User blog:Adelina Le Morte March/True Grit Merlin style (my opinon on "The Disir")

Okay, before I begin, I should probably confess I was not really able to focus very well on the episode when I was watching it. The stupid video player on the site I was watching it on stopped literally every two/three minutes to play poltical commerials and even more frequently to buffer, then it would start/stop/start from random points in the video, so keeping what was happening all in order in my mind wasn't easy. Not to mention, on top of all that, my parents were watching True Grit in the other room on the surround sound and even on full blast my sony headphones were useless at blocking it out completely, so through at least part of the episode it looked/sounded like when Merlin opened his mouth to say something (which, in this episode, wasn't as frequent as one would think, as he was scared/upset/sullen for most of it, far as I could tell...) Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross's voices came out.

That said, I think a large part of the episode's problem was that the title characters The Disir, were not that good. As characters they struck me as poorly devoloped, uninteresting, and a touch random. Somehow, the Cailleach, at least made some sense in the plot of The Darkest Hour part one (another episode I seriously need to re-watch, because it too did it's fair share of annoying pausing and buffering the one time I got to see it, though not quite as bad as this one; I'm SO glad it's been announced that season four will be out jan fifteenth here in the US!). The Disir, not so much. First off, all their gibberish about the tripe goddess had me going "Huh?" Is it just me or has the triple goddess only been mentioned once or twice before this? The only one that immedately comes to mind is Morgana being a priestess of hers; it was mentioned in passing. And out of nowhere she's got, not only a "last Priestess" but three random annoying women who wear hoods and do her bidding. Okay. I'm willing to accept it, it doesn't NOT make sense, sort of... I'll play along. But they were so BORING. I'm not saying I wanted them to be like the three funny fates from Disney's Hercules ("indoor plumbing, it's gonna be big..." LOL), but a little ANYTHING to show they have a personailty (even if they all had the SAME one, it would be cool with me), couldn't have hurt...

I didn't mind their servant though, the one who gave Arthur the judgement coin thingie; I almost liked him, he was interesting; he just had so little time before he died that it's a moot point.

Also, did anyone else think Colin's acting, while still brilliant, as usual, was a bit, um, held back in this episode? It kinda reminded me of Amanda Bynes in Sidney White. Great movie, very funny, and she was great in it too, but it seemed like the director or somebody told her to dial back her usual acting style back just a bit. I got almost the same feeling with Colin in this episode. He was great, but something was off. I get that it was a serious episode, so I wasn't expecting him to go around making his usual "dollop-head" and "clodpole" cracks or whatever, but he did seem like he was forcibly holding back Merlin's personality a little bit just to let out the sullen/depressed mood more strongly for the sake of the plot. Or maybe it's just because I couldn't focus on his acting with Mattie Ross's voice lopping over his every time someone on True Grit got shot, I dunno.

He was amazing though, at the end scene, and in the part where there were tears in his eyes when he said there was no place for magic in Camelot (How did Arthur MISS that his servant was on the verge of bursting into tears? That's one of the biggest clues he's had to Merlin's secret so far, in my opinon. He's not the same emotional young boy who showed up in season 1 and cried at the drop of a hat; something was CLEARLY upseting him; he hasn't looked that upset since season 2, with his father and Freya dying, it was just more controled this time is all, which shows character growth...)

Mordred was actually really likable, except that I feel the storyline isn't showing how he went from the scared little kid in seasons 1 and 2, to the guy who stabbed Morgana in the back in Arthur's Bane, to the laughing/playful sweet little knight in training in this episode. Also, I secretly suspect part of the reason Merlin's character was darker, less fun, in this episode, was to make Mordred look slightly better by comparison. Shows/movies do that all the time, and get away with it, if it works. Except for in poorly written films like Twilight where it backfires (we all know Jesscia only was there to make Bella look complex; there's a great film review by DJ something or other on youtube that proves this, if anyone doubts/disagrees with this).

I didn't care too much for the bit at the end where Arthur lifts up Mordred, just because he was acting like he was his son or something, more than his friend. And in this verison Mordred is not his kid. If they were going for that route, family show or not, they should have just bitten the bullet and made him the son of Morgana and Arthur. But I can accept that he was just really happy that his young knight wasn't dead after all. And I LOVED the bit of Merlin watching them, saying that Mordred's living was his judgement. Maybe not quite as epic as "Good Luck Mordred," at the end of The Beginning of the End, but still pretty jarring in an exciting way! Still chill-giving.

Honestly, it wasn't a BAD episode, not as good as it could have been, lackluster, but not bad. Probably would have been better if Julian Jones or even Howard Overman (I haven't been impressed with his latest episodes, but if I am remembering correctly he was responsible for The Beginning of the End, and so would have a better grip on such a Mordred-centric episode than the dude who if I'm not mistaken has only written The Hunter's Heart, great as it was still being a very different kind of story from the Disir) had written it.

I probably just need to see it again, without true grit and constant buffering and poltical commerials. Maybe when it comes to dvd here 2014... Sigh.