Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Highlander: The Series 2x15 - Unholy Alliance, Pt II


Xavier is so bad-ass, he gets two episodes in a row! Don't be fooled by his seemingly aristocratic gentlemanlyness. It hides the fact that he's actually a brutal monster.



Time to get serious. Xavier won't be driving anyone crazy this time.

Sassy Female Detective goes over to Duncan's place and he fixes her dinner whilst wearing a manly pink V-neck. For a second I thought she was Tessa and my brain had to autocorrect.

She doesn't get why he plays chess against himself all the time. Could this be a portent of his battle with Evil Duncan much later? ...I don't know.

Joe shows up and Duncan's body language is all "GTFO". Joe tells Duncan where to find Horton, but he doesn't want Horton to die. That could be an issue.

Meanwhile, in their secret Unholy Alliance Base, Horton is doing research on a laptop while Xavier eats caviar and rambles. "When you eat, eat well. When you love, make it last. When you kill, enjoy it."

Interesting to note that when Xavier said "when you love", he put his hand on Horton's shoulder and Horton uncomfortably brushed it off.

Duncan shows up unexpectedly, and Horton runs for his life. Xavier sticks around because he believes he can defeat Duncan. Maybe he can, but with just one hand it's doubtful.

They battle yet again. As usual, it's about even. Xavier actually gets the upper hand (heh) a few times.

Horton swoops in with a helicopter and demands that Xavier hop in so they can get the hell out of there. Xavier is not pleased, and thinks he can win this given more time.

Duncan visits Charlie in the hospital and promises to get the guys who injured him. This is the last time we'll see Charlie. He pops up later in the series, but only for one episode, and I doubt I'll cover that far. Tentatively the plan is to cover up to the end of S2, but I might go to the end of S3 for the hell of it.

With that, it's off to Paris for the rest of S2. WOO HOO! It seems Horton and Xavier fled back here after their run-in with Duncan.

I swear, every time the show changes locations we see this exact same footage of a plane landing. It's like in a video game when you use a transportation method that goes to the same cutscene every time (hello SaGa Frontier).

Oh geez. Sassy Female Detective is HERE too? If their genders were reversed this would be stalking and Duncan would get a restraining order.

...he'd also be a pretty hot woman, I wager. Look at that handsome mug!

She gives him a ride (hee) to the barge... and it isn't here. The area where he normally parks it is flooded.

Duncan is very sad.

That's some massive flooding. It makes me sad too. I presume this is one of those instances of the show making use of real-world circumstances on-camera.

Duncan hallucinates and sees Tessa walking around. This is the first time he has been there without her, now that I think about it.

Side note: What's with the giant iPhone laying on the floor there?

Charlie may be out, but now we have a nouveau guest character! Meet Maurice, the lovable French cook. ...well, "lovable". He's quite irritating. I think I blocked him from my memory until now, on account of him being a miserable leech.

Duncan has dinner with this detective, when...

...someone OPENS FIRE on the restaurant. What is this, Detroit?

No one was hurt, luckily. Sassy Female Detective takes a shower and suddenly gets attractive. Time for Duncan to leave.

Duncan does more investigating. The France episodes are so much easier on the eyes than the Seacouver episodes.

Flashback time. I believe this is when he was fighting for Napoleon. Here he tries to help a dying man, while the dying man goes on about what a glorious battle they're blessed to be a part of. Duncan is disgusted by all of this.

Horton and Xavier scheme in their secret base... with Steve Doocy from Fox News? HOW MUCH ARE THEY PAYING YOU? IS IT ALL WORTH IT TO WORK FOR THIS DEN OF SERPENTS?

...I'm talking about Xavier and Horton. What did you think I meant?

Xavier senses something. Yep, Duncan found them already. Horton and Xavier are dead meat.

The bad guys run for their lives. Horton flees to a boat, only to be caught by...

...Joe Dawson, his brother-in-law. Joe has had enough of his shit!

Joe SHOOTS HORTON just as Duncan gets there, and suddenly Duncan likes Joe again. But is Horton really dead? Looked like he leaped sideways rather than falling backwards as you'd expect when shot.

Oh, this lady got shot in the arm during all of the shooting. I'm actually starting to like her, as of this episode. She's cute.

In any case, one down, one to go. Duncan has to track down Xavier now.

But first! Comedy Gold with Maurice! While he goes on about how he was the greatest chef in all the land, Duncan needs his help finding Xavier. You see, Xavier loves this one particularly rare kind of caviar.

...Caviar St. Cloud?

Duncan calls Charlie to inform him that Horton is done for. As he says it, he looks at one of Darius' chess pieces.

A wildly drunk Maurice returns with the info on Xavier's wherabouts. Time for Duncan to make a caviar delivery.

Duncan shows up at Xavier's mountain chateau right at delivery time. This will be their final battle.

Xavier would like to share some caviar with Duncan, but our hero isn't having it.

"I'LL EAT IT ON YOUR GRAVE" bellows Xavier in an uncharacteristic show of anger.

Xavier quickly pulls ahead, slashing Duncan up pretty badly. There's a sense here that both guys are fighting at full-tilt, which is saying a lot for Duncan. Usually he can beat anybody by fighting at half-effort. Not Xavier.

Xavier's claw turns out to not be such a detriment after all, as he can easily block/catch incoming sword strikes with it. This fight is AWESOME because they battle all over the chateau. Best fight since Grayson.

At one point they both lose their weapons and brawl hand-to-hand, and Xavier can even hold his own in that department.

The battle spills outside, where they manage to switch weapons. At last, Xavier is reunited with a katana.

Sparks fly off of random metal statues as they battle across the courtyard! THIS BATTLE IS REALLY GOOD, YOU GUYS

Late in the fight, Duncan really gets into it. His adrenaline kicks in, and the fight becomes somewhat fun to him even though there's a risk of death. This is something that really happens in the real world, too.

Duncan with a taunting Kung-Fu stance!

Xavier CHARGES in anger, and misses, causing the katana to get stuck in a wall. That's the end of Xavier.

SWING.

Wow, that's the most graphic beheading we've seen since the first episode. They pulled EVERYTHING out for this one.

Awesome visual, as Xavier lets go of the sword and thumps to the ground.

Xavier actually died to his own sword, which is fitting in a way. What follows is a massive quickening where Duncan uses both swords as lightning rods.

THISH ISH!

THE QUICKENING!

Wonder if he kept Xavier's awesome longsword around for memorabilia of this epic battle. It looks like the sword he gives Richie much later in the series.

Finally, our hero meets up with the Sassy Female Detective. He's finally nice to her, so I guess she grew on him too.

She leaves for the U.S. (and out of the series) in the morning. No word on what they did until then.

Huh, someone's looking on creepily over there. I guess France has their own version of Creepy Richie...

...OH MY GOD. IT'S CREEPY HORTON.

So...yeah. He's still around. Xavier's done for, though. Definitely one of the best episodes of the first two seasons here, and I'd say the best overall since "Band of Brothers".


Something else I'd like to point out. Darius' actor had passed away by this point, so from here on (at least for a while) the episodes have an "in memory of" at the end. This likely started a few episodes before this and I'm only noticing it now. After all, Stocker was gone well before this point; they scattered his actual ashes in the Seine at the end of the season one finale.




5 comments:

  1. Great reviews. Please keep it up. I've been watching Highlander on Youtube recently and started following along with your recaps. Have to love Xavier; definitely the best battle since Grayson. The Horton gets old pretty quickly, though. Probably worth keeping him around just for the "awkward touch" or Creepy Horton look, though. He always was a stick in the immortal mud.

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    1. Thanks for the comment; I wish these Highlander posts got more of those. They tend to be the lowest-viewed things I do, sadly.

      Martin Hyde is another immortal who gives Duncan a hell of a fight, moreso even than Xavier. I'll get to him soon.

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  2. GIANT IPHONE WTF

    Generally immortals owning and selling antiques is the most logical thing for them to do, particularly "used" swords. They probably also use the businesses to launder their own money from "previous" lifetimes.

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  3. I know I'm 4 years late but I've starting watching this show on youtube as well along with looking at your reviews. It's quality 90's fun that I was too young to appreciate at the time set to a bad ass Queen song intro.

    Throughout your recap you keep talking about how awesome Xavier was and I can see why after watching his episodes. I found myself rooting for him and got annoyed when he did his hopeless charge at the end. I also just realized the guy sang "She drives me crazy."

    I agree with the first comment though Horton only makes me cringe.

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    1. Bring Back Xavier

      ...well, they do, a couple times later. He should have been a recurring threat in the present-day for as long as possible though.

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