After several episodes that tackled more serious subject matter, we're overdue for a comedy episode. Episode 5 here is, as the French say, "le goof". Which is just what le doctor ordered.
This week we're getting not one, but TWO new episodes. ...because I don't like the thumbnail for this one, and I'll be damned if I have this fish-like woman eyeballing people while they read this site.
The flashbacks in this episode are supremely good-looking. I'd go so far as to call them "sumptuous". We need more sumptuous content. Like some of the more engaging panels from the Berserk manga are sumptuous.
In this clearly-embellished flashback, lots of Theater Class overacting occurs as a Random Woman runs to Duncan for help. It seems she needs to be rescued from...
...The Loathsome Terence Coventry, a dastardly British guy who will HAVE HER VIRTUE or else!
Duncan points out that she dinnae wahn yew!
The Loathsome Terence has been besmirched. En garde!
Well, they don't really get to fight because he cowardly kidnaps the fair maiden! What a scoundrel!
Annnd cut to the present, where this peculiarly fish-like woman says "You'll need to buy the book to find out what happens next"
Amanda is at the book signing, and it turns out that the book is called "Blade of the Macleods" by Carolyn Marsh. And it's about, get this, Duncan Macleod.
Oh yeah, Amanda is back. She really does just pop in and out. Where's Richie, though? He's been persona non grata since he finally returned 3 episodes ago.
Amanda brings home a copy and reads several porn-like passages to Duncan. The whole book is basically this Marsh woman drooling over Duncan. The weird thing is...the fight with Terence actually happened in real life. How would she know about that?
Elsewhere, Terence is reading the book, and completely disgusted. Mostly by Marsh's fish-like picture on the back cover, but also by the book itself.
Yeesh, it's like looking at one of those Seamen from that Sega Dreamcast game. What has Yu Suzuki wrought??
Terence throws the book down and storms out to track this woman down and find out why she's making him look so...loathsome.
Elsewhere, Duncan tells Amanda the REAL version of what happened with him and Terence in the past. Duncan is a lot less glamorous-looking, and so is the woman he's rescuing. She's in full "perhaps I could interest you in my titties?" garb, and he's interested.
Terence is no longer The Loathsome One and is just regular Terence, accusing the woman of stealing all of his money when his back was turned.
Also, being British, Terence is constipated all the time. "I simply choose not to bother with all of that icky toilet business!" he says.
Duncan doesn't believe him, and prepares to defend the woman's...honor? or whatever, while she helpfully escorts his horse away.
...and takes off on it at high speed! Damn, in the novel, the horse wasn't what ended up getting ridden.
Duncan feels like a real dunce right about now, which leads to him and Terence forming a buddy cop duo to chase after and get his horse back. It's actually quite wholesome, they just instantly get along and trust each other because it's quite clear neither of them means any harm.
Back in the present, Carolyn Marsh shows up at the Dojo. She heard there's an actual Duncan Macleod in town, and wants him to be the poster-boy for her new novel. Amanda is unimpressed by this fish-like woman and her terrible book.
She then gropes his breasts and talks about how perfect he'll be "playing" the main character at book events.
"Carolyn Marsh...more like Carolyn DARSH, am I right?"
Carolyn drags Duncan off to talk business, while Amanda thinks they can have their discussion RIGHT HERE. Right here on this dirty dojo floor!
She gets her way (after calling the dojo a "doughbro or whatever") and Duncan is now, you guessed it, the poster-boy for the novel. She explained away the weird semi-accuracy of the book by saying that she's been researching "the legend of Duncan Macleod" for a while.
Duncan portrays himself at the event, while various women paw away at him. He's having a great time, even if he pretends to want to leave.
Amanda asks Carolyn if any goddess-like thief women ever turned up in the legend of Duncan. "Well, supposedly he met a thief in Turkey and they had a thing, but she was just a cheap whore and never turns up again" ZING
Shouldn't she go back to being the fish boss in Link's Awakening?
This woman walks by who is shockingly cute for an extra, and the camera makes sure to follow her as she gets a full pan-around of our boy. Did she win a contest or something?
"Oh my goodness! He's so beautiful!" says Marsh's assistant.
"Unbelievable! How magnificent!"
The proceedings screech to a halt as they are paid a visit by Terrence Coventry himself! And he is...quite displeased at all of this.
He and Duncan, of course, know each other. Time to get some answers as to what the hell is going on around here! Why is he in the book and portrayed so badly? How does she know about his fight with Duncan? Why does she look like that?
A) He's her ex and she hates him.
B) He told her stories, she knows he's immortal, and she's basing the book off of one of those stories while making him the bad guy. (She does not, however, know that this Duncan is immortal / the same person as the one Terence used to know)
C) She is one-eighth Seaman.
Amanda: "She called me a cheap whore! I WAS NEVER CHEAP."
Well, the final battle of this episode needs to be Amanda vs. Carolyn in a brutal slap-fight.
Amanda and Terence proceed to hit it off, mainly over their common enemy. They debate whether to kill her with poison or a stake through the heart. Perhaps a big rock.
To keep her from running into Terence, Duncan whisks Carolyn away from her own event.
You know, real talk for a moment, this episode is pretty good. It's definitely filler-y in a way, but it's a fun one and Lord Knows we need more of those in this show.
Back at the pad, Carolyn talks about how her fictionalized Duncan Macleod is her sexual fantasy. She then proceeds to talk about how romantic his early life was, bringing up...
...DEBRA CAMPBELL. "They still tell the legend in Glenfinnan, Scotland" she says while slinking about.
We get an extended flashback sequence recapping everything that happened with Debra and how Duncan failed to help her. Well, not from lack of trying.
This rude, abrasive, fish-like woman then proceeds to help herself to pawing at Duncan while she loudly rambles, causing him to balk and try to get away.
Funny thing is, he's pouring them wine, he's trying to be a good host to his houseguest... if she just simmered down a bit and played it halfway cool, she could probably get laid before the evening's over anyway.
Amanda busts up this little...whatever it is.
"Don't you know how to KNOCK?" bellows Lord Jabu-Jabu.
Well uh, you see, that's been a plothole for a while now...why doesn't Duncan lock his doors? He lives in a city, and Evil Watchers and human henchpeople are things that exist.
Situations like this highlight the fun nature of Duncan and Amanda's relationship. Nobody's particularly angry, just a bit jealous. Even if something happened, it isn't like they're cheating on each other when they're more friends than anything else. What will the dynamic be when Amanda's the one getting frisky with another guy, though? Glad you asked, because the very next episode tackles this.
Heh..."tackle"... So many Carolyn jokes. Hee
Downstairs, Terence arrives. He knows DARSH is here! Wait, did Duncan really leave her and Amanda alone? Good thing nobody got stabbed!
Long story short, Carolyn leaves, Terence leaves, crisis averted a bit longer.
Later that night, Amanda is reading the novel...and fantasizing.
What follows is a super-hot (and super-weird) scene where Amanda has her way with Duncan at some unknown point in the distant past.
Duncan then HOWLS. What even in the hell
She'd like to maybe act this out with the actual guy, but he's asleep and snoring loudly. A funny reminder that sometimes the idea just isn't as hot in reality.
Meanwhile! Back at the bookstore! ...man, they sure printed a lot of these. There are a lot of horny women, apparently. Do the books vibrate in 3 settings?
He is not their silken fop!
"Put the book down" he says while biting her on the shoulder.
After he leaves, Terence shows up. At this point the episode is just this whack-a-mole session with these characters all trying to run into each other. Well, he's finally got DARSH cornered.
He asks the crowd of onlookers if he's as unpleasant as the books portray him. "DO I TRULY HAVE A GIGANTIC MOLE?"
Then he KIDNAPS HER and everyone claps, probably thinking that this was all some sort of performance and not actually the real Terence.
Elsewhere, Duncan runs off to go rescue her, and Amanda steals his bank card to go shopping.
...seriously.
No rescuing is needed, though, as Terence talks Carolyn into giving him another chance. Turns out he still has feelings and so does she. The only reason she left is because he was always talking about all his fun exploits in the past (mostly involving women), but all of that was just him being himself and letting her in on the truth of the matter. She agrees to dinner.
Carolyn goes dress-shopping, and runs into Amanda, who bought the same dress. Alright, this is just TOO FAR with the coincidences.
This leads to them smoothing things over and actually becoming halfway friendly (after Amanda hurts Carolyn's feelings).
Then they just sorta take off. Did they...did they put these two $5000 dresses on Duncan's card?
Turns out, they aren't actually competing over Duncan, and have no reason to be foes. ...wait a minute, has anyone told the guys any of this?
Nope, and elsewhere Duncan and Terence fight it out! Terence was trying to get dinner ready for Carolyn and here we are battling with kitchen items!
They switch gears to a REAL battle, with swords, though it's clear neither guy is trying to kill the other.
The women burst in! Carolyn: "You were fighting...over meee?"
No, no they were not.
These two proceed to talk some more and go ahead with their dinner. So all's well that ends well with this crazy tale. Given how it was a full-on Love Square with Amanda and Terence also hitting it off, I'm surprised this didn't ever allude to some sort of freaky four-way.
Last scene really makes the episode, elevating it from an average filler episode to something worth seeing. It's just Duncan and Amanda going for a walk, not letting this rad dress go to waste.
They have a good chat about what their deal is, whether or not they love each other (they do), and so on. They'll never be married or a full item, but By God they're there for each other and they're probably both what the other needs. It's an interesting dynamic. Immortals don't usually work out in long-term committed relationships with each other, and even if they do, it's a struggle to maintain them (as we saw in "Till Death" and other places). Relationships with mortals have a shelf life. So in the end, the dynamic between these two makes a lot of sense.
Mostly it's just a fun walk, much like their relationship is in general. And damn, the time of day was PERFECT for this. I mean they really captured lightning in a bottle with this scene.
Episode could really end right there, but we have one more thing to get to:
Amanda is back to reading the novel, only now she's got an awake Duncan around emulating what's happening in the book. This shot sorta looks like Amanda has a freakish man-arm.
Welp. I hope the walls are soundproof.
This guy was a hoot. I've seen this actor in a few things, and he's always a hoot.
Yep, this is spot-on. The guy loved to tell tales of all of his adventures. If he didn't, then who else would? And probably with lots of extra embellishment sprinkled on, because why not.
Editor's Note: Went back and added in "page 2" of all the Watcher Chronicles for immortals in the first 3 episodes of Season 5, before I knew there was a second page. Someday maybe I'll go back to earlier seasons and see when they started adding second pages to the chronicles. So one can go back to those and find the extended chronicles at the end.
Tune in Monday night at 7 PM for the next episode. Yeah, the traditional airdate from back in the day.
Funny story, I won a bid for a charity auction with the prize being a set visit, and this was the episode. I was at the filming of the turkey leg-spoon fight. Couple of points. When Mac goes to Terrance’s house, he feels the buzz and walks stage left. We next see him appear behind Terrance stage right. That was a bit of Hollywood trickery. If you notice the pool is directly behind the kitchen window. Mac would have been seen turning left without the editing.
ReplyDeleteAlso notice the box of salt. It clearly says salt and Alistair was told to make sure we could see the salt label. F.Braun was there and was asked how long the spoon that would be cut should be. He said in this case, the longer the better. Adrian said that’s what he always heard. The table in the living room had prop magazines that Mac kicked off. They were made by the prop department and crew kept reading them. They had to be told not to because that could break the spines and that would ruin continuity.
If you look carefully, you can see Terrance’s sweat stains on his shirt as he and Mac jump around the candle table. In some shots, the stain is there and in others is gone. They had to turn off the house’s air conditioning to keep the noise down and it got hot on that August day. Terrance had three shirts and they had to ration them during the day’s shoot.
If you notice only two of the candles fall when they do the Zorro cut, but later you see all three down. All three were rigged to fall but only two fell. They didn’t reshoot because they would have had to reset the rigged candles and that would have taken time. So they went on and hoped no one would have seen.
Also notice when Terrance withdraws his sword from the chair, the tip hits the wall and the actor looks but continues the scene. When they cut Alistair said sorry and they checked the wall for any nicks they would be responsible for.
Finally, another bit of Hollywood magic. When they shot the scene of Terrance tearing the book cover off, it was dark because night had fallen. The scene takes place in morning but the lighting was all artificial. I got to talk with Elizabeth Gracen, who was nice to me. She said one of her Paris episodes that season would feature Roger Daltrey and she was looking forward to it. This was August and that episode was filmed in November. Getting Daltrey was hard given his schedule, so they had to write them far in advance. This being 1996, I had that spoiler but no way to let the world know. Oh life before Twitter.
Liked the review. Keep up the good work.
Great comment, thanks for all the inside info. Not surprised Terrence's actor is named Alistair...he might be the most "Alistair"-looking guy I've ever seen. This episode was a great time to watch, hopefully they had as much fun filming it.
DeleteThat Daltrey episode later in S5 is one of my favorites, and worth the wait.