'The Darkness'

[ithildin]

Sorry this is a day late.

Highlander Season Two

The Darkness, Air Date: October 1993

A mortal named Pallin Wolf, one of the renegade Watchers who believes the Immortals must be eliminated, lures an Immortal to his house and kills him, getting the advantage by tricking him into a sealed room that is completely dark, then stalking him with night vision goggles. Meanwhile, a Gypsy fortuneteller they meet in a restaurant, Greta, warns Tessa that she is in danger. When Tessa is kidnapped by Wolf, MacLeod returns to Greta, asking for her help. But she's mostly a hustler, and not accustomed to getting actual visions, so the clues she is able to provide are meager.

Finally, Mac finds Wolf's house, where Wolf is waiting for him. He meets Wolf in the dark room and all seems hopeless until he remembers a matchbook Greta gave him with her phone number in it. Lighting the matches, he regains the advantage and kills Wolf. However, as Tessa and Richie are heading for the car, a young junkie accosts them for money, and in an act of senseless violence, shoots them both. As Mac mourns, Richie tentatively sits up, healing -- he is an Immortal. But Tessa is gone. ~ recap via tv.com

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

For a detailed description of what TPTB had to say about the episode, and a blow-by-blow of the episode itself, see:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season2/Darkness.htm

My observations were:

The emotionally important moments in this episode are many, but at the top of the list is Duncan's defiant statement that no one's fate is predestined, followed by his immediate proposal to Tessa. His love for her was a tangible thing, communicating with remarkable power virtually every time we saw them together. During the midst of the kidnaping crisis, Duncan was cool, but fiercely determined, not at all cowed at the notion that Fate was playing with him in the person of the psychic and the gypsy who told him he would never marry. And he saved her. He got the bad guy. Everything was okay. But then she was dead, violently, suddenly, in a way he couldn't protect her from, didn't even know he was *supposed* to protect her from. But protecting her was his job. The helplessness of that, plus the pure sense of loss, would be utterly crushing. His reaction seemed absolutely understandable, to me. In that moment he had to believe that in defying Fate he had caused her death as surely as though he had pulled the trigger himself. So what could he do but go to his knees, and hold her. Not weep, not cry out. Just hold her.

There is a whole other story going on, though. Richie is not dead, at least not permanently. He is Immortal, and is now Duncan's responsibility, at a time when he would have no emotional energy to spare for such a task. But as we see in later episodes, I think it is that responsibility and Richie's irrepressible nature that keeps Duncan from sinking back into that dark place where he retreated after Little Deer was killed.

I liked the emotional set-up - the defiance of Fate which represents to me a fundamental part of DM's character - a refusal to be controlled by anything other than his own acts, skills and decisions. I think Tracie Lord did (as DA said) have a certain vulnerability that communicated well on screen, and I liked Tessa's determination to get out of the bad guy's control. I have a few nits to pick about some plot points, but on the whole the plot more or less held together. The final scenes were hard to watch, but certainly are memorable, and have become an essential part of an understanding of DM's character.