HLS3: Take Back the Night

[ithildin]

Highlander Season Three

Take Back the Night, Air Date: April 1995

When Immortal Ceirdwyn and her mortal husband are gunned down by a street gang, she calls upon her skills as an ancient Celtic warrior to exact her revenge on the members of the gang, one by one. At the racetrack watching Richie's success at racing, MacLeod befriends a young pickpocket, the brother of one of the gang members, and learns of the killings.

MacLeod, who has known Ceirdwyn since before they helped smuggle Bonnie Prince Charlie out of Scotland in 1746, feels he must stop Ceirdwyn and make her see that revenge is not the answer -- a lesson she helped MacLeod learn in the bloody aftermath of Culloden. In return, Ceirdwyn helps MacLeod see that, although loving a mortal can be dangerous for the mortal, it is the mortal who must choose whether to take the risk. MacLeod calls Anne. Meanwhile, Richie "dies" in a firey crash during a race, a crash that also takes the life of the champion, Basil. ~ recap via tv.com

Next week: Finale I

(And I'll try and get the seaosn four poll up at some point today too.)

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

My episode summary and TPTB comments are at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season3/Take.htm

One thing I found interesting was the outtake scene they showed on the DVD: 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.”

My comments were: Despite Ken Gord’s reservations about the success of the episode, 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 fundamental aspect of Duncan’s character demonstrated fully. Going after Kern wasn’t an aberration. 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 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 who was being stalked by the crazy new Immortal who thought he was an avenging angel. 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 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, it can be interpreted that he is 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.