Thursday, June 6, 2019

Highlander: The Series 3x07 - The Lamb

It's the debut of Young Kenneth, the series' most wee immortal.



We begin with an opening scene that I think is a catastrophic mistake. We see this unknown kid roaming around some post-apocalyptic wasteland Seacouver, scrounging for food.

He immediately hits some guy in the head with a brick and takes his sandwich. Jesus Christ!

Now, this scene was a mistake because it tells us right off the bat that this kid is bad news. I think they should have kept it ambiguous for at least half the episode.

Our heroes are bumbling around down by the river when they sense a disturbance in the force.

Duncan looks around, and his immortal radar leads him to...

...Newt The kid lurking under a pier. See, THIS should have been the first scene.

Duncan tells the kid that he has nothing to fear from them. Richie is shocked that this kid is immortal.

It turns out that the kid's name is Kenny, and he's been ten years old for four years. That's rough. And the worst part is, I think he went through some puberty already, so he's trapped in the addiction-like mindset of being perpetually horny and unable to do anything about it.

Duncan: "Have you encountered many other immortals?"
Kenny: "They mostly tried to kill me."

...Mostly.

We get a flashback that shows Kenny hanging out with his previous immortal teacher, Frank, a super nice guy who fishes. I don't know how Frank lasted longer than a week in the cut-throat world of Kimmies. ...oh God, I'm one of those people.

Duncan: "What happened to Frank?"
Kenny: "Some guy cut off his head."
::Richie reacts::

Ya know, when you come at this show from an outside perspective of those things not being normal, it's pretty awful that this is how these guys have to live.

Flashback time! It's the Civil War, and Duncan is trying to get slaves across the Mason-Dixon Line.

Confederate troops are marching through the woods!

Elsewhere, Duncan tries to tell the Union commander that he's walking into a Confederate ambush.

 He's having none of it. "GO BACK TO YOUR NEGRESS!" he bellows. No, really, he said it, with this face.

……….

………..LOL

Then the Union troops... walk into a Confederate ambush, despite Duncan's efforts to get them to turn around.

The Confederate troops charge through, and Duncan gets shot in the process.

Turns out one of the Union troops, this little kid, is also immortal. Duncan is shocked to find this out, as he didn't think such a thing was possible.

In the present, Duncan introduces Kenny to Anne. Since he can't be honest with Anne about anything, he says Kenny is his cousin. He agrees to let Kenny stay with him for a little while until he can figure something out.

We go right back to the flashback, where the kid tries to get Duncan to stay and protect him. Duncan can't, because he has to go back out and find the people he was trying to help. The flashback ends there...uh oh.

Back in the present, Kenny plays with this robot-immortal action figure with a sword.

...and somewhere, the creators of Highlander: The Source just had a lightbulb appear above their heads.

Duncan and Anne go out, and they have the most realistic date ever where they awkwardly ask each other questions. I think this was probably ad-libbed all the way.

Duncan is very pre-occupied with the Kenny situation while Anne tries to find out more about his family. He has no answers. "Your guess is as good as mine! THANKS FOR NOTHING, DAD!" he bellows before storming out of Joe's Bar.

Duncan continues to look queasy while Anne silently wonders why she couldn't just have been born a lesbian. Pretty sure he just LOST an S-Rank from hanging out with her.

Richie tells Kenny that he's going to teach him everything about swordfighting and how to defeat his foes. Finally, Richie has found someone less of a threat than he is! RICHIE IS NOW THE MASTER!

Next thing we know, Richie is paid a visit by an immortal, Dalman Ross.

Ross demands "the boy". Alright pedo-bear, the exit's over there!

After Richie tells him to get to steppin', Ross just kind of...leaves without issue. Huh.

Meanwhile, away from the ranch... Duncan is taking Kenny fishing. This was an opportunity for us see how Duncan would function as a dad, since it's one of the few things he hasn't been. He seems pretty reluctant and out of his element though, like he isn't actually sure how to even talk to kids.

We get a flashback to FRANK, as he lets his guard down long enough for Kenny to swipe his sword and behead him. Again, how did Frank last more than a week? Also, still think it's a mistake to show Kenny being all evil rather than retaining ambiguity about his true alignment.

One of the few quickenings so far in S3 gets wasted on Kenny. How much power could FRANK have had anyway?

Anne arrives with a picnic basket and Kenny is immediately rude to her, scampering behind a tree to glare at them like some kind of little Antichrist.

This kid is pretty annoying, to say the least. If they hadn't already given up the ghost that he's evil, right about now is when we'd start wondering if there's something rotten in Denmark.

Duncan talks to Kenny about being rude to people, and explains that Anne is his friend. Kenny just decided to hate her though, and nothing she does is gonna make any difference.

Duncan hears from Richie about the Dalman Ross visit, and goes to see what Joe thinks. Joe (who is terrible at his job and should definitely never be a lawyer because he'd violate attorney-client privilege on a regular basis) says that Dalman Ross is a good guy and not the kind of person who'd want to kill a kid. Duncan asks him if he can find out what the deal is.

Richie is ready to teach Kenny some martial-arts moves! Unfortunately, learning from Richie is a lot like owning a gun: You're vastly more likely to end up getting hurt than successfully defending yourself against an attacker.

Richie turns his back on Kenny to clean up a mess. While he crouches and talks to himself, Kenny sneaks up on him with a sword. I haven't seen a character behave this gullibly since Season 8 Tyrion.

Duncan walks in before anything can happen. Moments later, they get a visit from Anne, who Duncan is going out with again. "ALL YOU TWO DO IS GO OUT! PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEE!" is probably what's going through Kenny's mind here.

"Duncan sleeps with a lot of women. Better-looking ones than you, too. Last night there was one who looked like this."

You've been staying there for ONE NIGHT.

Well, pretty sure he's just making that up to be a jerk. Not sure Anne is really the open-minded sharing type.

Now we get the conclusion of the flashbacks, as Duncan finds the people he's trying to save and helps them escape from soldiers. He then turns around to see a quickening in the distance around where he left the kid.

Sure enough, he's dead along with everyone else around him. I wonder who the immortal was that did it. There was a quickening so it couldn't have just been some random mortal soldiers.

The DVD extras don't give us much insight, so chances are this question never got answered.

Duncan and Anne take Young Kenneth to the park. He's all angry and spends all of his time complaining.

Joe visits Richie and has some news. Turns out Kenny isn't actually a little kid whose parents died in a car crash a couple years ago. He's actually over 800, and survives by relying on stronger people to protect him (who he then kills when they aren't paying attention).

Anne tells Duncan that his little cousin is a piece of work, and a real troubled kid.

Left to his own devices for a moment, Kenny violently attacks some other kid. He's really starting to make Duncan look bad.

He's like a mirror universe Nazi version of John Connor in T2. YOU'RE NOT HIS MOTHER, TODD.

Elsewhere, Dalman Ross is back for THE BOYYYY.

He notes that Duncan is the latest person Kenny has roped in.

Dalman doesn't give them much of a chance to talk this over, and goes on the attack.

Duncan quickly pauses the fight by inverting sword. "I'm not your enemy, Ross!"

Ross attacks again, and Duncan wins the battle in seconds. This guy is even more helpless than FRANK.

Ross reveals that Kenny murdered his wife, after they treated him like family. Duncan...is not entirely surprised at this revelation. He tells Ross to walk away and leave it alone. He's gotta go figure this out now.

After Duncan leaves, Kenny sneaks up on Ross and lops off his head.

ANOTHER quickening? We're seriously giving this little twat two of these? For some reason he gets all distorted during this one, perhaps showing his true evil self and a hint of his oldness.

Duncan returns after seeing the light show, only to find a corpse.

Back at the ranch, Joe and Richie tell Duncan the truth about Kenny... and Duncan defends him! "He's surviving the only way he knows how!"

"All we do is find ways to survive! What have you been doing for the last year, KNITTING?"

...he's being weirdly abrasive here. I've noticed that in Season 3 Duncan has been more emotional and less mature than in previous seasons. Pretty sure this is because of the imminent arrival of Methos. Up until this season, Duncan was "the adult in the room". Soon he'll be the one needing advice.

Finally, Duncan realizes that Kenny is a legitimate threat. Given that he went after Ross' wife, it's safe to say Anne is in danger. He takes off to find her.

Next thing we know, Kenny tries to run down Anne in a parking lot. This is the most danger she's been in since she met Duncan, and further proof that we can't have nice things. She never sees who it is, at least.

Duncan arrives, gets Anne out of the way, and chases Kenny... only to be stopped by security. He's like "not now bro" and flips the guy before apologizing and running away.

He chases Kenny into the bowels of this factory. This is rapidly turning into a Saw movie.

Kenny lures him under a falling-object trap, then tries to behead him while he's stuck. Luckily, Duncan's one arm is more powerful than Kenny's entire body strength.

Kenny vanishes, and Duncan is left looking rattled by this entire experience.

Kenny escapes on a nearby school bus, glaring back evilly. Of all the great villains we've had, THIS guy is actually surviving an episode.

And yes, Kenny will return. Season 4 is notable for having sequels to a bunch of earlier episodes, featuring the likes of Kenny, Charlie, and Xavier St. Cloud (RIP) making appearances.

Duncan arrives back at the ranch, where Anne is very happy to see him. He did just save her life.

That said, she's also nonplussed that he went all Rambo in the first place, and asks him if he can leave things like that to the police. We haven't even gotten started, lady. In other news, Duncan's back is probably broken from that thing falling on him. He'll be alright in a little while.

Duncan says he sent Kenny back to his parents. Anne is THRILLED. She has no idea he was behind the car attack, but he was just an awful human being already.

Then they, TEE HEE, make out.

::spanking is heard in the background::

...yeah, so this guy. Meh. But wait! First teacher...Amanda? We'll find out more about this when he returns. In the meantime...where the hell is Amanda? She was around near the start of S3, then vanished to train that girl. She'll be back, but I thought she was in this season a lot more.

Well, we're past the excellent first few episodes and entering a bit of a pre-Methos doldrum now. Even S3's doldrum is pretty good though.

2 comments:

  1. Oh nooooo, the Kenny episode.

    I agree, this episode probably would have worked better if they kept that reveal as late as possible. Instead they went the Terminator Genisys trailer route.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What have you been doing this last year, Knitting?!

    ReplyDelete