Saturday, February 13, 2016

Lost Girl, Season 4, Episode 14: Follow the Yellow Trick Road




This episode is pretty much split in two

In the real world we have some emotional reactions to the horror of Trick’s death. Bo is comatose. Lauren is reeling and feeling helpless that all her medical skill can’t help. Tamsin is in vast denial and conflict over her pregnancy while Dyson is torn apart with grief and guilt while Vex and Mark are… there, I guess.

This has some decent well acted emotional drama.

And then we have Bo’s dream world – the Yellow (or red) Brick road. With Bo playing porno-Dorothy (seriously, that dress screams porn parody) looking for the “Maestro” stand in for the wizard. Along the way we have Dyson the cowardly werewolf (who does make an excellent crack at the name “Dyson”), Lauren the stoner without a brain and Tamsin the estate agent without a heart

Ok, normally this kind of thing amuses me because a) a bit of silly is nice and b) some of these actors are great fun playing different roles. Kenzi (who is back!) is also really good at playing scary long sleeved monster lady.

It’s just… this is Trick’s commemoration, his funeral, his death and I don’t think silly (and lots of Bo learning moments) is really the way to go to mark this. Such a major character for so long – he deserved more than this.

Anyway the gang manages to bring Bo back with some kind of evil fae moth and everyone is reunited. But not before we get some cryptic dream messages – about the evil horse thing they’ve mentioned in passing for a long time that we thought was a symbol for Hades. They remind us about the magical horseshoe Bo got but which everyone has forgotten for a while and something about how the dark evil monster can come to the light

Despite the obvious conclusion, I don’t think this means Hades is going to be redeemed.

Afterwards we have what the whole episode should have been – a beautiful, touching memorial reading Trick’s will and Trick leaving magical, meaningful items to everyone else. This quiet, emotional ceremony is very much what this episode needed.

This episode also tries to pull up some of Vex’s storylines – the idea that he was the two-faced man who didn’t know what he wanted, try to stagger both courts (like Bo?) and has now finally found some acceptance though he has a huge amount of guilt and sadness over what he’s done in the past… which would be nice except we’ve never really seen any of that developed. He’s been used repeatedly as a comic relief character with occasional bits of storylines but no real following that up (the latest being Vex’s sudden-on-then-not desire for Mark). This belated attempt for humanisation was basically because Hades appeared to slit his throat to “send a message” (I’m disappointed that the show’s only recurring male bisexual character died before that can be developed, especially since there’s been one-off depictions that have been less than ideal.)


What, dead Trick wasn’t enough?