Reign 2x20 Fugitive

 

After weeks of having to watch Mary flip-flop between „I love you and we should elope together” and „I love you but we can’t be be together” and then Conde basically saying screw all that, I’m just gonna marry your mortal enemy instead, this week’s episode of Reign was delightfully light on the Mary-Conde-Francis love triangle/relationship drama, so much so that I could probably sum up that part of the episode in only a couple of sentences. In fact, that is exactly what I’m planning to do, and then devote the rest of this review to Mary’s ladies and their respective love lives, because let’s face it, every single one of those is a million times more interesting than what Mary’s storyline has been reduced to in the second half of the season.

Reign 2x19 Abandoned

 

I know I gave Reign a lot of shit last week because of its handling of various relationships and just generally taking the show into the wrong direction, and I would love to say that things got better this week... but sadly, it’s still very much about Mary and Conde being super into each other, Francis being angsty about it, and Narcisse sleeping with Catherine. On the bright side, there was a bit of Narcisse/Lola too and even a tiny hint of Kenna/Renaude, so that was enough to see me off until next week. And if you think that I shouldn’t be so focused on the relationship stuff and should instead concentrate on the other aspects of the show, like the political situation, well believe me I would be the happiest if I could but as of right now these two are so intertwined that I’m literally unable to separate them. After all, these are kings and queens amd princes we’re talking about, and their relationships with each other are very much the driving force behind most of the political games the writers have decided to explore. So I will probably keep whining about the badly done relationships until they miraculously sort themselves out, or introduce a bigger plot that is much more fun to write about. Until that happens, bear with me please.

Reign 2x18 Reversal of Fortune

I can’t think of another show in recent years that has been such a rollercoaster ride in regards to my attitude towards it than Reign. When it started, I was mildy interested in it. As an English major and self-proclaimed general history nerd, a show about the life of Mary, Queen of Scots was right up my alley. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself bored with the whole love triangle angle of the show which was pretty hard to care about when you already knew who Mary was going to end up with anyway... Remember, this was back when I still thought this series was only going to be a little bit historically inaccurate, just enough to make for better drama, but devoid of any major changes to historical facts. Well, we all know how that turned out, but the point is, I enjoyed season one and was happy when the show got renewed, but I never particularly looked forward to any of the episodes, and it wasn’t unusual for me to let them stack up when I had better things to do, and only catch up three or four weeks later. That all changed, however, with the introduction of the brilliant character of Lord Narcisse, who I only paid attention to in the beginning because he is played by Craig Parker and you simply can’t NOT pay attention to Craig Parker, but I never thought I would ever care much about the character itself, and I expected him to be in only a couple of episodes anyway... but then. BUT THEN. That scene in the crypt with Lady Lola changed everything, I completely fell in love with not only the character but the pairing too, and from then on I religiously waited for each new episode just to see those two interact for ten seconds. What a wonderful few months that was.

Unfortunately, after the midseason finale things went downhill very quickly, and the show completely regressed into what was always my least favourite thing about it: relationship drama after relationship drama, love triangles all over the place, and what bothered me the most was that they seemed to have completely forgotten about the wonderful blossoming relationship between Lola and Narcisse. If I’m counting things right, in the last eight episode they only had one important scene together, which actually could have been HUGE for them, except that it was never brought up ever again, as if it never happened. Now, you might think that it’s not fair of me to critize the show for not focusing on my ship, after all, there must be other, more imporant things to deal with, right? Well, if that was the case I wouldn’t be angry at all. I’m all for slow-burn relationships and God knows it wouldn’t make any sense for this particular pairing to just go from acquintances to lovers overnight... but the thing is, what we have instead ranges from boring to infuriating to completely nonsensical, and anyway, I’m more upset about the wasting of a perfectly good storyline than about my ship heading nowhere. Because believe me, I know the difference between „this couple has no chance of ever happening and it’s just the fans who read too much into it” and „this couple is written in a way that suggests that they’ll eventually get together”, and Lola/Narcisse was definitely, 100% percent in the second category... except that somewhere along the line the writers either changed their mind or just simply forgot about it. In any case, the last few months I found myself being back in my season 1 attitude: I watch the show every week but I don’t expect wonders. Which is sad, really... so much wasted potential, so many characters that deserve better.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all this is that you’ll understand how it could happen that I apparently fell asleep while watching the previous episode, because honest to God when I was watching the „previously on” segment this week, I didn’t remember any of that happening, and they were pretty important stuff too. Mary sleeping with Condé, Bash getting stabbed, Francis collapsing... important stuff. The only thing that I seemed to remember was Narcisse and Catherine kissing and probably sleeping together, which I sometimes randomly remembered all through the week but it seemed so improbable that I actually had to check the episode to see if it really happened or if I just dreamt it. But no, it did happen, and now you probably see what I meant when I said that everything BUT Lola/Narcisse seems to be happening on this show. Anyway, enough about my frustration, let’s see what this week’s episode had to offer.