Highlander 5x03 - Manhunt

 

It's always cool when we get an early-series immortal to show up in a return episode later on. In this case it's Carl Robinson, who first appeared in "Run For Your Life" and went from being a slave to a baseball player. ...then later ended up in trouble, before becoming a baseball player again. Well, now we're back in the "trouble" cycle. This is one of those episodes where the primary threat is a conundrum to solve rather than a particular bad guy.

Carl plays for the Chiefs, which a google search reveals are the minor-league team for Peoria IL. Which is nowhere near Seacouver. Maybe this is a local team called the Chiefs? Not sure, but he makes a reference to playing against Ken Griffey Jr the previous year, so now I'm just confused. Whatever he's doing, it's enough to afford a super-expensive car.

My conclusion is that the "Chiefs" here are supposed to be the local MLB team (the Mariners) but they couldn't name it after the actual Mariners due to copyrights or something.

"Chicka Chicka, Bow Bow" from Ferris Bueller's Day Off plays as we pan the car. Gotdamn!

However, all comes crashing down when his autograph-signing is interrupted by...1996 Hunter Hearst Helmsley??

Carl wields a Chinese Broadsword, which is a particularly good-looking cousin of the scimitar.

He and Hunter battle it out! Carl is at a disadvantage because the guy is a southpaw, and Carl struggles with southpaws, something Hunter points out.

This being a very public place, a crowd of onlookers assembles just in time to see Carl behead the guy, with the corpse flopping right onto the baseball field. Whoops!

"It's not what it looks like! You don't understand!" yells Carl. Just tell 'em it was self-defense and you always carry around a sword! That might work!

Instead, Carl does what worked in the past and flees. Next thing we know, Carl is a wanted fugitive, on the cover of the newspaper. Him being a celebrity, killing another immortal with a bunch of witnesses basically means he's screwed. However, the big challenge for him is going to be putting aside his ego and "disappearing", as immortals need to do, despite finally achieving so many of his goals. Starting from scratch isn't on his agenda, but he'll need to accept it.

Carl sends word to Duncan of where he's hiding out, and Duncan shows up in his sick Thunderbird.

Carl doesn't know what to do, and Duncan tells his old friend that there isn't much he can do, except flee the country and start over somewhere where no one will recognize him. Carl didn't diversify his assets, so all of his substantial wealth is tied up in a bank account that he can't access due to the situation he's in, so Duncan is gonna have to find a way to smuggle him out.

We get a bunch of flashbacks to "Run For Your Life", reminding us of how Duncan met Carl after the latter was already an immortal, and helped him escape from slavery.

Also reminding us that Duncan really likes Carl, one of the few immortals he seems to genuinely enjoy the company of.

Back in the present, an ace detective with a thick Cajun accent shows up to check out the crime scene, immediately spotting a bunch of things no one else spotted. He's the stereotypical "way too good at his job so all the other people present resent him" detective.

He's got a sword in the trunk of his car, so it's safe to say he's an immortal. This just got a lot worse!

Our heroes try to return to Duncan's Pad, only to find that the police are already there scoping the place out. How'd they figure out Carl's connection to Duncan so quick? Also, it's gonna be tough hiding a GIANT BASEBALL PLAYER (Carl is like 6 foot 7) when they don't even have the top up on the convertible. Maybe Carl's too tall for the roof to close all the way?

In any case, Carl knows one of the cops that was outside the pad. The ace detective...is Matthew McCormick, a Cajun immortal who knows Carl. FLASHBACK TIME

Louisiana! 1859! This is before the flashbacks from "Run For Your Life", and Carl's still mortal (and still a slave) here.

This local guy finds out that his daughter is pregnant, and for whatever reason she blames it on Carl, even though he's never even seen her before. "She had to point out somebody" he says.

A scuffle erupts and the guy shoots Carl dead, which is how he died the first time. So WHO WAS THE FATHER THEN?

Things go from bad to... still bad as Carl wakes up as a confused immortal and immediately gets captured by bounty hunters who assume he's an escaped slave and start hauling him back to town.

McCormick shows up with his thick Cajun accent and suggests that these boys give up the slave, tossing them a couple hefty bags of money.

They look at each other all like "Now that we DO take kindly to!" and take off.

McCormick now has the easiest layup kill ever, as Carl still has no idea what the hell is going on or where he is.

Instead, McCormick chops his bonds off, and says he's got some explaining to do. So McCormick is one of those "be a nice guy and help out new immortals you run into" type immortals.

Come to think of it, is there any real reason why immortals HAVE to fight when they run into each other? So many of them treat routine meetings like a death sentence.

After (particularly good) blues have been playing for the entire episode, we learn here that it's all been Jim Byrnes music, as our heroes walk in on him seamlessly playing the very music we've been listening to. Whoa.

Duncan introduces the two of them and says Carl can hang out here and lay low for a bit while he goes and talks to McCormick and finds out what he's after.

Now I'm wondering that too, since for all we've seen McCormick is a nice dude.

Duncan goes back to the pad to see if McCormick is still there, and sure enough, he's sitting at Duncan's desk like he owns the place. They have a pretty civil conversation here about The Baseball Incident where Duncan says no murder took place, because it was a fight between immortals, and McCormick has no reason to be going after Carl.

McCormick, who has a TON of "Gary Oldman in The Professional" energy, is all like "Well then I guess we got a verdict from Judge Macleod! Or are you the whole jury?"

...a good question when it comes to this entire show, actually.

Macleod doesn't need any of this bullshit. Guy is just trying to exist in peace, dammit, and every time he tries to mind his own business, someone else is going "help me, Forrest, help me!"

In any case, McCormick has his reasons, which means...

Another flashback, as McCormick tells Duncan that there's more to the story that he doesn't know. As usual, there are multiple sides to this, and Carl's past is back to haunt him.

So evidently McCormick's wife is the daughter of the guy that shot Carl, which means McCormick visited the plantation pretty often, and knew what Carl was well in advance.

Wait a minute, does that mean McCormick was the father? No, I think the pregnant one was a different daughter and we never actually see this guy's wife. Not sure though. Who knows.

Now that McCormick got Carl to a safe location and taught him what the whole immortal thing is all about, Carl has decided to do the most Carl thing ever!

That's right, instead of heading north, he's gonna use his new-found second chance at life to go beat up the guy that shot him.

McCormick is like "Naw come on dere now ya hea?" but Carl isn't having it. He says McCormick has been a good friend to him and he hasn't had one of those before, but he's gotta do this. McCormick tells Carl straight-up that the guy in question is his wife's father, and if anything happens to him, McCormick is going to hold Carl responsible for it.

Carl returns to the plantation and surprises the slaver, who is all "naw you ded boy y'hear, I dun saws it!" while Carl gets in his face.

They struggle a bit, but Carl is easily much stronger than the dude, and accidentally shoots him with his own gun. Carl is a huge, buff guy, which begs the question of why he gets pushed around so much.

The guy's son charges at Carl. "Ah dun keel you ya dirty rapscallion*!" he bellows before also getting shot (completely on purpose).

* - Not what he actually called him

Well, now Carl's a double murderer.

"Well, at least he isn't the first sports great to be a double-murderer!"

Yes, we know, thank you Norm.

Fast-forward to the present, and McCormick's been keeping an eye out for Carl for a while, only to have this case fall right into his lap, and all he cares about now is either slaying Carl or putting him in prison.

Now that Duncan knows the whole story, he thinks Carl is going to have to deal with this.

Carl storms out, only to be spotted and chased down by the police. Not sure if they were looking for him specifically or if they were just following the "Black Man On The Loose!" protocol that all police departments had to follow in 1995.

Eventually he trips up and gets tangled in a bunch of garbage and they catch him.

Carl...is not very graceful, or good at staying out of trouble. Or good at anything, for that matter. Well, besides baseball.

There's been a plot development, though. Just as they were arresting Carl, somebody else turned himself in for the murder at the baseball field. Which means Carl's free to go, where McCormick can deal with him the hard way.

The guy taking the fall is Trey, a former minor-league player who is a Carl superfan and was there when it happened. He knows Carl did it, but he's going to take the blame for it just to save his hero.

Carl is totally fine with letting this guy take the fall for him, and says the guy's a nobody. Duncan astutely points out that Carl was also a "nobody" when they first met. There's an obvious parallel here between Trey the washout and Carl the slave, namely how despite neither of them meaning much of anything to the world, they still matter as humans. Buuut it's going right over Carl's head.

Duncan's at his wit's end with Carl at this point and tells him to turn himself in and not let this guy go to prison for him. He straight-up tells Carl to stop feeling sorry for himself and thinking the world is out to get him, because he hasn't been a slave for 150 years and Trey doesn't owe him anything. DAMN.

This leads to them brawling all over the dojo and COMPLETELY TRASHING THE PLACE.

This is a vicious fight. It's like the alleyway brawl from They Live, only without the alleyway or the futile effort to get somebody to unplug from the matrix. Which is every bit as difficult and pointless in reality as it is in that alleyway.

Carl goes THROUGH THE OFFICE WINDOW.

We've been through a lot with this dojo, so it's wild to see it get obliterated.

This particularly cute woman shows up and, looking around at the wreckage, offers to do a full remodeling of the dojo.

Duncan (with Carl laying in the glass out of view) agrees just to get her to leave, lol.

I wouldn't mind if she stuck around for a few episodes. The place is going to need to get fixed up so she might as well.

At the station, Carl is reluctantly agreeing to talk to Trey about not taking the fall for him. Duncan is probably pre-occupied with that woman and how high the odds are that they're going to be in bed by the end of the week.

Carl tells Trey that while Trey thinks himself a piece of garbage, it isn't true, nobody is garbage.

"I'm just a nobody, I can't handle money, I can't play ball anymore, I can't-"

Can't what? Can't get a boner? Bro just hang around for a few years, they're making all kinds of stuff for that.

He explains how he used to not like people like Carl, until he became a fan of Carl. He never thought he could play ball until he got inspired by Carl. "If you could do those things for me, you can do a lot more good for the world than I can"

Carl finally feels the gravity of letting this guy go to prison for him. He's ready to take responsibility, if Trey'll let him.

Trey has nothing to go home to, and insists on staying here and maintaining his confession.

This leaves Carl still free to walk the streets, which means...

...McCormick has come to collect. While it's a bit hard to be sympathetic with his need to avenge an abusive slaver, the fact is that they were his family, and he asked Carl over and over to leave them alone and just go north.

They get ready to fight, while Duncan implores them to stop and talk it out. Dammit, not this way!

McCormick is forced to confront his inner pain and, yes, he also needs to let go of something that happened 150 years ago.

Luckily, he's not a bad guy, so our heroes hatch a plan.

They bring Carl's sword back to the station, where forensics confirms it to be the murder weapon, allowing McCormick to arrest Carl. However, there's the small issue of how they really can't let an immortal stew in prison.

So they show up with a full-on RIOT BRIGADE to apprehend the big man.

Carl waltzes out with a shotgun. Man, they're really going all the way to make this convincing. What about all of Carl's young fans? What about all the little CARL-MANIACS?

He pretends to move to fire at the cops, so they open fire, and that's it for Carl Robinson the famous baseball player.

Moral of the story: Being immortal and being a celebrity sportsball player doesn't really work.

Duncan and McCormick go and break Carl out of the morgue.

Carl: "It's cold in here!"

Duncan: "Yeah, 'cause it's a morgue."

So now Carl can embark on his new life (preferably on another continent) and McCormick can go back to living his, with both of them hopefully having learned something about holding onto their past traumas.

Good episode.

But wait, they have one more thing to do.

Since Trey is now a free man whether he likes it or not, Duncan and Carl pay him a visit.

Trey is astonished that Carl isn't dead, and Carl says not to ask questions, but just know that he didn't let his hero down.

Very last scene is Trey, now alone on the field, hearing the roar of an imaginary crowd and wishing it was.

Looks like Carl has inspired the guy one more time.

Not a great episode, yet a surprisingly touching one at times.

Would have been cool to see McCormick again, with his Cajun accent. Given his sense of humor, he'd have been a good ally to Duncan. Fun Fact: His actor later went on to star in hit sitcom "Will & Grace". You can tell just looking at him in this episode that he was destined for bigger things, man has a ton of charisma.

Future Editor's Note: Retroactively adding in all of the Watcher Chronicles for everyone in this episode. There were a bunch:

"Donna Sculder", eh?

Okay, now it's straight-up dropping X-Files on us.

Always noticed the "wrongfully" in there. As if there's a non-wrongful way to be murdered by your slave master?

Good call about how he'll turn up again in another decade or two. Take it from Ric Flair, guys addicted to a sport like this can't just turn that off and go away.

Speaking of Ric Flair, here's his #1 fan, Hunter Hearst Helmsley. His whole thing is literally "left-handed"

He's literally "one of those young ones who kills for sport" that Duncan was so worried about in "Till Death". Hyuck.

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