Here’s the thing,Merlin fans and Merthur shippers. I like this show. And I’ve always loved Arthurian stories. But I’ve noticed that Merlin, the show, just does not change. We’re five seasons in and where are we? Merlin is still Arthur’s servant—just like in Season One. Magic is viewed as evil—just like in Season One. There’s a villain masquerading as a good guy—just like in Seasons One, Two, Three, Three and a Half, Three and Three Quarters, Three and Fifteen Sixteenths, Four, Five, Five Again, and now Five Once More. No one knows Merlin has magic except Gaius. Heck, even Merlin’s ascot doesn’t change. The show has simply stayed static since its first episode, really.
The only big change evidenced in the entire series—the death of Uther and Arthur ascending to the throne—really doesn’t demonstrate much change at all. Before Uther died, Arthur rode out weekly on various missions fighting mystical beasts, evil wizards, and other assorted forms of medieval naughtiness. After Uther’s death, Arthur rides out weekly on various missions fighting mystical beasts, evil wizards, and other assorted forms of medieval naughtiness. He is married to Guinevere but—as many of you point out in your comments (well, as the three of you who comment point out—and bless the commenters, may I just say!)—he still spends most of his time in the woods with Merlin. Not kissing.
See? Nothing changes.
Take this week’s episode, for example. Typical Merlin fare. Our scene opens with Elyan and Guinevere visiting the grave of their father (and, by the way, he’s a knight, she’s the bloody queen—couldn’t they afford a nicer grave memorial than a pile of rocks? Anyone walking by might be forced to conclude, “Here lies Pebbly Rock Stoneypants, the Third.”) They reminisce, Guinevere tells her little brother that she is proud of the man he has become, blah blah blah.
The queen and her brother, accompanied by other knights, then make their way back to the castle. Banter ensues. Elyan is teased because he has a crush on someone (who? The only woman we ever see in Camelot is Guinevere. And if it is his sister, well, I guess we could then assume that Elyan is from the southern portion of Camelot.)
Guinevere bemoans the fact that “Arthur never tells me anything” (because he is too busy running around the woods with Merlin.) Arthur did tell her, however, who Gwaine is in love with: “himself.”
It’s a nice scene, it’s sweet and mildly comedic and incredibly familiar. And it’s familiar because we have seen it all before. It’s been something like three years since Arthur took the throne and nothing has changed. Let’s face facts, Merlin fans: this show has become as regular as an all-fiber diet. It’s not déjà vu; it’s déjà vuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvu.
Anyway, enough soapbox (because, as this is the Dark Ages, I am pretty sure soap has not been invented yet.) As our merry group makes it way through the woods, guess who is watching them with evil intent: well, yes, Morgana. Who else would it be? Morgana usesher magic to summon a light fog. Ooh, there’s a trick, summoning fog in England. Perhaps next she’ll make it rain, or make the people around her all have bad teeth, or make the national cuisine something less than delectable.
Anyway, snakes appear out of the mist and frighten the knights and the horses. Where’s St. Patrick when you need him? Elyan tells Guinevere to run away while Leon and Percival end up getting bit on the arse (and sadly, not by each other.) Guinevere rides off—and straight into the arms of Morgana.
Now look, I realize a horse is no Humvee, but why not just keep going and run Morgana over? I imagine getting stomped by a horse would not feel very comfortable. Heck, I go “oof!” every time my pug runs over my stomach when I am lying on the floor, and he only weighs twenty pounds. That horse could do some serious damage.
But no, formerly kick-butt Guinevere has been replaced this week by demure and fearful Guinevere, and so Morgana has no trouble subduing her. Elyan gets Leon and Percival back to Gaius, who does his usual “ER” routine on them. Seriously, I swear at some point I am going to see Dr. Carrie Weaver come hobbling up behind Gaius while somewhere, in the background, Dr. Greene piteously bemoans whatever calamitous trouble he is having that week and the fact that he is more prematurely bald than a newborn baby. (I’d make a crack about Dr. Ross, but neither Merlin nor this recap can afford George Clooney’s appearance fee.) Gaius saves everyone (again) but wonders why it was so easy, since clearly dark magic was involved in all this (again.)
Of course, only upon returning to Camelot does Elyan realize he has lost his sister in the woods. Arthur gets all sulky and everyone decides to go chasing after the missing queen in the morning. In the woods, Guinevere wakes up after spending the night asleep under Morgana’s spell (umm, was I the only one seriously creeped out by the fact that Morgana pretty much spent the night watching Guinevere sleep? )
Morgana ties Guinevere’s hands together and drags her through the woods. Soon they arrive at a desert. What, you’ve never heard of the English desert? It’s located somewhere south of the frozen wasteland in the first episodes of the season, east of the rocky ravines from the fourth episode of the season, and west of Starbucks.
In the middle of this desert sits a “tower so dark it could swallow the sun.” And so the ancients of Camelot named it the Dark Tower. Real imaginative bunch, those ancients of Camelot. This is also the group that gave us White Castle, orange juice, and plain-flavored popsicles (think about it for a minute…) What is perhaps most mysterious about the tower is that it took Morgana about a couple hours to get there while dragging Guinevere along on foot, while it takes Arthur and his knights four days to find it riding horses. Well, maybe it’s true what they say about men getting lost, and perhaps the boys just didn’t stop and ask for directions!
Morgana locks Guinevere at the top of the tower. The room is filled with roots dangling from the ceiling and dripping sticky black tar onto Guinevere. She sees visions of people—including her brother, Merlin, and Arthur—and hears the most ghastly shrieks rending the air. Those aren’t ghosts, though; that’s just Victoria Azarenka playing a tennis match next door. Morgana occasionally comes to visit Guinevere, usually to sneer and laugh—at least at first.
Meanwhile, as Arthur and his knights frantically search for Guinevere in the woods, Leon wakes up screaming from a terrible dream. Seems he had that same dream about showing up for the jousting tournament without his pants on again. No, wait, he has dreamed about a horrid place, void of life and happiness and full of misery and despair. Neat, Leon is dreaming about a Wal-Mart! No, no, it’s the Dark Tower, and Percival has had the same dream.
Arthur sulks and broods. Merlin says that Morgana planted these visions in Leon and Percival’s minds when the snakes bit them (seriously—couldn’t she have just left them a bloody map? A trail of breadcrumbs? An engraved invitation?) Gwaine says that he was dreaming about eating a piece of cheese that tastes like apple pie, and if everyone is done screaming and sounding wimpy, he’d like to go back to having that dream some more. Oh, Gwaine, you’re such a rapscallion. Don’t ever change.
The boys wander around the woods, lost and alone, and no one even thinks to break into a song from a Sondheim musical (this is when having a Sir Prancelot would come in handy.) They eventually discover they are going in circles and Arthur grows even more broody and sulky. Hey, Arthur, I think taking your shirt off might make you feel better…well, it would make me feel better, that’s for sure! Merlin gives a pep talk about how they will totally find Guinevere and everyone needs to keep their chins up. Seriously, if that is the English idea of a pep talk I can see why their World Cup record has been so boffo of late. (Ooh, a soccer joke—not bad for a Yank!)
Meanwhile, back at the (name not pinched from Stephen King) Dark Tower, Morgana suddenly turns all “fakey nice” and invites Guinevere for some take-out Chinese and an evening of girl-gab and braiding one another’s hair. Guinevere is suspicious and tells Morgana, “You’ll never break me,” which means, of course, she totally will.
Morgana tells Guinevere that she is the only person Guinevere can really trust and those 1,635 times she tried to kill her were just accidents. Guinevere ends up back in her tower room and gets more goop dripped all over her. Maybe it’s just me, but if I was locked in a scary room with gross sticks tethered to the ceiling and dripping yucky stuff on me, I would probably take the radical action of taking the sticks down. Seriously, where did this passive-waif-damsel-in-distress Guinevere come from? I counted six different occasions where Guinevere could have easily kicked some mad sorceress bootay. But no, all we get is Morgana trying to play nice while attempting to convert Guinevere to the Dark Side of the Force.
Oh, goodness gracious, really? Morgana has irrationally hated Guinevere for, like, ever, and now we’re supposed to believe she really secretly liked her but wishes they had more evil things in common? Guinevere gives a big speech about how she’ll never turn to the Dark Side, concluding it by saying, “You’ve lost, your highness. You’ll never turn me. I’ll die a Jedi, like my father did before me. Now unhand that ewok and let’s tango.” Well, it went something like that, which of course means she’ll go turncoat before the show is done.
Meanwhile, Arthur and company are still lost and wandering around the woods (maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on them: after all, Moses spent forty years wandering the desert lost; these guys have only been looking four days.) Merlin gives another “rah-rah” speech and England is doomed to lose the World Cup through at least 2062. But that night he sees an invisible presence traipsing through the forest and follows it. The presence turns out to be Queen Mab, a fairy who, for some reason, reminded me of Patsy from Ab Fab. Seriously, all she needed was a fairy-sized cocktail shaker.
Anyway, Mab prattles on and on in that fantasy pseudo-cryptic gobbledygook that all magical creatures speak in though, finally, when Merlin tells to cut out the cryptic crap, she glares at Merlin and tells him to use his magic to find his way through the forest. Then she says that one of the group “will not return” from their trip. It so better not be Percival. That’s all I have to say about that.
Finally using his magic (seriously, couldn’t he have done this about 5 minutes into the episode?), Merlin gets on the track of the Dark Tower with the focus and intensity of a monkey playing Tetris (before you scoff, have you ever seen a monkey playing Tetris? They’re pretty darned focused.) Actually, Merlin playing the bloodhound like that, with aristocratic men on horseback, was just so darned British. I imagined that, after they found the fox, they’d take tea and crumpets at the gazebo.
Instead, the group finally finds the desert that holds the Tower and make their way across. Mab had warned Merlin that other dangers awaited the group if they made it out of the forest, and she was right—Merlin falls into a ditch. Yup. A ditch. Well, hey, to make it sound spooky, let’s say Merlin fell into the Ditch of Mild Despair. Whatever. He tumbles and falls and that’s about it. I guess those faux-fur trimmed brown leather boots he always sports weren’t made for walking after all.
Percival stops because he has a pebble in his shoe and all I can think of is that if you kill off my big muscle hunk knight with a rock in his shoe I will never speak to any of the Merlin writers again. Not that I speak much to them now, but it could happen. But no, it just seems Percival has a blister and seriously, why did we need to see his big ugly toe? If Percival feels the need to stop and suddenly remove an article of clothing why not make it his shirt, pants, or any combination of the two?
The knights finally—with about six minutes left in the show—make it to the Tower. Talk about delayed anticipation. Talk about overkill on the foreplay. Sorry, now I’m too tired for the big finale, and besides, I have a headache. Nonetheless, the group charges in and Elyan somehow ends up in front. The Tower is boobytrapped, Indiana Jones-style (crazy figures on the wall shooting out arrows from their mouths—what did they do, walk all the way to South America?) but Elyan manages make it through first. He finds Guinevere, who is being protected by an enchanted sword. Nertz to you, Elyan! This is what you get for wasting all that time practicing air guitar when you should have been working on your air sword. I, for one, am an expert at air sword, though when I do it most people just imagine I am having a seizure. Elyan defeats the sword but not before suffering a mortal wound. Guinevere is crushed and, as Mab said, one of them does not make it home alive.
Elyan is buried at sea—well, in a river, actually; I guess the king of Camelot can’t afford the sea—and in a nice homage to the Barcelona Olympics an archer shoots a fire arrow into Elyan’s funeral barge to set it on fire. (What if the person missed? And then missed again? Would some poor schmuck have had to wade into the river to bring Elyan’s dead body back so they could properly set it on fire? How crappy would that be—you’d get your shoes wet and have dead guy cooties on your hands. They don’t make enough Purel sanitizer in the world to make you feel clean and germ-free after that!)
Merlin is bitter Elyan had to do die (though he was probably relieved it wasn’t Percival—well, at least I was relieved!) Later, we see Arthur and Guinevere in bed (by the way, they sleep together with more clothes on than a pair of Amish honeymooners.) But Guinevere is not quite asleep. She sneaks off into the woods to meet … Morgana. So apparently Morgana did manage to sway Guinevere to the dark side of the force with her wicked magic and promise of ten percent discount on all items at the Dark Tower gift shop.
So now we have a traitor in the very walls of Camelot…. Wow, this is a neat plot twist this series has never explored before. Seriously, I am very excited … to see … how this all … ends up … playing out … zzzzz…. I kid, I kid, but Merlin, we have seen this all before, so let’s hope it does not get dragged out too long. Instead, let’s hope Merlin and Morgana have a big magic fu showdown, Arthur learns about Merlin having magic and accepts his best friend, and Percival and Sir Prancealot live happily ever after in their little pied de terre on Fire Island.
