most other shows I've seen, then or now.

[sholio]

HAHAHAHAHA ... you guys are making me want to actually read one of these travesties. Sort of. XD

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

where I stumble into sticky territory with Cassandra and Methos is that I do not particularly want to see Cassandra reconciled with her rapist.

No, I know what you mean, and honestly I'd be happier if more people just wrote fic in which Cassandra finds peace with herself. I don't particularly need her forgiving Methos or even interacting with him, and to be honest I prefer a Methos who understands that he has no right to even ask for it. Maybe what I meant was more "reconciliation with oneself". That said, selenak wrote a fic series in which Methos and Cassandra are forced to work together and there's at least a lessening of anger and hatred.

(I'm definitely not going to call it love, but hell, history is full of women who had absolutely no choice about who they had sex with, or married, and found ways to be content with it anyway. And she seemed to be on a road to something like that.)

They both were, I think. A pretty sad imitation of love, but still--there was something there. trobadora and I have recently discovered we're both Methos/Cassandra shippers ("shipper" for lack of a better word). I find the two of them fascinating.

Yes, you did mention that S1 ep, which I think is when I commented about HL the show being pretty decent in how it handled women. Following your re-watch has deepened my appreciation of the show, in fact, because while I certainly was aware that HL enjoyed moral complexity, it's only now that I'm more clued in about some of these issues that I can really respect the way the writers handled them.

[sheron]

I love that there's so much mythology that can be woven into HL canon, that immortals could have been any figure in history (until confirmed otherwise).

Someone once commented in your journal that one of the things they like about HL is that there are so many different types of fic that can be written about it -- it can incorporate scifi and fantasy, drama and romance, historical fiction, horror, anything!

Actually that's one of the things I really appreciate about Cassandra's character -- specifically her Voice and her being 3000 years old -- is neat because it opens another door for fic writers. Now there are people that posses a special ability like Kantos and Cassandra, which opens the door to more supernatural events while at the same time the universe is essentially _our_ universe. Something I've always loved about SG1/SGA was that it was tied to "our" reality in a way where I could suspend disbelief and yet incorporated all these amazing adventures.

Plus, there aren't many immortals who have survived to Amanda's age let alone Cassandra's and it's quite interesting to have one more character that's led an incredibly long life.