Thursday, September 15, 2011

Lost Girl Season One Episode Four: Faetal Attraction

Episode four of Lost Girl was not nearly as entertaining as episode three, in large part due to the disability fails.

Bo tells Kenzie that Dyson is not interested in a relationship and so like a proper bff, Kenzie offers to help Bo get over it.  They begin by taking sledgehammers to an abandoned car to help them get in touch with their rage.  Kenzie then tries to talk Bo into going drinking. Bo is resistant at first, because she fears that if she gets drunk, that she will not be able to control her succubus powers. They compromise by going to the fae bar.

Bo and Kenzie do several shots and get rip roaring drunk. Lauren approaches them and tells Bo that it is not a good idea for her to get drunk, because they don't know what effect it will have on her abilities.  Bo gets snarky and tells her that because she is not a man, she is not worried about her ability to perform.  It is clear that there is some kind of chemistry between Lauren and Bo, but when Kenzie brings it up, Bo tells her that it does not matter because Lauren is human and sex with her would mean death for Lauren.  From this I suppose we are to surmise that Bo is indeed bisexual, but this does not explain why each time she becomes intimate with a woman, it is to manipulate her in some way.

At the station, Dyson flips out and dislocates the arm of a suspect that he is questioning. His direct supervisor tells him that he needs to go and see the psychologist, because this is the fourth complaint that they have had about his actions in a week. I can understand someone being resistant to being told that they should seek help, but Dyson tells Hale that "therapy is bullshit, human bullshit".   This statement in and of itself would not be so problematic, if it did not feature in an episode that was full of disableism.  In a world in which people are shamed for seeking help, I really didn't appreciate what Dyson had to say about therapy.

At the bar, Bo is approached by Samir to join him and his wife Olivia for a threesome.  When she asks whether or not he has Olivia's permission, he says, "most certainly, my wife is a fury".  This is yet another new kind of fae that the audience is being introduced to.  Bo initially turns him down, but when Hale and Dyson walk in, she changes her mind and takes the two of them home for the night.

In the morning, Bo wakes in her own bed feeling great and Samir and Olivia are gone. Bo says that she is excited to have no strings attached sex.  I once again believe that this is a good thing.  With a succubus it would be easy to take the opportunity to slut shame, and I am ecstatic that the writers refuse to go down that road. As Kenzie complains that she is the only one with a hangover, Olivia knocks on her front door.  She rudely asks Kenzie to speak to her owner, and Kenzie is forced to tell her that she is her own person.

When Bo sees Olivia she asks her if she is there for more, and then says that this was a one time only deal.  This is yet another sign of Bo's sexual freedom.  Olivia assures her that she is not there for more sex, but wants to hire Bo to kill Samir, because he engaged in an affair with a human.  She produces love letters that the two sent to each other as evidence.  Olivia tells her, "I'd kill the girl myself but we White fae really are suppsoed to frown on harming humans or whatever, but you're unaffiliated. It would be so nice and simple for you to get rid of her."  When Bo and Kenzie refuse to help, Olivia decides to kill Samir on her own and storms out the door.

Kenzie and Bo both realize that they now have to save Samir's girlfriend Jenny from Olivia.  Using the address on one of the love letters that Kenzie stole from Olivia, Bo finds Jenny just as she is being attacked by Olivia.  Bo and Olivia begin to fight and Olivia tells her that she is going to make her go crazy and then kill her.  Olivia bends Bo backward onto the kitchen countertop and her eyes go red.  When Bo realizes that she cannot fight this or keep Olivia out of her mind, she grabs the toaster and places it in front of her face, causing Olivia to look into her own reflection.  Olivia releases Bo and huddles in a corner clearly in pain.

Bo returns to her home with Jenny.  When Kenzie suggests that maybe Samir was just using Jenny, and that is why he has been so distant, Bo decides to pay Samir a visit to see if he can call Olivia off.  When she gets to Olivia and Samhir's house, Olivia rushes by her accidental cutting her on the way out the door.  Bo keeps walking into the living room and finds Samhir dead without his head.

Bo returns to the house and tells Jenny that Samhir is dead.  When Jenny starts to cry, Kenzie declares that she is not fit to deal with emotional women, and so Bo tries to use her succubus powers to calm Jenny and sends her back to bed.

Back at Olivia and Samir's, Dyson and Hale investigate.  Dyson says that he got an annonymous tip regarding Samir's murder, but when he smells Bo from the blood she dropped when Olivia cut her, he goes to question her.   Bo tells him the whole story, and he sets out to find Olivia, but first he has to keep an appointment with department psychologist. 

Dyson sits in the chair and gives the psychologist the silent treatment.  She tells him that he is not the first person to treat her like this.  He then tells her that he figures last night she ate a frozen dinner, drank a bottle of wine, and played with her cats.  This of course is to infer that she is lonely and pathetic.  This leads me to believe that he does not see the psychologist as an equal, because he far too easily implied a trope that is meant to minimize women.  She answers back that he does not feel like he is in control, and that is why he feels he has to take out a big bat and take a swing at everyone.

Dyson and Hale then go to Olivia's sister's house.  The sisters try to keep them from entering, but Hale informs them that they are there on Ash business. They let them in, but complain that they cannot get Olivia to come out, to which Dyson responds that what they need is a siren.  Ah ha, so now we know what kind of fae that Hale is.  He whistles and Olivia follows him much like the children followed the pied piper.

At Bo's Jenny tries on Bo's clothing and says that she just wants to know what it would feel like to be as powerful as her.  Bo decides to lay the ground rules, and lets Jenny know that she cannot stay forever.  She says that she understands that as soon as it safe she has to go.  Bo tells Kenzie that she thinks that she has over done it with her mojo and that Jenny now has a thing for her. 

Dyson calls Bo and gets her to meet him at the fae hospital. Once there, it is clear that Olivia is delusional.  She is strapped to a bed and Lauren is trying to help her. Ash tells Bo that she was wrong to side with a human over a fae.  Ash is also disgusted that Olivia chose to kill her husband because she is a White fae. Olivia swears she did not kill her husband and summarily dies.  Okay, Olivia has gone so crazy that she dies?  Really?  I am not cool with that.

If that were not enough, Dyson discovers that Jenny has been stalking Samir.  He did sleep with her one time, but when he made it clear that their relationship would go no further, she became obsessed with him.  This of course included sending him love letters. Bo rushes home to find that Jenny has kidnapped Kenzie in a jealous rage.

When Bo arrives she sees that Kenzie is tied to a chair, and so she immediately professes her love for Jenny.  Jenny tells Bo that many people have claimed to love her in the past, but that they all left her.  Jenny opens a cupboard to reveal several skulls and then places Samhir's next to them.  When Jenny tells Bo that she intends to blow them up, Bo begs to die in Jenny's arms as a way to get close to her, but before she can reach Jenny, Olivia's two sister burst in intent on killing both Jenny and Bo.  A struggle ensuses during which Kenzie is able to free herself.  The moment Kenzie gets free, she and Bo rush out of the building only to have it explode shortly after killing Olivia's two sisters as well as Jenny.

Okay, the violent mentally ill person has been so overplayed in the media.  Yes, it is true that there have been some who have been known to stalk people they get obsessed with, but most people who are neurologically atypical are far more likely to be a danger to themselves than they are to others. Not only was Jenny violent, she was a mass murderer.  To highlight that mental disability is some kind of punishment, Ash said that this is what Olivia deserved for attempting to kill a human and for killing her husband. Even the idea of a fury being able to make someone suddenly become neurologically atypical, was loaded with able bodied privielge.  Disability is not something that is contagious or that can just be given to people in a fit of rage. This combined with Dyson's feelings about getting help really felt extremely disableist.   I think that this episode should have been called one step forward, three steps back because the fail went a long way to decrease the pleasure I felt in previous episodes.