'Unholy Alliance'

[ithildin]

Highlander Season Two

Unholy Alliance, Air Date: February 1994

Xavier St. Cloud returns, killing Immortals with the help of mortal mercenaries who shoot his prey, making his kill easy. His next target is MacLeod but, warned by Dawson, Mac and Charlie just manage to escape death -- though the dojo is all but destroyed in the gunfight. Renee Delaney, a CID agent investigating the mercenary angle, gets on the case. MacLeod goes after Xavier himself, and Charlie insists on coming along. During his battle with St. Cloud, MacLeod spots James Horton, the Hunter who killed Darius. Distracted, Mac is 'killed' and falls down an elevator shaft out of beheading range, and Charlie is badly wounded and lies near death. Blaming Dawson for helping Horton escape alive, MacLeod warns him not to cross his path again.

As Charlie regains strength, MacLeod accepts help from Dawson one last time, and barely misses catching Xavier and Horton. He then follows their trail to Paris -- accompanied by the persistent Renee Delaney. They track down Horton, and when he almost escapes, he is shot by Joe Dawson. MacLeod, with the help of his humorous new neighbor Maurice, then tracks down Xavier and finally takes his head. In a coda, however, we learn that Horton still lives.
~ recap via tv.com

Next week will be Pharaoh's Daughter

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

This encompasses two episodes, so I'll do two different comments. For these, I ended up with a lot of miscellaneous comments, in addition to my general commentary at the end:

Unholy Alliance I: episode description and commentary at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season2/Unholy1.htm

Joe continuously denies knowing Horton was alive, but once that lie becomes apparent, he denies knowing that Horton was involved in these killings. But if that was true, why did Joe specifically warn MacLeod about these killings which had taken place in Paris and New York, far away from Seacouver and not involving anyone Mac was close to? Methinks Joe *always* knew it might be Horton, but either wasn't certain enough, or didn't have the courage to confront Horton about it.

Also, in the flashback Duncan is carrying a standard broadsword instead of his basket-hilt claymore that he carried after Culloden. There's also a canon implication here - that after Duncan left Connor, he returned to the Highlands, at least for a time. The Watcher Chronicle with the dvd says the incident occurred in 1670.

General Comments: This is an important episode, both canonically and especially in the relationship between Joe and Mac. At the end of it, Mac is convinced that Joe can't be trusted. The disappointment and sense of betrayal is palpable. Duncan is intensely loyal to his friends and he had begun to think of Joe as a real friend. As for Dawson, he really has screwed up, IMO. He had to have known something was going on, at *least* subconsciously. We do know that, like Mac, Joe is loyal to a fault, sometimes blindly and in this instance, fatally blindly.

I think Horton is a great villain, full of that fire of righteous, insane arrogance at the right moments, and smoothly suave the next. And Xavier is pretty good as a bad guy, too, easy on the eye in a creepy kind of way. I wish they'd done a better job with the severed hand, but I supposed the length is always a problem.

What to say about Renee? Well, I liked her better than I remembered, and she and Duncan had some nice moments contrasting sexual tension and very real anger and irritation. You got a solid sense that he liked her gumption and her playacting and her humor and her intelligence, but they were *so* never going to have a relationship because of who and what she was, and who and what he was.

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

Unholy Alliance II, summary and miscellaneous commentary at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season2/Unholy2.htm

Misc. comments: The actor who plays Xavier (rock singer Roland Gift), got a lot better with each fight scene, and this is a pretty good fight, overall. I love the little trick DM does when he uses his foot to flip a fallen sword into his hand. The Quickening in this is also interesting, and it seems clear that Duncan has at least some capacity to deflect the energy away from himself, giving some credence to the notion that after he beheaded Kalas in Finale II at the end of Season Three, that the destruction of the general area around Kalas' headquarters was deliberate.

There is a final scene between Renee and Duncan in a park, where Renee makes her interest very clear (if it wasn't already). She asks, "Do you think, someday, that you and I..." she shakes her head. "Oh, God this is embarrassing." Then she laughs. "How come you haven't come onto me yet?"

[Hmm. He's already kissed her a couple of times. But I know what she means. She has made all the moves, and he has just kind of gone along for the ride. It seemed like at every turn he was still thinking and talking about Tessa.]

My General Comments: Some big stuff going on in this episode, but what is going on in Duncan's head? I think he is still grieving over Tessa, and there is something about Renee's independence and strength that is tugging those strings. But he also sees her as an individual and is torn between wanting to move on and grasp what happiness he can (as he says to his Immortal friend's widow), and still too mired in grief to let his heart feel that much. There is also the problem that she is a cop, and a curious one at that, and represents a threat to his identity. So he ends up being entirely reactive in the relationship, leaving Renee to make all the moves, frustrating her and sending her mixed signals.

His friendship with Joe is never really shattered, although it comes awfully close. He holds Joe at least partially responsible for Charlie getting hurt, and for the death of his Immortal friend, because his saving and protecting Horton allowed him to run amok. But Joe is nothing if not persistent. He can't make it right, but he'll do whatever it takes to both stop the killing and to repair his friendship with the Immortal he's been watching for 15 years, and of whom he says in the intro, "There can be only one. Let it be Duncan MacLeod." First he dares visit Mac, even in the face of Mac's last words to him ("The next time I see you will be the last."), and gives Mac an address, practically begging him to believe him. Then, it is clear Joe is "the friend" who let Duncan know Xavier had gone to Paris. Finally, Joe steps up and in the face of Horton's plea ("But we're family!"), says harshly, "I'll light you a candle," and pulls the trigger on his unarmed brother-in-law.

And at the end, we still have Horton hiding in the distance, watching MacLeod say his tender goodbye to Renee, and we know we haven't seen the last of the bastard, yet.

I've never been fond of the "perpetual bad guy" story line seen in a lot of super hero comics. Somehow, whether it's Lex Luthor, The Penguin, or whoever, never getting closure on a bad guy is very unsatisfying, for me. But Horton was such a really great bad guy, keeping him around for one more round (well, one and half, actually, if you include the whole Ahriman sequence) worked for me.

[kathyh]

I think I should have made notes while I was watching this because now I have time to write something my mind's gone blank apart from saying that I agree with Macgeorge. From the perspective of the later seasons it comes as quite a shock to revisit an episode where MacLeod's relationship with Joe was so rocky. No matter what Horton has done he's still a member of Joe's family so his action at the end in shooting him has a lot of impact.

I never much liked Charlie, for no reason that I can put my finger on, but I did understand his huge confusion about MacLeod and his secrets. I presume Duncan thought it was just too dangerous to tell him about Immortality.

I liked Renee Delaney and think that at another time she might have had better luck with Duncan, but obviously he would have had trouble keeping secrets from her.

I suspect I was supposed to find Maurice endearing, instead I just found him irritating.

I thought the montage of Duncan's memories of Tessa was a very nice touch as it was his first stay at the barge since she died. Maurice did serve a purpose in defusing the potential heartbreak of that moment, but I still found him annoying.

The episode was a nice balance of action and character moments and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[mamamia1964.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I agree. Maurice was just plain annoying. I also agree with MacG. Duncan was too wrapped up in his memories of Tessa to be attracted to Renee. Besides, she was too....obvious?....not as classy as Tessa, that's for sure. In fact, it's always funny to see how different his love for Tessa and Amanda are. Tessa was very classy, while Amanda remains the perpetual sex symbol. They seem to appeal to the two different sides of Duncan. But, he seems to go for long-term relationship with the quieter, less extroverted women. (At least, I never got the feeling that Tessa was an extrovert. But, both Tessa and Dr. A were warm folks.)

Anyway, I'm digressing. I haven't seen these episodes in a while, so I'm searching through tired brain cells here! I liked parts of these episodes, and disliked other parts. For example, I liked the part with Duncan dropping in on the bad guys, just like a Mission Impossible scene. Some of the scenes between Charlie and Duncan are great, while others are just annoying. Renee was annoying for the most part, too. And, I thought that the Immie was a little too over the top.

Finally, I got tired of Horton as the bad guy. But, I did like the growth in Duncan and Joe's relationship. Despite or because of the rocky path, their friendship is precious to both of them.