Review Lost Girl Season Two, Episode Seventeen: The Girl Who Fae'd with Fire

 

I was completely thrown for a loop with this episode.  Finally, finally we have some back story involving Hale.  

The clan leaders are slowly being killed off.  It begins when Marisol is immolated in her office and Dyson and Hale show up to investigate.  Hale has to immediately recuse himself because he is the heir to clan Somora, a rival clan.  This leaves him time to talk Kenzi about his issues with Dyson and to convince her to be his pretend girlfriend at the once century summit.  Kenzi says no, until Hale pulls out a list of all of the things that Hale has done for her. Can I just pause to say that the tendency to refer to friendship between men as bromance is annoying.

Bo talks to the Ash and he wants her to partner with Dyson to figure out what is going on.  He tells her that the timing of these attacks is critical.  The Ash is hoping that she can gain their support to help fight off the Garouder. 

When Kenzi meets Hale's family it is clear that they are not pleased to see Kenzi.  Val even refers to Hale as a human hugger, and Kenzi as a cheap, ill bred mortal. They see Hale's involvement with Kenzi as a stain upon their family, and for his father, yet another thing to deal with from the disappointing son, who turned out to be a siren. It is clear that Hale's father sees being a siren as effeminate.

Santiago is clearly charmed by Bo and is quick to blame Dabner for the death of Marisol. As they discuss who may be the guilty parties, Val has her hand on Dyson's leg under the table.  When Mr.Santiago makes a toast, Val tells the maid to "wash the silverware the human uses at least twice."  When Hale attempts to correct his sister, she changes her instructions and tells the maid to "just pitch it".

At this point, Kenzi cannot take it anymore and begins to storm out of the estate.  Hale stops her and tries to calm her down, but Kenzi feels used by Hale.  Alright, there is definitely some class issues going on, as Kenzi is poor, and Hale's family is rich, but I think that the attempt to round this down to bigoted fae people hating humans simply does not work -- especially considering the treatment of race in Lost Girl.  

As much as Lost Girl hates to label things, there was a race dynamic in this setting that made me uncomfortable. It played too neatly into the whole, but Black people are bigoted too defense, that is often engaged in by Whiteness to excuse its behaviour. Because we are talking about the fae, as viewers we are supposed to suspend belief and take a leap of faith and trust that isms don't apply to the fae world.  I think I could have taken this leap, had the writers not waited until a full season and half to give Hale some backstory. The writers may feel that their work is free of racist influences, but that is an impossibility, because anything produced in a White supremacist state is infused with race. Making race invisible, and then having people of colour act as tokens repeatedly, is a sign of race, or more specifically racism in action.  When this is added to a scene in which a Black family hates Kenzi based solely on her identity, it is a complete reversal of identity politics. In many ways, the behaviour of Hale's family absolutely negated their presence on the show. 

Lost Girl Season One, Episode Ten: The Mourning After

A young woman meets a man and decides to take him home. Once there they have sex, but when she awakes he is gone.  She runs herself a bath and then sits and writes words like whore, slut, skank repeatedly over the wall, before grabbing a blow dryer and bringing it with her into the tub, thus committing suicide.

Rather than doing a straight up blow by blow of this episode, I thought that we would talk about sexism and patriarchy, which were essentially the themes.  Let's begin with consent. Lauren and Bo slept together finally, but unfortunately it was at the behest of The Ashe. For Bo, this is sex by deception and absolutely negates her right to consent to sexual activity.  Lauren countered by suggesting that since they would have eventually slept together anyway that consent is a mute point.  This is one case in which Bo is absolutely right.  This was sex by deception and some may even go as far as to rape by deception because Bo most certainly would not have consented had she known that Lauren was there at the behest of The Ashe.

Albaster cause massive guilt over any kind of sexual behaviour, leading to shame spirals, eating disorders, and suicide.  They largely target women. According to Saskia, they are the exact opposite of succubi who feed off sexual pleasure. Both succubi and inccubi are capable of feeding off of the opposite sex, as well as the same sex, and therefore they the alabster are not the polar opposite of them. What they are is a paranormal group that is misogynistic to its core. For them to be the opposite of Succbi and Inccubi, they would have to feed off of men and women equally.  Of course this follows the whole he's a stud, she's a slut routine we have going in the real world.  As much as we are supposedly post feminist and liberal, it is commonplace to slut shame women for their sexual behaviour, while men are congratulated.

After Bo's first attempt to feed off of Bertram fails, he says to her, "You see when I am done with you, you're going to take a little nap and you're going to wake up knowing what a dirty worthless slattern you really are and know you don't deserve to live."  About his previous victims Betram says, "None of those bitches were innocent. Every single one of them gave into desires of the flesh at one point in time." His language and behaviour absolutely are reflective and oppression and violence women face everyday.