HIGHLA-L Digest - 6 May 2005 to 23 May 2005 (#2005-49)
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Mon, 23 May 2005 22:00:18 -0400
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Topics of the day:
1. Season Six DVD Commentary: Patient Number 7
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Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 11:00:37 -0400
From: kageorge <kageorge@erols.com>
Subject: Season Six DVD Commentary: Patient Number 7
Sorry it's been a while. This is my crazy time of year, but things are
quieting down a little.
The html version of the commentary, including screen captures, can be
found at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season6/Patient7.htm
TPTB COMMENTARY: David A. says the first thing you try to do in an
episode is “not create a stinker”, and to create a good story. This
story didn’t have a big Immortal question, but technically it was a good
story, although David says it would also have made a great “La Femme
Nikita” episode, as well. There was nothing that made it a Highlander
episode, but it was well paced and a good script. Some episodes can be
about Talmudic questions, but it may not happen every week.
Any idea that works is a great idea, because they are under such
incredible time pressure because every seven shooting days, you have to
come up with 55 pages worth of script, and “that machine keeps turning.”
Sometimes you have great ideas, and sometimes you have to rely on great
execution, and this episode was well executed.
With a smile, David says that it wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the
episodes like “The Ransom of Richie [sic] Redstone,” or “The Zone,” or
“some of the other woofers we put on.”
Hal Beckett, the series composer during Season Six, said that Don
(Paonessa, I assume), came up with the idea of using “The Thieving
Magpie” by Rossini, (for the flashback bedroom scene) – music which was
also used in “A Clockwork Orange”. On the surface it’s a very light
piece, but a little deeper, there is a “warped, quirky angle to it,” so
it really worked with all the sexual double entendres in the scene.
However, he had to go back to the original scoring of that part of the
opera and rearrange it to fit the scene, which was very satisfying and
fun to do.
David A. said sometimes the sixth season was harder because you only had
Adrian for a limited number of days, so you had to work the script and
the show around that, which could be difficult, but no one gave up, in
any of the years Highlander ran. David A. then ruminates critically
about Adrian Paul, implying that AP’s lack of involvement was because
his ego got out of control. “Was he tired? Did he want to go on to
something else? Maybe all that’s possible. But I certainly can’t judge
him. He began to think, “I’m a star,” and he was a star.” DA adds for
emphasis that AP was a star in the world of Highlander. “We (I think he
was talking about all those involved, as well as AP) caught a great role
with Highlander.” He adds that it was a pleasure and a struggle, and
that it worked all those years is a testimony to Adrian and Bill Panzer
and the writers.
NO OUTTAKES.
EPISODE: The episode begins at a large mental institution, where Patient
Number 7, who the attendants say has amnesia, is being sedated. She is a
pretty, petite blond woman staring vacantly off into space, unaware when
the attendant tries to molest her. At that moment, two Euro-thugs stride
in and kill the various attendants, but when they take aim at the young
woman she suddenly (and expertly) reacts to the threat. Soon she is
leaping over the dead body in the hall, and escapes the facility.
We then visit General Vladitch, a craggy-faced man with a heavy accent
living in a large, isolated house. In a room filled with animal
trophies, Vladitch severely chastises the two Euro-thugs for not being
able to kill a medicated girl locked up in a hospital, and bring her
body to him. Vladitch alludes to mass killings they had done together in
the past, threatening to put both of them in a lime pit without wasting
a bullet on them. The thugs tell him that, unexpectedly, the girl didn’t
know who they were, and the chart they had stolen says she has amnesia.
Vladitch says that will make her all the easier to find, and that he can
guess where she will “go to ground.”
In the meantime, she has stolen some clothes and hitchhiked a ride into
Paris, ending up in front of a house that triggers some remnant of
memory of witnessing Vladitch killing someone, and when she ends up
passing a guy who pulls out a cellphone, she reacts as though it were a
gun, kicking it out of his hand and twisting his arm up behind his back.
When she approaches a newspaper dealer, speaking to him in Arabic (the
language he had been using to talk on the phone), then sees herself in a
newspaper headline, she ends up panicking and kicking the stand down,
then running.
Then we see Duncan strolling along the street, and he feels the presence
of another Immortal, soon running into the woman, calling her “Kira,” in
a friendly fashion. “It’s me, MacLeod!” he says, when she just looks
puzzled. She shouts a warning about something behind him to distract
him, and takes off and Duncan takes off after her. He catches up to her
and after a brief struggle convinces her that they are friends, although
she doesn’t seem to know him. Police sirens are heard and at the woman’s
insistence they run away, ending up under a bridge near the barge.
She tries to recall who she is, but remembers only snatches of things
from the hospital, and questions why she should trust Duncan. “Because
there is no one else,” he tells her.
Back at Vladitch’s house, the Euro-thugs report that they had waited at
the house where he had told them to wait, but never saw the girl, and
question why they were bothering to try to kill a girl who didn’t even
remember anything. “Sooner or later she will remember,” Vladitch
answers. “And it is always better to be the hunter than the hunted.”
Duncan and Kira are dining on the deck of the barge when she comments
knowledgably about the antique being used to serve some of the food,
then is puzzled at how she knows about that, “Riiight the Immortal
thing,” she says when Duncan alludes to the fact that it might not be
because she is a history expert.
We get a flashback to a tavern in France, in 1640, where Kira enters
dressed as a guard of Queen Anne. When she is insulted by two of
Cardinal Richelieu’s minions, Duncan stands to defend her. “These are no
gentlemen,” Kira pipes up. “And the lady can take care of herself.”
Duncan defers to her, sitting back down. The insults fly and when things
get violent Duncan just steps out of the way, careful to hang onto his
cup of wine, only intervening to slice the arm of one of them when he
attempts to hit Kira with a chair while she’s busy taking care of the
other one, who she forces to say nice things about Queen Anne and to
call Richelieu a bastard, ultimately kicking both of Richelieu’s guards
out of the tavern.
When she inquires from the innkeeper about a room for the night, it
turns out Duncan has taken the last room, but he offers to share, “Under
strictly honorable circumstances, of course.” They end up sharing the
narrow bed, their discomfort and mutual interest growing as they both
partially disrobe and climb in.
She glances at him, then looks ahead. “I’ve never met a Scotsman before.
Tell me, are they well armed?”
Then ensues a series of innuendoes and double entendres about the size
of a Scotsman’s sword, complete with demonstrative gestures, that is
among the more humorous moments in Highlander canon. Subsequently, when
neither of them can sleep, and Kira asks why that is, Duncan answers
with a smile that, “I have a theory.” When she asks if the theory is
strictly honorable, Duncan shakes his head and they kiss.
In the present, Kira tells Duncan that he was the one who belongs in a
mental institution, but he informs her she has a birthmark on the inside
of her thigh, which she retreats into the pilothouse to examine, and to
her embarrassment, finds he is telling the truth. He tells her they had
only one night together, and they hadn’t seen each other in over 100 years.
“Can’t have been much of a night, then,” she quips.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Duncan says gently. “I remember it.”
She finally concedes that they probably knew each other, but she doesn’t
buy the Immortal story, so Duncan picks up a couple of nearby pipes,
hands one to her, then attacks her. Her response is instinctive and
expert, finally proving Duncan’s point.
They decide she must have hysterical amnesia, and she worries that she
might have killed the people she has seen in her snatches of memory.
Then she remembers dancing with a man, making love to him, and a house –
the house she had passed by earlier that day. She goes to the house and
recognizes the two Euro-thugs sitting in a car out front. She sneaks
into the house, and wandering through its rooms triggers the return of
her memory.
Turns out she was the bodyguard and lover of the chief judge (Richard)
of a court trying Vladitch for crimes against humanity. Just as they are
leaving for a romantic holiday together she learns that Vladitch has
been released and before she can react, Vladitch breaks in and kills
Richard and she has to throw herself off the balcony to get away.
Shortly after her memories return, she has armed herself, and kills one
of the henchmen outside to deliver a message to Vladitch, who is pleased
that she will now be coming to him and they will fight on his turf.
She goes to MacLeod and tells him about Vladitch and what he had done,
and how much she had loved Richard. She asked MacLeod if he knew what it
felt like to have that all taken away, and he says he does. She says if
she doesn’t come back, and if he ever runs into Vladitch – “I’ll make it
a point,” he interrupts.
Of course, she manages to take out Vladitch’s thugs and then, in a
stylish fight, takes on Vladitch and defeats him. (Unfortunately, it is
pretty obvious that the fight is mostly done with a double.) The
quickening is not impressive.
She goes to the barge and tells Duncan that her killing Vladitch wasn’t
the justice that Richard would have wanted, but it would have to do.
Duncan offers to help if she ever needs anything and she thanks him, but
says (as she did when they originally met), “the lady can take care of
herself.” They kiss gently, and Duncan smiles and says he remembers, and
she smiles back as she leaves and responds, “So do I.”
MY COMMENTS: Not a bad story, but not a particularly good one, either.
As a tryout for an Immortal femme fatale, Kira doesn’t really have the
on-screen charisma or the physical skills to pull of the roll of a
female Immortal bodyguard. However, the whole episode is worth it for
the flashback scene. It was clever and funny and a real pleasure to watch.
I considered David A.’s remarks about AP, and confess they bothered me,
but I also must confess I have a personal point of view to bring to the
issue.
There’s this person I know really, really well who once played the role
of Anne Sullivan in “The Miracle Worker”. For weeks and weeks she
rehearsed, then performed the play, which includes a tremendously
difficult emotional and physical scene – the one where Anne physically
forces Helen to touch things over and over again, spelling their names
out in her hand. It is really a very physical battle, with Helen kicking
and struggling and fighting Anne all the way until that incredible
moment when the light dawns, the connection between the signs formed in
her hand and the objects she is touching is realized, and Helen’s
internal universe suddenly and dramatically opens to the outside world.
It’s great drama.
Now, the person playing Anne is tall and physical and strong, and the
person playing Helen is only about 5’3” and slight, but when you have to
do that sort of thing night after night, deliberately taking physical
blows (no matter how carefully choreographed or executed), bruises pile
upon bruises and emotional strain piles on emotional strain until it
becomes an incredible ordeal just to do it… one more time. I know this
person locked herself in the bathroom more than one night and wept at
the pain after the show because she couldn’t let the actor playing Helen
know how much it hurt because then she might not play the scene full out
and the drama would be spoiled.
I take the knowledge of that person’s experience, and then I imagine
doing that over and over and over again – for years and years. No matter
how carefully choreographed physical scenes are, no matter how
professionally they are done at whatever skill level, there is a
tremendous physical and emotional toll.
So, if Adrian Paul was tired and wanted to step back and distance
himself from the weekly grind of such a physically and emotionally
demanding show I can deeply sympathize. The only surprise to me is how
long he stuck it out.
I can also understand why chief writer David A. felt peeved that Adrian
– who was the heart of the series on whom so many people (including
David A.) depended for their employment at the time, and who, no doubt,
could be demanding, imperious and dictatorial, especially about the
character he played and how that character ought to be written – pulled
away from daily involvement just when things were beginning to fray at
the edges anyway. Perhaps David felt that if Adrian had been more fully
involved the show (and their jobs) might have been saved.
Was it just about ego? Was he just plain exhausted and tired of the
pain? I don’t know and frankly, I’m not sure it’s any of my business to
know. My interest in the show is about the characters. The actors and
writers and directors, etc., have interesting things to say about how
those characters were perceived and played, but their individual private
lives are not why I watched the show or continue to be interested in it.
MacGeorge
All Episode Commentaries can be found at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/indexframeset.htm
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End of HIGHLA-L Digest - 6 May 2005 to 23 May 2005 (#2005-49)
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