Merlin 4x03 - The Wicked Day

[trude]

* OK, now I'm going to be the fan who has wished Uther dead for the past two years and, when he finally does die, whines that it was to early.

[Is that fan.]

* Seriously, I do wonder if Uther dying this early in the series (I was pretty sure he wouldn't survive to the finale) was an artistic choice of the showrunners, or if they did it to accommodate ASH's schedule.

* Odin is still around and still want's to kill Arthur! Continuity yay!

* Dragoon manages to be a both hilarius and touching character in his own right here, but I'm not sure it would be wise to use him again.

* If Arthur is ready to be king, but still goes to ridiculous and dangerous lengths to avoid becoming king, is this, in fact, a sign that he's not yet ready to become king? I guess it's a moot point now, but I do think that Arthur's wish to keep Uther alive was presented as a mistake, period.

* I DO like that they actually found a way to let the bad guys kill Uther without having Merlin look like a hypocrite.

* Still, I also wonder if they haven't written themselves in a corner with Arthur's re-newed hatred of magic. Will he start a new purge, or at least be too quick to judge innocents? And if this happens, will Gwen and the knight support him, and how will this make them look? Or is this just a contrivance to give Merlin reason to "keep the magic secret" a little longer, and Arthur will only cause damage to magic users that actually are evil and dangerous?

* I get that this was Merlin-Arthur, Colin-Bradley showcase (and it was a good one), but Gaius lack of emotional investment in Uther's death felt off, even if I do get that he had written off Uther as a good ruler during S2/3 and Uther as any kind of ruler during the hiatus.

* As for Gwen...I wish she could have had more scenes (especially with Arthur), but she does have good reasons to hate Uther, and him dying will both enable the better future for Camelot that she has wished for since S1 AND give her a chance to get some personal happiness, but telling a grieving Arthur "you're father sucked, let's get married" would be wrong in so many ways, so I can't see her acting in any other way that she did. And yet, their inability to talk about Uther and their very different feeling for him, is a problem which could lead to a permanent flaw in their relationship.

* More Gwen: her facial expressions during the banquet-scene were PRICELESS.

* Agravaine & Morgana and Agravaine vs. Gwen are seriously starting to interest me and Evil Goth Morgana continues to be my favorite incarnation of the character so far. She is powerful enough to carry out evil plots that actually work now! And I think part of her genuinely grieved Uther. It doesn't make her symphatetic, but it's interesting.



Something completely different:
Abigail Nussbaum on Northanger Abbey, The Mysteries of Udolpho, novels and "sisterhood". I found her observations at the end interesting (though I suspect I enjoy Northanger Abbey much more than she does).