'The Samurai'

[ithildin]

Highlander Season Three

The Samurai, Air Date: October 1994

After Midori Koto sees her husband, rich industrialist Michael Kent, murder her lover, she kills Kent and runs to MacLeod for protection. She reminds MacLeod of a vow of protection his "ancestor" (actually MacLeod himself) made to her family over 200 years before. Flashbacks tell the story of MacLeod coming to the aid of the samurai Hideo Koto after MacLeod is shipwrecked in Japan. Hideo befriends MacLeod -- even though the penalty for helping a "barbarian" in isolationist Japan is death. When Hideo is forced to commit ritual hari kari by his feudal overlord for that crime, MacLeod serves as his second. He vows to Hideo he will always protect the Koto family and is bequeathed the dragon head katana sword he uses to this day. Back in the present, MacLeod discovers that Kent is an Immortal and he's still alive. In order not to further dishonor her family's name, Midori returns to Kent. Kent challenges MacLeod, who fulfills his vow to the Koto family and frees Midori from her loveless marriage. ~ recap via tv.com

Next week: The Cross of St. Antoine

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

My episode description, plus descriptions of outtakes and AP's commentary, are at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season3/Samurai.htm

This episode is extremely important canonically because it doesn’t just tell us about how Duncan got his katana, it tells us why, and what it represents to him. When we see him later struggle with issues of judgment and the relative value of human life, and whether he has the right or the duty to act when he sees something he believes is wrong, we know that he is dealing with those issues against a background of long-held belief that deception, however well intended, does not preserve honor, and that the value of honor is larger than the man who upholds it.

Duncan is still thinking like a mortal, in many ways. He doesn’t really take the long view that Methos does. He believes that in order to live a good life he must adhere to the concepts of trust and loyalty and honesty, and not doing so will stain his honor and lessen the value of his life. Methos appears to feel it is life itself that is the ultimate value, and that if he uses deceit and guile and even dishonor, if necessary, to insure his own survival (or that of people he cares about) that any ramifications of distrust or disgust or outrage at his behavior are acceptable, and relatively short-lived.

Who is right? Both? Neither?

Later, we do see Duncan begin to step away from his rather rigid notion of honor that we see up through Season Three. It began even before then, though, when he first encountered Darius, and ultimately decided that few causes were worth the price that war extracts. Then he ultimately finds that he is capable of as much evil (in his view) as any of the great villains he had fought in his life, and that no facade of honorable behavior could successfully hide that fact, from himself or anyone else.

By the end of the series, I think MacLeod is philosophically somewhere between the heroic, honorable DMotCM that we see in Season Three, and the non-ethics that we see Methos espouse (but which are frequently belied by his actions). He believes in acting in the face of immediate threats to innocent mortals. But he also believes that people have to make their own choices and deal with their own demons, and that it is not up to him to make that choice for them.

I think Highlander is one of very, very few genre shows that ever allowed their central heroic character to change so significantly over the course of the series, and to also be portrayed as someone who consistently made mistakes in judgment, and paid the price.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

This is one of my favourite non Methos episodes, and an ep that always stuck out in my memory from way back when. The flashback setting, the themes, the way the episode was filmed/lit. Lots of stuff I liked in this one.

[beeej.livejournal.com]

Me too. It's one of the first episodes I pull out when showing HL to new people. As many times as I've seen it, it never seems old.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

That's true, it would be a good episode to show to someone new. Great idea! :)

[dejla.livejournal.com]

Those are really good points. In some ways, the problem I had with 6th season was the idea that you could give up the sword -- Darius did, but Darius also lived his life on Holy Ground (which didn't save him in the end, but did keep him from killing anyone else).

One of the singular points of Japanese honor is that to surrender is dishonorable. Suicide is an honorable option, but living after surrendering is not an honorable action. That always felt to me like one of the original linchpins of MacLeod's character -- never surrender. And I'm not sure he's ever accepted that it is possible to surrender and not surrender honor at the same time.

He did change, throughout the seasons, and that's a remarkable thing to see happen in a main character, I agree.