HIGHLA-L Digest - 2 May 2004 to 4 May 2004 (#2004-84)
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Tue, 4 May 2004 22:00:03 -0400
There is one message totalling 274 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Season Three dvds: Take Back the Night
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Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 14:28:00 -0400
From: kageorge <kageorge@erols.com>
Subject: Season Three dvds: Take Back the Night
COMMENTARY: Don Paonessa, the Post Production Consultant tells us that the
episode was shot in Paris, and that Ken Gord cast a kid as Paolo, who looked
great and was a great young actor, but he was French, spoke broken English,
and you couldn't understand what he was saying. They had to bring in an
actor in Vancouver and re-voiced him with a woman who was great at sounding
like a 14-year-old boy.
F. Braun talked about choreographing battle scenes (as in the flashback in
this episode). Part of the danger is dealing with people fighting in
proximity to one another, with multiple fights going. The movement patterns
must ensure that "nobody walks into a weapon that is being prepared." The
windups to strike must be managed precisely so that nobody swings into
anyone else.
Ken Gord said that dealing with the flashbacks and managing the production
aspects of the episode were not a particular problem, and he thought the
casting and performances were all pretty good, but for some reason he'd not
been able to put his finger on, he didn't think the episode came together as
well as it should have.
OUTTAKES: Gillian tells us the episode ran way long, so a fight scene in
Cierdwyn's pub had to be dropped and the subsequent bedroom scene re-written
as a result. We see the original scenes, with Duncan sullen, drunk and
aggressive in her pub. He deliberately provokes a fight, and when he taunts
his opponent, saying he hits like a woman: "Come on, hit me like a man!"
Cierdwyn comes up behind him and knocks him out with a metal vase. Then in
her bedroom, Duncan wakes up in her bed, naked. "They're gettin' cleaned
before they walk off on their own. A body like that, ye should take better
care of it." He's obviously badly hung over, and when he gets a look at what
had knocked him out, asks what kind of coward would hit me with such a
thing. Ciedrwyn tells him she was the one who hit him, and that she wasn't
going to let him wreck her pub, "just so you can stop feeling guilty."
EPISODE: We meet Cierdwyn, a beautiful Immortal, almost 2,000 years old. She
is having dinner with her husband and they argue over a professional
opportunity for him that will require a move out of Paris, and Cierdwyn
doesn't want to move. "Some of us don't live forever," her husband says, a
little bitterly, and he leaves to go get the car so they can continue the
discussion at home.
Outside, we meet Paolo, a young pickpocket who, at his older brother's Mario
's insistence, turns over his pickings of the day to a bully, saying he
would do better the next day, "There'll be a crowd at the track." Cierdwyn's
husband comes along, and the gang demands his wallet. He resists a little,
they beat him up then shoot him just as Cierdwyn steps out of the
restaurant. She runs towards them, but they shoot her as well, all as Paolo
observes from a distance.
Then we're back at the motorcycle track (sigh), and Duncan and Maurice are
there watching Richie go 'round and 'round. Duncan expresses his concern
that Richie is "riding a little close to the edge," and asks if Richie would
push as hard as he does if he thought he could really get hurt. Richie gives
him a dirty look and walks away.
In the meantime, young Paolo deliberately runs into MacLeod, after which
Duncan realizes his pocket has been picked. He tracks the boy down, gets his
wallet back, then takes the boy's wallet as well, as a lesson. When he gets
back to his car, the boy jumps in, giving him a story about a sick sister
that Duncan obviously doesn't believe for a minute, but gives him a ride
back to the city anyway.
In the meantime, Cierdwyn is drawing ancient designs on her face, haunted by
the murder of her husband, and we get a flashback to her first death, in
England in 60 A.D. when she was a Celtic warrior defending her tribe from
the Romans. She leaves her apartment armed for battle, to track down her
husband's killers. She finds the guy who pulled the trigger in a warehouse
where Paolo and his brother live, and kills him.
Duncan feels an immortal as he drives up, and goes in search, with Paulo
(against instructions) following. Duncan finds the body, sees Paolo, who
runs away with Duncan going after him, when Duncan feels the Immortal again,
and he and Cierdwyn stalk each other, but they relax when they recognize
each other. "This is not your part of town," Duncan observes warily. "Are
you walking or hunting?"
"Hunting," she replies. "And you?"
"The same. I'm looking for a killer."
"So am I."
He tells her found the dead man and asks if it was her. She refuses to
answer, and Duncan demands, "Since when did a warrior become a murderer?"
She says it was the killer who was killed. "I call it justice, and so did
you, once."
He says there is no war, but she tells him they killed her husband and tells
Duncan to stay out of her way.
We get a flashback to Scotland in 1746, when Duncan took Prince Charlie to
Cierdwyn's pub after their terrible defeat at Culloden. He and Cierdwyn
greet each other with joy, and she helps them, dressing the Prince in woman'
s clothes to disguise him in his escape to France. Duncan asks to stay
behind to help the people in the countryside who were being killed
indescriminately by the English. He sets out to take vengeance on the
English as Cierdwyn yells after him that, "More blood does not make it
better!"
At the racetrack, Duncan tells Richie about Cierdwyn. Richie says the only
way to stop her is to kill her, and Duncan says he's going to see if Paolo
is working the crowd. "Mac," Richie says, "Are you looking for a way to stop
her, or a reason not to?"
"Either one works for me," Duncan answers, and again admonishes Richie to be
careful.
Duncan finds Paolo, who is frightened and says, "I saw you with the dead
woman." He doesn't think anyone can stop her, and Duncan questions him about
who else was involved in killing Cierdwyn's husband, and says he can stop
her. Eventually, he convinces Paolo to tell him the name of the bar where
they hang out.
Duncan goes there, and right after he arrives, Cierdwyn comes in. They
argue, with Duncan insisting that killing the rest of the gang isn't the
answer. "A head for a head and a body for a body since the beginning of
time. It's no different now," she replies.
We get the famous flashback to Duncan taking vengeance on the English
soldiers, killing all that he meets, obviously dying over and over in the
process. He ends up back at Cierdwyns, exhausted and covered in blood. "It
looks like you made the English pay," Cierdwyn tells him, "but I don't think
they were the only ones. We're warriors, MacLeod. We avenge our own. We kill
the killers. But there's a time to stop, when enough is enough. You know
that."
"Maybe it's too late. The things I've done," Duncan says softly. "I've
killed so many. Young. Old. With their wives and children watching. I've
become the thing I hate."
Back in the present, Cierdwyn and Duncan are sitting in front of the
fireplace in her apartment and they talk about the difficulties of being
with a mortal. She says that despite the problems, Stephen was sure they
could make it work. She watched him grow and change over the years into the
man she loved, and she asked Duncan if he had ever loved and trusted anyone
enough to tell them what he was.
"Once," he says. "She was killed over a few dollars and a car."
She asks if he thinks he will ever love again, and he smiles and says yes.
Cierdwyn asks what her name is, and he tells her about Anne, but says he
left because she saw him die. He asks Cierdwyn to let the rest of the gang
who participated in the killing go, that it would be her husband's memorial.
She nods jerkily at last, and finally breaks down, and Duncan holds her as
she weeps.
In the meantime, the remaining gang members have decided to go after
Cierdwyn before she gets them, but Paolo overhears and urges his brother not
to participate. Back at the racetrack, Richie and his nemesis, the evil
Boring Basil, are going around and around, making a lot of noise and revving
their engines, when Basil and Richie start bumping each other. Ultimately,
both go down, things explode, bodies fly and both of them are killed, Boring
Basil a little more permanently than Richie.
Richie arrives back at the barge, naked and wrapped in a sheet, saying he
figures having to make it across town from the morgue was some kind of
lesson. "One of them," Duncan says grimly as he compulsively rearranges
things on his shelves.
Richie says that while he was really angry with Basil, he didn't
intentionally try to kill him, and asks what it all means. In controlled
anger, Duncan tells Richie that it means he's dead in France, that he's dead
in Europe and that's he's going to have to disappear. "It means you're gonna
have to live with this for the rest of your life."
"Mac, did you ever screw up like this?" Richie asks.
"Sometimes."
Paolo comes to his door and tells Duncan about the gang going after
Cierdwyn.
It's now night, and the scene moves to Cierdwyn's apartment as the guys
sneak in. Duncan is there and knocks one of them out, and Cierdwyn takes on
Mario. She has her sword in hand, socks him and kicks the guy down the
stairs. In the meantime, Duncan takes the gun away from a third kid and
tells him he has a choice, "You either leave, or die." The guy wisely
chooses to leave.
In the meantime, Mario is on the floor, holding a gun on Cierdwyn as she
holds the sword. "Go ahead," she says. Do it!" The guy drops the gun in
fear, and Cierdwyn raises the sword to kill him just as Paolo comes him and
begs her not to. Duncan yells at her to stop and asks her to leave it to the
police, who we hear arriving. With a snarl of frustration, she walks away.
Later, after everyone is gone, Duncan asks her if she is going to be okay,
but she tells him she won't, not for a long time, that she won't forget him.
"But it was worth it. For the fifteen years we had together, I'll trade
fifteen years of pain. I'd trade a hundred!"
"But what about the price they pay?" Duncan asks. "No family. Living in
secrecy, waiting for the night you go out and never come back. Maybe we're
not supposed to be with them."
Cierdwyn tells him they're not children. They make their own decisions,
their own choices, and tells him that if he loves Anne, he shouldn't make
that choice for her.
TAG: Joe's bar. Anne walks in, there because Joe had asked her to come. Joe
is a little nervous, Anne says she's been working hard, keeping busy, trying
not to think about it (Duncan's death) too much. He pours her a drink and
when he tries to complement her, she urges him to tell her what he called
her about. He says there were things about MacLeod he couldn't tell her,
things he couldn't explain. "It's time for the explanation." He gives her a
ticket to Paris.
"I'm going to Paris?"
"I guess that depends."
"Depends on what?"
The phone rings, Joe picks it up and hands it to her. "It's for you."
She holds the phone to her ear. "Hello?" (Gasp!) "Duncan?!"
MY COMMENTS: Despite Ken Gord's reservations about the success of the
episode, and some serious plotholes (like why the police wouldn't have
figured out that Cierdwyn was the guy who killed the shooter) I liked it. I
really liked the character of Cierdwyn. It was great to see a real warrior
female Immortal, and this was one of the first episodes where we saw a
critically important aspect of Duncan's character demonstrated in the
flashbacks to Duncan's quest for vengeance after Culloden. Now we know that
going after Kern wasn't an aberration, a one-time event. As Cierdwyn said,
"We're warriors. We kill the killers." Except that eventually they become
killers themselves.
It did make me wonder when, exactly, that lesson was brought home to Duncan.
Certainly, he had changed by the time Tessa was killed, since he chose not
to take vengeance on the kid who shot her. Was it the cumulative effect of
time and events, plus Darius' teachings? Or did Coltec's magic do more than
just take away the hate and rage that had driven Duncan after his Sioux
tribe was slaughtered? Perhaps a combination of all of that? We've seen no
moment of epiphany, and we know Duncan's murderous rampage after Culloden
had haunted him most of his life, and that he felt a reckoning was probably
due.
I think, like most of life's hardest lessons, they are learned and
re-learned and learned again until eventually they take root. I recall that
there was a reply Duncan gave to the prostitute/friend of Tessa's. She asked
him how he got so wise, and he smiled and said something to the effect that,
like a rat in a maze, if you run into enough walls for a long enough time,
you eventually find the right path. That stuck with me because it summarizes
how I see Duncan's character. Whatever wisdom he has is mostly a result of
making mistakes again and again, and dealing with the consequences of them.
In that, he is just like the rest of us.
I thought Duncan's reaction to Richie's death was also interesting. He was
upset and angry, but didn't want to yell at Richie so he expended his energy
by fiddling with his bookshelves. When he tells Richie he's dead in France
and Europe and will have to disappear, I interpreted that he was upset that
Richie will be leaving, and won't be under his protection anymore, and that
Richie is making the same mistakes he has made himself ("This is something
you'll have to live with for the rest of your life.") It is heartbreaking
and maddening to see a child make really bad mistakes that truly screw up
their lives, especially when Duncan saw it coming and tried to head it off
by gently reminding Richie of who he was and asking him to be careful, but
of course he didn't listen.
So, this episode, at its heart, is about making tragic mistakes, and how
hard it is to learn from them, even over hundreds of years.
MacGeorge
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End of HIGHLA-L Digest - 2 May 2004 to 4 May 2004 (#2004-84)
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