Resisting Everything but Temptation

Two years, wow. I remember when this first started, and I was sure I was going to watch every one. How hard can one episode a week be, right? Optimism my old nemesis, we meet again.

Episode commentary typed up in a hurry:
Peter Wingfield is glorious and believable as Methos as always. Everything about Methos is pitch perfect here, including his mistakes. He's just as tired as Duncan of all this killing, but he knows that he doesn't have a choice, really, where Duncan does. Methos has opted out of fighting as much as possible, but while his friends are still waging war he gets pulled in will he or nil he.

Duncan's relationships with Amanda and Methos say interesting things about his moral values. He seems to be consistently AOK with crimes against property, and so views Amanda's unrepentant theft much less seriously than Methos' ancient rapine. This bugged me, but this episode provides a good reason - Duncan's personally suffered a lot more from soldiers looting and pillaging than direct property theft. He could well be imagining Methos as similar to the people who ravaged his homeland, or slaughtered his American-Indian tribe.

He also doesn't hold Amanda's betrayals against her. Is this something he had to get over pre-series, or did he never view her betrayals as seriously as Methos'? Duncan is so allergic to anything that's not complete and total disclosure (except for all the things he fails to bring up to women that they might find important or interesting - Duncan's not nearly as modern or as good a friend as he likes to think) that Amanda's openness could be the basic reason. It still feels like wacky priorities to me, but I guess when you live that long predictibility becomes a virtue in and of itself.

Oh, the flashback. Leaders of armies talking about battles outside while a kid runs around with flag? I...seriously doubt that scene is in any way realistic. Oh Highlander, part of your charm is the completely uneven historical research.

Duncan's baffled expression and headshake during 'I won't run' is perfect. He's so surprised that this random guy expects him to run. He's spent the past few years fighting nigh-weekly battles, why on earth should he run from one more, and from someone who needed Amanda to track him down at that? It's a big moment for his challenger, but just another Tuesday for him. 404 error: Idea not found is written all over his face. And at the end of the episode he neatly encapsulates his essential charm and flaw - Duncan relies on the understanding of people he learned as a kid. It mostly works because the fundamental dominant culture hasn't shifted all that much, but the two Immortals who have lived through massive culture shifts are clearly not as impressed with his reasoning.

Poor Amanda. She totally overreacts to Duncan's moral quandry, but at the same time I can sympathize - Duncan's growing his ability to be nuanced, but it's pretty slow, and I can see how a surprise threat to one of the few sources of stability she keeps around is enough to throw her into an emotional place. She's not exactly starting from an even keel or possessed of much self-restraint to begin with. Methos should have known better than to believe her, but given his current relationship with Duncan, and possibly his latent deathwish, I can see why he'd get confused. And by the end of the episode we see how Amanda's grown and changed over the course of her relationship with Duncan, how she can articulate and understand moral concerns at a fundamental level that she didn't seem to when the show began. It's not Duncan's morality, but it's her's.

The swordfighting is still clearly fake stagefighting, but at least it's energetic, and everyone knows what they're doing! Hurray!

I really wonder if there's some kind of predictable way to tell how long Immortals take to heal from fatal wounds, because Duncan was out for a surprisingly short amount of time. Unless Methos used a quick-metabolizing tranquilizer of some sort?

I love Sean Burns os much. He's the rarest Immortal of all, one who's moved past his own grief and pain to see other people as other people. Does anyone have any good fic recs for him?